Birds and Clay

Now that i have decided on my character for my animation, i have began to look into how i will construct the storyboard. Clay? Hand drawn? Still frames?

I am most drawn to the clay idea as i think it will be a good media to create character with. Here are some examples i found on the internet.

I particularly enjoyed this video as it is something a little bit different, not only does it show the use of clay but it shows the making of the character. This video will give me inspiration when creating my own bird.

While looking through Youtube i found it increasingly hard to come across any bird animations made from clay, especially impressive ones.

I also came across this video, which isn't exactly anything special but you get the idea. I am going to give this idea a try for myself, hopefully it shouldn't be too difficult!

Rayograms

I have never really done rayogram's before, or knew what they were for this matter. I found the tutorials with laura really helpful as it give me an insight into something knew. We were then left to create are own rayogram's and see what we could produce. I decided to use jewellery and paper clips as i thought this would create a good outcome, i also think the perfume bottle works well as you can see the insides of the bottle.


This is my outcome:

I used a test strip so i was able to see which one created the best exposure. Using 1,2,3,4 and 5 seconds, i decided the best outcome was at 4 seconds.

These are a few of my favourite rayograms...

The necklace didn't work as well as i would have liked it on the pendant but i still think it has created a nice effect.

For this piece i used a range of square pieces of paper with smaller squares cut out the middle. I arranged them in an uncontrolled fashion, i think this is one of my favourite rayogram's.

This piece didn't work quite as well as i wanted it too, but still think it has created a nice effect. I placed me hand at different angles and heights for 1 second at a time to create this desired effect.

Kate Nash

Now that i have chose my character i am trying to gather as much research and thoughts as possible. This is when i remembered this song, i remember listening to this song ages ago and coming across the animation version on Youtube. Someone has created an animation for pretty much all her songs, but i thought this was most fitting.

Character Development

Now that i have decided that my chosen character is going to be a bird, i now need to choose, what kind of bird? I've started drawing up some (very rough) possible character ideas.

Eventhough i am beginning to steer towards the toucan idea, i think i need to maybe come up with some more character designs. 

Workshop Session

We were given a session on creating an animation. We were told to draw a selection of several basic characters, the characters could be literally anything you wanted but trying too keep it simple. We then had to choose one of the finished characters and draw it from a range of different angles, then working in pairs or groups we had to come up with an animation using each persons character. The animation needed to show a beginning, middle and an end and be made up of 36 hand drawn images, very tedious! My chosen character was a bird and my partners character was a cat, so we came up with an animation of the bird sat in a tree, when the cat sneaks up on the bird and eventually ending in the bird dying.


These are the first character designs i came up with.

I decided to go with the idea of the bird as i thought this went will with my partners chosen character of a cat. We then went on to create the storyboard for the beginnings of are animation.

Research into Rayograms

Before my induction with Laura i didn't really know anything about rayograms or what they were for that matter, so i decided to see what other artists had produced to give me a feel for the task.

Define Rayogram- 'A photogram is a photographic image made without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a photo-sensitive material such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light. '

I particularly liked these two designs, i love the idea of using the film as you can see all the twists and turns. I am going to think of using something similar on my own rayograms.

Research

While looking through Youtube i came across the two videos shown below. The first one is a short 10 second animation made from paper, the finished animation looks very effective but i imagine it wasn't easy to do! It is something i am willing to try if it is fitting with my initial ideas. The second video is a chalkboard animation, for this particular animation it works very well, but i think if your drawing was to detailed, the excess chalk would end up making your animation looking very messy and unclear.