RoseLovesAnimation

*.。.☆゜・*:.。.☆**☆.。.:*・ posts from my 1st, 2nd and 3rd years of studying animation at university & my Masters in Animation~ work. ~ Graduate film work ~ Model Making/Stop Motion Work ~ *.。.☆゜・*:.。.☆**☆.。.:*・

[roselovesanimation]

Website for Rosemarie Nelson, Puppet Maker, Model Maker and Artist

The link above is for my website/portfolio, showing my work from the past few years.

If you’re interested in seeing an updated version of my portfolio showing my work from studying at the NFTS Model Making for Animation course 2018-19, please email me as some of the pieces I’ve worked on can’t be published online yet as they’re for the NFTS Animation films.

[roselovesanimation]

What I’ve learnt and what’s next...

I learnt a lot during the 2 year Masters and improved on my model making skills.

I made 2 films during my Masters and as they are about raising awareness towards Autism, I might try to enter them into festivals via FilmFreeway as I feel like it’s an important message to share. The book itself could also be a useful resource for helping people understand Autism a bit more. 

What I’m concentrating on the moment is continuing studying Model Making, which I have been doing for the past 2 weeks and will be doing til August 2019, as I’m studying Model Making for Animation at the National Film and Television School (https://nfts.co.uk/model-making-animation) with 10 other students, so it’s quite a small course but I feel like I’ve already learnt a lot and can build on the knowledge I gained during my Masters and the Masters allowed me to make lots of things for my portfolio which helped me get onto this course. 

I’m looking forward to the next year focusing solely on Model Making.

[roselovesanimation]

Making the book in Blurb (3/9/18 + 6/9/18)

3/9/18

After realising Tesco books wouldn’t be the best idea, I went to Blurb to start arranging my book using Bookify which is online so I didn’t have to download it and it meant I could work on it at home and at uni simultaneously.

For a Blurb photobook, the minimum pages is 20 which is what mine started as, and I added 2 pages for end part showing screen shots from my animations.

I chose a Standard Landscape which is 25cm × 20 cm, so a pretty decent size, I’ve ordered the large square from Blurb before which is 30cm x 30cm, which I found too be too big, so standard will be easier to store too.

I changed font on my front and back cover to be similar to typed font in book, so it works throughout.

I also realised I have to do all the text in on photoshop as you can’t have layers in Bookify, just images/layouts, so I made all the boxes to go behind the words too which have soft edges.

Bookify has the option of frames around the images, which can be any colour, I decided to choose simple black frames.

As my photos/layouts are massive in Photoshop, they are mostly zoomed on 0.18 - 0.20, showing that there is a lot of detail in the images and the great thing about Blurb is that it’ll say if the image is bad quality and this didn’t happen to mine. The font itself is 120-110 size, font TW Cen MT.

In a few hours I managed to layout the majority of the book and needed to just finish 6 pages with extra details. 

(The image above shows some of the process)

6/9/18

I went into uni, and took photos of miniature cars and my dad puppet for background details for my book.  (I also attempted to do a small animation for an ident for the MA Animation showreel and animated the pupils in After Effects.)

I edited my images (green screen removed, removed background, removed letters/brand/made silhouette, added motion blur using After Effects and Photoshop). Then my dad came to collect me and we cleared out my animation room so it’s tidy now.

In the evening, after sorting out all my stop motion props/puppets/sets, I continued to work on the book in Photoshop and asked my mum to check my wording/effects so it made more sense and looked “right”.

FINISHED BOOK LINK: http://rosemarienelson.wixsite.com/home/photobook

[roselovesanimation]

My parents and I went to Bristol over the bank holiday weekend (25/8/18) and I told my mum how I’ve been looking into old puppet picture books as part of my research a week or so earlier and she managed to find this Charles Perrault “Sleeping Beauty” puppet book in one of the charity shops in Clifton for £1! It is in incredible condition and was made in 1968 so it is 50 years old and I’m so impressed with how well it’s been kept! It’s different from the books I’ve posted about but is from the same era. The layout of the book is different too, there is a lot more writing, half of the book is writing and black and white photos and the other half is two page spreads of full colour photos. I’m so happy my mum found this as it was great to look in person at the details within the book and help me figure out my own puppet picture book.

[roselovesanimation]

These are some of the layouts for the Park parts of the book without the text etc, I’m thinking of changing the font and considering how to design the text boxes.

