I have now made my characters for the animation and I've also done the storyboard. I have made many expressions for each of the characters so that I can ply around with them. The first character I started to work on was the woman and I decided in the story board that I want her to flicker her eye lashes in a flirty way toward the ma, heres a quick example of her in working progress;

 

At first I thought I would be fine to use my digital camera but I found that it wasnt good enough quality for what I wanted. So I decided to go to the photography to department at the uni and rent a nikon D60 camera and I also needed a tripod to keep the camera in the same position. In earlier projects we were tought how to use this camera not using manual so I found this very helpful when using it for this project. So I set up my own little studio at home with the right lighting and I used my story board to guide me throught the expressions and movements. Heres a few pictures from the animation;

Heres a picture of all of the expressions and other features I used for the animation;

At the beginning of the project I thought about having a backgroud for the animation and I thought about a tradional mexican town or a desert. But after thinking through it I decided that it might make the characters not stand out so much and I felt that I made the animation complicated as it was with the detailed characters so in the end I decided to just have a plain background that I could write on so it was clear to see.



This next workshop we did was in the stop motion studios. We were shown how the program worked which is simple, basically you have a camera thats specific to the program and it was plugged into the laptop so that any image we took was streamed straight to the computer. We were given objects to make a short animation with for a practice, we were given kids toys to play about with. So we placed the toy in the shot and then moved it slightly to the next move and when you do this you can see the last move still there like a ghost of its self, this is so you can see where you last were so that you move it in the right place. When we got the hang off it it was actually very simple and hers the video we ended up with;

I found this method very easy and fast to use and I remembered a few videos I'd seen before that are done using the same method. This group called 8 bit that have done a few adverts and they use lego to create objects and make them move with stop motion.

I've also seen this stop motion movie before and always wondered how they do it. They use post it notes on there wall to create images and writing and I think very interesting and fun to watch.

 Heres a few examples of the workshop we did in the dark rooms. We were asked to bring some objects in to take photos of and I brought one of my crystal glass pots and some beads to the session. She explained to us how the exposure worked and she demonstrated with a glass and some feathers as shown below. She did a test example of the piece to show us how different you can make the photo look by doing longer exposures and covering the rest of the piece to show it and at the end you can see the strips change. Once you have done this you can decide which exposure you would like to use for the whole photo, she also showed us on a plain piece of paper and another paper on top with a square cut out and she moved the square around the paper closer and further away and when the photo came out you could see lots of small and big squares overlapping each other with different exposures and it was a great effect. As you can see with the test it sloly starts to get brighter and you cant see the image in so much detail and this isnt necessary a bad thing because if you wanted a light effect you could use this method.

The first attempt I did at the exposure was this dark piece below as you can see you can hardly see the pot and the beads but this is still quite nice to look at but qhat i want was to be able to see the glass shining and see the detail in the pattern and the beads. So i then set the exposure for longer and brighter so that i could see the detail I wanted and I think it really worked out, I still tested the exposure on it as you can see it starts to get a bit brighter but its not as huge of a difference as the tutors was. So overall I found the workshop really fun and I really enjoyed learning about how it worked. She also showed us other ways of making the photo by putting it in 3 or 4 parts of water then drying it out but she said this would take to long for our animation because of how many frames we should have, so instead we just put it through a machine that processed it in about 2 minutes.

The actual end result didnt quite look like this because I took a photo of it and played around with the colour which I thought would be interesting except you can see the flash on the paper which I didnt want to do. But other than that I'm really happy with the outcome, except I'm not quite sure how I could make my animation with this tecnique it seems it would take a very long time and also the paper for doing this method is quite expensive but I would definitly like to use this method another time. To help me think about whether I could use this method I've found a few videos of peoples rayogram animations.

It's strange because as soon as I looked up rayogram animations this came up and It's also the song I have to use for my animation. I think it's a really good video for what I can do with this and I can see that you can use other methods with it like photoshop and after effects.

  

This next one is a good example of the simple forms and shapes I could use and how you can cut the images up and move them around to give different effects they have also drawn on the rayograms which is a great idea I could use.



storyboard

Heres my storyboard for my animation the heart broken mexican. Its only a a quick sketch of whats going to happen in my animation, it explains what the characters movement is and how its going to look for example close ups and different angles of the scene. This will help me to organise my animation and will show me what i need to do when I'm at the final stages of making it. I'm still not certain whether what program I want to use to make it.



characters and backgrounds...

I have now come up with the final sketches for my animation and here are the characters. I sketched the skeleton up and I then cut it up and the joints, I then put string inbetween them so that the skeleton could move.

 Heres a photo of one of the characters I think I'm going to use and I think he's going to be the guy that seranades the women with his banjo.

 This next one is a possible character I'd like to use. My story has a sort of guy and then a handsome guy comes along so I need to think about what i want them to look like and how I can show one as being really handsome, so this is what I need to do next in my sketchbook.

I've been thinking about what kind of background I could have and whether I want to use a background. So here I have researched mexican patterns, rug patterns, cloth patterns e.t.c. I've found that mexican patterns are all really quite colourfull and stripey and if I want my skeletons to stand out a striking background might not work well with it, but it could also work. I could have the skeletons as sillouettes?!.

So this next drawing I've done in my sketchbook is of a mexican pattern and I've put the simple skeleton infront of it and you can see that it does stand out and works well.  After this I'm going to put the skeleton sketches I did earlier infront of a pattern but a less complex pattern and see how it goes.

I really like the bright colours and patterns in this piece and the mexican day of the dead art is full of bright colours and great patterns so you can see how inspiring the art is to my animation. Below is my next sketch of the next pattern I chose from my research and because there's a  strip of white on the bottom and top you can see the skeleton alot more than you would with the last skeleton. I also have the idea that as the animation starts the pattern goes round in a circle so the skeleton is moving one way and the pattern is continously moving the other way, I think this could enhance the movement a little.

Theres another option I could go for and that is a totally different style of background. I could do a traditional mexican scene like in the westerns when theres a stand off in the village. Heres a few sketches of this idea and I think they work quite well.

 I really like both of these and if i want to use them I'd find it hard to choose. I like the detail of the church and it gives a real mexican feel and I also like colours and the way its painted. And i like the dessert scenery because it's a very traditional cartoon style background for this type of animation. I now need to make some desicions as to what I want the whole animation to be like. I like all the ideas I have come up with but making a desicion quickly is often quite vital to my design progress and the animation may take time to do so I need to make sure I leave enough time to do it.

 

Inspiration....

There is so much art in the mexican day of the dead, but I need to look at different styles and also need to look at actual animations. I remembered a game I used to play called grim fandango, it's a mexican style game with skeletons as the characters and theres a long story throughout the game and this could inspire me with my animation and what type of story I could do.

This next animation I found is such good inspiration for my idea. I love how simple it is but yet you want to keep watching it! Ive already been drawing skeletons much like these but I havent started thinking about what I'm going to do with them and I really want to have a a simple and interesting animation that will catch peoples attention and remember it. So now I need to make a skeleton that will move so that I can start messing about with them. I also love the idea of the flowers and how they get bigger as they grow and bright coloured flowers are in the mexican theme.

This next video isnt particularly helpful for my movie but I think it's a great idea and i love watching it everytime. Its a good example of what you can do with stop motion and it just shows what people can come up with, because really its quite a simple idea but when it all comes together it looks like it would be hard to do but its not really.