Because Hayley and I struggled with keeping our animation smooth in terms of the camera angles due to multiple factors (the gradient of the floor, the awkward access to the scene, etc), we decided to move our setup around so that we would be giving ourselves more room and opportunity for a more stable animation. Looking back on this, as we have now completed the first part of the birds scene, I am so glad that we took the time to do this because we had so much space to work with the models, as well as stand back and evaluate the animation as a whole on Dragon Frame, allowing us to contemplate our next move more coherently. Our animation also has a lot less shake to it, which I am very pleased about.
Martin also came to speak to us about this shakiness, and gave us a few tips on ways we can fix this. He told us about the stabilisaton in After Effects, or tracking the background which both sound like ways we can test out once we come to the post production stage.
Before we begun to animate, we borrowed some thick wire from Mike and cut about two lots of 6cm which I pushed into the models, as Hayley made two holes in the fence (which looks so realistic, Hayley has done a great job on it!). We did this so that the models will stay in place as we manipulate them, but will give us some room to move them around at the same time. We did think about hot glueing them down but because the fence was more lightweight than the models, this was not a sensible option so wire seemed to be the most effective. Using a similar lighting set up to the newt, we then began to animate.
This is what we animated so far. Like previously, we took turns moving the model whilst the other person directed. I began to animate first which as you can tell gets better as it goes on. I defintely feel like I am learning so much the more I am animating, and taking note of my mistakes. For example, in the beginning here, I knew that there was maybe a bit too much eye movement. Though it seemed like I wasn't doing enough because it takes such a long time to do, once I put we put it into Premiere, I could see that it was perhaps a bit too sporadic and therefore slowed it down a lot!
Also taking some feedback from Mike, he thought that our models were a bit too static, therefore Hayley and I discussed how we could make the birds move more naturally. We came to the conclusion that the wings would be our key to making the animation more lively, and so thought about how we could incorporate their movement with particular words.
When the red bird says 'drizzle', Hayley had an idea for the bird to shake, and I suggested we close her eyes at the same time for more emphasis on the word. This was a lot of fun for me to animate, and I feel like it looks perfect in conjunction with the sentence she is speaking. We also had some fluttering of the birds wings to just constantly remind the audience that they are birds, and they are alive, instead of having them just stand there.
Overall I really enjoyed changing the animation up and animating something new. It was quite tricky to animate these models as I made them on such a small scale, so if I ever do stop motion again, I will make the models bigger so it won't be such a complex task!
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