How Do You Promote A Ba

18/03/15



For this project we have been asked to work as a team to produce a piece of promotional material for the Ba Hons Motion Design course. We will identifies the courses key strengths and use this to promote the course in a positive way. we will develop the main story board together and will each be responsible to creating a section of the animation and individual storying boarding our work more intricately. We should however show a full range of techniques mediums and methods that we have learnt of the course, such as stop motion pixilation after effects work, video edits, cinema 4d work and live footage camera work and lighting.


Motivational Teamwork Video:



The main aspects we wanted to show in our work was growth, creative freedom, teamwork with the creativity being emphasised.

We brainstormed our ideas together and drew mock up story boards of the ideas we came up with to explain it to the group.

we then made a full rough version of our story boards placed together so that we all knew how the piece would look and what we all had to do. This also made it easy for us to spot which parts of the story boards we might have to tweak in order for the transitions to work between sections of the animation. 

We did a lot of creative exercises to brainstorm idea and creatided physical story boards to pin our ideas down. I have brainstormed most of our idea development in my sketch book and included evidence of some of the creative exercises we did in it.

Exquisite corpse exercise:

for this exercise we had to draw on sections of the paper and the fold it over and pass it on for the next person to draw on. This meant that the outcome would be random however we would leave marks indicating where the next part of the drawing would go so that the drawing when finished is connected well. We drew the corpse going down as it would be, drawing a head then folding it over then drawing the body and folding it over and then drawing the legs and feet. 

Exquisite corpse, also known as exquisite cadaver (from the original French term cadavre exquis) or rotating corpse, is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. "The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun", as in "The green duck sweetly sang the dreadful dirge") or by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed.

Exquisite corpse example:

1. Lateral thinking is solving problems through an indirect and creative approach, using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic. The term was coined in 1967 by Edward de Bono.
   
   
   We decide that for our animation our theme is going to be following the theme of the title we will start with of 'lets get the gal rolling' and the animation will follow the ball rolling through out different environments becoming digital or going into realistic environments this will show our range of techniques and keeping the idea of traveling on a journey of creativity as we display the interesting ways in which we will transition our shots and connect them as well as how we adapt and move the ball through different environments. 
   
   
   

   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   
   

                                            
   
   
   What each of us are doing:
   Me- opening title, stop motion showing hands arranging scraps of paper to make the words 'lets get the ball rolling then moving together in a scrunched black gal of paper
   Hannah- Draw ball (black and symbolising scrunched paper) rolls towards drawn character.Screen angle moves on its side and ball rolls down and falls off the bottom of the screen
   Olivier- ball drops down and is then kicked about by a character made in after effects, character then kicks the ball to the right of the screen and goes off screen
   Steph- (using stop motion on white board) ball comes in from left and then interacts with drawn characters and is eaten by one of the characters making screen completely black
   Niaeem- (live footage film noir) black screen then beam of light from spotlight illuminated real life ball on a table and then shows actors interrogating each other then close up of the ball
   Jamie- Close up of ball in cinema 4d then camera follows the ball moving quickly through a pinball machine hurts out of the side of the machine then drops down.
   Danny- ball falls down from sky in after effects
   At the end of these sections we will then have 3d text that we will each make in cinema 4d saying Ba Hons Motion Design one after the other and then will finish with the text Stockport University. 
   So with all of these sections involved this will show a variety of techniques such as stop motion pixilation in real life (my stop motion inclusion of hands makes this pixilation). Physical drawings of frames to create footage (hannahs drawing section) after effects character animation drawings (olivier) (stop motion drawings (stephs) cinema 4d (jamie) Live footage and lighting techniques (nayeem) and after effects techniques with Dannys creation. 
   The message and effect of this when finished is showing the audience the creative and educational journey of the course and representing what we as students have experienced and our journeys in a way. It also shows a variety of techniques and specifications that people could take. It shows a playful and fun environment as the animation we are making is not serious and has funny playful sections especially with some of the drawing sections and shows swell impressive 3d creations such as jamies c4d section where he has digitally built objects that react and move with realistic qualities. 
   My section of the animation will be the opening sequence where we display the words lets get the ball rolling. I am going to be creating this title using stop motion that shows hands arranging paper scarps into the words and then the words morph and scrunch together into a paper ball which then starts rolling and travels into the the next section. 
   My 3D text:
   Getting to grips with cinema 4d:
   I did a workshop where i created a snowman out of shapes on c4d and using the tools. I also created lighting for the piece and created an environment with the floor and added colours and materials that my snowman is made out of.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   I used this tutorial to help me create my 3d text as my idea was to add text into real life footage. 

