http://www.gazillionproductions.co.uk/blog/

The work for this project goes all the way to the beginning of April with the post 'THE START OF FMP'

Context, Rationale and Brief

Context:

Medical centres are not the most interesting of places or the nicest due to the nature of them (people are generally not happy who go as they are not well). There is also a lot of waiting around in medical centres, therefore to keep the customers entertained and educated at the same time adverts and information are placed on the TV screens. Customers do tend to read it as they don’t tend to talk to other people. A good way of educating about these issues is through visually watching as they don’t have to actually do anything themselves such as read.

A health problem I have come across, personally and from talking to friends living away from home on a budget is the problem of healthy eating. Many people find it difficult to eat healthily whilst at university for the simple fact of little money and the time and effort to make food. Although many students are aware that they do need to try and eat healthily, thinking and actually acting upon this are two different things. Furthermore, moving to university gives you a new found freedom to do what you want, therefore at times you need to re-evaluate your lifestyle, and change to make it more healthier. Although there is a lot of information on the internet on healthy eating, it takes a while to read through it therefore many people can’t be bothered or miss out certain aspects of information, when really they need to know it all.

Brief:

To create a short stop motion animation that is light hearted and aesthetically appealing to students. It should attract the audience to watch it to make students aware of simple ways to eat healthily.

Rationale

To create a short stop motion animation that is light hearted and aesthetically appealing to students. It should attract the audience to watch it to make students aware of simple ways to eat healthily.

Key research findings:

·         Look at the human body and its movements closely when creating your stop motion.

·         Have a clear, structured story behind your stop motion

·         Students know what healthy eating is it is achieving it that is the problem.

·         The students don’t want to sit for a long time watching the same thing, therefore keep it short.

I will approach the brief with a clear aim of learning a new skill for myself, yet also engaging with my audience constantly to make sure what I am doing is effective and useful, therefore fulfilling the brief. I am going to research through experimentation as to what medium I am going to use for my stop motion, this is the main decision I need to make. Another decision I need to make is also what information is going to be included in my stop motion.

As I have approximately nine weeks to complete this brief, I am planning on for the first three weeks thoroughly investigating through experimentation different mediums to use for my stop motion. Alongside this I will continue to talk to my audience to find out what information they want to know to place in the stop motion. If I feel I am confident with a number of different ways to produce my stop motion I may give my audience the opportunity to have a say into the most suitable medium, however I feel as I have never created a piece of stop motion before it shall be me who makes this decision. Once I have this information I will then narrow it down if needs be to a reasonable amount of information to put into my stop motion. Meanwhile I will create a thoroughly detailed story board. Again consulting my audience all the time through the process into whether they think the information is suitable in terms of content and size.

Evaluation

My final piece consisted of a stop motion animation showing how to eat healthily. After the research of ‘What is Vis Com’ I then decided to research further into healthy eating by looking at medical websites, the NHS, in particular the part ‘Change 4 life’. This looked at ‘swapping’ foods. I also sent out questionnaires to my target audience about healthy eating, from this I found that people wanted as little information as possible, just what is good for them and showing the ease of how to healthy eat. I feel I did get enough information about eating healthily for me to create a piece on how to healthy eat.

In the beginning I started to create very short stop motions with plastercine and a camera. They were very basic and they didn’t flow very well as the camera was not at the same angle all the time. I then got a tripod, which allowed me to create stop motions that were less wobbly. One thing I got from these stop motions was that they were humorous and people really liked them because they were light hearted. I then decided that this was the route to go down with my animations as I felt it would work well with the ease part of the healthy eating.

Although I had experimented with plastercine I also wanted to include paper animations too and after seeing the peg stop motion on YouTube I was inspired to include a person into my stop motion. Also after struggling of thinking of a way to show the ‘swap’ of foods I felt including a person would create a humorous and clever way to swap the foods.

After an induction into the AV room and the stop motion equipment I began by creating paper animations. I really liked the effect of these, and after a crit I discovered that a good way of creating my animation would be in a low tech way. Therefore my people that I cut out were in black and white as the colours of the paper pieces were quite muted. I also decided to keep the background white as I felt that this looked simplistic, which was the overall feel of the piece.

