"Animated Yorkshire hits Light Night!
Former TKMaxx space in Leeds Shopping Plaza, Top Floor.
Drop in workshop 1-5pm Screening of workshop results 5-9pm
Animators from all over Yorkshire descend on a Leeds shop unit and light it up with fantastic projections! Come and add your contribution to our animation and find out more about the work of Animated Yorkshire. No previous experience needed"So, On Friday, my friend Verity and I went down to the drop-in workshop at 3.30pm. I was expecting there to be at least a few people there already, but when we walked in there was nobody there apart from Rozi and Zane from Animated Yorkshire and Zoom Animation. Nobody had been to the drop-in all day. Which seemed a shame as the event was free. However, it was good for us as it meant we had their full attention and we got to get animating straight away. Rozi asked us what experience of animation we had, I told them I was a beginner and interested in stop-motion and Verity, studying retail management, had no experience at all.
We chose to have a go at the "smudge and wipe" method, in which we used black sugar paper and white chalk. Rozi already had the camera set up on a tripod and focussed it on the paper we had secured to the floor with masking tape (to stop it moving and making the animation "jump"). We marked around the legs of the tripod with tape too, incase the camera moved. We quickly had to think of an idea for the animation and the first thing that jumped into Verity's head was a spider. We decided that I would draw and smudge and that Verity would take the pictures (so that we we weren't up and down all the time, which would get annoying after a while).
First I drew a spider, very roughly with no detail, hanging on a spiders web. Verity took a picture. Then I wiped away the first image and drew the spider slightly higher than the first picture. Verity took another picture. We repeated this a few times until the spider was half was up the page, then we decided to make the animation a bit more interesting and drew in another spider, coming down from the top of the paper. We carried on smudging and drawing until the two spiders were side by side. Thinking we should create a purpose or ending for the animation, we decided the spiders were going to fall in love........
I drew question marks next to each spider, as if they were thinking "hmmm who's this? You're new" and then made them swing towards each other to be closer. As they were getting closer, the question marks became hearts and then finally as the spiders met in the middle I drew one large heart in the middle, above the spiders. However, it didn't fit in the frame so just looked like a 'V', so I wiped it away and drew one below the spiders.
I personally wanted to gain more knowledge on the computer side of animation, so at this point we asked if we could put the pictures into the computer and edit them. Rozi, hooked up the camera to the laptop and imported the images into Flash. I've never used Flash before, and I'm pretty useless at using laptops so I was a bit worried I would come across as an idiot. Laptops just do not like me at all, I like a mouse!
Anyways, In Flash we made all of the pictures last one 12th of a second. We were told that usually they would make the images last one 24th of a second, to make the animation more seamless, but we only had a short time to finish the animation and to be honest I like the jumpy quality of stop-motion.
Firstly we deleted the picture of the large heart above the spiders that looked like a 'V', otherwise it would look very odd and plus we had done the correct picture straight afterwards. Then we played the animation to see if we wanted to change anything.
The animation was a little short so we decided that we should repeat some of the pictures to make it longer. We decided that the first 4 frames of the first spider going up the spider web should be repeated backwards and then forwards again, so that the spider went up the web, then down the web, then back up again and then the second spider would come in. All this involved was copying and pasting each frame where you wanted it. It was a little bit like final cut but much simpler.
Rozi mentioned that Flash is usually used for making web pages but she thinks that it's great for making animation, that it's really easy to use. I think she was right as it we created the animation in less than an hour. Plus, if I can use Flash to animate, I could use it to make web pages too. Maybe even something for my own website when I get around to getting one.
So the final thing to do was to make the final frame last a bit longer than the other frames, to show that the animation had finished and then put it on repeat. So we made the final frame last 10 12ths of a second. Then Rozi had an idea, that to give the animation a bit more narrative, she would show the spiders over a background of some pictures of the space she had taken earlier, that she had on a slideshow. The slideshow pictures were of just plain walls and floors and dark dingy corners so the spiders would look right at home there. I don't quite remember what Kath did after this but she explained that she had made the spiders (in white) one symbol and the background paper (in black). Then made the background symbol 50% opacity so that both the spiders and the slideshow pictures could be seen together. Job done :)
I really enjoyed the workshop and what's more, Rozi said that she would be screening our animation later on as part of Light Night. A pretty successful hour if I don't say so myself.
All I need now is to get Rozi or Zane to send me the animation to put on here. I'm pretty sure they're gonna put the animation on the website too which will be cool. I checked out the website and found that for £25 a year, you can become a member of Animated Yorkshire and have access to facilities and other animators for advice and events. I think I'm going to have to join.
No comments:
Post a Comment