after watching a couple of tutorials online i decided i wanted to create my 3d text onto of a photograph so that it would look like it is a part of the photograph and 'realistic looking'

I chose this image to place my text on as it has an urban feel and i would like to try perhaps blending graffiti onto my text to match its environment. 

The first stage was positioning the text so that it looked like it sat in the environment. This meant getting it at the right angle and scale. 

I added a plane (floor) so that my text would have shadow beneath it but also so that i could animate my text in order to make it fall and look slightly less straight lines organised and neat (as this did not match the nature of the environment)

However the result of this i felt was a little too unorganised and wonky and made the words hard to notice well seeing as this had to be fairly easy to make out what the words say as it will be on at the end of our group animation along the with other text it will only show for a couple of seconds, so i needed to change this. 

I decided to rotate and move each letter individually so i had more control over how each letter would fall in its place. I then did some compositing to make the lighting more realistic.

This is what i came up with at this stage:

I decided to experiment with colour to see what effect it would have on the appearance of my text however for the purpose of the brief decided that white was the best colour as it stands out most as white and is more easy to read seeing as the image will only be visible for a few seconds. 

Adding the appropriate lighting to create realistic shadows and to make it more yellowy to match the environment and adding texture to the text (again to make it look more life like:

Testers:

                                         
After doing these test animations i decided that to simply place all the letters with my hands in an ordinary way was deleting the point of using stop motion and may as well just be filmed so i decided that for each word i would create it in a different way making each one look like it could not happen in real life and so holding more unique quality and interest  also this is a better way of displaying the skills learnt with stop motion and would be more suited for the task i am doing.

Research:

               

This video shows techniques and similar aspects to what i will be creating for my section of the animation such as the paper crumpling into a ball by itself and the involvement of the persons hands in the animation and so would be a good video to refer back to when I'm coming to create my stop motion.

Watching how a paper ball moves for when i come to do my animation:

                                         

Setting up the work space for the stop motion animation i am about to create.

                                          

Time lapse of me creating the first two words for my stop motion animation:

                                          

First Version Of My Piece (unedited):

(original higher quality version in hand in folder) 

This render shows my animation with out the ending transition where i am supposed to finish with the paper ball rolling off the right. This is because i did not have enough time to complete this and will finish that section off next time when i am finalising the animation. 

After making this animation its appearance was avery dull and blueish due to how it was lit so i decided to take it into photoshop and change its appearance slightly by making the animation brighter and slightly warmer.

Final version with sound:

               

This is the finished section of our group animation that i have made myself. This still needs to be pieced together with the rest of the animation as the opening sequence. I have cut out a small section of my animation from how i had originally filmed it (the part where the paper ball folds right out into flat paper) as i felt this was too distracting and made the contrasts etc over exposed compared to the other frames. I felt that i did not need the paper to entirely open, just to demonstrate that the pieces of small paper had joined together. I used realistic sounds mostly in my animation however some of the sounds i used are more comical than realistic such as the ping noises when the hand makes a word appear this is to exaggerate the trick and the unrealistic nature of these parts of the animation. I recorded my own sounds using a variety of papers and appliances (microwaves, bike bells, balloons).