Further construction

I have now finished constructing each lorry for the opening scene, and made the car that the advert will follow on its journey. I may make another car or two to be traffic on the roads. I have also started constructing the brdige, but have not finsihed that yet. As well as this i have now finished the house, the river, the fire and all the tree's. I now need to construct the factory, the tent and a few roads. I will however add finishing touches and extra's when i have put the set together and consider what it needs to look finished. I will then be able to begin filming.

Further animation research - A Town Called Panic

Whilst I am building the set, I have been animating and testing small parts of it to test my animation skills, and see if what i have planned is do-able and looks effective. I have been struggling with some basic movements, and have decided to do some further research into animation, looking specifically at the movements and how they might have been created. I bought " A Town Called Panic" on dvd, which is a french feature film, entirely made with stop motion, directed by the same people who created the animation for the cravendale adverts. I have watched it through and noticed some clever things that could be inspiration for my advert, and also how they made simple movements look good. I have tried to include here some footage from youtube of the dvd, but there was very little.

what I found out -

The use of humour - not every action has to be perfect, and not everything has to be to scale and made to look realistic. It is an imaginary world and things can be slightly rediculous. In this film, humour is use throughout and nothing is possible or realistic - but that is not important. This is something i should consider when making my advert , i have been focusing on making the set look entirely realistic, but not fun.



- The way they animate their fire is much the same to the way i tired out, it is quite jerky, but still looks good. This film mixes perfect flowing movements with quick jerky ones, and its still effective. I need to work on making it a bit more smooth, but this has showed me it is not an issue, i still like the way it looks.

- giving everything movement, even if its small movements, make everything seem more alive and interesting. Its the little details in this film that makes it brilliant.

- they mix 2D and 3D like i intend to, their tree's are much the same as mine, but perhaps with a little more detail. I might consider painting some of my paper objects to add more interest and detail.

problem overcome.

While i was building the car for my advert, I had many problems with the measurements. I was finding it difficult to make a net where all the measurements were correct and the final car fit together. After 5 or 6 attempts i decided to construct it on photoshop, using the line tool and photoshop rulers I could make sure each measurement was exact and everything was at perfect right angles to each other. This has proved to be a much easier method, and also means i can duplicate the car easier, say if i wanted four or five, i could simply print them and then fix them together, and they would all be exactly the same. From now on i am going to construct the nets for my models on the computer each time as it gives better results and the models are looking cleaner and better made, and i think this is important.

On the left is the photoshopped version, which i can also scale to any size, so i can experiment with which size looks most realistic, and on the right was the best hand drawn version i created, which didnt quite fit together.

Experimenting with animation

Whilst I am in the process of building the set for my advert, I thought it would be wise to test the animation of small parts of the advert, to have a practice and find the positives and negatives, and give me an idea of what I need to work on.

This is my first practice at the wave motions in the river -

There are a number or problems I need to workn on -
 - the waves are too large, and need to vary in size, it doesnt look realistic
- movement is a bit too fast

Campfire for the camping scene -

- This has many problems,the actions are too jumpy, as the fire sizes are too different
- longs are not static