FINAL GRADE: UNIT 5 & UNIT 27

FINAL GRADE = Merit

To Distinction

Make sure that you look at LO1 & LO2 as a first point of call, make sure you follow your feedback carefully.


See individual blog posts for all feedback.

FINAL GRADE = MErit

To Distinction


Make sure that you look at LO1 & LO2 as a first point of call to improve your Merit pieces upwards, make sure you follow your feedback carefully.

See individual blog posts for all feedback.

Questionnaire Feedback

Vendorbelly Documentary

Pitch Feedback and Justification of Idea

Pitch Feedback and Justification of Idea

From the feed back about my idea's for the animation I have chosen to do I have found many things that I could use and change to improve upon this idea. Using this feedback I now have a wider idea of what I need to do to achieve reaching my target audience.

Justification of my Idea.
The reason why I have chosen this idea is due to the fact that it has the highest possibilities of meeting my aim and also a large potential of reaching the target audience. By using claymation animation the audience that I am trying to reach would mainly be around the age of teenagers. The reasoning behind why I have chosen this medium is that i would be able to create all the characters and props specifically to how I would see fitting to reach this audience and personalize the advert to them.

I have picked to do this story as I have looked at other adverts for other charities and they mostly all follow the same structure. This story will show a dog in need and then show a transition in the middle where it is found and helped to live a better life by a member of Dog's Trust.

However I would need to plan this animation well and manage time due to the negative affect of using plasticine. This problem is that it is time consuming and will have to be a patient project. To make sure this is not a problem I will plan out the production into three sections. Making and designing the characters, set's, and props, filming the animation and lastly the edit where I would add in the audio and cut parts that need to be worked on.

Dog's Trust Animation Evaluation

Dog's Trust Animation Evaluation

Filming the animation for the advert went well in many cases however there were a few thing that I feel I could have changed. The process in filming I thought went well and was easy enough but I did find that it was time consuming. The reason for this being was I had to make every individual character and prop out of scratch from plasticine. This affected the amount of shooting time I had which caused the animation to look like it doesn't flow as much as I would have liked it to. A way that I could have avoided this was to spend more time on the animation itself and taking more shots where there would have been ore movement in the characters to make it look less jumpy.  

One thing I found went well within the animation was the soundtrack. Using the editing software Final Cut was handy to have to use as I was able to easily import audio and also change the audio to best suit the visuals. By this I mean that I was able to change volume of the breathing of the dog as it got closer and further away from the camera. I done this to give the animation more depth so it did not seem like a 2D animation and intrigues the attention of the audience more. 

I am, personally, on a neutral feeling about my aim to get the message of Dog's Trust across. On one had I feel that I have shown the message through the story. Showing the dog in need of help and then having the transition of it being helped by a member of Dog's Trust shows the audience that people can make a difference to the lives of stray and abandoned dogs. However, I do feel that the animation itself was slightly too fast. By it being too fast I feel as if the audience watching did not have enough time to get this message I was trying to convey. 

The presentation that I pitched for Dog's Trust went well as I feel I was confident in my ideas and would be able to target to an audience that would suit the same of the charity itself. I showed the ideas of what I could achieve and demonstrated how I would do this using examples from previous work. 

I showed the client a short test shot of a claymation turtle which lasted for a three second period. This was enough to show the modeling skills and show an example of how the characters would move within the advert. 

In conclusion I felt that the whole process went well and I achieved what I had set out to do. 

Development in Animation

Development in Animation

William Horner

William Horner was a british mathematician who invented the animation device called the zoetrope, originally named the Daedaleum, in 1834. based on the idea of the original Zoetrope, 'The pipe which makes fantasies appear', Horner created a device on a spindle that when spun, the user would look through the slits and see an illusion of the images moving. 

Émile Reynaud

Charles-Émile Reynaud was a french science teacher who is responsible for the invention of the first ever projected animation. this invention was called the Praxinoscope in 1877. It wasn't until 28th October 1892 where he had the first ever public projected animation. The Praxinoscope was similar to the Zoetrope but instead of having slits to look through, it had a selection of mirrors in the center to reflect the image and then projecting it on a wall. 

Edward Muybridge

This man was a photographic pioneer who had the invention of the Zoopraxiscope. This was the a small glass disc that contained images on which was then projected onto a wall. The disc would then rotate and in rapid succession the image projected would appear as if it was moving. 

Lumiére Brothers

Auguste and Louis Lumiére are known to be the earliest filmmakers with their production of the cinematograph. Making their first film in 1894 using this the movie was debuted in the L'Eden, the worlds first and oldest cinema. The cinematograph served two prepossess, the first being able to film, and second being able to project the filmed footage. 

Willis H. O'Brien 

Responsible for the visual effects in films such as the classic monster films, 'King Kong' from 1933 and 'The Lost World' in 1925. using a style of stop-motion animation incorporated into the movie, O'Brien changed the possibilities of what someone could do with film. 

Ray Harryhausen 

Harryhausen is another visual effects who has developed O'Briens technique even further. He had done this by using a stop-motion style known as 'Dynamation'. Being part of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Harryhausen has worked on many sets creating models for the likes of 'Jason and the Argonauts' and 'The 7th Voyage of Sinbad'. 

Henry Selick 

Henry Selick brought a new dark style of animation using stop-motion claymation. This started with the film 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' where working with Tim Burton he achieved an animation style which would be dark and bleak by the movement of the characters and the imagery. Showing he was not a "one hit wonder" Selick continued this animation in his latest film 'Coraline' and has been used by other filmmakers seen in the film 'Paranorman'. 

Aardman

Sticking with claymation, the animation studio company Aardman have been producing comedic British shorts on our TV's for years. With their hit show, Wallace and Gromit, Aardman have grown and had become one of the biggest and well known animation studios in the UK. By this having an affect on the company Aardman have produced full length feature movie, and has had many cinema releases including the first stop-motion using hair for a whole character. 

Evaluation Commentary on the Vendorbelly Documentary