Bouncy Ball Exercise

   The bouncy ball exercise was my and the rest of the class's introduction to animation. I was handed a sheet that showed all the stages of the bouncy ball's movement from start to finish. I was then given a yellow flick book. My first task was to draw the ground/floor for my ball to bounce on. We were allowed to use a ruler for this but I chose to draw the line freehand to make the whole thing look more "hand drawn". The first line had to be traced from the sheet we had been given showing the ball's movement. As the pages of the flick book were fairly transparent, I was then able to trace this line from one page of the book to another. For this technique to work I had to start from the back page instead of the front. The next stage was to draw the ball on each page. I had to trace each frame from the movement sheet to make sure that the balls movement would not look too erratic. I was able to work from the front of the flick book this time. Once all of the ball's movement had been drawn in, I flicked through the book to see if the movement was smooth. I was happy with the outcome, so I got hold of a pen and drew over all the pencil marks I had previously made so the lines would stand out more. I was then told to try and make my animation stand out in some way, so I drew a cloud moving across the sky. The flick book animation was now complete, but I wanted to turn it into a "stop animation". This is where you take still images of each frame of the flick book and play them back in quick succession. I used a program called iStopMotion to do this. I turned my laptop on and opened up iStopMotion, I saved and opened up a new project, I selected 12 frames per second for the speed of playback (this is the maximum amount of frames the human eye can pick up). I then got a video camera and set it to still image mode, I connected the camera to the laptop via a USB cable. When connected, iStopMotion "recognized" the camera. To switch to the video camera from the standard camera built into the laptop, I went to the drop down menu in the top right corner of the iStopMotion interface and chose the video camera. Using a tripod I tilted the camera down at the surface of the table, I then secured the book to the table surface using blue tac (in full view of the camera). I was now ready to capture each frame of the book. This next process involved turning each page of the flickbook and taking still images by pressing the "space bar" on the keyboard. Instead of doing this all by myself, I teamed up with a fellow class mate. We agreed to help each other. One person would turn each page of the book and the other would press the space bar. This was a much more efficient way of completing the task. Once all the frames had been captured, I watched the animation by pressing the play button. I was pleased with the outcome. I exported the animation in a format that was suitable for the Final Cut editing software, and then imported it into Final Cut. I dragged the file onto the timeline. I saw that the length of the sequence was 3 seconds long. For people to be able to watch my animation properly, I decided to repeat the animation five times. I did this by copying the original clip (Cmnd C) and pasting (Cmnd V) the new clip next to it. I now had a sequence that was 15 seconds long. But it was not yet complete. To finish it off I created a soundtrack using Garageband and imported it into Final Cut and added it to the video. The last thing I had to do was upload the video to Vimeo.

BLU Research

BLU is an Argentinian street graffiti artist who has been recognized for his work since 1999. His fame began due to his spray paint artwork done in the suburbs of Bologna. During his early years the artist was limited to using spray paint, but in 2001 he started using house paint and large rollers which enabled him to create artwork on a much larger scale. He often collaborated with another artist called Ericailcane, both artists work complemented each other, Blu drew his characteristic human figures, where as Ericailcane made his typical animals. Also during these early years Blu started experimenting with (stop motion) animation. In 2004 art galleries began to notice Blu's potential and asked him to come to their collective shows, the artist declined these requests because he preferred to stay unknown to the official art world. In 2005 Blu began to travel to different countries, spreading his horizons. When he got to South America he painted a large wall, the painting showed a human figure made out of bananas. This was significant to the people that lived there because it related back to when many workers went on strike on banana plantations. The painting was immediately dubbed Hombre Banano which means banana man.

The artist then went from place to place visiting locations such as: Brazil, Costa Rica and Peru, making his mark in each country. In 2007 Blu and a group of other artists such as Ericailcane, Banksy and Mark Jenkins, painted on the wall surrounding Bethlehem that separates the West Bank from Israel. The piece of artwork was painted on a watchtower and shows a man attempting to tear down the "open air prison" with his finger.
Today Blu is a celebrated artist and has stunned many people with his artwork. Some of his most stunning work comes in the form of stop motion animation. The artwork in his animations is painted in the same style as his wall murals. Instead of using a blank canvas to paint each frame onto, Blu chooses to paint on walls and pavements. Once he has drawn a single frame, he blanks out the last frame by painting over it in a bland colour, usually white or grey. This is a very time consuming process and when looking at his animations it is possible to see the days go by, by looking at how quickly the light changes colour in the sky. 

Animating And Colour Choices

After settling on the design I was going to use for my animation, I drew the sheet below to sum up which parts of rocket were going to be animated and what colour the different components were going to be.
The first thing I chose to be animated were the wheels. As the wheels have four perfect lines of symmetry, it is possible to create a short loop of two frames. The first frame will show the wheel in its stationary position, in the second frame the wheel will be rotated about 45 degrees. This loop will give the impression that the wheels are moving. The second component I wish to animate is the fire. I have chosen to give this a loop of three frames. I do not want the fire to have a smooth movement like the wheels, instead I have chosen to draw the fire a slightly different size for each frame. This loop will give the fire some "life". The last loop I am creating will be for the eyes. This will be the longest loop and it will be four frames long. The first frame will show the eyes being open, the second and third will show them shut, and the fourth frame will show them open again to complete the loop.

I have thought hard about the colour selection for the rocket and I have come to a conclusion. The main body of the rocket will be white. I chose white because it will save time when drawing each frame of the animation. As I drew the wheels to look like old fashioned cart wheels, I have chosen the colour brown to mimic the colour of wood. The pupils of the eyes will be black and the irises will be yellow. I chose yellow because it is a vibrant and bright colour that will catch the audience's attention. The tip (or nose) of the rocket will be red. After watching some cartoons and feature length animations such as Toy Story I found that the nose colour for rockets is primarily red, this is my reason for choosing this colour. For the fire I have settled on three colours: Red for the outer flame, pink for the middle and yellow for the inner flame.

Character Loop

My initial idea was to use the shape of an eye to create my character in some way. I experimented with drawings for a while and I came up with a "flying eye", this basically looked like an eye with wings. I was pleased with this drawing but I carried on experimenting. I then began to toy around with the idea of using a rocket.  The second drawing I produced was the "rocket on wheels", I received good feedback on this design. It is my favorite design because it contains three elements that can be animated: the wheels, fire and eyes. From then on I started drawing random images, hoping to stumble upon a good idea. During this process I drew a running banana, an iron, the earth and a skier. Animating the skier's arm movement and body posture whilst moving would have been complicated to create. I enjoyed the idea of the earth rotating. But it soon dawned on me that we were set this task to try and create our own graffiti style character, so I decided the animating the earth was not a good idea.

The design that I have decided to animate is the rocket. It is a design that is not too complex but not too basic. The animation elements are simple but because there will be three loop animations, the overall animation will be visually stimulating for the audience.