Storyboard animatic

We are finally getting somewhere... today we filmed our storyboard this helped us to see how to link each clip. We filmed it so when we want it to zoom in on that certain drawing then we zoomed etc. and where we wanted the camera to enter and exit. I'm happy with how it looks and are getting a better idea of how the animation is going to work. Also when we edited it together we played around with the music a bit and added sounds that were on the Mac like stardust. Music we havent sorted out yet however we know that we want something along the lines of the music we added within this storyboard.

Continuity second and final cut.

This was our second edit of the continuity sequence. We could see problems that it didn't stick to the criteria we decided to cut out a scene. We choose the scene where the camera moves upwards to revel the second character, this didn't work as a camera angle as it isn't either a establishing shot or an point of view of one of the characters. Now we have cut that scene out it flows much better and communicate the same positioning of the characters throughout.

Continuity Sequence- first cut

This is our continuity sequence, it had to have an character walking into a room, sitting down and exchange dialogue with another character. Together we thought how we can use different camera angle but at the same time stick to the 180 degree rule. Our first shot was a low angle of the feet walking into the room and the door closes, it then switches to the inside view as the door has just closed. Throughout out sequence we switch the camera from over the shoulder shots to a wide shot showing both characters, and not breaking the 180 degree wall the characters each stayed on the same side of the frame. This is our first edit i think there is still some changes to do.

Ideas, The big picture and The Pitch

On thursday we presented our pitch to the class. During the lesson we looked through the book "Laura Star" and looked at ways how we can put the titles and images together. We made a list of all the different places where the names can appear.

1. window

2. sky

3. slippers

4. torch

5. bed/pillow

6. jelly

7. ballons

all these fit with the story and all feature in the book. We each had a go at drawing one of the titles, i done the bedroom where the name appears on the pillow.

However when we each done one of the titles we realised we each have different styles and as we want it to all be the same one of us have to do the drawing. As a group we decided to edit and colour the photos in photoshop this will make the pictures stronger and more bold unlike the ones above. Also it will be quicker than colouring in all the pictures.

In our pitch everyone liked the idea and i think they could see it working. We showed clips from my blog of other example of Children animation to back up our idea. The main thing came across from the pitch that there is alot to do, but i think we realised that and we will put the work in as we want it to be done.

This is our "Big Picture" we have shown all out ideas and possible ways in how to do our animation. Also included example ofanimation which we like.

Children animation research

Like i said we wanted to change normal then to animation and the children's book idea, "Elf" is a perfect film that has all that. It keeps the magical part of the child's book and the animation are very sweet.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=t5cv0MxKAzk

The drawn image turns into a real life which i really like the effect of.

Another good thing about it is that the titles appear on different thing, for example some are written in the book and the pages turn.

Other examples of childrens aniamtion are films like Shrek, Ice Age and Bug Life however this are much more glossy and we could never get to that standard of aniamtion. However they are still animation and are mainly for children viewing.

I think the appealing thing to this is the characters look friendly and child friendly. If out audience are children we need it to appeal and communicate to them. Having characters or bright colours like Shrek makes it more for that audience.

This image is from a childrens animation show on BBC, obviously this is an animation of two girls however they are drawn into there own style. This could be an idea for ours aswell, rather than keeping it totaly real and making sure it looks correct we could do a character like this. As when you watch it you kind of go into that world and forget that a human dosent look like that but accept it as a human.

Catch a falling star...

So today we went into more detail on how we want to use animation. One of our main ideas was to do a children's animation, however base it on a children's book. One of my childhood books was a book called "Laura's Star" about a girl who looks after a broken fallen star and then mends it and send it up to the night sky again. This is a very sweet book and if we want keep the idea of real to animation then it can easily be done with this book as we could have a child looking out of a window then change to animation. Also as i said before we wanted to keep a continuous image linking the titles together, this could be done with a star.

Above are photos from the book "Laura's Star". Also another idea we had was to start the story with a fake model of the room then going into the real room.