Animation Project
The first things I thought of when I heard about this project where a number of different videos that I’d seen on youtube like Grizzly Bear’s new video for Ready, Able
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Puph1hejMQE
and a video of a Ukraine sand artist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOMgDbcA84A
From the beginning I knew I wanted to do a stop motion animation, but I wasn’t sure about what medium I was going to use. I knew I didn’t want to use clay, because while I think it looks great, I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied with the results of my efforts. I decided to do simple drawings and at first I was going to actually do the entire animation on a fridge using magnets and pieces of paper, but in the end I decided to just focus on the scraps of paper. I tossed around several different ideas for the theme and story and eventually decided to use Robert Frost’s Poem Fire and Ice as the focus for my animation.
To make my images for the animation I drew each frame on a square piece of paper that I had ripped by hand. I used a black sharpie and then a few colored pencils. When I had all of the pieces of paper ready I took a picture of every piece. I used a lamp in my room for good consistent light and put the pieces of paper on a black background.
Once I had all the images I uploaded them in Smith and added them to iMovie. I was worried that I would have a lot of trouble with actually making the movie, but I figure it all out after awhile and had the sequence and timing of all the images done pretty quick. I used an effect on the images which made the black background much darker and gave the pieces of paper a yellowish color and old look.
Getting the song I wanted and having it time with the video was definitely the hardest and most time consuming part of making the animation on the computer. I spent a lot of time working with one song and then switched in the end. I eventually found a program online to use to edit it the way I wanted and once I figured out the timing, I saved and added it to iMovie. After that I just exported it to Quicktime.
The finished animation is uploaded on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M16XwvERy1I
My original storyboard was on a scrap of paper and in boxes about 1/2 inch big, so for my final I redid it on a piece of computer paper.
