Final Animation....The Snail Race..

This is my final animation. I am quite pleased with how it turned out. i aimed to make it 25 frames per second but ended up taking 557 photo's rather than the 750 i should have needed. However it was already too fast with this amount of frames. Some of the sequences within the composition i had to stretch in order for them to look slower and be able to see what is actually happening when the photo's change. The first two images are not in sequences. They were put in as individual layers and were a second long each. This also was the same the the last frame which had the text 'The End' in. I had a play and a look at some of the effects i could give it. Because of the type of animation it was using plasticine i didn't really want to add rotations or fades. I had a look at curves and hue and saturation as for animations such as Wallace and Gromit they are quite saturated. Because i had already edited some of the photographs before importing them into after effects they were quite good quality which meant i didn't have to particularly change or add these types of effects. I faded the music at the end rather than having it stop dead completely. I think this has quite a nice touch to it as from 28 seconds it then starts to fade out until 30. I wasn't sure if the animation could be over 30 seconds. If it could have been longer i would have prefered it as i still think the animation could be slowed down a touch more in areas. However i stuck to the brief and solved problems to make it finish on exactly 30 seconds. On a whole i enjoyed making my animation and it makes me appreciate other animation we see today for example all the Pixar  and Dreamworks movies. If there was anything i could do to improve it, personally i  would  slow it down further but as the limit was 30 seconds i think it is still a good effort.

Clutchy Hopkins (3.25)

This is the video i found for the piece of audio that i have been given to compliment my animation. I actually quite like it. Its not something i would particularly listen to but i think it could be interesting to see how it suits different animations. The three words that i thought of to describe this when i heard it were... MYSTERIOUS, SNEAKY AND CONTINUOUS. These words were then used as part of my input to choosing a story for my animation.

After Effects screen grabs

I took some screen grabs in order to record what i was doing and to show what i was doing on my timtable and how i had to change things.

This image above was a close up that was an individual frame. With both this image and around the one below it was too fast. I had to change the 1 second up to 2 seconds however that was all i could maximise it to as i did not want to cut out any other parts of the animation.

This shot was taken with camera 2, the Canon D30. I used that camera for front view shot and a couple of the close ups that happened towards the beginning.

This is the part when the small snail approaches the log but when he does start to climb he accidentally falls back, slithers up, falls back. This was to emphasize how much harder it was for the small one and that he as being left behind. This part was also very fast and still could be slower but is also 2 seconds in long.

You can see the snails face has changed expression i changed this a few previous frames. It was to make him seem afraid of the size of the log and how he was terribly losing to the big snail.

Here the small snail has his small eyes back to normal again. The large one is just leaving the rock making it look very simple. 

In this image he is actually tilted to the right. He previously had just tried to get up the rock, fell back had a wobble n eventually makes it on to the rock without completely falling over.

The small snail here is having a rest after his struggle of getting on the rock. His tongue is now out and his big eyes had reappeared before getting on the rock. The big snail steaming ahead.

The face suddenly changes to a shocked/fearful look where he would be screaming as he sees something above him.

He looks forward thinking it cant be real before looking back up to see that something really is there.

Here he's looking up to see that its a massive boot coming down on him until..

WHAM! he gets smushed. This bit was actually quite easy to film and was quite fun as well. It is meant to look like the boot has completely squished him where as what i did was filmed the boot till it made contact. Measured its whereabouts  took it away used my had to squish it and then replaced the boot on top before walking it off. I wasn't going to use the actual snail but didn't have enough plasticine to make another one so took a risk. It worked fine and luckily didn't make any mistakes that i had to use the big snail for again.

Here is another example of a close up i did of it when it sees what happens to the big snail...pure excitement and happiness.

Here is the same image however further back also making us know that the small snail is goint to set off again now after his rest.

Currently speeding past knocking it's eye off as he goes by.

The snail that is nearly dead shakes his fist angrily at the small snail. this is where his arm was back. He clearly didn't have arms before but often in fiction cartoons you see limbs appear even though the animal doesn't actually have them at all.

Here the fist is slightly tilted our way towards us..

Gradually coming up to the finishing line, big grin still there.

Here he crosses the finish line.

Here i took a close up of the snails expression. I changed his eyes to be as if they were closed tight because he was so happy about beating the big snail to the end. These eyes were also made from plasticine just with marker pen making the line.

This is obviously the end. I created this on illustrator using a checkered flag to symbolise racing in general and it is a flag often waved within racing. The font was called Harlow. I thought it looked interesting and was too serious to go with the animation. It had to be fairly fun looking as i think something like Baskerville or Garamond would have looked to traditional and wouldnt have particuarly fitted. I chose red as it stands out well on both black and white and wanted it to be legible on top of the design.

Screen grabs of my background

Here my screen grabs are working backwards. The one below contains everything that the final background had. I also made a side to my set which was part of this but cut to 36cm wide to fit the end of the table.

Then here there is no clouds..

Heres the mole is non-existent nearly just its head and its tunnel.

Only part of the tunnel and no mole at all.

No mole or tunnel completely..

I was going to do several screen grabs of the making of the flower as it was made one petal at a time but thought it wasn't particularly necessary.

Here there is no grass at all. It had to be deleted in one as the grass was made as one big path..

Complete blue screen...

Below is what was used for the floor of the set-up. I drew out a windy path that the snails would race along.

Started off with my blank screen..

I considered other ways of making the set. I thought about using coloured paper, the natural evironment outside, paper masche and more but decided upon using a constructed environment for lighting reasons as well as it being something that was completely fiction from the background to the animation itself..

Pictures of my own set

Here is some images of my set up. Unfortunately i forgot to take the images when all the lights where set up as it would have shown how bright they were and how they were directed. However these pictures show you how the set layout was. The table i used was about 4ft long by 36cm wide. I made start and finish flags and also found a small log that would look big against the snails and a suitable rock that would make perfect obstacles.

Research on sets

Below i have found different images of how sets look like and how they can be set up and constructed. This helped me decide on how my set should look and that i was going to use two cameras, one on a tripod so that it was always fixed and would move along with my characters. The other camera could capture from a different angle. I also decided on using two artificial lights so that no matter how long the collection of my images for it took, i would have even lighting throughout the whole animation rather than having daylight where it could differ throughout the day and perhaps not even be the same the next day.

Rayograms

 Below are some of my rayograms that i managed to scan. The top one is a test strip i did although i made the mistake of not looking at my test strip in daylight to see how ong my exposure time should have been. My actual rayograms came out too light. I used various objects such as beads, jewellery, buttons, matchsticks, bubblewrap etc.. to create different looks and rearranged them differently on each different rayogram.