Characters - extras

To make our animation feel more alive and therefore realistic, we have decided to make a minimum of 16 characters for our entire 5 minute short. We would prefer to have a minimum of 20 to really bring the animation to life but whether we create such a large amount of plasticine characters is still in debate. The factors that affect our decision are the time and materials needed to create them and the benefits to the animation, we need to assess whether creating so many characters would actually be worth it or whether we could achieve the same results using fewer models. A possibility to achieve those better results would be to make the framing of the shots closer so everything is a lot tighter in the shot and therefore making the shot look busier than it actually is.

Here are a few quick design ideas for another orphanage child and townspeople:

Orphanage child

Townspeople 1

Townspeople 2

Ideas for lighting!

To keep our light continuity we have decided to use artificial lighting so we do not get the natural light changes such as shadows created by the sun moving. This also benefits us in creating the mood and emotion which we want in our animation. Carrying on with the Tim Burton theme we can use different coloured light bulbs to create shadows and an eerie look, we would use colours such as a deep blue which we would use throughout the whole piece or a dark red for emphasis on dramatic moments. Using artificial lighting allows us to play around with shadows, by moving the flexible desktop lights we would be using we can manipulate the shadows to whatever we want, for example we could make the shadows long and thin to give that creepy gloomy look. We can also control the time of day using artificial so we can film things which would be daylight in the animation time but in real life it’s dark or vice-versa. We can also emphasis the moonlight which Tim Burton also does a lot in his work, this creates that gloomy, creepy look again. To make one of our characters look more sinister we could change the lighting so only half their face is lit up this could create a sense of fear and mystery where as if they were in fall light they would look more happy and innocent, this can help us create questions on Lucy by putting her in a darker light then the other characters. This will then make sense towards the end of the short film when the audience find out the climax of her actually being dead.

Moulds in the making!

This is some more progress on an Orphan from the Orphanage.

This is the Orphanage owner in progress and she is made from Polystyrene balls, a pipe cleaner and plasticine.

This is the start of a Orpan whom will be at the same Orphanage as Lucy as you can see it will be made from two polystyrene balls, a pipe cleaner and plasticine.

This is lucy's hair, which is also made from Plasticine.

This is Lucy from the front.

This is Lucy from the back in the process of having detail added to her, she was made by using 3 polystrene balls a pipe cleaner and different coloured plasticine.

Original Ideas

Before we came up with the idea for doing Plastacine stop animation we had gone through a range of other ideas of what we could produce. One of the other options we were interested in originally was the idea of doing a film trailer. One of the first questions we had was whether or not we could do a trailer for our AS level thriller idea of endurance. (If you are interested in finding out more about endurance please visit www.thrill-seekers.blogspot.com). As we found out that this ideas wasn’t necessarily aloud we thought of producing the trailer for endurance and finding another idea for our as thriller resubmit.

Our second choice was to create a short film, the main ideas were to do with animation as we thought that would be the most interesting and creative way to compress into a 5 minute long film. We then thought of the different ways we could do animation. With our main ideas being centred around the comedy aspect we had thoughts of ways to make people laugh focusing on slapstick humour. This would have been focused on some less detailed characters and wouldn’t have given the depth we are looking for at A level. Another consideration was to draw out character’s and pin the limbs together to make a character that is easy to move with a childish look and feel to it. Once again we would have incorporated a lot of colour to create a pleasant and cheerful tone for the short film. Again the childish short film idea just didn’t have the feel or quality we were looking for.

We were then inspired by a previous animation we had produced called “Milly, Marvin and Malcolm”. This featured 3 different coloured blobs of Plastacine running around hectically trying to hurt each other in different ways.

To do this we used stop motion to move each character around on a whiteboard and we drew in the different ways that they could hurt each other with a marker pen. Although this was really fun to both create and watch, the same problem came up. It just lacked that professional look. So we took the Plastacine idea from Milly, Marvin and Malcolm and decided to incorporate it into another idea.

When I was searching you tube for ideas and other peoples work on animation, I saw one of Tim Burton’s early works called ‘Vincent’, featured earlier on the blog it features a gothic style combining both comedy and horror to create a brilliant look. This was the look we had been looking for and decided finally to create an animation in the style of Tim Burton. And that is when we started to think about Lucy Fir and Rest in Pieces.

Soundtrack - Opening theme

In a media lesson on Friday we decided to create the song we will be playing during the opening scenes. After playing around with all kinds of different sounds on Garageband we managed to come up with a sound that we thought perfect for our almost Victorian setting and mood. This piece is featured in the video below along with a few photos of our modelling weekend.

As you can hear we selected clips from Garageband and arranged them to form a piano score. This music features notes from both high and low octaves and when put together sounds almost like a high pitched cry of misery from amongst powerful lower tones. This relates to our narrative as Lucy is almost crying out for attention amongst the monotonous drones of the townspeople.

Moulding day!

Me and Sam spent the weekend at my house working on our Animation figures, we made these by using polystyrene balls, one for the head and one for the body, though Lucy Firr has 3 balls in her. We connected these balls using a pipe cleaner through the middle of them. We then applied the coloured plasticine to the polystyrene balls and moulded the shapes of the dress'/outfits. The figures start our looking fairly basic but once there is detail added they start to come to life! So far we are in the process of making three characters these are the Orphanage owner Mz Popperlock, A fellow Orphan child called Richard and Lucy Firr herself.

