Task 1: Animated Sequence
Thaumatropes- A thaumatrope is a toy that was mainly used by kids in the 19th century. It is a piece of paper with 2 different pictures on each side; it has a piece of string attached to both ends of the paper so when you twist and spin the paper, the two images form a picture. I have learned that you can see 12 frames per second with your eyes and the thaumatrope was a good example to use. This is because when you spin the thaumatrope it creates a fast movement that shows you a lot of frames.
To make this you will need a piece of paper (preferably small), two pieces of string, a pencil and a rubber. To start, you pick an image you want to make, and draw it. My idea was a duck in the water. On one side I drew a duck and the other side I drew the pond. Then, if your paper doesn’t have holed at each end, make holes to be able to put your string through. Once you’ve made your holes, take your string and pull it through making a little loop at the end; near the paper to be able to have a knot so your string holds. Do this for both sides. Afterwards, hold the string at the end furthest away from the paper and twist it so that the string and paper twirl. Then you’ve made your thaumatrope.
Flipbook animation- this is a book with several pictures in it to form an animation. Flipbooks were discovered in the 1968. These are mainly used for kids because they can play around and make their own ones.
I also made a flipbook and this is how. To make one you will need sticky notes, pencil and a rubber. To start of, you can either separate all your sticky notes from each other of keep them together. You pick an animation you would like to do and you draw it frame by frame onto each sticky note. Mine was a stickman jumping up and down. So, on one sticky note I would draw a stickman standing up normally then for a few more he would eventually get lower and lower. Next, I would start drawing him higher and higher till the point where it seems like his in the air jumping. After that it would be the same process but different. You would draw the man falling down after jumping, which you would draw him lower and lower and then towards the end you would just draw him standing up again. You can do other stuff as well such as a man jumping over a wall or someone yawning.
Rotoscoping- Rotoscoping is an animation that cuts down everything frame by frame to make sure your footage is perfect. Animators mainly use this.
Mellissa and me used rotoscoping on a pelican walking along the beach. We changed the background that that the pelican was walking along the red carpet instead. To animate we used After Effects. Once in after effects we used a video we got from the Internet (Vimeo) to be the main base. Using the animals from the video we choose (Pelicans), we cut them and used them on a simple background, making them move. Before we could use this tool, we had to isolate the layer, to do this. We had to double click on the video, making another layer.
To cut out the pelicans from the video, we used a tool called the roto brush tool. This tool using the green circle with a small plus on the inside. When this brush clicked onto the screen, it made a small, or large green line (Depending on the size of the brush, that can be changed by pressing ‘Cmd’ while moving the mouse) this line added a purple/ pinkish line around the animal, or object. Occasionally the green line would highlight parts of the video that we didn’t want in the completed animation. To take away this, while using the Roto brush tool you had to hold down ‘Alt’ This changed the colour of the tool to red, and a minus replaced the plus. When clicked onto the area that already had been outlined, pressing down on the video with the red circle would erase the parts that weren’t wanted.
Once we had made it through the animation to the length we wanted, after correcting the parts that when then it changed automatically did not do correctly. We changed back to the original Composition layer. Once we changed layers. The colour of the animal(s) we changed had been changed, or the background had been changed to the colour we had chosen originally. The sides of the animal we had cut were jagged and not smooth. To make it better and more professional looking, we changed the smoothness and featheriness of the purplish lines mentioned before. These made it look better, and less jagged.
Once it looked smoother and more improved than before, we added the background that we decided on in the end. After putting in the background, we had to change the rotation and size, to make it fit and look better.
Zoetrope- these are one of the several pre-film animation devices that produce the illusion of motion. They display a sequence of drawings or photographs showing progressive phrases of the motion. A zoetrope is a cylinder with slits in it so when it spins and you look through the slits, it makes a moving animation or a picture. The name “zoetrope” is Greek.
We haven’t made a zoetrope so I wouldn’t know how you could possibly make one.
Stop motion- this is also known as stop frame. It is an animation of several pictures to make it look like the object of person is moving on its own. Once all the frames are put together, it should look like a normal clip of someone or something moving. Stop motion using objects is sometimes referred to as object animation.
We have also made our own stop motion animation. Emma and me pretended we were in a car with Emma being the driver and I sitting in the backseat. We had to move step by step and take each picture moving only slightly forward. By the time you have finished filming all of it, you will end up with several pictures that would then need to transform into a clip.