[roselovesanimation]

Creating the Book for the 3rd Story

20/8/18 - I set up my backgrounds minus the characters (to make editing easier as the trees are a similar size to the puppets so I had to scale things digitally) and took multiple photos, arranging the trees in different ways and also removing the trees and just photographing the floors. As I left my hard drive at home, I couldn’t copy the images over so I worked on my blog and website instead and also tidied the room I’m using for animation.

21/8/18 - I found my hard drive so I copied the photos from Monday over and took those into Photoshop to edit/remove the backgrounds/blend images together. so that I had finished backgrounds as the camera only focuses on one point but I wanted the floor and trees to both be in focus. I also started setting up a test version of the book on Tesco Photo’s website (which I have changed from as I found out it had bad reviews), typing up the story into 9 sections to fit with the pages.

22/8/18 - I spent the morning posing the characters separately and together to go with my backgrounds I took on Monday. I knew the book was going to be 20 pages, but I took more photos than I needed so I had more pose options to choose from. After this I edited the photos using After Effects to remove the green screen easier, I also pre composed each set of pages and saved them as Photoshop files (9 files in total) so that I could continue editing there with adding in the pupils/colour correction/shadows. As there are many compositions, I found it easier to open them all together so that I can see how each page would lead to another. I think I’m going to use Blurb instead of cheaper book options as every time I uploaded test images they turned out blurry and I’ve never encountered that when using Blurb (I’ll just wait for a discount code before I order). As the film is set in Autumn, I’ve colour corrected it with colour balance/brightness/contrast levels to match this vibe.

23/8/18 - I took photos of my puppets in different poses for the book cover and back and edited them in After Effects and Photoshop.

WHAT NEXT: edit the words in and “crowd” and put the book together in Blurb.

[roselovesanimation]

These are some stills from the “Beach” animation. As this film is all from one angle, these all look quite similar but the emotions shown on the characters faces shows different points in time and I like how they look.

[roselovesanimation]

Here are some stills from the second animation “Home” that I will have on postcards for the MA Degree Show. I like how these postcards show the two locations and also all 3 characters.

[roselovesanimation]

This is the “City” part of the book so far, there is still room for improvement and background characters to add and I also need to add in the word “bubbles” which tell the story. I’m really happy with what I have achieved over the course of this week.

[roselovesanimation]

Part 2 -  Test Book - TescoPhoto.com

As part of my book planning, I did a test using Tesco’s book website (which I won’t be using now as they have very bad reviews so it’s worth going to a better website that specialises in photobooks). This gave me an idea of how the pages and words could be laid out and where the puppets could go (this was before I took photos of the puppets).

[roselovesanimation]

Part 1 -  Test Book - TescoPhoto.com

As part of my book planning, I did a test using Tesco’s book website (which I won’t be using now as they have very bad reviews so it’s worth going to a better website that specialises in photobooks). This gave me an idea of how the pages and words could be laid out and where the puppets could go (this was before I took photos of the puppets).

[roselovesanimation]

Postcard Designs for MA Degree Show

These are originally watercolour which have been edited/cleaned up digitally in Photoshop. I decided to draw my main character in all the outfits she wears in the stop motion films and create postcards from them so people can take them away at the degree show as a little memento. I decided to do them in watercolour as I like the texture of the paper and also the tones in the paint used.

[roselovesanimation]

Update on Animating the “Home” Animation - June to August

June 8th to 21st - I animated & edited 4 shots.

July 10th to 27th - I animated & edited 6 shots.

Aug 2nd/3rd - I carried on animating shots and animating pupils in After Effects.

6/8/18 - I animated the last shot of the film in the morning and spent the rest of the day animating pupils.

7/8/18 - I animated the final shot which is the other half of the green screened shot, so now I can start setting up the room for the last story which will be just images rather than animated.

The schedule for animating this animation took longer than the previous animation, as I did the “Beach” one over two weeks (5 days) and this “Home” one took place over seven weeks (as I was ill for 3 weeks) so 4 weeks/double (14 days), because the animation was more complex, the scene set up was 3 set ups rather than 1, the puppets hands broke and I also needed to take my puppets to an interview in the middle of production (but after finishing a scene). Even though both animations are a similar length (less than 1 minute 30 seconds) it just shows how complications take time and it’s better not to rush and fix things.

[roselovesanimation]

http://www.mycozyclassics.com/about/

This video shows the inside of the “Cozy Classics” books, showing that they only feature a word for each image, which is very conceptual but works for it’s purpose and the puppets/set ups are incredible.

