Finished.

Well that's it. The project, and my whole university career is finished and handed in and over. Now I can only hope

Full 1st Edit The Artist & The Model

Here is a near finished version of my animation, although it has changed already since this one... enjoy

Video

So it's finally uploaded, and hopefully nearly finished. Enjoy.

Update - the end is (hopefully) in sight

Just a quick update while my file is rendering, hopefully get it added to here later tonight.

I have shot everything now, all of my stopmotion and live action is done. I have a rough edit of it all together and it looks pretty good. So far it comes in just under 2 minutes, although I haven't added on the last long shot of the finished painting, the title sequence or the credits yet.

This week I have been focusing on getting the painting effect looking alright, I've been playing around with different ways of layering the photoshop image so that he can be painting on the shade or the highlights to a certain shot instead of just painting on the whole thing at once. I'm also trying to figure out how to build it up, as I'd like it to look quite ambiguous until you see the final image. I've already switched the order I've been doing it in once, but unfortunately trial and error seems to be the best approach. At least I've discovered that I can copy and paste masks from layer to layer, so changing them isn't too much of an issue.

The Live Action pieces were tricky as I had wanted someone else to play the artist. I feel reasonably narcissistic starring in a piece which is essentially a self portrait anyway, but it was the easiest way of doing it. I've made sure that I'm not in focus at any point, and the first shot worked out quite well because it slightly mirrors the position that the artist in the painting I'm copying is in.

The title sequence, I have decided, is going to be painted on to the screen in the same way as the painting is. It will simply paint the title, possibly onto a coloured background. I still don't know what I'm calling the piece though... possibly The Artist's Model at the moment but we shall see.

There are still 12 minutes left before my video is rendered, and then it has to be uploaded to youtube, so I shall finish this post with the hope that I don't have to reshoot anything after tomorrow's presentation...

20 seconds with backround

With background test shots

My Allegory of Painting

These are my versions of the Allegory of Painting. Might do a 3rd which has more highlights on the face,  but the 2nd one looks more painted than the first

Last Video for a while, and all of the stop motion is done!!!

Woooo! here it is.

All of my posts seem to be videos...

... but here's the latest one. 52 seconds of stop motion. The montage sequence is done, and now all that needs to be done is the bit where he hears the artist coming back upstairs and runs back to his original position. And the live action, the music, the compositing and the effects of course...

Rough edit of montage

I've shot the majority of the montage now and below is a rough edit of everything so far, definitely going to change some things around and reshoot some bits, and I've managed to miss out a shot which is impressive, but this is just to give an idea of how it's going. I quite like the overall effect, it seems to flow well.
Have also started creating the painting, just done the right arm and the background so far, but below is how it's looking.

Up to the montage

Completed all of the stop motion up to the montage, that's my task for this week. Here it is;

my setup and useful books

Thought I'd update with new pics of my setup;

I have 3 lamps, some with homemade diffusers made from baking paper. There is also a reflector made from tinfoil, but the camera is obscuring it from view.

I've been using some books to help me perfect my animation. One called The Animators Survival Guide by Richard Williams was very useful to help me get my walking motion better. Below is a page from the book which demonstrates ways of animating a walking motion.

My new problem is to do with the green screen. My paint brush is blue and thin, and therefore doesn't look any good once I've got rid of the green. I also have a shot where I use a focus pull, which is throwing up issues as well. I have another book which gives a fairly detailed account of how to use the Keylight plugin in after effects, which is being a massive help.

Once I've sorted these issues I'll have close to 30 seconds of footage though, so on track for now.

20 seconds now...

So after a fun weekend of animating, which included breaking a bulb and a desperate dash to morrisons to try and get a new one, I have 20 seconds of stop motion. Keyed all the green out, and positioned my little dude (who I've called Woody) roughly where I want him to be in the shot so all is left is to add in the background on these shots.

Of course, might still reshoot some scenes...

