RESEARCH

This stop-motion animation is our inspiration for our storyline. The characters are so fixated on each other that they do anything to get to each other but being from different worlds it results in their peril. It shows anthropomorphism, the sand and snow people are given human qualities and by the end of the animation their genders are made clear.


These techniques we have researched are the inspiration behind our characters.  We will be using and implementing many of these techniques to create our animation.

Stop-motion
Stop motion (also known as stop frame) is an animation technique to make a physically controlled or moved object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the  photographed frames are played as a continuous sequence. Thus creating a short animated movie.


I liked this concept on stop motion. Very simple and very effective.

Cut-outs

Cut-out animation is one of the oldest forms of animation and in pre computer days, probably the easiest to create. As its name implies, cut-out animation involves moving cut-out shapes in small steps and taking a picture at each stage, this is a lot less work than having to draw every single frame of the animation. We will be using this style of animation for Character One.

Clay animation
As with stop-motion, claymation is a method of animation in which clay figures are filmed using stop-motion photography.


Here is one of my favorite games from the 90's created entirely from clay animation. Brilliant!

Anthropomorphism

It is basically the addition of human motivation, characteristics, or behavior to inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena. In our case we will be giving human traits and characteristics to our main character which will be a paper cut out.

Here is a clever example of giving a PC mouse, well mouse characteristics:

2D and 3D animated Space
Our set for our movie will be switching planes from flat 2 dimensional space to 3 dimensional angles and camera views.

Perspective & Scaling
We will be experimenting and implementing a lot of perspective angles in our 3D animated space with the character moving to and away from the camera, thus creating size and scaling illusions, and also vary perspective.


Depth of Field
Because of the camera angles we will be utilizing the inclusion of perspective through different focus points to create depth of field, and different point of views.

Examples of what we will attempt for the above two points.

Reference to key moments in animation history (ie changes in technology)

At the turn of the 20th century, cinema changed from manual construction of animation


to digital techniques in animation, and define itself as a recording medium. As cinema enters the digital age,
these techniques become the common-place in the film-making process. Consequently, cinema can no
longer be clearly distinguished from animation (Lev Manovich, 2001)


To animate is…
“to give life and soul to a design,
 not through the copying but through
 the transformation of reality”
(Philosophy of the Zagreb School, in Holloway, 1972: 9)

Other key moments were:
Fleischer’s use of rotoscoping in Out of the Inkwel’, (1919)
Disney’s live action/animation series, Alice Comedies (1923)
Fleischer’s Song Car Tunes (1924);
Disney’s first sound-on-film, Steamboat Willie (1928)
Fleischer’s first use of sound-on-film processes with the
Phonofilm system (1924-1925) and Noah’s Ark (1929)
Disney’s 3 year exclusive contract with ‘Technicolor’ (1932)
Fleischer’s use of other color systems & introduction of the
Stereoptical process (1934)
Fleischer’s move to longer ‘special’ formats (1936)
Disney’s use of the ‘multiplane camera’ in The Old Mill (1937)
Disney’s feature length film, Snow White (1937)
Fleischer’s feature-length film, Gulliver’s Travels (1939).