[roselovesanimation]

American Lady showing the Puppet Storybooks page by page

- I found these videos when trying to find out more about the Puppet Storybooks and I’m glad I did as because these books are vintage, they’re hard to find online to buy and also they’re Japanese/American so also hard to get to the UK for a good price seeing as they’re rare. These videos are useful to me in terms of aesthetic and layout and also page length, as the entire book is shown page by page. For the Hansel and Gretel book, there is a front and back cover and 16 pages with one image over 2 pages, meaning 8 images total, to tell the whole story, which is a good amount and I looked through my storyboards for the 3rd story and there are 7 parts, but probably 9-10 images, meaning it could be a 18-20 page book.

These books were a 14 part series and from what I’ve noticed from watching these videos are that they follow the same format, same page lengths and layouts, which is nice for the consistency and shows that you don’t need many pages/images to tell a story, especially in a children’s book. All the puppets and sets are also really nicely made and some things are repeated in separate books which is nice to see things being reused to tell other stories.

- The Snow White book was published twice, one slightly bigger than the other and with different puppets and an edited version of the story, but the page length is still the same and this was part of a 12 part series.

I also decided to look more into the Japanese puppeteers and game across this website (https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/author/tadasu-izawa-and-shigemi-hijikata/first-edition/) were more books are sold from that era.

This website notes another book they made (http://andiepants.blogspot.com/2013/03/lost-and-found.html) called Colours which lead me to this website (http://thetrashcollector.com/bookschildrens3Dbooks.html) showing that Tadasu Izawa and Shigemi Hijikata made more books than just fairytales and with different publishers, but all puppets! This is really interesting to find out and also discover that these books were very popular at the time (70s) in the USA and Japan, I’d never heard about them til today and it inspires me with my own rejigged project.

- The Cinderella one is by a different publisher, so the layout is different, there are 10 pages instead of 16, but there are more than one image on a page to tell the story so there are 7 photos and also the front and back photos so 9 photos in total, whereas the smaller book had 9 photos but more pages.

[roselovesanimation]

Making my 3rd Idea into a “Puppet Storybook”

I decided to change my 3rd animation into a storybook idea, as I wanted to show how puppets don’t have to be used in Stop Frame animation and I feel like I’ll be able to tell the story better through less images and in a book format.

I looked into this idea a while ago, as my interactive animation is almost in the form of a book, so I looked more into puppet based ones.

- I found a series of books called “A Puppet Storybook” which are vintage books from the 1960s/70s/80s, and all the characters are physical characters (most commonly needlefelted), posed and photos are taken of them to show the story, rather than through illustrations. These were created by Tadasu Izawa and Shigemi Hijikata in Japan and publised by American publishers Grosset and Dunlap.

SOURCE: https://www.abebooks.com/Cinderella-Puppet-Storybook-Oscar-Weigle-Grosset/20961846780/bd

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/112786159/three-little-kittens-3d-puppet-storybook?show_sold_out_detail=1

https://www.rubylane.com/item/321389-05012/Puppet-Storybook-Goldilocks-Three-Bears

https://www.rubylane.com/item/171376-3919/1970-3-D-Boardbook-Puppet-Storybook?search=1

https://clickamericana.com/media/books-media/vintage-preschool-favorites-puppet-storybooks-3d-lenticular-covers

- I also found a more modern book which I’ve seen in shops before called “Cosy Classics”, where needlefelted characters tell classic stories, but it’s 12 pages (images) with 12 words, so a new concept that makes the story more simplified and easier to tell younger children.

SOURCE: http://www.mycozyclassics.com/books/ https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Jane_Austen_s_Pride_and_Prejudice.html?id=lTXRuAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y&hl=en http://www.mycozyclassics.com/2018/03/12/almost-ruined/

These books range in size from 9 images/18 pages to 12 images/24 pages.

PAST RESEARCH: http://roselovesanimation.tumblr.com/post/161857868508/whilst-looking-on-amazon-for-things-i-may-need-to

[roselovesanimation]

Here are some photos of the set ups I’ve done so far for the “Home” animation.

For Terry’s room, there are lots of props that are there to provide the character “comfort” after what happens in the previous scene. To keep the puppets secure, I added double sided tape to Terry and white tac to the bottom of the chair for the Dad.

For the Living Room, my tutor Sarah helped me set up the lighting based on what she has seen at actual stop motion companies, with boards to bounce the light. I also secured all the big props and floor/wall with a hot glue gun to make sure they never move until I need them to.