Aniticipation

The images above are my  Anticipation bar sheets. My first attempt was wrong so I did it again. On the first bar sheet the graphic line just constantly moved forward without any changes. However in my stop motion the block literally speed up and slow down. Therefore, the first anticipation bar sheet does not make sense at all. The reason to cause it was I did not really understand the bar sheet. I though it just the direction of the block, so I drew a straight line. Now, I had a better understanding of bar sheet because of  the graphic editor in the Maya. It really helped me a lot that once you animated the block, there will be a graphic line to explain how the motion works. 

The main problem about this anticipation animation is the stage. The block started from very left but stopped on the center of the table which is uneven. Additionally, when the block going to stop, it should have leaned forward whilst moving, in order to show the expected movement.  

To improve it, I will measure the distance with the rule next time. I believe the block would work better once the starting point and end point is been figured. 

Alice Wonderland 

Slow in and Slow out

Bar sheet 

This is the bar sheet for slow in and slow out. When I reviewed my bar sheet, I found a mistake which was I didn't draw the constant speed between and slow in and slow out. When a block slowly moved in the scene, it should have speeding up gradually and then slow down, but I did not draw that. It suggested that I did not fully understand the bar sheet at that time, but I felt proud of myself as now I have the capability to identify the problem and being able to correct it.  

Slow in and Slow out Stop Animation

This Slow in and Slow out animation.

This time I found it's slightly easier because it's based on the A to B animation and I already had few experience on the camera and settings. 

The good thing about this animation is that it looks smooth and details. However, the distance seemed a bit short. Additionally, there are not enough slow in frame, which seems that it speed up suddenly. 

It would be much better if I put more timing at the beginning.

I could also reduce the space at the beginning, this would create a slow motion for block.

If it happened again,  I would spend more time on bar sheet to figure out the timing and spacing.  

Week 9 Idea generation of City Project

In week 9's Intro to Creative Play, we started to produce the mind map for City Project, we generated various of start points, idealisation and factual information  and think of the divergent possibility to produce the city physically. 

Mind Map

 This is the mind map we had created today. We thought about requirements in the brief such as old & new, techniques and meaning of the city. We produced several ideas like animal society e.g. hives, the structure of ant house. The insect colony are powerful and unity. It has the most ecological successful structure on the planet. 

We decided to set the theme Evolution to our city project. The product will feature on the evolution of the city, from ancient to modern days. There will be three stages set on the circular platform that includes: ancient ocean, stone ages and the building in the modern days.  We are going to create these in order to meet the brief requirements, history, old meet new and physically... 



When we talked about applying the pattern or referenced to hives, we also linked to several theories, for example,  Chaos theory - Branch of mathematics that deals with systems that appear to be orderly. 






Mandelbrot set, a particular set of complex numbers which has a highly convoluted fractal boundary when plotted. 


Synesthesia, the production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by simulation of another sense or part of the body. 

We attempted to incorporate those theories into the brief, start thinks shapes of the city, how it sounds like and how it feels like etc. 

Here is the mind map of visual ideas that present what we will be produced on the circular platform. Basically, there are three stages which are modern day, stone age and ancient natural. These three stages expressed how did we evolve from small-brained ape into the human being and how did our society has developed. We are going to create towers or landmarks for the modern day and it would be better if we use foil rolls to construct the  metal materials and implication of technology evolution.  

for the stage two. we intend to create few caves with patterns on to show the communication in the stone age. 

Here are some clay caves that we've made in the experiments. Harry carved some African pattern on his cave because the first human being came from African and he intends to merge some African art culture into the human evolution. 

We used phone lighting to simulate the projection mapping. One of our plans was to utilise the projector to create the atmosphere of the stone age. 

Week 9 Acting

In week 9's Intro to Making of, We did some actings for references. 

Here is the video of 'mirror reflection' exercice that two people paired up, and one of them have to copy the exactly same movement from her partner in order to achieve the 'mirror reflection'. 

I think it's really helpful for referencing in animation because we are not only acting the movements but also observe other's performance, to see the differences between me and my partner. 

Here is the video of me acted punch people. As I jumped for several seconds, I then turned around and finally fisted people hardly. 

This is the video of me did a sexsy walk cycle. I attemped to chiack my hair to the back of ears, this posture was aimed to express the sexsy feeling. Then I walked on a stright line, tried to wave my butt as much as possible but it seemed did not work well. I was too shy to performant the sexy walk, as well as I could not control my laughing. Overall, It looks fine; at least viewer understand what I am doing and understand the purpose of the movement. 

At the second part of the lecture, we did some 'Adverbs' game which doing a performance to decribe an adverbs, no verbal communication were allowed. We had so much fun about this as Harry and Dante were extremely talented in acting, their performances were so brilliant and funny.

The video above is about Kahong and Dante acted the adverb 'Childlish'. Kahong was sitting on the floor and kicking his legs to show the childlish behavior, Dante talked in a child's way. Finally, Harry had guessed the adverb.

