The Science Class SMU Project

In my final piece I worked with Ceri. From the beginning I was unsure as to whether I should do a flip book, or a clay animation. Having looked on the web and on YouTube for some inspiration, I discovered that we could make a clay animation of a scenario in a science class where there is a teacher giving a Science lesson to two pupils. This would be both interesting and informative. Once we had settled on this idea, we both arranged to meet up to discuss exactly how we were going to make our animation. First of all we needed a classroom setting, some options here could have been to use Green Screening, but we decided to use an actual set instead as I felt it would add to the realism and feel of the piece. I wanted it to feel like a low-budget inidendent movie. Once we had made the set, we then made the plasticine figures which would become our main characters. Now that we had our set and 'actors' we needed a script and a basic storyline. Obvisously there was a 2 minute cap on what we could present, so we needed to find a way to create a classroom scene that presented facts, and close the 'story'. I felt that 2 minutes was not enough. Ceri and I both wrote the script together, making sure we presented enough factual information to go with the animation. We also decided to include the teacher and the children doing some experients in the 'classroom' as this would both look visually appealing, and also be informative for the KS1 target audience we were aiming for. Once we had roughly two minutes, we started to play with our figures and see if the script we had written was attainable within the setting we had created. Before begining filming, we decided to make intro credits at the beginning of the piece. At first we decided to write the words out on the white board that had been placen in the front of our fictional classroom, but the thought of actually capturing the words being written on the board came to me, and we decided to attempt to film it. Despite it being a long, labouring process, I think it worked out really well, and very much inspired by the 'lo-fi' credits in the film Juno, I decided to include the very same song as they use in the movie. As for the filming of the piece, the only challenges being presented were adapting each scene to fit in with the exact amound of speech that we had in the script. Also getting our little charachters to stand up and not fall down constantly was frustrating. We filmed the visual side of the project in one very long day and were very pleased with how it turned out. Next we spent all day recording the audio in Audacity andimporting every bit of speech into Zu3D. This took longer than anticipated, and it possibly would have been easier had we done it all in one go, however there was too much margin for error by doing it this way, and so we decided to do it little by little. After the speech we needed to have a few sound effects such as the door closing and a "crash" sound when one of the boys falls over after the tug of war. We recorded them using Audacity once again and added them to the piece. All that was left was to add the end credits, which we did in the same style as we had done with the intro. I am very pleased with how it turned out, it surpassed my initial expectations. I also very much enjoyed working in a group with Ceri.

Session 9

The trend of recent years has been for schools to use a range of media rather than simply relying in text based information (Lowe, 2003). I believe stop-motion animation can hugely influence creative technological learning because it "can help learners come to understand complex ideas more easily" (Ainsworth, 2008). There are many different schools of thought in this regard, some believe that animations have a motivating effect which can help people learn (Rieber, 1991), whilst others claim that "there are specific computational properties of animations that match the cognitive demands of a learning task" (Tversky et al, 2002). Contrary to those points, some view animation with more scepticism and recommend limiting their use. They tend to cite that learners have difficulty processing animation and applying it properly (Lowe, 2003). The success of stop motion animation in modern cinema also has an effect on children's learning as children would see these films, and if it gets replicated in the classroom then I think they would take notice and pay attention. It is a great, informal and fun way to pass on information and to educate. Sometimes in the classroom, the teacher speaking alone can be quite 'boring' for a learner and so a teacher should make the most of any opportunity to make the lesson more visualy attractive. It is becoming more apparent that there are different factors which influence the way people learn with animations. These can include: 


Cognitive Explanations
Motor Explanations 
Perceptual Explanations 

 At the moment, critics feel that more research needs to be done in order to analyse the positive influence of animation in education.

Various attempts at modelling

My attempt at a "happy" clay model: An "angry" model A "sad" model A "cheeky" model A "very sad" model

Session 8 - Model Making

During this session we made clay models. Initially I began the session by attempting to draw various different faces on a piece of paper but soon abandoned the idea when I remembered that I am not a particularly good drawer. Instead, I decided to concentrate of making clay models of faces and concentrating on getting the details right such as the eyes, nose, mouth and hair. Since my final project was going to be a clay animation, it made sense to me to do that. I anticipated it would be quite easy, but in fact it was a lot more challenging than I thought to get the little details right.

Session 7 - Storyboarding

In this session we created a storyboard. I designed mine with my final project in mind. I found it useful to consider how many different shots I will need in order to make my final animation, and it also got me thinking about the different types of shots I will use. After making a short storyboard I realised that just keeping to the same shot throughout the whole animation is a bit boring, and therefore I decided to use a variety of closeups and different angles; I believe doing this will make the final piece a lot more visually pleasing.

