33.1 Clay Animation

Gumbasia


Gumbasia is a 3 minute 10 second short film that was made in 1953 and released on September 2 1955. The first clay animation was produced by a man named Art Clokey who created the classic series Gumby and Davey and Goliath using the same technique. Gumby is well known for a good example stop motion clay animation. Clokey created Gumbasia while studying at he University of Southern California under the direction of Slavko Vorkapic. Gumbasia has done over 234 episodes and a movie over 50 years.Gumby has become a cultural icon and has had a huge impact on the animation industry.Gumby has also inspired and entertained audience of all ages.My clay animation was 51 seconds me and my team experimented with different shapes we included a Volcano erupting towards the end we included a city type of environment to see how different backgrounds would look.Me and my clay mates decided to keep it simple with two shots also we used a slower melody to give it a more relaxing feel to it.compared to the original soundtrack.


Morph


Morph is an animated Plasticine stop-motion character that appeared with the late Tony Hart, beginning in 1977, on several of his UK TV programmes, notably Take Hart and Heartbeat.
Morph was produced for the BBC by Aardman Animations, later famous for Wallace and Gromit.
Morph appeared mainly in one minute "shorts" interspersed throughout the show, characters could change their morphology.Sometimes they would become spheres in order to move around, or extrude themselves into cylinders to pass to different They could also mimic other object, or creatures.


Strengths 


One of the strengths of using Morph is its cheap and relatively easy to get started but hard to perfect, certainly with 3D models (you can see the progression by watching all the Wallace and Grommit films in the order they were made). 






Disadvantage 


Again, you don't have to worry about expensive cels and redrawing characters perfectly for every frame, but moving individual models can be time consuming if you are striving for perfection.






Summary


The Morph was fun at the start i found it a bit tricky to sculpt the arms and head lucky i got some help from one of my peers who is a pro.When we got into are groups me and peers decided to show a mordern Morph by adding a completely different soundtrack to what usually expected.In are Morph clay animation are target adience where all ages from 12 to 60 because it included a young boy. A middle aged man and a old man in his sixty's.I think my team achieved this task really well because i found each others strength and we worked on that to produce a amazing Morph, We had some problems when we was working with Morph because me and my partners created the Morph differently by making the legs,arms and head separte. The downside to that is limbs will tend to fall of or the Morph would lean forward but comparing to Cut Animations you dont have to draw




The Morph was fun at the start i found it a bit tricky to sculpt the arms and head lucky i got some help from one of my peers who is a pro.When we got into are groups me and peers decided to show a modern Morph by adding a completely different soundtrack to what usually expected. In are Morph clay animation are target audience where all ages from 12 to 60 because it included a young boy, a middle aged man and a old man in his sixty's.I think my team achieved this class task really well because i found each others strength and we worked on that to produce a amazing  Morph.We had some problems when we was working with Morph because me and my partners created the Morph differently by making the legs,arms and head separate.The downside to that is limbs will tend to fall of or the Morph would lean forward.But comparing to Cut animations you don't have to draw out the characters for every single frame and it can be general process.Also clay gets warm which breaks and distorts the Morph.The most easiest animation is the Zerotype because it does not require much work you just have to draw 6 frames.The downside to that is the person gets bored of seeing a loop.In comparison to Zerotype the cut animation can be viewed by a larger audience and the viewer has more to look forward to because its 2d.The Morph beats cut animation and Zerotype when it comes to viewing because you can see 360 degrees around the Morph which gives you a more of a feel.


In concusion the cut out animation is cheaper because you can get a magazine,newspaper and it saves lots of time.Unlike the Morph it gets distorted under heat and it cost money to get a basic Morph set.

RAG Stop Animation (Gumbasia)

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Film Noir - Production Diary

 Today in Livia lesson she set us a class assignement, which is to complete a short film (film noir)
Week 1 : Monday 23rd January was the Roles day for Awesome Sauce

 1)  30th  Jan 2012 - Pre-production - session one

We were made our in my group i had myself, Valonkorn,Alexander,Tevin,Nada ,Aisha and Sheniz. We began assigning the roles to people I was Editor and assistant DOP. We then started to write our film noir storyline. Nada - producer, Aisha -Production, Manger Sheniz -Director Alexander -Writer, Me  -Editor Bom -Dop Tevin - Sound opreator

2) 6th Feb 2012 - Pre-production - session two

Little progress was made while i was away only Film noir storyline idea discussd.


