Applied 2: Evaluation

Applied 2 has been such a great module for me, as I was able to spend a long time learning and experimenting with a new technique that I have always wanted to investigate. Because this was so new to me, it was also great being able to work with someone else who had an interest in this technique, as we were both willing to put more effort into the production outside of regular uni hours. I feel like I have learnt an abundance of skills throughout these past few months, and I have honestly really enjoyed this area of animation which is completely out of my comfort zone. As someone who likes to work outside of the classroom as well as inside, this module pushed me to use more of the college’s resources and also communicate with my teachers more, so that I could reach the best of my ability.

Despite having already worked with Hayley in our OUAN504 module, it felt like I was working with someone new because the whole process and technique that we were using was foreign to us. Because of this, we had to constantly communicate, share ideas and methods in how we were going to approach our work, so that we could find a happy medium that would allow us to produce good results. I felt like we were never that badly behind in our work, and we stayed on schedule, which left us a lot of time to comfortably work on post production and the final touches. I also feel like I am more comfortable working in a team now, because I have more experience handling duties and pressures.

I found that pre-production was my least favourite part of the module, which has made me realise that this is perhaps not an aspect of animation that I should go down in my future career to focus on, as I didn’t enjoy it that much. This could be due to the amount of times Hayley and I had to re-record our audio and write the script, which in the end did benefit us, but at the time was very frustrating and made me worry a lot on how our animation as a whole would turn out. The only part of pre-production that I enjoyed was creating the models and the mouth shapes. Again, I was so worried to start this process, as I felt like I would completely ruin the image Hayley had set up for the project. Since i’ve never modelled a character before, I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing, but I carried on, and in the end I loved how my characters turned out and I was so proud of what I had achieved! Then once I begun to animate them, as they came to life I was even more surprised and began to feel more confident in myself.

Therefore the actual animating part of this project was by far the best stage for me. I loved moving the characters and seeing them become like real life animals. I had to look at reference videos, as well as act out simple, subtle actions so that I could reflect that into the character. There was so much caution and planning when animating them, but this was fun for me, because it was so technical and intricate. What did surprise me the most about this module however, was how much I enjoyed directing. Though I am assertive outside of uni, I have never been so when at school or college, so naturally, I was not at uni either. I always felt wrong to ‘boss’ people around, however when it was Hayley’s turn to animate, it felt so natural to direct which way the model’s eyes should turn, or which way the hand should go, that I didn’t even realise I was directing until she told me! I loved being particular about each frame because I felt like it would make all the difference, and I wasn’t afraid to keep telling her if something didn’t look right. I am not sure if I would ever venture out to be a director, but I did surprise myself, and I think it has allowed me to grow and not be afraid to tell someone how something should go if I don’t think it fits!

This project has also allowed me to explore post-production, which I have done briefly in every module, but not to this degree. Within Applied 2, I had to fix lighting, stabilise frames, adjust formats and do various bits of cleaning up, which was not as stressful as I thought it was going to be. Because Hayley and I had finished our animation around a week before the deadline, instead of rushing to tweak the animation, we could take our time. This meant I was able to learn how to stabilise a shaky animation properly, as well as how to fix flickering lighting, which was quite time consuming. I feel like these are really beneficial, not even for just animation but for any type of video making, so I think I will be able to make good use of these for years to come! Not once in this project was I not learning something new, which I find very fulfilling to say! 

Overall, though Applied 2 was scary and not very enjoyable to start with, it ended up being the module where I really jumped out of my comfort zone and took a big risk with a new technique that could have gone horribly wrong. I really didn’t know what I was doing to start with, and I always felt like I was going to let Hayley down, but looking back I have developed so much and feel silly for even thinking that! I hope I can do this technique next year at some point because it was so much more enjoyable that simply sitting in front of a computer for hours. I was able to use new resources, physically make things and see small models come to life! OUAN505 has been a really great module for me, and I am so proud with what I have achieved! 

Applied 2: Final Animation

This is our final animation 'Animated Tails'. Hayley chose this name as a play on words for 'tales', but with animal connotations. I really like this name and I am so proud of our work! We went from nothing to producing a one and a half minute stop motion animation which I think is great for beginners! We did receive a lot of help from our teachers and peers, as well as from each other, which allowed us to take constructive criticism and feedback and turn it into our final product. I have learnt so much over this module, and I really like our final result! 

