Friday 29 February 2008

Not quite panic, but nearly

Self Negotiated
After one more day in the puppet room, I am quite happy with the results I have achieved and decided to pack up and concentrate on the other ares of the project which need quite alot of work (animatic, finish storyboard and he 30 second feature) I also need to spend time with the other 2 projects as time is rapidly running out. All in all the return to stop-motion was initially very frustrating and a nightmare, what with the first puppet breaking and my crap timing and lack of patience -but in the end I really enjoyed it, wanting to achieve lots more with this medium. The second puppet I made was far superior to the first (both structurally and visually) The results gained are incredibly rewarding and well worth the massive effort involved.

Web Design
Once again had to seek advice from Ella as I'm still not getting it with adding movies to the site. In between I have polished up the design and as I look back (even though i isn't yet finished) I can see how the site has grown both in design and function as I understand the program a bit better. There are more pages than earlier anticipated and I'm really having to put the brakes on and not add any more pages as I fell I have spent more time with this than I thought I would and time management is of the essence with deadlines less than 2 weeks away. All (!?) I have left to do is... build an Mp3 player, add the Mp3s and add the movies. I am, also encountering problems with getting links buttons to work. I so far have spent the most time with the discography section, had to alter the design countless times so it would all fit on the page- at points I am cursing myself for undertaking a band website due to the enormous content, but am very pleased with the results and glad I bothered! It has been handy too liaising with the other members of the band to get their opinions on the design and function; also group decisions regarding the songs for inclusion on the site. Hopefully I can badger one (or all of them) to write an evaluation of the site. 

Sound Design
So after gaining access to an incredibly booked up resource, I 'got down to business' with adding my recorded Foley sounds and finding sound effects for 'The Wooden Leg'. Logic to me has the most ironic name of any computer program I have had the pleasure to work with and anyone even vaguely familiar with its working will know what I'm talking about. I know that with my senior shriveled brain it's going to take me a while to get the hang of new technology, but this has been a right mission! As programs go, it's incredibly intimidating for me (scared of the digital?) Things happens when you least expect it with this and once you have got a tiny grasp, the bloody computer crashes! These have been my problems with the project so far - hard to get access to the 'MA' sound room, lack of knowledge with the program, the mixing desk changed (it took a while to get used to the old one) computer crashing regularly - and once I had synched together sound and image meticulously, the bloody film timeline had moved (or the computer is running slowly?) the technological problems have been taking up more time than the actual process of editing and processing the soundtrack. Hopefully a tutorial with Barnaby Templar will help me with some of these problems. However all of this aside, we had a a group tutorial yesterday and the group agreed that the sounds I had used and the soundtrack all worked well together giving my chosen clip new depth. Tom initially advised me against a soundtrack, but I tried it anyway and I'm glad that it works with the image. My thoughts for the choice of track (Herb Alpert) was to start the film with the viewer in high spirits, then changing the soundtrack completely to mirror the tragic elements on screen. I want to also add more humour (sound effects) as obvious or cheesy as it may be, but it's always nice for something to be entertaining and not so much puzzling for the viewer (even though saying that I am also drawn to the latter) My initial idea for the sound design for this clip was to add a new dimension to it, as in its original state it's very flat and two dimensional, the soundtrack itself doesn't do the animation justice and my first impression was that more could be added to hopefully add depth to it. I also saw that 'The Wooden Leg' had lots of opportunity for Foley and sound effects which I wanted to practice as for my final film I will be using both of these. 

Tuesday 26 February 2008

Blink and you'll miss it!

The second of 2 attempts. And it didn't break,nice one.

Monday 25 February 2008

The Second Puppet


A bit quicker to build than the first and defiantly a more robust design. Another major change is with the claw design. There's a hinge in each claw allowing it to open and shut. Pins have been added to the end of each leg providing a more rigid stance. I've also added an 'in-between' set of eyes for blinking. Hope the stronger design leads to a longer 'life' of the crab.