Settings and character construction day 3

Although originally my brother and I intended to have today as our day off from working on the the town setting, we couldn't help but begin on painting the high and lowlights of the buildings. To get the colour for the lowlights I took white and black and added a hint of yellow. We also blacked out the windows and we have yet to place the window frame bars across them.

Once again here are some photos of today's progress.

The setting as a whole so far

The textured and detailed sections we have completed so far

Close up of textured section 

Close up of textured shop front

Close up of the orphanage owner and Lucy Firr's basic character models

Day 2 of setting construction

After the second day of construction, the town scenery is coming along smoothly. All of the building have been cut out, and after sticking on model slabs for a brick effect on some of the buildings and extending the front of the shop, the base coat has been painted on all of the scenery. We used more light wood to create the frames for the windows and the panels of the door. For the side of the building we found some tiled effect wood in a DIY store and applied it to the orphanage to give the brick effect. Here are some more pictures to show our progress.

Settings - Town is under construction

Today we started construction on our town setting for Rest In Pieces. We used MDF wood for the fronts of the building and drew out a rough plan for the outline. Then we cut out the outline using a jig-saw. After that we drew out the windows and doors and glued pieces of thin wood to outline the window of the orphanage to emphasise and seperate the windows. Here are a few pictures of the project so far.

Story Ideas!

These are a few ideas me and Sam have been working on in class. (Click the image to see it in full size).

Update

Today I have been concentrating on the character design again, however this time i looked at in 3D and so far it is looking really good. I will keep a record of my progress with the modelling and will have pictures up when it's finished. Construction for the settings should be under way as of Saturday evening and that will run over the following week.

Thankyou

Designing Ideas

Over the past few hours I have been looking at designs for costumes and settings and I have finalised the design for one of the confirmed settings, an orphanage.

Here is the Design ideas for the orphanage:

The building to the right of the picture is the final choice for the orphanage, and below there is a line of houses which we will be making as a surround featuring the orphanage in the centre.

I then designed a bedroom within the orphanage which will feature three children, one of which is Lucy. This is shown below:

As for costumes, I have narrowed the basic design = for the costumes down to two different styles. One being a ghoulish orphan nightgown, the other being a classic Victorian looking dress. As you can see in the image below, both of them are carrying a doll. This doll will be a porcelain doll to add to that 'creepy' look.

Inspired by Tim Burton

Here are some stills from some of Tim Burton's pieces which will show the sort of colours and style of characters we will be using along with the sets. Notice how he uses mostly dull black and white colours then puts a bright blue to create that erie look and to emphasise the fact that it's night, also makes us ask the questions about whether it's reality or a dream world. His characters are also done in a way which makes them look unrealistic as the human form does not look like that. They're not meant to look real and we are going to try and achieve this model look. For Lucy we will be using a lot of black, black hair, black dress with white pale skin but then to contrast we will have the patch work fixings in her dress done in a bright colour like red or blue for example and we will also be using a bright colour for the ties in her hair which will bring out the innocence within her and contrast again with the grey, dull colours to try and create the emotion which Tim Burton does.

Progress and our new bright ideas!

Hello Hannah here I'm going to be showing you guys how we have been progressing in our media project. We have been inspired by Tim Burton and therefore have decided to use his ideas within our piece. Here is the idea we have for the look of the character also including the title. We choose the title 'Lucy Firr - Rest In Pieces' because she is a sinister child so we made her name like Lucifer which is another name for the devil and the title of the short film 'Rest In Pieces' was a connection to Rest In Peace which also has a connection to the animation which will be explained later in the story line. Too keep on the theme of Tim Burton's ideas we have decided to try use just voice over and Rhyme for it which will create a creepy feel to it and will also seem more like a story being read to the audience with animated pictures. We have finalised that we are going to be using dull and dingy colour within our animation but also use very small amounts of bright colours for emphasis and contrast to show emotions of our characters. The main character will be a creepy looking small girl no older than 10 years old whom will be showing us her experience in the orphanage and how she got there in the first place, hints the tile 'Rest In Pieces', this will be incorporated through a confusion over reality and fantasy, like a dream world mixed in with the real world.

Inspiration

We have been searching YouTube for some inspiration and ideas for our animation short, and we have found some amazing work at a high quality.

Although our initial thoughts were to have the comedy genre as our main feature, we have found two videos that have changed our view on what animation can portray.

The first video is called Vincent. This was written and directed by one of my favourite directors, Tim Burton. Although there are elements of subtle humour the main focus of this short animation is Gothic, dark and dramatic.

If the clips don't appear please click the links below:

Vincent - Tim Burton

Replay

The Second video is called replay. The short film follows the lives of Lana and Theo living in Russia in

a post-apocalyptic time. It shows just how deeper emotions can be shown through animation.

Welcome

Hello,
This is Hannah and Sam here, we're just writing to tell you about our short film we will be making, we will be using animation.
We have been looking at videos of some short animations and intend to get some of those up on the blog but until then we will open our first poll, please vote!
thank you!