Half Term


3) 20th Feb 2012 - Shooting - Session 3

 No work has been done today due to staff training day.

4)  27th  Feb 2012 - Production Group Issues - Session 4

We  started to have our group issues which set us back from shooting the film noir.The issue where people in the group didn't want to be a particular role and as editor i wanted the film to have a tint of colour to add flavour but half of the group disagreed.Alexander is back and their is corruption on he was put down as the script writer. lots of  time was waisted going baack and fourth. We decided to  scrap the original film  plot and return to the drawing board yet again. The lack of communication between the group members costed us time.

5) 5th  March  2012 - The new story - session 5

Me,Sheniz,Alexander,Nada,Valonkorn  are the only ones in the group that came in. Towards the end of our group meeting  we decided to make our film noir  alot easier and understandable plot to film. Alexander agreed to make a few adjustments to the storyline.  As a team we decided on the wardrobe together as everybody hhad smiliar thoughts.

6) 12th March - Shooting day part 1/Another plot edit - Session 6
Finally Aisha and Tevin decided to turn up for the meeting, we updated Aisha with the new  plot and she found it confusing and borring so she made a few tweaks The film was meant to be  planned two weeks ago we was meant to shoot are first scence today but because allt eh paperwork was not done vdue to my group being really lazy and unwillingness of the group members. Alexander stepped down as main director and  Sheniz switched roles. Alexander is now the  assistant director.I had choice of been head of editing or dop and the begingin when we where allocating roles but i thought about deeply and i decided to the main editor reason because i wanted to have a large control of the film noir.I believe its the editor is the person who makes the film look good i know i was the best editor in my group.

Finally the other half of the day we start shooting the first part of the film.It  went okkay, when i looked at the footage andi felt the acting could of been a bit better but  our actors and actresses were  decent seeing as they never have acted before too. I worked beside the dop because i was assistant we had some nice shots  but the lighting of been better if we hired out lights, which i will have in mind for next time.

7) 13th March - Shooting part 2/Time constraint - session 7

 

Once again , the filming had to be split up into to  different time as one of our actress gave us a short span of time to film our shots as she had to go somewhere else after. I was disappointed of our shots because they were rushed, and a few shaky shots because we didn't use a tripod . I wanted to re-shooting some of the scenes but to get the team together was a hasule so i didnt bother in the end . As the filming  was wrapped up and it was just left to the edito to complete the film.

8)  Wednesday 14th - Tuesday 20th March 2012
Editing with Raymond

Sessions 8-12
Start of a session: 4:30/12:15

End of  a session: 5:30 

From editing onwards everything seem to have sped up and got faster.Me and Alexander ideas and suggestions seemed to fit together really well.There was no arguments between me and Alexander at all because we had faith in each other. When the shots were chopped up, cleaned and added to the time line they relatively made sense.

When we got to the scenes at Hyde park, wefelt their was some dialog missing so we deicded  had  to do some quick voice overs.  The editing was looking smooth in transitions and cutting. It came Alexdaner time to do the colour correcting.

There waslots of arguments about colour correcting befoe hand, whether the film should be partially in colour or completely in black and white.

The foundation of the whole film is Black and White, however Alexander I tinted in some areas.

For the beginging of the film we made the colour very saturated as we wanted the editing scenc to be dark and gloomy.

For the flashblack we used colour to show life in the footage.

9) 21st March 2012 -Shooting part 3 - Session 13

 

Finally  we began to film  the killing scene with our Actor and actress on location. A argument ensues on the method of murder  and the choice of weapon, and the friction is definitely starting to occur more visibly. Eventually, with some direction I manage to get them to film something that's decent enough to be used in editing. Overall, It was ok . Just ok.  

10) 22nd March 2012- Editing - Session 14

On the final stretch of editing, we added the missing parts effortlessly  and i changed it into black and white. The last things to do is. add voice overs, soundtrack, intro,outro & credits and were done. So close.