This is the video about gussing adverb 'honey'. Harry and Dante tried to seduce Kahong with flirttly behaviour. It was so funny but Kahong could not get the verb at the beginning. He said sexsy, flirtty and so on, which was so close to the original adverb, but still not get it. Eventually, they acted horn to show the similar pronoucation to get the right anwser. 

Comment of Khaled's Blog

This is Khaled's blog of reviewing classmates's maps. I think it's good that he explained the strength of the map as well as mentioned the improvement they can make in the future.

For example, He liked Chelsea's map because she draw the monster  surround the media city with her imagination, which is brilliant. But it's confused viewers that A and B points did not clearly stand out.

It's good thing that he is going to incorporated the techniques that he learned this time and he is going to try different methods to compete the project in the future.

Links to Khaled's blog, click links below 

https://marinmiah.wordpress.com/2016/11/16/week-3/

Mirror Observation

Facial Expression - Sad 

the video above is a mirror observation of myself acted as a sad person. When I attempted to act this emotion, I took a deep breath first, then my eyes looked downward and my hand hold together on the chest. My body language has fully explained to the audiences that I was in a worried, disappointed or depressed mood, put hands on the chest implied that I subconsciously want to protect my heart because I was feeling heartbroken. Additionally, my gradually down eyelid  has suggested that I did not want to face myself or look at other person,  this also showed a self-defense behavior as I don't want to show my emotions through the eyes. 

 

I traced the video frame by frame and observe the motion of each part of my body. I  found out that my head has slightly turn down and my eyes apparently looked up and down. Furthermore, my collarbone appeared clearly whilst I headed up, it showed my intense and stiff.  

 

Sketches

My idea for long term project is to do a sketch that based on natural, plant, animals, I might expand the drawing with my imagination. I believe that my drawing skill will have a greatly improvement after one year.

There are few unfinished drawings because of shorten time. I found it's difficult to complete one sketch within an hour everyday because I have to work on the shift and catch up the blogs... Thus, in order to keep on data, I had to move on next drawing without finish it. 

Long term Project - Photo montages

My intention for the long-term project was to make a sketch based on plant or animals every day. However, I found it's too difficult to continue, I don't have the motivation to spent an hour on sketch every day as one drawing might need several days to complete. 

Therefore, I was looking for an easier method that I have the persistence to do each day.  I decided to take a photo every day in the same location but different posture. The photo below showed the daily behaviours I have done every morning for example: read the paper, drink tea, eat breakfast and so on. I took photo everyday and used Photoshop to edit them together so audiences can see all the movement in one picture. This idea was inspired by a creative photographer's work on the website. He photographed himself with different posture in exactly the same location. It was amazing and very creatively that inspired me to do the same thing. This photo montage is only a test, I will edit photos more precisely in the future. 

Animation Festival

Zeezucht

This is an inspirational short animated film that showed a man who casts aside everything in pursuit of his dream. A dream we all share: the quest to find a place we can call home, even if it's underwater.  I really like the graphic style it utilised in the film,  the graphic was beautiful and the story made audiences emotional . 

Birdz

It's a weird but great animation. In the film, people that look and behave like birds, try to survive the cruelness of nature. 

Week 8 The City Project

In week 8, we've been given the City Project that creates a representation of 'the city'. We should investigate the city in different visual ways and build a physical response.

We were been separated in groups of three in order to start the project. The idea should include:

• Interpret the idea of the city
• Include an enquiry into old meets new
• Incorporate some or all of the techniques/ideas introduced  to us from the past Intro to Creative Play lesson thus far
• Apply the subject of energy and incorporate into our response
• Utilise the maker space and play with the materials

When separating the group, I chose to join in group 3. It's a group of people who good at following the instructions and making things. Although I felt I have all the skills that capable of producing the ideas, be a problem solver and product maker, I am not good at communication. I cannot fully explain my ideas to others as well as communicate the process. Additionally, I chose group 3 because I always enjoy creating products, I feel proud to see the final result. 

Our idea is to make a sculpture of monster mouth and build a city surround it. This is Harry's idea as he's the team leader but I don't really get the idea as it seems not really related to the requirements in the project: incorporate old & new, history and interaction etc. He intends to create a brutal fantasy monster world that based on his own imagination, which is totally opposing my style. I like natural, animals and a lovely world, whereas horror monster is an area that I nerve interested. This is out of my comfort zoom that made me feeling depress and confused. 

However, as part of the team, I had to take my responsibilities to achieve the project. I decided to fix my emotions, step out of my comfort zone and give it a try. As the aim of this module is to let us experiment, play and take the risk with divergent style and methods. I wanted to push myself into a new area that I never thought I would get into and hopefully, I can gain more experiences. 