10 secs

here's what i've managed so far;

Progress Report

I have officially started animating. After two days of work I have come accross the following issues;

1. Camera battery running out (thankfully it only takes 2 hours to recharge, and I've ordered a mains adapter which should arrive tomorrow)
2. Lighting not being great (borrowed an extra lamp from holly, better now)
3. Stop Motion Pro crashing (restarting is the only thing I've found that helps)
4. Not being able to animate a walk properly. Looks too much like he's loping. I feel this is overcompensation from the previous stiffness, will have another go tomorrow.
5. Keying out his pole, then realising it took some of his leg with it (had to reshoot)
6. Keying out the greenscreen, then realising some of the pole was still visable and my hands appeared in some shots. (Thankfully matte chokes and masks are designed to help with these problems)

However, I have 10 seconds of animation. Worth it? sure :)

More StoryBoards

I have re-storyboarded my animation with much more detail, including how long my stop motion shots will be.
In total, I should be shooting 1365 frames of stop motion. In total this amounts to 1 min 33 secs of footage (at 15 fps) however as a lot of that is a montage sequence, it will more likely amount to 1 min 16 secs as many of the shots will be cross faded into each other.

The stop motion will be preceded and ended with some live action sequences, the first being around 34 seconds and the second being about 42 seconds including credits.

Lens

On many stop motion websites it suggests that you use an old style lens rather than a new one, as the new ones can result in light flickering.

"The lenses that are supplied with modern DSLRs use automatic iris. This means the lens is normally 'wide open' to let the maximum amount of light through to the viewfinder making it easier for you to see your composition. When you click the shutter release, the lens iris 'stops down', the shutter opens, after the set exposure time, the shutter closes and the lens iris opens up again.

Unfortunately the lens does not 'stop down' to exactly the same place each time you press the shutter. For normal picture taking this is not a problem, but for animation it causes an annoying flicker.

To solve this problem, the best solution is to use older style manual iris lenses, not to use the lenses that usually come bundled with the new DSLR cameras.  The lens on this page is a manual iris/aperture lens. You can tell by the aperture "f-stop" markings on the movable ring on the lens barrel.  Look for this stepping ring with similarly marked increments when considering a lens." 

(http://www.stopmotionpro.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=84:dslr-lenses&catid=12)

To avoid this problem, I found some old lenses for a film SLR that I had at home, and bought a cheap adapter. Now I have a  manual 28mm prime lens mounted onto my SLR, so I should have no light flicker. 

Test 4, walking

I actually did this before the particle test, but forgot to upload it.

Here I encountered many problems;
needing to mask out the base so that it looked like he was walking on the desk
needing to mask out the pole - keeps getting hidden behind legs
basically using alot of masks
and the movement doesn't match with how fast he's actually walking.

Therefore, I need to paint the base and the pole green in the hope that they will be got rid of at the same time as the green screen, I need to make sure that the pole is never in front of his legs in the shot and I need to pay way more attention to the speed that I am making him move at

Test 3; Motion tracking & particles

This test involved me creating another little bit of stop motion, and learning how to motion track. It took some time because I was tracking the tip of the brush which disappears behind his head at some points, so I had to manually move the tracking points until the whole track followed the right path. It still could do with some adjustments, however when creating these shots I will now be more aware of what I need, and can shoot with motion tracking in mind so that the brush doesn't go out of shot again.

Additionally, I created a basic particle effect and parented it to the motion track, so that it looks like it's following the brush. I really like this, however it doesn't look much like paint. Therefore I have decided that in addition to particles such as these, I will create brush strokes on canvas in photoshop, and reveal them with the stroke tool so it looks like it has actually been painted onto the canvas.

Storyboards

These are my rough storyboards for my animation. I have tried to include all of the shots that I have planned so far.
The middle section where he is painting will be done in a montage style, and the first and the last shots will be live action.

Self Portrait inspiration

I have also been thinking about what the mannequin should paint. Recently I am thinking more and more that it should be a representation of my as a "digital artist" to an extent, and therefore I think the picture should show me creating some digital effects.

One portrait which has inspired me to think this is a self portrait by Artemisia Gentileschi called Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting. Gentileschi was the first female to have a self portrait in a royal collection, and I think the significance of this lies in the fact that it is showing herself at work. 

2nd test, woody paints

Learned how to chroma key out the green, placed a random image in the background just to show that it has actually been done. I like the movement, but I think it's too shaky still, so I will aim for a smoother movement when I do it for real.