Round Two


Self Negotiated Project
The second attempt nearly finished, just needs its 'skin'. Got a few more days booked in the puppet animation room to animate the crab, fingers crossed this one stays in one piece! Encountered a couple of problems making this one so far, in-particular Milliput not setting as it should (the claws) - so substituted it with Fimo.

Friday 22 February 2008

Disaster

Self Negotiated
Pre-booked the puppet animation studio at college - set up on Tuesday, took a few hours to arrange everything, sort the lighting out and with the aid of Sam became familiar with the software for shooting. Tried a couple of little bits of animation and realised the puppet needs better anchoring so it won't shift whilst I manipulate it. Wednesday morning I glued pins to the end of a few legs and then attempted to make the crab 'walk' It is an age since I have tried stop-motion and no surprise that the movements between frames were too big making for a very cumbersome, lightening quick result. Back into the studio Friday with the aim to make a definite improvement on my earlier efforts and to hopefully produce at least 3-4 seconds of walking. You tube has been a handy resource to view crab movement - very complicated with 6 limbs moving simultaneously. Initially before even setting up and making the puppet I had grand plans to animate the crab and another character interacting with each other-but due to the complexity I thought it would be bette to focus initially on making it walk. However, a few frames into attempting this goal, disaster struck and all of a sudden one of the legs felt a bit strange, looser and then just fell off onto the set. Brilliant, just what I need! As rubbish as it is it did remind me of trips to the beach where you occasionally see random singular dried out limbs of crabs laying in the sand. 'Art' imitating life (albeit in a rather 10p way) With circumstances being beyond my control, the Friday shoot was called off at the first hurdle. Thoughts of different forms of animation for my final project are now in my mind. I'm not sure if stop-motion is for me. It does require an enormous amount of patience and incredible care (I forgot the joys of bashing into the cameras tripod or knocking the puppet with your elbow for instance) but saying that it is fun and satisfying once you have a nice result (but not in this case). I have the studio booked for next week, so this weekend I will see if I can salvage the puppet. Sam advised me on different techniques for wiring the puppet, so I'll give that a go.
So, all that's left to do is re-animate, finish the storyboard, make an animatic and the 'Very Old Man With Enormous Wings in 30 Seconds' film. 
Had a look at a couple of good websites (here and here) with hints and tips for building armatures for puppets. Next time I will twist wire together, making for a stronger longer-lasting result (hopefully)


Sound Design
Did some re-recording with Catherine on Thursday and spent the rest of the afternoon choping up my sounds and putting them in the relevant areas of the film. Still alot to do and the presentation deadline is looming up incredibly quickly! I got a bit sidetracked as I was attempting to record some background music for the start of the film with my stylophone plugged into the mixing desk. Didn't sound too pleasant and I doubt I'll use it. I need to borow recording equipment and gather some 'pub' atmospheric sound. Booked in next week so hopefully I can see that to completion.

Web Design
This was going well but have hit some bumps in the road over the last couple of days. After a tutorial with Sean (showing me once again how to apply Mp3s to a site) I then took this knowledge home an proceed to do it all completely wrong! So I then spent 6 hours trying to work it out, then tried to finish off 2 empty pages only to find my meticulous deign and hard work was for nothing as when I tested them in the internet browser the text couldn't be read in the 'discography' section of my site. Quite dis-heartening as it took ages, but of course I now know what NOT to do (hopefully).

So a busy weekend all round!

Tuesday 19 February 2008

Progress so far....




Web Design
Since last time I sought advice and much needed help from Ella at college and she showed me again  what I had previously been shown, but this time I got it a bit more. Returned to her for help a couple more times and am happy with my progress so far. The website is nearly finished I'd say with the results I'm after. The next 2 missions i have to undertake is how to embed Mp3's and short films  - I have been shown this process but again it's all trial and error! Looking good for deadline and presentation (fingers crossed)


