Hello Again!!

Only been in the AV suite again, working on a new animation haven't I!
From my first attempt, I found that using pen ink on paper was not the most vivid and visual way of using the animation booth.
After conducting some stop frame animation research, I found that the most effective way of creating drawing based animation is through using a whiteboard, but I also gathered that this method is getting a bit worn out.

The use of objects in flat animation is something which interests me, either through collage or inanimate objects (oboy, I've only just realised what 'inanimate' means!).


A bird I animated in the clip.

Thinking up a little bit of a narrative for the animation this time around sure helped (as opposed to no preparation in the first attempt) and just spending the time before hand, making the letters and shapes to be animated, made the process run much more smoothly.


The 'Bonjour' bit was helped by a page in Phil Baines and Andrew Haslam's 'Type & Typography' where they look at the spoken language and the phenomes of a selection of languages.



They happened to have frames of a man saying 'Bonjour'.



I copied the steps as closely as I could in my prep bits for the animation.




Thats not to say the project was 100% smooth - my troubles came with TECHNOLOGY! dun dun duuuuuun!


Hello Animation II from Kate Prior on Vimeo.

Despite taking notes from James who helped me the first time round, I managed to save the thing in the wrong resolution, then deleted all the frames I had thieved. bugger. Serves me right for being a know-it-all.

James said me doing this shouldn't be a problem, and can be sorted out in post production (after adding the music in 'Final Cut') but some how it ended up too wide. I need to get to grips more with these programs in order to make better animations and to stop making silly mistakes.
I make these because of my lack of patience and need to see the final piece ASAP!
I think I can identify a lot of what I did wrong myself 

1. Some parts go too fast - I'd like to learn how to take better control of this, and identify the problem areas before its too late.
2. The exposure on the camera was set to automatic, and would change depending what was put down in it's view, creating a change in lightness in the animation. Putting the camera on a set exposure would have prevented this

but ass for the actual animation, I'm pleased with the outcome, and enjoyed the process- after overcoming my fear of the AV suite, its quite a nice place to sit and work in.

I want to come up with more ideas for this kind of animation - moving away from just using 'greetings' & make something with a bit more meaning - maybe tell a story.

Where can I go from here?

1. Be more creative
2. Be more prepared
3. Spend at least a week coming up with a story board
4. Use multimedia
5. Be able to match an animation to music (i.e. Music Video)

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