This is just to prove that it was shot on a green screen 

1st Test Animation using StopMotionPro

After doing some research into stop motion, I discovered one of the first and still most widely used softwares for this type of animation is Stop Motion Pro. This is the software used to make the amazing Wallace and Gromit animations.
So I figured while I could take the pictures and import them all into After Effects, acquiring Stop Motion Pro and being able to use tools such as onion skinning, and being able to see an instant playback of my animation would help me way more. So here is my first test using this programme, apologies for the quality, so far I have only been able to get it to export the movie straight to youtube.

Content ideas

In my meeting with Graham, he suggested I watch a documentary which aired on BBC4 last night called "Ego - the Strange and Wonderful World of Self Portraits". From watching this documentary, I have began to formulate an idea for what my mannequin can be painting.

I was thinking about this animation as a whole, and what it represented, and what I wanted it to represent, and I realised that, assuming it is of good quality, this would be the work against which most of my degree and my ability is judged. This will be the culmination of all of my years studying at university, and studying digital media. Therefore, it should represent what I have learned, and also demonstrate my skills appropriately.

I was thinking that this is fairly similar to what a CV does, and this will also be the animation which I would show to prospective employers, and a CV is essentially a snapshot of what makes you, you, and therefore, this animation would serve as my own self portrait.

Following this idea however, I have no idea whether I want the mannequin to paint me straight out, to paint himself and have it fade into me, or some other variation. But that is the plan for now;

Artist painting/drawing mannequin, mannequin comes to life, starts painting, nice visual effects with colours etc resulting in self portrait. 

Some inspiration - Patrick Boivin

I've seen the videos that this guy has done, and he's really inspired me to make decent quality stop motion. Here is one of his videos involving two transformer toys:




And here is the making of video, which has given me lots of ideas on how to do an animation of my own in a similar way:





Enjoy :)

New Ideas

So I need ideas that I can animate in a stop-motion film.

Two so far:

#1 - Lucky 13.

A man takes no heed of superstitions such as walking under ladders, black cats, walking over 3 drains etc. On Friday 13th, he carries on as normal, however every time he does something supposedly unlucky, a bad thing happens.

However, it turns out that all of the bad things have contributed to him being late and avoiding a massive accident which would have killed him.

#2 - Living Doll/The Artist

Artist's mannequin comes to life when no-one else is around. Tries to get off his stand. When he does, he begins to paint. What he paints can be CGed and visual effects using particles, reminiscent of the animation I did of the cello before.


At the moment I'm liking the 2nd idea more, mainly because I already have everything I would need for it. 

Next Animation...

Started on drafting ideas for my next animation... all I know so far is that I'm going to use stop motion and combine it with some form of CGI to keep the digital aspect.

Watch this space basically

It's finished!!!

After weeks of mostly hard work, my animation is finally finished, rendered, and burned onto two dvds. So I figured this would be the perfect time to update the blog...

I have managed to stay quite true to my original key narrative points, however I have had to scrap the trying to help people point, because of time restraints, and also because it flowed perfectly well without it in there.

So it now goes along the lines of a man leaving his house, seeing that everything is good in the world, he goes to work and has a normal day. As he is leaving work a link in the chain which holds on his visor breaks and falls off. The man then sees the world for how it really is, and runs away scared. When he gets to his house, he looks through the visor, and sees how he'd been living a lie. He tosses the visor to the ground, and walks off into the rain. He sits in a cave in the hills overlooking his town. The girl who he works with suddenly appears next to him, and sits down. End.

I have tried consistently throughout the animation to include references to Plato's allegory. For example, the chains which hold the visor onto the people's head represent the chains holding the prisoners in the cave. The cave itself also stands as a pretty obvious representation, however I have swapped it around with the prisoners leaving the cave to achieve enlightenment with the man going into the cave once he has seen the world for how it really is. Lastly, when the girl appears in the cave, you first see her shadow, which is reminiscent of the shadows on the wall of Plato's cave.

In terms of music, I bought 3 copyright free tracks from AKM Music (akmmusic.co.uk) which represented the three main emotions I wanted to portray; calm and happy, terror and shock, and melancholy. I edited these tracks together with some free sound effects which I thought would help add to the animation, such as machinery sounds in the factory, and sounds of rain and fire etc.

That'll do for now, I'll update more later on