As you can see the photos here, I started to build the ground for the city. I drew a big circle on the foam and cut it off with the saw. It wasn't an easy job because the foam's too thick, I've spent around 40 minutes to shape the circle foam, which you can see the final result below. Although it's a hard job, I am proud of the final product; it's a proper circle. 

I was surprised about the final animation. It was pretty good and totally different style compare the others. Most of other group did  the city skylines, fantasy forest and cute characters whereas our's dead land. Our monster mouth city conveyed an atmosphere of barren and desolate, one clay character walked through the city and approached to the city centre where monster mouth is. It's a short stop motion animation but I quite like it. It had visually expressed the city and physically showed people the story. I really enjoyed the process. 

Thank you Photos on 11 November 2016

Dramatic Lighting

'X' Sunset

Holding the moon

Week 7 Foley Sound Effect and Design

This week, we produced Foley sound effect for the film clips that provided in the drive. We were required to do: 

• Creating cue lists for film clips
• Recording sounds
• Editing sounds in the Premiere
• Screening the final clips and feedback 

Firstly, we started with chose film clips. We decided to use the first minute of the clip of '' Skeleton night before Christmas'' and we edited and annotated the clip with After Effect in order to figure out what sound we should records and timing.

Annotation of sound effects

Recording Soundtrack

One problem we met in the day was noisy environment. We couldn't find a quiet room to record sounds because of fully booked classroom, we have to share the room with another group. What's the worse? There's another class come at 12, which means we had to either finish recording earlier or find another places. Eventually, we decided to recorded in the toilet, which is worse as we could hear the water, hand dryer and conversation. 

Although we had really bad conditions, we completed the sounds recording successfully and we were really enjoyed the process. We used various of ordinary objects to produce the sounds by blow it, knock it, hit it, shake it and so on. For example, we were knocking the 'slippy sign board' in the toilet to imitate the wind. The reason we did that is the skeleton was stepped on the wooden stairs which the footstep should be heavy and profound. Thus knocking on the sign sounds more realistic than real footsteps. I were amazed by the possibilities of Foley sound design. It's really funny and creative as you will nerve know what is the sound made of. 

The photos shows I  recorded for Tz to play the guitar. We were using it for background music and it sounded amazing. 

Final Foley Sound Effect 

At the end of the day, we combined the soundtrack together and screening them to get the feedback. The main weakness on our video is that we did not have enough soundtracks to cover the footage, as well as parts of sounds did not edit accurately, such as electric shock and turn on the microscope. If I have more time, I will add more soundtracks from website to make it as perfect as possible. 

Week 7 Review of Block Interaction and Ball Weight

The things I've learned today that include:

• Pro-type something e.g. bar sheet, storyboard... before going to computer or stop motion room.
• be prepared, be organised.
• Observe, translate, animate

Reviews of Block Interaction 

Block Interaction 1

I realised that my animation was too quick which causes it  lost performance. Timing was a big problem because the animation is only around 5 seconds, the blocks moved too fast during the performing, it would be better if I hold the block for few seconds to show the performances. In next exercise, I will put more thoughts in timing, do not be afraid of holding blocks, play with the spacing and distance to make animation better. 

Block Interaction 2

This is my second interaction exercise. I learned the lesson from last experience and slow the block down by repeating each frame three times. I intended to redo the animation frame by frame, however after I collected the camera, I just released there's no tripod left. I was really annoyed about this because we supposed to have 6 tripods (as 6 cameras and 6 rooms) but there are only 5 tripods and all of them were been used. Therefore, the only thing I could do was to repeat the frames in order to slow down the motion. After I change the timing, the performance can be seen clearly, but it did not perform smoothly as it's done by repeating frames.  The plan nerve catches up the changes. From this experience, I had gained the awareness of equipment preparation and avoid of book camera at the rush time. 

I had no clue how to animate three blocks at the same time. Block interaction is different to another exercise, which needed more than one object to achieve the interaction. This required accurate timing and the good understanding of Maya. Fortunately, after spent almost one hour and a half, I finally made it. Although it's not perfect, but I'm pleased with its completion. 

Ball Weight 

Ball weight is the essential element in the animation.

The task we've been given today is to produce four stop-motion animation and one Maya animation for the following selections:

• Ballon (featured on light and the wind)
• Ping-pong ball (featured on small, bouncy and light)
• Beach Ball (featured on large, soft and light)
• Bowling ball(featured on large, heavy and hard)
• Ball of clay (featured on small, hard and solid)

Use circular disk or 2p coins to represent the balls bouncing across the screen. Apply the principle of Squash and Stretch in Maya animation. 

Timing and Spacing

Timing = Speed+Tempo

More Frames + Less Change = Slow Motion

Big Space + Less Frames + More Change = Fast Motion

Notebook Record 

This is a Beach ball bouncing video. It did not bounce great but I can still observe the motion of the ball. From the video, we can see that beach ball is light, soft and bouncy but because of its volume, it did not bounce much.