Applied 2: Post Sounds

Because Hayley and I were so busy with other post production factors, such as stabilisation and lighting fixes, we actually forgot about foley sounds! Originally we wanted to record some ourselves to make our animation even more individualised, and I am really disappointed that we didn't do this. However we were so busy with everything else that we didn't have time. This is something that I really want to do in the future however, as I feel like even the slightest bit of background noise can really elevate your final product.

Never the less, I found some ambience sounds from the Youtube library and some from videos on Youtube itself. I didn't want a lot of background noise, just a little bit so that characters wouldn't sound like they were in a box. I wanted our family audience to really feel like these characters were outside and alive, so I tried to match their setting as much as possible!

This is what I ended up choosing. I went for trickling water ambience for the newt, a dusk ambience for the sheep and some birds tweeting outside for the bird couple. I tried to think of where they would be naturally, and matched the sounds from there. I think it sounds fine, I just wish I could have been able to take a recorder out and experienced recording our own sounds this way. Perhaps we should have done this at the pre-production stage, even though we were already falling behind with having to re-record our audio three times.

I also remembered that these sounds weren't completely royalty free/copyright free, therefore I went back and found sounds all from the Youtube Library, and a website Hayley linked to me FreeSounds.com.

I think it sounds similar to before, but because the sounds are not copyrighted, we can submit them to competitions and not worry about getting into trouble, therefore I am glad I went back in and looked for them! 

Applied 2: Ready for Competing

Before making the DVD cover for our animation, ready to submit for competitions, I decided to check out some existing ones for other stop motion films. I originally thought that this process would be similar to designing the book covers that I did for Penguin Random House, but it wasn't similar at all! (It was harder). 

I noticed that there was always at least one character on the front of the cover, and it really resembled the product as a whole, so after talking with Hayley for some advice, she suggested we use one frame of one of our characters for each side of the DVD case, and design around that.

And this is the design I came up with! Hayley advised me to use the same font as her opening and closing credits, so I stuck with that font, and tried to be very minimalistic. I also added some mouth shapes on the back because our documentary is for a family audience so I didn't want it to be too boring and plain. 

Applied 2: Further Lighting Fixes

Sheep Scene 2 without light fixes

Sheep Scene 2 with light fixes! 

This is the other scene for the sheep in which I also fixed the lighting in Photoshop. This took me SO long because there were over 400 frames, and even though I didn't have to alter every single one of them, I did have to go through them and change their levels individually. I do think that this looks so much better, and I am glad that we decided not to leave it be, especially as I found the flickering very distracting. Never the less, I have realised that there is so much work in relation to post production, so if I eve do stop motion again, I will know to make sure that everything before production is perfect, as this leaves less hassle and work to do at the end! 

Applied 2: Fixing Lighting // Shadows

Clip before any adjustments.

Hayley tried to fix the lighting in After Effects but wasn't able to do much with it, nor could I, so we both decided that it was to be done manually. Since Hayley had put the backgrounds in, I took control of fixing the lighting issues, and I chose to do this in Photoshop.

We shared multiple folders on Google Drive, so I downloaded them from Hayley's hard drive and noticed that every so often there was a darker frame, and sometimes four darker frames in a row. This was the reason for the flashing/extreme change in appearance, so I decided to import the darker ones into Photoshop and touch them up with the levels tool.

This was quite tedious to do because there were so many frames, and I wanted them to look as close in lighting as possible. We hadn't changed any lighting at all throughout our process so the reason why this happened is unknown to us. Nevertheless, I picked out the darker frames, and them imported another frame that was perfect as a reference and switched between the two until I found the perfect match! This actually wasn't too bad, and I ended up enjoying seeing the results so quickly! 

I started with the first part of day 1 just to see if I could achieve the look I wanted and if it was worth levelling up the rest. Since I liked the results, I carried on and did the rest of the sheep first scene. There is still some slight flickering, but no where near as bad as before so I am very pleased with this! 

And this is the second part of the first scene! Next I will do the same for the second scene, and send it to Hayley so she can put it with sound and a background! 

