Love Spin Video

When I first saw the love spin video, I was struck by the "seamlessness" of the animation. One of the things I first picked up on, was that there is very little link between the song lyrics and the video. This could be a reflection of the artist's personality. Although the video looked "seamless" the first time I watched it, after watching it for the second time, I noticed that many of the moving objects/characters stopped moving when they got to a certain place on the turn table. As the turn table moves, new objects replace old objects, the viewer disregards objects as they start to move away, and begin to focus on the new objects that have appeared. This is the reason for the motionless objects. I also noticed some "flaws" in the animation, many of them are hard to spot, and can only be noticed when you are looking for them. But I think that this animation should contain a few faults, it gives the video "character", and leaves the audience in no doubt that the animation is stop motion, and not computer generated imagery.

When many people watch this video, they may think that the video has no meaning or storyline. I would definitely disagree with this. The way I see it, the story its based around the little blue character at the beginning. The video is about his search for love. His endless struggle to find love is shown by the countryside, houses and cities passing him by. At the end of the video, it is clearly shown that he finally finds true love. The video ends where it started, the only difference is he is not sitting alone anymore.


The big difference between the beginning and end scenes, is that the plant in the centre has bloomed and grown flowers. This supports both my theories. The flower is a symbol that represents "love", and the time it took to bloom also shows his lifetime struggle to find love.

BLU Style Character Video/Evaluation

Overall I am very pleased with my "BLU" style animation. Like a "Blu" animation, the movement from frame to frame isn't as smooth as it could be. In my mind, this show character, and tells the audience that not everything they're going to see is perfect. Although there is some "Juddering" in a couple of stages of my animation, the animation as a whole looks smooth and is "pleasing to the eye".

One of the things I think I should have done is colour in the fire that comes from the back of the rocket. Although it might not have made a huge difference to the overall image, it is something that "bugs" me when I watch it back to myself. Also during playback, I have noticed a few black lines that appear occasionally throughout the animation. This has occurred because I did not erase all of the background of a specific frame during the Photoshop process, I should have "cleaned up" the Photoshop layers more thoroughly. But this is a minor set back, and can only be seen when you are looking for mistakes. The last aspect of my animation that I should have changed is the length of time the eyes shut. During the animation, the rocket's eyes shut twice, because of the speed of the animation it is hard for the audience to spot. I should have either made the eyes shut for longer, or I could have slowed down the animation by adding more frames and less movement space between each frame. This would have allowed the audience to pick up on the blinking eyes.
Despite it's "floors", with this animation I think I have captured the essence of "BLU's" animation. This project has taught me a huge amount about how an animation is put together. I have learnt how to make an animation using Photoshop. It takes a lot of dedication and time to be an animator, and I have gained a huge amount of respect for people that work in animation.




3P2 DOUG - BLU-STYLE CHARACTER LOOP 2 from Long Road Applied Media Diploma on Vimeo.

Character Loop Video/Evaluation

I was told to go out and take a photograph of a wall around the college, this photograph would later become the background for my character loop. As my animation consists of a moving rocket, I decided to go and look around for something it could fly over or under. After wondering for a while I soon came across a low balcony, I took a photograph of it thinking that the rocket could on to it or even off it. I was pleased with this photo, but I new I could do better. I then walked over to the gym. The gym itself, has a curved roof. I took a photo' of it thinking the rocket could use the curved shape of the roof as a ramp. This was an "ok" shot but I still preferred the previous one. As I was walking back to class I passed the music block, the wall I was walking passed had a small circular window in the middle of it. I suddenly had an epiphany and thought that my rocket to do a "loop the loop" around the window. I took a photo of it and headed back to class.
The Character loop was previously put into photoshop. So I imported the photograph into Photoshop and place the layer underneath all of the other layers containing frames. I then needed to get rid of the white background on each of the frames so that the new background (the photograph) could be seen. This task was difficult at first, it was hard to get rid of all the white on every frame. When I cycled through the frames to check them, there was always specks of white that I had missed when using the Photoshop eraser tool. It took me some time, but I soon managed to get rid of all the white.
The final stage was to place all the separate layers onto Photoshop's animation timeline. Once I had placed all the layers onto the timeline, I was able to play back the whole animation to see how it looked. I was pleased with the outcome, the whole animation was smooth and there were no anomalies or noticeable faults in the animation during playback.
The very last thing I did was to export it as a "Quicktime" movie file. This process was simple, I went up to "file", "Export" and then "Render". I chose a place to save the file on the desktop. Once the file had been converted and was on the desktop, it was ready to upload to vimeo.
Looking at the video now, I am very pleased. The animation runs smoothly, and I am happy with the colours I have chosen for the rocket's body. One problem I have noticed is that the rocket's wheels do not move in a completely circular motion, this problem has arisen because I did not draw out the paper frames as neatly as I could have done, I should have taken more care over the drawing stages so that certain aspects of my animation would have run smoother. Although I am pleased with my character loop, it looks a bit boring when the rocket is moving in a straight line all the time. When it comes to turning into a "BLU" style animation, I am seriously considering making it fly. By doing this, the finished video will hold the audiences attention for longer and keep them interested.