Final Animation.  Stratosphere Boogie. (REID_DANA)

This is a screenshot of the production within After Effects. After making the complete set, taking around 1000 pictures and alot of testing it was down to spending hours looking at a computer screen. This is simply showing the connection of it all. The sequencing and order is obviously the most important part of putting it all together. In addition from the start I thought the song reflected a very old fashioned black and white movie, so the last thing was to put a black and white effect on the entire animation, I definatley think it fits and suits the images well. This is one of the only effects I used as I wanted my stop motion to portray the story rather than for the computer effects to do so, this way it is kept original and homemade instead of manufactured. Overall I am pleased with the outcome of my Print to Pixel module. Enjoy.   View high resolution

This is a screenshot of the production within After Effects. After making the complete set, taking around 1000 pictures and alot of testing it was down to spending hours looking at a computer screen. This is simply showing the connection of it all. The sequencing and order is obviously the most important part of putting it all together. In addition from the start I thought the song reflected a very old fashioned black and white movie, so the last thing was to put a black and white effect on the entire animation, I definatley think it fits and suits the images well. This is one of the only effects I used as I wanted my stop motion to portray the story rather than for the computer effects to do so, this way it is kept original and homemade instead of manufactured.

Overall I am pleased with the outcome of my Print to Pixel module. Enjoy.  

As the brief was mainly about creating an animation which reflected our allocated piece of music it was important to get the right parts of the song to match my stop motion and vice versa. I always wanted the first 15-20 seconds of the song combined with the last 5-10 seconds of the song as they were the most interesting parts and the ones best to work with in my opinion. The song follows the same continuous rhythmn throughout which was why one of my themes were aniticipation, as I felt asthough within the song you are continuously waiting for something to happen, something big, which never actually comes.

At first I tried to use Garage Band in order to cut the middle section of the song leaving the beginning and end of the song pushed together. However I was unable to get this adapted song into my after effects project in which I was sequencing my images. In the end I used After effects for changing my song also, this was much easier as I had the song and animation within the same project but just on different compositions. This made it easier to keep changing timing of the song to my continuously changing animation and vice versa. And therefore combining the two was simple, but only after a few attempts of getting particular sections of the song to suit certain actions in the animation.  

This is another example of the smoke appearing from an explosion but on a bigger scale. As the car I’ve used is only small, I had to take it size into consideration.

Ths is one of the videos I looked at when I was creating the smoke at the end of my animation. The speed, shape and movement is important in order for it to reflect an actual smoke cloud. I adapted the thinner shoot up of smoke followed by a larger and wider top built up from beneath to make it as realistic as possible.  

These are a few pages from my sketch book showing my initial ideas and sketches at the start of the project which were developed and adapted to get to the point I am at now. As you can see I eliminated the character based options and also stuck with this idea of confusion and rotation which is portrayed in my final animation. These were the first things that came up mind when listening to my music and after having chosen my key words which turned in themes.

[Flash 10 is required to watch video]

Potential ending

In order to represent smoke at the final stages of my animation where the car flies off the cliff I cut up simple paper circles varying in shape and created an movement on the backdrop in order to resemble smoke appearing. Once again I looked a videos of how smoke clouds appear and shoot up to create the right shape and progression of the smoke. I was originally going to do this digitally however after processing many sequences of my images in After effects I realised that a digital effect might not flow well with the rest of the stop motion therefore using stop motion for the ending seemed ideal. View high resolution

In order to represent smoke at the final stages of my animation where the car flies off the cliff I cut up simple paper circles varying in shape and created an movement on the backdrop in order to resemble smoke appearing. Once again I looked a videos of how smoke clouds appear and shoot up to create the right shape and progression of the smoke. I was originally going to do this digitally however after processing many sequences of my images in After effects I realised that a digital effect might not flow well with the rest of the stop motion therefore using stop motion for the ending seemed ideal.

Car Movement

When conducting my never ending track and moving the car along it in order to portray the car driving it’s important for it to reflect the actually type of car movement. I once again looked over my previous research videos which I posted in relation to car chases in film to analyse its specific movement. Techniques such as the car slowing down when coming towards a corner or turn and taking longer to move round it in comparison to how it acts on a straight stretch of road. Also the the back end of the car usually swings out as the front end is in more control. These are techniques I considered and adapted into my stop motion in order to reflect a real life car.

[Flash 10 is required to watch video]

Compass test 1, 2 and 3; confusion and disorientation