Whilst creating my paper animations I accidently got my hand caught in a shot. I felt that this combined with the photo paper pieces and the drawings was a really nice all over effect and allowed me to move smoothly from one part of the animation to another.

After I had all of my animation together and sequenced correctly I then had to add sound to it. At first I was going to add music, however after my final crit it became apparent that the only effective way of adding sound to it was to add sound effects. As I have never used sound effects before I found it really difficult to do. I firstly recorded some sounds of my own, however when I put them into final cut I realized that they were too quiet, and then I couldn’t find many good sound effects on the internet, therefore I had to raise the volume of my recorded sounds and the sounds I found on the internet I had to lower. All in all it meant that my sound for my animation is very quiet, which is not ideal. However I think that parts of the sounds do sound good and effective. All in all though I am not pleased with the sound and I feel that in a way it spoils my animation. I feel I would also have been able to improve the sound a bit more if I had had time, however as in the com tech project I managed to delete all the work I had done on final cut twice.

In the future I am definitely going to try to use  after effects as I tried to use them in this project however I just didn’t understand how to do it, even though I had had a very detailed induction into it. In addition in the future I will probably try and write down a step by step instruction on how to save in final cut as it wasted a lot of time by loosing it.

All in all though I am extremely pleased with the animation itself, I feel I managed to create it how I wanted it to look, however I definitely feel that the sound I have added has let it down.

final piece

I knew I had got my idea for using people from somewere...and today I figured it out...the juno opening credits.
I have already posted this video in november time...even before I was interested in animation.

these took SOOO long to do...for so little time...but personally really worth it. exactly the result i wanted!

First attempt in AV room

Ben Tallon

I want to include drawings of the food ie. coca cola...i really like the style of Ben tallons work, and feel that this style would work really well in stop motion.

Pavel Koutsky

emma rios

victoria ball

Su Blackwell

i really like this stop motion. I feel that a person like this in my stop motion could be the narrator. and move around...

I have been looking for animations about healthy eating and i found this one which just happens to be stop motion. its exactly what i dont want to do in my stop motion. it tells you to cut out sugars yet it doesnt show how.people no they need to do this need to be shown how to do it. I also dont like how the stop motionmoves the food about to create letters as it doesnt do it in an even order so its really difficult to read and at times you have to read it backwards.

i have been looking at healthy eating videos on youtube and many of them tell you lots of information on how to eat healthily, why you want to, whats it easy to do blah blah blah...everyone knows what is easy to do what they want is straight information.what is easy. EASE.
I have decided for my animation  'ease' is going to be the subject. after looking on the 'change 4 life' website and various other food/healthy eating websites...the easiest and simplest way i could see for people to change is by swapping foods. ie. swap a packet of crisps for an apple. its so simple and putting it like that shows that it doesnt involve buying LOADSS of ingrediants to eat healthily. its just simple.
After browsing the internet and alot of cook books i have come up with a list of foods to swap for. I have also asked a few people about their meals they eat now to get an idea of what people actually so when i do swap they can actually relate to it.

www.beyondbakedbeans.com

recipe ideas for students...

Baltic Newcastle.18/04/2011

Crisps....

The North East is beautiful...

BIRTHDAYYYYYYY!! i got a tripod!!!! :) :) :)

I put my snail animation and the worm on facebook and my next door neighbour saw them...he is quite into cameras and..according to his wife was really thinking about my animations the next day...so when i got back from swimming i went round to his...and he had another camera for me to borrow and a tripod!!!!perfecttt!

MIMA

mima is a bit of a joke at the best of times...nobody hardly ever goes and when they do there is hardly anything in there so people go once then never go back. Despite this there is sometimes the odd thing that is good in there. So i thought...whilst at home i would take a trip there,to see what there is and look at the set up of an exhibition. So i took my camera through the streets of middlesbrough (very brave of me) to Mima. I walked in...the stupid place didnt even say that it wasnt open...the glass door just wouldnt open. So that was a waste of time!!!!!!!!!!!!

GLENNNN!!!
okiee...i only really like the end of this video...when he goes outside but i think it shows me developing my skills. I must say it doesnt look as good on here as it does on a camera screen...but this allows me to develop!