Session 6 - Green Screening

During this session, I worked with Amy, together we tried to create a green screen background. During this task we had mixed results as we both found it quite difficult to get flawless image on the screen. The first attempt went well, but we soon realised that there are so many variables which can influence the quality of the green screen, these can be things such as the lighting in the room, creases or folds in the felt, any slight movement... All in all, I think due to the difficulty experienced, I do not think either one of us would feel comfortable using Green Screening again to do our final project, however it was an interesting look at one of the options available to us.

Session 5 - Radio Show

During this session, I worked with Hannah to make a short, factual style of news programme. During the programme, we used a mix of humour and news items in order to create a very listenable and enjoyable radio piece. More importantly than the actual content, it was helpful to be able to use Audacity in order to make the programme. I myself have used Audacity before as I used to use it to record myself playing guitar (before I got some better software), so it was very helpful to remind myself of how to use it. During mine and Hannah's 'Radio Show', the news items we covered were gangland violence on the streets of Cardiff, the election of a new Pope, and the murder of Paralympic athlete Oscar Pristorious' girlfriend. The aspects of Audacity which I found useful were the use of different audio tracks and being able to use tools such as 'Noise Removal' and 'Changing the pitch'.

Spy who loved me : car chase and underwater

Here is an example of green screening during a car chase in James Bond's The Spy Who Loved Me. During the squences in the car when James Bond is driving, the shots we see of outside are done on a green screen.

Understanding Zu3D

In todays session we looked at a stop motion animation software called Zu3D. We were instructed to make our our animations in order to understand how all the software works. My animation was posted on my blog earlier. I found the programme a lot of fun and once I got going, quite easy to use. I enjoyed adding layers to my animation and making things happen in the background on my slides.

Next week we will be using the programme again to make a video, working in groups.

Magic Lantern Evaluation

During this session, we were split up into groups and attempted to make a magic lantern. My group was Iwan, Andrew and Rookshanara. We started by discussing how we would make it and what we needed to have in order to make it. As you can see from my previous post, we managed to come up with a plan of action, and set about making our lantern. My role was to take notes and photographs of the group as we made the lantern, however I was also inputing a lot of ideas. Andrew was drawing our slides, and Iwan was making the box, and the lens. We started off by drawing our slides on a piece of card paper, but soon realised that the light was never going to travel through the lens and through the card and therefore, would not be able to project our imagine onto a screen. We needed something transparent such as tracing paper, or better still, overhead projector paper. We also needed the light to be as bright as possible in order to stand a chance of the images being projected onto a screen. We cut a hole into the box and shone a lamp directly through the hole, which would travel through the lens, and onto the projector paper.

Despite the box being made to our desired specifications, the projection was still a bit faint. In order to combat this, I placed a magnifying glass in front of the lens so that the images would be more visible. This made a slight difference, but overall, the image still was not projected the way we intended.

Tutoial - How To Make a magic lantern

First, get all the necessary materials, these include: - a medium sized box - projector paper - sticky tape - scissors - pens - a light source (lamp) Next, cut a hole In the box for your lens to go through (picture) You can make a lens by rolling up paper (picture). The lens will be used for the light source to travel through and thus projecting the imagine on to the source. The animation will be drawn on OHP paper so that the light source travels through it and on to the white board. There was some debate among the group as to weather the used the light source direct from the lamp, or weather to have the lamp outside the box and being reflected through the lens via a mirror. We also started using card in order to draw the animations on, however it soon became apparent that this material was too think to have to light travel through, so we changed to tracing paper, which was also too thick, and it quickly became apparent that OHP paper would be the most suitable. It is important to seal the box so that no other light can get into the box, apart from your source. In order to get the most out of our light source, we rolled up card to go directly from the light source into the lens. It is important to remember to keep to a note of continuity when drawing your slides (picture). We have made a cut in our lens in order to put the slides through (picture).

Zu3D Project

Original Video - More videos at TinyPic Here we see one man's struggle to avoid going swimming. He is being chased by the evil swimming instructor who will not take no for an answer. The video was made in Zu3D, I then exported the video to tinypic.com, then pasted it to this blog.

Stop Motion

Stop motion is a technique of animation use to make static objects appear as if they were moving. Stop motion films are created by moving certain objects a little bit at a time, capturing an image of each movement on camera and then playing them back together. The film looks smoother if you include more frames per second. Stop motion is one of three main types of annimation, the others being hand drawing and computer generated.



References:

Webopediea

What is Stop Motion Animation

Cars Toon - Rescue Squad Mater

The last he last animation I watched was Cars

Today I am wearing a plain burgandy jumper, black jeans and blue suede dessert boots.