Applied 2: Stabilising Our Animation

Since Hayley and I had finished animating, we agreed to come together again to do some post production, or at least try to stabilise our work. I didn't think that this would take long at all, but I was proved wrong when we kept receiving failure notices and errors, every time we used the warp stabiliser and the motion tracking stabiliser. With Annabeth's help, she informed us that the reason for these failures, was due to the image being so large. In addition to that, we were trying to stabilise multiple scenes at once where there were black cut scenes in between. We were told that this forces After Effects to struggle interpreting the footage with the stabiliser tool, so I started off by stabilising each scene individually, and it seemed to work rather well! 

To stabilise the animation, I chose the 'stabilise motion' tool on the tracker menu under the animation panel, which prompted a small square with another square and an anchor inside of it. With this anchor, I chose a point of interest that never changes throughout the animation, so there would always be one reliable point in the clip. Annabeth helped us to begin with, so she advised the small piece of grass as indicated in the left image. Once I had done this, I clicked 'play forward' which ran the stabilisation through and then I applied to X and Y.

Since the stabilising does warp the animation/move the video around in some way, I had to enlarge it so that there were no odd bits chopped off at the sides, or blank spaces. A good thing about our images was that we had taken them quite far back so that it left us with an opportunity to zoom in if need be! 

These are the newt scenes fully stable! These were the ones which needed to be done the most, as they were quite shaky and choppy, but not so bad. This was because we were just starting out animating, and getting used to the format of things and how the floor moved, as well as other varying factors. 

However once we got to the sheep scene, which is what we animated last, there is barely any shake (even though I stabilised it here), which I think shows just how far we have come and what we have had to do to avoid it! I quite enjoyed this part of the post production process, as I learnt something new which I think will really benefit me in my future, even if I filmed something in live action, I know how I could possibly stabilise it! 

We then had a go at trying to replace our green screen which made our animation REALLY come to life, but sadly we had no memory on both of our machines to save the file, so Hayley is going to take this part of post production and do it at home. What concerned me when editing the newt scene was the halo around the edge of him. Hayley didn't mind this but I thought it was quite distracting, so I played around with the black and white shaders, as well as the smoothness/blurriness option and it ended up coming out fine and wasn't much to worry about. With such an easy fix I think Hayley will do a really good job replacing the backgrounds and I am so excited to see how they turn out! 

Applied 2: Finishing Animating the Sheep

Today we finished animating the sheep which was a scary thought because that means we only have post production left! As always we planned all of our mouth shapes out by going through the audio and doubling up on frames but choosing particular mouth poses wisely. 

I started animating this scene this time, and I really wanted to move the sheep head as she says 'because', as the way she says it, I envision her inclining her head towards the interviewer, as if they are asking her to elaborate on what she is saying (as there are so many pauses). I think this went quite nicely, however the eye movements are a bit too sporadic. Hayley wanted to have the half eyes as she says it to emphasise this head movement even further, which I like, but I do wish that we hadn't moved the pupils at all to be even more effective. For a future reference looking back at this whole process, I think we don't need to move the eyes half as much as we have in this module. Though it feels like a slow process, and sometimes often feels stagnant, when the images are put together, they go by so quickly, so the eyes movements sometimes suffer. 

Also I really wanted to keep the pause at the end into the animation, but still capture the character thinking/moving so we can establish her even more, and so the whole animation isn't choppy and instead, flows nicely. I really like how this turned out, and I wish we had done this a bit more. The only worry that I have is the flickr in the animation. Whilst animating, we did not change the lights at all, but somehow this kept changing in Dragon frame which was really frustrating and hasn't happened to any of our other scenes either? Hopefully this can also be sorted in post. 

This is all of our scenes which I slotted into the animatic. Sometimes when we rendered them out of Premiere they have lines between each movement which is something I have come across before when I had to made a short film in college, so I know it is fixable, however it gives us a rough idea of what our animation looks like so far! I am so happy with it, as really, it is our final 'production' part, and next we will move on to stabilising and green screening! I think it flows quite nicely, and looking back, I am glad that we changed our audio as I cannot imagine animating to ten different voices with ten different characters in such a short time frame and being able to make it look cohesive! For a first time animating via stop motion, I am so proud of myself!