Feedback presentation

Animation focus group and questionaire evaluation copy from leahreay

Stop Motion Channel Ident presenation

Stop Motion Animation - Channel Ident Presentation from leahreay

Claymation/Plasticine/Modelling Animation

Clay/Plasticine Animation is a material used in animation that allows the producer to form any character they are able to form with that clay. As clay can be moulded into different shapes easily and remain its position until its moulded again this allows the creator of the animation the ability to easily manipulate the movements of the clay. It means it is much easier as there is more flexibility with the material the creator is working with. This will allow them to be more creative with the styles they are using and means they can test out different object or characters that they want to be present during the animation, without any set backs of it not going back to its original clay form. 

In most cases when using clay in an animation thin metal wire is also used along with it which allows the use of support in the clay to form structure in an object or character. It also means smaller parts of the clay will have more stick on larger parts of the clay, it is safer for smaller pieces to be moved around with metal wiring in the middle. The use of the thin metal wire allows the clay to become slightly more realistic and adds features to the clay that were not there before.

The problem when working with clay is that it is a material substance that needs to be kept contained so it does not dry up so quickly. If you are producing a stop motion animation with the use of clay , you are going to need that clay to remain flexible for the duration of filming. Depending on the type of clay being used this can be avoided. The quality of clay that is picked is extremely important as some will not dry out as quick and some will not dry out at all and can remained permeant fixtures and sculptures. A lot of people think using play-doh will be easier to work with, in some respects play-doh is an easier material to work with as it requires less effort to mould it into the form you want it at. However, play-doh is a substance that drys out extremely quickly which can  effect the timing of the production and may mean you need to start all over again. Plasticine which is the highest quality of clay available is something used by top stop motion claymation animation film producers.

 I have chosen this specific animation because it uses basic techniques and basic clay material, but it has been executed extremely well which shows how smooth the use of clay material can be.

Advertising

The use of animation in advertisement is very popular and commonly used. Normally it is not a fully animated advert but does include some animation footage and techniques in most adverts. A lot of the time animation is used in adverts to make a product that is being sold come to life to give it unique out of this world features that will make the product sell better. To make an object come to life obviously a form of animation is going to have to be used like stop motion. Back in early years no one ever thought to incorporate animation in with adverts until the first ever matchstick advertising animation was done, once this animation was produced many other companies followed as a form of advertising their products. Many popular brands began to follow the animation advertising trend, for example coke being one high brand. Animation in advertisement used to be done as it was a much cheaper form of advertising compared to hiring actors and actresses to star in a production. Now animation in advertising is one of the most expensive time consuming devices that can be used to sell a product. However, it is something that pays of in the end result. Animation advertising has defiantly grown over a lengthy time period and has gone from the use of stop motion in a match stick commercial to the use of CGI to produce the new Nike World Cup 6 minute long advert. 

Music Video

Over the years every now and again animation gets incorporated in with a music video, and in most cases normally becomes a huge hit. The use of animation in music video is slightly different compared to it being used in cinema as a different effect and end result is trying to be created. Although the basics of animation techniques still remain the same. One video I looked at was arctic monkeys “Do I wanna Know”. Arctic monkeys produced an official video that is animation from start to finish. It is common for some music videos to have both animation and live action mixed together but it is rare that a music video will be produced with pure animation footage. The animation technique used to produce this video was mainly 2D animation, 2D two dimensional animation has existed since late 1800s. 2D means that the animation is completely flat. The early techniques of creating 2D animation included flip book, cel animation and rotoscoping. The difference between 2D and 3D animation is that 2D animation is flat where as 3D animation has depth. 2D hand drawn animation will usually be shown at 24 frames per second. The design of the arctic monkeys video came across and rather basic and simple but works very well and has been carried out very well. Although it was so basic it still received millions of views due to the use of animation throughout.

Here is a clip of the music video itself. 

Channel Ident

A channel ident is a small clip normally varying from 15-30 seconds that is shown jut before a programme is aired via broadcast or webcast. Channel indents are in place to represent the channel that a specific programme is being shown on. So for example channel 4 will show their ident and whilst the clip is playing a voice over will come on and introduce the Tv programme that is coming up in the next 30 seconds. Some indents even relate the style of the programme into the style of the ident. An example of when this has been done is through channel 5 ident using the theme of big brother the programme. A lot of popular TV indents like channel 4, channel 5, itv and BBC use different animation devices to produce the footage. I found a useful website that displays different channel idents that have been shown over the years and the different techniques used to create them

Channel 4 ident 

Channel 4 ident 

BBC one ident

Channel 5 ident incorporating the TV programmes theme into the ident

The clip below shows numerous different channel 4 indents that have used a form of animation to produce each one. Varying from stop-motion but mainly CGI. CGI is a very technical use of animation and can be expensive and difficult to use. CGI will normally be used by top animation industries and channels.

Channel 4 animation indents

Frames Per Second/Frame Rates

Animation and film motion works by creating the illusion of movement. A sequence of still images is projected normally at a speed of 24 pictures per second (called frames) each picture is slightly different. In animation more detailed movements require a greater number of frames, these type of techniques can be seen in flip book animation. Frame rates are images played back per second. so the more images there is the more frames there is going to be. The average frame rate is normally 24 per second.