OMYGOSHHH!!!!

i was just browsing through my blog to sort out my ppd presentation, and i found some pictures i was going to put on my blog AND WELL!! I HAVE MOVIE MAKER ON MY COMPUTER!! i have literally spent all week trying to download it and ive had it on here all the time!!!!!!! ahhhhh!!!!

i tried to download frametheif...that wouldnt work...asked around for other software I could use...i eventually found one that would work on my computer (i think ive been watching too much one tree hill its breaking my computer)anyway...monkeyjam! it actually downloaded...but i had no idea how to use it...so i youtubed a tutorial on how to use it....so i knew how to use it...came to put my work on...it wouldnt work..surprise surprise! i seriously think i just was not meant to create this stop motion.

ANYWAYYYYYYYYY
i have started my stop motion even if i cant put it into an actual film...flicking through it on my camera makes me feel good! im going to put some of the pictures on here. Im actually quite impressed with myself...its really simplistic at the moment but the more i practice the better I get!

Tomato.

Carrot

Clock

Hand

Glen



my lens on my camera is broken, Ive left my connection cable for my camera back at leeds...along with the paper work for my camera. I also keep trying to download frame theif...but so far I think the only thing I have downloaded is viruses...i seem to have a new bar on my computer screen for a variety of smileys I can use...what use is that?
on a positive note though...i do have plastercine!!!

i didnt actually realise how much i missed home until i got home! went to a bbq at my friends last night...i didnt realise how much i missed the boro accent...or quite how strong my friends accents are. I also found that my accent has changed a bit too...posh according to my friend.
driving to drop my sister at her friends i was looking at the countryside around me...i really really miss the countryside!! im going to go out tomorrow or maybe this evening to take some photos.

THE START OF FMP

just bought my plastercine from Boyes...ready to get on with this stop motionnn practice!

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Goodfood/Pages/eight-tips-healthy-eating.aspx


http://www.beyondbakedbeans.com/


http://www.webmd.boots.com/healthy-eating/features/healthy-eating-for-students

http://www.kitchentotable.com/resources/healthy-eating-ideas.php

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/lsmp/healthadvice/healthyeating2/healthyeating2.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_motion


http://www.stopmotionworks.com/stopmosoftwr.htm


Stop motion craft skills for model animation.

sleeepppp

http://www.phobias-help.com/sleep_deprivation_insomnia/im-having-trouble-tryin-to-sleep.html


http://www.leeds.ac.uk/lsmp/healthadvice/Sleep/Sleep.html


http://www.studenthealth.co.uk/advice/advice.asp?adviceID=171


http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Childrenssleep/Pages/Teensleeptips.aspx

http://www.25thestate.com/

i dont no how to get this video onto my blog...but i also love this video-its quite similar to the moleskin video.

Tshirt war

ok go-last leaf

Western spaghetti

love

 Moleskine Advert

 

This stop motion advert for moleskines new compact and colourful range. Rogier Wieland created and designed this advert. What I love about it is the clever manipulation of the paper to tell a story. Also like how the product that is being advertised is used as part of the advert. I also like the delicacy of the illustrations cut out.

hate

Ray Harryhausen

 

 I hate this stop motion animation by Ray Harryhausen. Even though I have looked at and do enjoy the technique of using models and actual people combined-I hate this style of animation. it looks very dated-I do appreciate that this is an old animation therefore it is expected to look dated, however I hate the fact that the skeleton characters themselves look semi real due to their placement in the movie. As the stop motion itself is quite good in terms of the flow of the piece, to me this makes it worse as the models are creepy and are unattractive to me as they do look quite real.

Paper horse stop motion animation

Cut out animation project.

cut out animation: the portrait artist



What is a friend

Sweet dreams by Kristen Lepore

her morning elegance/oren lassie

Kevin Parry

 

Moleskine

Food Fight

Cesar kuriyama

Carlos luscano

Chess clay

jordan c greenhalgh

x box commercial

Guiness ad

My Drive thru- Santogold

Bad Apple

David Shrigley

 

this one is for my dad...he always calls me the dwarf.

http://www.rachaelparsons.co.uk/gallery_06.htm

Joost Elffers and Saxton Freymann: Food Play