Opening and Closing Credits Plan

Opening and Closing Credits

For the opening of our animation production we will have a blank snooker table. Then every letter of our title will be made from snooker and pool balls. One letter will be added at a time and then a picture will be taken. Hands will also be seen sometimes in the shots. This shows a proper handmade animation and is an original animation with no technology apart from the cameras to take the shots and computer technology.

As the animation ends, we will have thank you mentions to those who have done voices for our characters. As these names are mentioned, a still shot of the character will be shown. Furthermore, we will have our production company name , ‘Mad Dog Productions’ at the very end.

(Tom and Alex)

Character Planning

Character Planning

·       14 reds, (men) ( stereotypical, macho)

o   5 reds talking.

o   9 are no characters.

·       Black ball – black gangster – shades.

·       Pink – floosy, long hair, thin characters, red lips. (chavy voice)

·       Blue – gay guy. Earrings (gay voice)

·        Yellow – posh women, stunning. (brunette, posh voice, hinting at flirty.

·       Green – everybody hates green. Granddad, wise. (does not move until potted.) (walking stick)

·        Brown – Indian (tash, urban)

·       White – Bully. (male).

(Tom and Alex)

Audience Feedback - Script

After reading our script to the rest of the class.
We recieved positive feedback about the way in which we have used the colours cleverly by playing on the words. They also liked the fact that we conformed to the stereotypes of our characters.

Materials for 'A Point of Que'

Lewis Newplast Plasticine

We used the 'Lewis Newplast' as it is a specialist materials that professionals use for animation. This ensures that we have the best quality materials which will therefore influence our final product. Creating was very easy, once you stretched the newplast it was very soft and easy to mould. However, we had to be careful that the colours did not mix. For example, with the white ball, using black and red made it difficult to keep the white clean. Alex moulded most of the tricky characters with small parts as he is more skilled in that than me. We are very happy with the end product, however we need more red. It took us just under six hours to produce our characters. Our new-plast we have used is very hard once it is moulded, therefore we have ease of use when changing facial expressions.

(Tom and Alex)

Plot Planning

We came up with two plots for our animation which consisted of the following:

·       London marathon.

o  Clay buildings of London.

o  2 main characters running the race.

o  The story is what they go through during the race, who they see.

o  Vegetables, famous people.

o  Fast paced music.

o  Sound effects of planes etc.

o  2 main characters talking.

·       Pool table.

o  Balls are personified.

o  Older audience.

o  Humour.

o  Balls are men and women talking about stereotypical.

o  Many voice over’s, for characters.

o  Some balls are not personified.

o  Humans are playing but you don’t.

o  No music.

We decided to use a pool game plot after a discussion with group member and my group partner Alex and teahcer. We decided that the London Marathon plot would have been too complicated and maybe boring. A 2D/3D effect may also have been tricky to achieve. However, the pool table plot will have to have a very strong script for it to be a success.
(Tom and Alex)

Pre Course Research

I created a presentation to the introduction of the animation and learnt about the different types of animation. For example stop motion. The following images show the presentation I produced.

(Tom)

3D Film Animation Planning

We then began to plan our 3D animation where we would personify socks and use them as puppets.

 

We added facial expressions and followed a simple plot. We leant from this that with no dialogue, facial expressions are extremely important. Furthermore, we have learnt that speed of movement is very important for the audience to grasp the story.
Expressing the importance of the facial expressions was important and we therefore looked at a work sheet showing facial phonetics when saying words. Doing this in our animation would be very detailed and time consuming as it would need to be changed after every frame. Eyebrow movements and position I found where very important as they can really show expression.

(Tom and Alex)

Pre Planning

We then began to plan and storyboard our own aimnation for the nursery rhyme, 'Itsy Bitsy Spider'.

We then drew the frames on large A4 paper to present to our audience in 2D. We then had to take into consideration shot types and facial expressions. Colours where also important and we made our scenery very colourful as it was aimed at a child audience. Also we used blue for happy faces and red for sad faces. We used close ups on some expressions as we felt it was important to the story. However, our audience feedback said that we should have used a close up facial expression on the last frame. We also personified the sun and gave it an expression to make it seem more freindly to the child audience.

(Tom and Alex)

A Point Of Que Animation Script Recording

On 1/02/11 we recorded our voice over to our animation. To do this we used the program Audacity.

(Tom and Alex)