Self Negotiated
Good amount of zero feedback from the people who I asked to read the story - Suzie has mentioned I should draw up a questionairre to give to them, but I fear this may be a waste of time. Anyway, have recently built a crab puppet (crabs feature heavily in the story) and also sought advice from Barry Leith concerning building a very old man with enormous wings puppet. Got a bit of advice, so will act on it! Had plans to set up and animate today, but Sam was busy, so first thing tomorrow will get going with animating. My plan for this is to storyboard it, have some test animations and also produce 'The Very Old man With Enourmous Wings in 30 seconds' for deadline. I also collaborated with fellow musician Simon Sandall (who I play in Goober Patrol with) to start creating some form of a soundtrack for the 'feature'. We came up with a nice steady tune and also an incidental piece of music which I will apply to an aspect of the story which is now (hopefully) going to be a small dance routine in the middle of the tale - to lighten the mood a bit and to be entertaining (also fits in with he themes of Magical Realism) May be hugely ambitious, but we'll see.  Anyway the test puppet animation will help me with the decision of how I'm going to realise the story, be it puppet animation or otherwise.



Sound Design
So far so good, got my clip, got it on the computer machine, so that's the basics. Have a plan to record some atmospheric pub/bar sounds, but think I can re-produce this in the studio. Recorded Foley today with Catherine, hopefully it turned out o.k. More to do Thursday (as well as animate-oh dear, double booked myself) The mixing is gong to be a different matter. Constantly aware and studying animation sound, sound on films/adverts. Good to be this aware of what's going on, just a bit annoying. I hope I don't ruin all of that for myself like I did with music! 

Also joined another band. A folk band called The Tanktops. It's a folk band doing folk versions of punk songs and folk versions of folk songs. Our best song is 'sex and violins' (so far) I'm playing uklele (sort of) and bye bye bass and normal guitar, the uklele is what it's all about! We'll be playing a harvest festival near YOU soon!

Wednesday 6 February 2008

Technical troubles and other such fun

Sound Design
After much watching, I've settled with a nice animation entitles 'The Wooden Leg'(1994) by Darren Doherty and Nick smith. Not on YouTube so no link I'm afraid (an animation only YouTube would be handy...) Anyway, trying to convert it into an editable format for the best part of 2 days and it's proving a complete mission. Working out mpeg code breakers and whatnot is quite boring and time wasting (when time is of the essence currently) So I have the clip, but not in an editable format. That's frustrating. However I have studied it and worked out what to do with it.

Web Design
Of course this was never going to be easy. Started literally at the beginning again, printed off 'how-to' notes for Dreamweaver from the internet, which proved useless, so did the maximum that I'm able to do with this project (ie. notalot) Laid out the pages (in Flash) I intend to use for the site and all I need o do now is 'simply' link them together so it's a working website. We'll see! A shame I cannot design this more in the way I want, but with the time and my lack of knowledge I'll have to make do with what I can do really.

Self Negotiated
With my battles with computers and their 'fantastic' 'straight forward' software, I have neglected this project and may have to cancel my booking of the puppet D.A.R. due to the simple fact that I have no puppet to test animate. What a nightmare and a big panic. In hindsight, I wish I had all of this taken care of over Christmas and not concerntrated so much on the collaborative project. I'm also sure I have missed a tutorial concerning this project too which isn't much good either. Sort of walking in the dark with this one and hope I can find some kind of direction with it soon as time is running out. Thinking I should've stretched this MA over 2 years as I seem to be unable to fit it all in -3 projects, 2 days a week job, 2 active bands, not to mention a somewhat neglected private/social life. Ho-hum, 'onwards and upwards'. It doesn't help when talking to fellow students about their stuff and seeing their progress it makes me panic with my somewhat lack of progress. Safe to say it's time to write a new timetable.

