Week12&13-Towards Expression3 (Final)

Here is the final of my directed project.



I redo all the stop motion parts (that is the character animation), import them into aftereffects to make the color keying and color correction. When animating, I used natural light instead, and it worked a lot better. Color keying went not as bad as I thought; some darker shadows were still keyed out, which will be something to improve the next time I use this method. However, my camera is still not really stable, so the animation is a bit shaky.

After color keying, I drew the background and props in photoshop and set up the stage in aftereffects. Animating in aftereffects took a bit longer than I thought because each step is still irregular which I spent a lot of time fixing it and adjusting the speed.

Sound design is something I am not good at. It caused me most of the problem, but I tried my best not to simply take a piece of music.

I like the flatness of this animation, and the sound works better than I imagined (at least better than what I did before). I hope the next time I will be able to work on some facial expressions because I didn't do too much in the short.

Week11-Towards Expression2

The fox puppet failed. It is too stiff to animate smoothly, and its legs cannot support the weight of the puppet. It won't balance even if I add a long tail to support it.

I am still working with plasticine. Instead of making a 3D puppet, I made it 2 and 1/2D to lessen the unnecessary weight. A supporting wire stand was made to hold up the puppet. This stand not only support the weight, it can actually been attached to the puppet; therefore, if I am only animating the feet, I won't accidentally move the body parts.


This is my first test for the project. I tried to make the character (a sheep) walk across the screen. It was a disaster at first because I often forgot which leg is right and which is left. After the first step, I attached the leg one in the front and one at the back to distinguish them. 


The second test I put the character in the center of the screen, not making it to go across the screen. I forgot to reset the focus, but this way of animating saves a lot of time.


Improvement needed: - The overall animation is still to fast. I surely need more in-betweens. 
- The camera is not stable enough.
- The light caused too much reflection, cannot key out green color properly.
- The walk cycle is not regular.
- Upper body (arms) has limited movement.

Week10-Towards Expression1

For this last assignment, I would like to work with plasticine, which is a material I used only once in foundation year. I began with a wire structure still, and wrap this wire with plasticine only. To make the head lighter, I had a styrofoam in it, but the rest is purely plasticine. After the puppet was done, I found that I forgot his tail. The problem is that without a wire in it, the tail didn't attach to the body at all and it just kept falling apart. The other problem is that his body is still to heavy for the feet to balance the weight. The arms could not move freely or else the wire in them might expose. Anyway, I had a lot of issues working with this puppet.

 After the failure of puppet making, I decided to change my character and story to a simpler one (since I don't have much time left for this assignment). This story will be focusing on one character only, with a much simpler background design and no camera movements in order to limit the work load. The storyboard is still longer than I need, the animation should stop at step 4.

Week9-Detailed Reflection on Deeper Studies & Proposal for Towards Expression

I-Detailed Reflection on Deeper Studies

I guess I can call it a failure of the past three weeks. I tried different ways to keep the puppet standing on its own (wire and magnets) but none of them work. Honestly, I am tired of making a human-like miniature, and the materials I used didn't work as well as I imagined. The next assignment I will probably be trying some other materials.

II-Proposal for Towards Expression

This is the character design:

This is the inspirational sketch:

This is the storyboard:

These will be the materials:

This is where the inspiration (puppet making) comes from:

Week8-Deeper Study2

I created a new puppet using wire structure and felt, but this time the limbs are separated from the body and the feet are made of magnets. I've tried the magnets before attaching them on to the puppet. Magnets work well on their own; however, when attaching to the puppet, it was still unbalanced. Therefore I have to use more magnets than I thought I need. The problem is that I have nowhere to hide the extra magnets, and it might take me extra time to remove them in photoshop.

The other difficulty comes from the limbs. I have a toddy bear in this kind of design, and the arms and legs can be moved freely. But the puppet I made didn't work the same way, which means they don't have memory in their movements. I had to limit the arm movement because of the problem.

Week7-Deeper Study1

I used the same puppet from the messy period, trying hard to make the puppet stand up by using wire. It doesn't really works, cause the wire cannot support the weight of the puppet (though it's pretty light already). I have to hold the wire underneath while at the same time shoot the photo, which is a challenging move, and my back and arms suffer a lot after animating.

A profile walk:
 

Yoga exercise:

Week5&6-Detailed Reflection on Messys

From the studies of the past three weeks, my biggest problem is tempos. This was probably the first time I worked under the camera without onion skinning. It was difficult to get track of the timing and the speed of the motions. If I did one move wrong, I had to redo everything, and this really made me frustrated especially my camera was not stable and it shifts every time I shot a frame. The tempos didn't work for the first and second messy practices (the second messy practice improved a little bit though), so during the making of the third messy practice, I gave myself a little assignment which I could get familiar with stop motion again. I made three practices, and the flow of the movements were overall satisfying, though I didn't have the time to work on the fourth practice which will be a walk cycle.

I am still aiming on puppet animation. More interested in the creation of puppets and background setup than the actual animating process.