Today we had our interim crit session where we showed Sara and the rest of the class, the pre production and tests that we have conducted so far. This had to be the longest presentation that I have made to date, which I think is a good thing because it means we have done a lot of work, and a lot of tests! I also thought that we had a lot more visuals to show than usual, which I was proud of, due to our plasticise models.
The feedback we got was quite conflicted, but still useful and worth evaluating. Some comments were that our audio was perhaps too scripted? This was something we tried to avoid by recording lines over and over, but perhaps that meant it was the words themselves that made the dialogue sound too forced. Some people said some scenes such as the sheep and the newt, were the scripted scenes, and others said that those were the best ones, so it left us at an awkward position because we were unsure what to change and what to keep. Because of this, I asked Sara if she could help me more with the script and the audio to make it stronger and as bold as the animation itself. We talked for a good half hour on options that Hayley and I could take. The first, was to obviously re-record all of our dialogue, perhaps get different actors or just change the wording of the script a little more. The second option we talked about, was to just not have a script. Since I really struggled with trying to write a conversation down, looking at other students in the class have success with just basic interviewing and asking questions, made it seem like another route Hayley and I could take. Sara suggested this strongly, and I am open to it, so I think if anything it really is worth exploring, and testing, and if it goes wrong, we still have our other audio to fall back on.
Someone also raised the option of music. I personally, don't think music would work with this atmosphere, more of a ambience or natural sound effects would fit the environment better in my opinion. Hayley also agreed, but we could attempt at finding some music, just to see if it could possibly work and surprise ourselves.
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| Sarah's notes/illustrations with my annotations |
I also then asked to speak to Sara so that she could talk to me about our models. She said that they are impressive, but perhaps the actual material we are making them out of is not quite right. Plasticine is great for the body parts that we are going to move and manipulate, but what about the body parts that aren't? For example the sheep's coat. Though it looks quite stylised and textured, if we are trying to move the sheep around, the pattern will start to flatten and change shape. This would be a waste especially when it took us around an hour to make each individual one.
She gave me a lot of other options to consider, such as using blue foam for the structure of the model and then using plasticine around the outside. She also mentioned mixing 40% beeswax with plasticine which will allow the plasticine to be soft at first but then it will harden, so would be a great substitute for just plain plasticine for the eyes and the mouths. This means that we will be able to interchange them without having to worry about flattening or altering them. She advised with the blue foam however, to make sure the plasticine isn't flat, or else it will slide right off and won't be of much use. We also talked about perhaps buying polymer clay and then baking it, for the eyes or the mouths as another option to look at.
She also talked about having magnetic wires in the models themselves so that when we replace parts of the bodies, they will click back to the exact position they were in before, lowering the chance of them jumping around. She said that KNS is perfect for this, and around 5mmx2mm or 4mmx2mm, which we will have to cut ourselves. Or even having magnets under the models, and then under the surface to which they will be placed on, which will allow us to move the magnets around without having to ruin our textures.
Eyebrows/impressions within the eye socket area was also something she asked me to think about, whether we will be moulding the eyebrow area ourselves or creating hairy eyebrows that are more 3D. I quite like the impression idea, however I am not sure if this will be too conflicting with our eyes. Also with eyes, if we are using beads, Sara said to make sure there is a hole in them, so that we can easily use a pin or a toothpick with some vaseline to interchange them or take them out.
After all this feedback from Sara, Hayley asked her friend who also used to work at Aardman Animations, Martin Poole for some advice as well on what he thinks our options are. He also talked about baking, and having replaceable mouths and eyes so that seems like the more concrete solution to our problem, as that is two similar, solid answers. He also talked about casting 10-12 different heads, but because we have around ten models, I am not sure if that is doable in the time frame, or worth it for such a short animation. But after all of this feedback we have opened our minds to using different materials to make the process easier for us and allow us to get a better result with our stop motion journey.
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