Pixar

On Wednesday I watched 25 key moments in Pixar, this programme takes a look at the highs and lows of the multi award-winning animation studio Pixar as it celebrates its 25th birthday, and discovers the secrets of how to make a Pixar movie.

I am now researching Pixar and this was a help with some of the research telling me interesting things. 

Blu Style Character Loop

This is the video for my 'Blu style character loop'.
I used the same animation as character loop but changed the way he moved and also made the character more transparent on photoshop to create a different effect. I also think this made it more interesting to watch.
I went out into long road and took a few pictures of various surfaces that i thought would look good for my character to move on. I decided to use the photo of the wall outside the art block.
After putting this as the background I copied and pasted the clip a few times on final cut to create a 'loop'. After this I went into garage band and experimented with music. I thought the drum beat i chose sounds good to my little loop.

Character Loop

This is my character loop video, I think that I could have made the video look more professional by using colour and making the animation do a casual move as it looks a bit random.

Character Loop

I first started drawing ideas of my character on paper when creating the character loop. I got influences from images online and graffiti books for my drawings. My favourite was a toaster with toast popping in and out...the toast has a mouth which changes as he moves in and out of the toaster. Despite this I decided to use an image of a round person who would move around using his arms and legs and tounge. 

After making my mind up on the design of my character, I started to draw the frames in the frames in the flipbook we were given. Once I finished this i scanned the fames into the computar i put them into photoshop and lined up all the frames in the same photoshop page. This was the first time i got to see my creation animated, the next stage was to export the animation from photoshop into quicktime and import into final cut where i copied and pasted the clip around 6 times so it was on a loop. 

JAN SVANKMAJER

He currently lives in Prague and was born there in 1934. From the years of  1959 to 1954 he trained at the Institute of Applied Arts then he studied puppetry at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts. 

Since 1964 Svankmajer has made some of the most memorable and unique animated films. He has a reputation as one of the world's foremost animators, influencing film makers from Tim Burton to The Brothers Quay.

He used quite dark and twisted imagery in most of his films, he experimented with clay morphing body parts, strange things in jars and still managed to create slight comedic effect because the themes are so abstract.

I feel that the animations he has made are great and will be around for years as every shot has so much detail. This an extract from is his first Feature film ALICE, an adaptation of alice in wonderland made in 1987.

Svankmajer uses a mixture of live action shots and stop motion animation to make the stories blend together. He also uses lots of different camera angles and shots including close up's where you can see the detail of the craft which i think is very clever. Every sound in his videos are pre-recorded effects. The objects and characters are made of a variety of materials from clay to fabric and toys. Jan Svankmajer's next project is set for release in 2015.

Love Spin

I watched a video called 'Love Spin'. The video was a really good way to show so many possibilities than you can have when working from stop-motion animation. 

The video has a rotating platform with a plant and pot, while the platform rotates the setting goes slowly into a countryside to a village into a city all from different props around the plant pot. The videos last shot is a figure walking out from the city towards the country side to sit down where he started at the start of the video only with a female figure there too. I will be sure to watch this video again to help me with my future animations. 

The Saint Petersburg Disco Spin Club: Love Spin from SPDSC on Vimeo.

Lemon Jelly

I have been watching the music video to the Lemon Jelly song called 'The Shouty Track'. This video shows an animation to that we have been creating. I think the animation is clever because it shows a lot of eye catching ways to animate the characters although they look like they are fairly simple to draw, the track must have taken so long to finish! The Style looks as if it was drawn on a flipbook animation but the animation is actually computar generated. The Music video shows a lot of very interesting ways to animate characters which will help with ideas when creating animations.