Monday 4 February 2008

February and time is running out

Self Negotiated Project
Continuing with character design- also working on the storyboard. Haven't made a puppet yet, hopefully I will construct something by the end of the week. I have printed out copies of the story and given them to so far 4 different people to see what their thoughts and ideas would be if they were to adapt the story and what media they would use. I am yet undecided as to if I will use stop-motion and puppets or hand draw frames due to the amount of characters (however if I built many puppets it maybe less work in the long run)

Sound Design
Eventually allocated a clip for the presentation a great animation entitled 'Home Road Movies'(2000) by Roger Bradbrook. The sound design in the short film fits with the image perfectly, very well though out and varied. The film is made with computer animation, photographic images and moving image. In a nutshell it's a real life story of a shy and awkward father who desperatly wants the family car to make him a better parent. Set in the 70's, the soundtrack reflects this period and the son is the narrator of the tale. Unfortunatly it's not on YouTube so no link I'm afraid, but it's on The Best Of The British Animation Awards 4 dvd.The other examples of sound design from the others were all good, each quite different. I trawled through lots and lots of short film before I made the choice I settled on, in hindsight a great exercise in itself as I watched tons of animation that I probably wouldn't have. Same again now as I try to decide which short piece of animation I will record my own soundtrack on for the imminent presentation. I've been going through the British Animation awards dvds and the Stash dvds. Found a great film which I may pick a scene from 'Flat World'(1998) by Daniel Greaves. Great mix of media and fantastic ideas throughout the very funny story. Here's some of it. The cat is brilliant.
We also recently had a sound workshop, showing us around the workings of the not-so-straight forward Logic sound program (which program IS straight forward on first use?) Good fun and we recorded some good Foley sounds. I bet it won't be as 'easy' when it comes to the 'real thing'!

Web-Design
After a whirlwind session showing us the 'basics' of Flash, it's now up to us to construct a website either in Dreamweaver or Flash. Personally I prefer the freedom which Flash affords with the design process and interactivity - but I prefer the simpler technique for building pages and linking them together in Dreamweaver. I have designed 80% of the pages and since that want to re-design the whole thing and have my website read like a scrapbook, where the visitor literally reads the site like a book. A good example to show what I'm on about can be seen here.
However, due to recent problems I will scrap that idea as it's getting incredibly ahead of myself. For the past 3 days on and off and for the last 10 hours I have been trying (and completly failing) to build the most basic of sites in Dreamweaver, which didn't work out at all. Then I moved onto Flash with the thoughts that I'll be learning from my mistakes and well, that's a wrong assumption! No luck at all and very frustrating with this computer nearly flying out the window! Stupidly I believed this would be straight forward, but I don't think that after literally ONE brisk run through each of these programs that one is aptly equipped to pull off a website using either programs. Hopefully I'll laugh at these initial teething problems (and it's not through lack of trying) There's millions of websites about for some of the most pointless things, it surely can't be THAT difficult(!?!) Lots of questions for my tutorial Wednesday afternoon. I've also been looking at websites all over the net and a particularly nice piece of design is here. A good straight forward personal animation website.

Private Work
I have been asked to produce 2 music videos for a friends band called 'Bonzer'. Quite exciting as both videos are for inclusion on an upcoming release (cd tracks on one side of the disc and dvd on the other) Looks like it will have a worldwide release too. For one of the tracks 'Oddball' I've edited together a whole load of train clips from a cine film from the 40's and it goes really well with the track. Unfortunatly since I had this idea I was exposed to The Chemical Brothers train video by M.Gondry in which very similar sound/image synching is used. Recently whilst I was in Japan I filmed every underground journey I took, even the whole of a Bullet train journey from Tokyo to Nagoya plus trains all over the place. I may use this footage for that track but not sure if I'll have the time to completly edit something from scratch. The second video is my BA film 'The Mouse, The Bird and The Sausage' (as requested by 'Bonzer') and I've really edited it down (still keeping the narrative structure) it fits pretty well with 4 good points of synchresis. Rough edit to follow.
I've also been asked to edit footage of an interview of movie 'hardman' Danny Dyer (star of Human Traffic and many other films) for local publication The Student Pocket Guide. It was a 2 camera shoot and the finished article will be on the website in all its glory. Hopefully more work will come from this as the owner of the magazine wants to go more in this direction. I have been associated with this magazine or over a year now contributing band interviews and designing layouts or the last 6 issues. Check out the website here.