Evaluation

Overall I feel that the animation went reasonably well as the 3 words I chose included the words Chase, Pulse and Race. The main theme of the animation is one square chasing another so I think I applied these words to my animation well. Although there was a change of idea half way through I don't think that this has put me at a disadvantage as the idea I changed to was much more abstract and not so literal as the original.
The animation flowed well but I think that if I wanted it flow better I could have added more frames per second and more stages in each sequence of the story board. This would have improved it but I feel that the animation as I planned still worked out well.

Final Animation

This is my final animation. It is made up of just under 400 photographs at a frame rate of 12fps. It was then put into After Effects with added effects to improve the look and to add credits.

Finishing Touches

I felt that my animation ended too bluntly so thought that end credits would finish it off nicely. I added 2 new solids and made a show. I then made 3 separate words and made them swing. I felt like this was a nice effect and it could be my branding logo at the end of anything animated that I create. It is only for the last second so if quite quick but this make it more effective. 

Final Animation with Lighting and Music

Here is the final animation with the music and the lighting added. I feel that the movements of the large and small squares match the music perfectly and the movement shadows each beat in the song. This is the outcome that I wanted and I think it worked out quite well.

Adding lighting and shadow

Here is a screen shot of After Effect with a light on my animation. It creates a shadow around the outside of the shot. I feel that this shadow makes the animation look more professional and acts as a boarder for the shot. 

First Final Animation

This is the final stop motion animation put into After Effects. I think that the animation as a whole is good but it needs some final touches such as lighting and some end credits maybe, this could make it look more professional. 

Stop Motion Practice

Stop motion stills

 This is the beginning shot of my animation. The good square is on its own

 and then begins to be chased across the page by the bad one.

This is the shot when the two black squares morph into to red 

one and this is the beginning of all of the squares becoming good.

At this point to music makes a noise that I feel represents lots of dots or 

sprinkles so I made sure that this part of the animation happened to this point in the music. 

The 2 squares morph into one at this point.

And they become one good red square.

The black square then tries to release itself from the red square.

But only good comes out of them both; lots of colourful squares.

The squares slowly come out one by one.

Until there are lots of them surrounding the 2 morphed squares.

All of the small squares return into the center of the

 2 morphed squares and they are once again just one 'good' red square.

Here is a quick practice using my cubes to make a stop motion video. This is using about 80 photographs and a frame rate of 12fps. This isn't the story from my story board as it is just a practice. By doing this practice I found that I would need a lot more photos to make the actual animation flow the way I want it to.  I like the general effect of shooting it from above so I will proceed with doing this for my final animation.

Other characters

I made the other cubes out of a multiple of different colours. I feel that this best represents the music as at one point there are lots of little 'jutters' and these small cubes represent each one of these. I will put the movement of these cubes to those 'jutters' in the music so that the mood of these cubes goes with the music.

Colours of the Music

I chose the colours black and red for the squares. The good square will be red and the bad square will be black. I chose these colours as red is associated with love and black is dark ominous colour and can represent doom.

Here is just a quick drawing of what I wanted the main characters to be. Just a basic 3D cube.

Here are to two characters made out of clay. I chose a pinky red for the good square to further represent its love. 

Here are the same characters from a different angle. 

New Story Board

This is story board number 2. I've told the basic story of a chase but with squares as the characters. In the story a 'bad' square is chasing the 'good' square and as they get caught up lots of colourful squares come out of both of them. They then morph into one square again both now being the 'good' square.

Shapes of the Music

I began to think of the shapes that I feel the music represents. I feel like each beat is a sharp beat and this made me think of a square.

I then started to think how I could apply this shape to my idea of a chase. I thought that I could characterise the shape and make it become the thing that is being chased. 

I realised that I needed to apply this idea to the use of clay and this made me think that the shape needs to be 3D in order to be able to move around and and look good. The alternative to a 2D square is ofcourse a 3D cube. 

Making Clay People

My original thought was to create a chase of my own out of my clay people and make a set for them be chasing each other around. I made a practice model but felt that it would be incredibly difficult to make the body movements look realistic and the figures wouldn't be able to have facial expressions as these wouldn't look realistic either. I then began to think about abstract shapes.  

                                                       

Clay

I have decided to make my animation with clay as this is a fun and enjoyable way of making one. I will do stop motion with this and put it into After Effects to add finishing touches such as lighting.

Racing to Chasing

Going from the original idea of racing and video games I began to think about the fact that the main plot in some games is racing or collecting points and sometimes being chased. I feel that the music sounds like music that would be put against a chase. This made me automatically think of films with massive chases in them. The first one that popped into my head was James Bond and the chase that started the film Casino Royale. I watched it on YouTube and studied the music that went with it and what happened at the different points of the track.

Music with the chase:

• The music had a very fast beat and when certain things happened such as the dust dropping on him at the beginning the music slows down and soothes. 
• As they are both running the beat is very fast and consistent. 
• When there is realisation the beat will change or get louder. 

From listening to the music along this chase I am now able to apply this to my own idea and make sure that I use the different points in the music to represent what is happening in the animation. 

Coming up with another idea

I started to just doodle some shapes after listening to the music and try to see, again, which shapes the music represents. I came up with sharp lines for the regular beat and circles for the other parts of the music. I am going to do further research to figure out a new idea.

Back to Basics

I've decided to change the idea for my animation as I feel that the idea I have come up with is too complicated and the outcome won't be what I want it to be. The idea seems too complicated and there isn't enough going on to match the beat of the music. I am going to follow on from the same ideas and inspiration and see what else I can come up with to represent the music. I want to find out what shapes represent the music and focus on this idea as well as the others I have come up with in previous research.

Tracing Walking movements

When trying to figure out how to make my animation I thought I could take pictures of each stage of walking and then outline them. I would then put them into After Effects and play it and it would run smoothly. After trying this and drawing them I found that this isn't the best way of doing it. I feel that my idea is more difficult than I anticipated and I am now considering changing it.