Last Bits of Paper Work

My Gantt chart shows in green the time I set aside for work, focusing mainly on the production and post production of my film.. The red bars are the time it really took my. As you can see some things took a little longer then planned and others didn't. I finished about half a week after planned.

  

For my business card I decided to use my pigeon from y film, I thought that if we where giving them out at the degree show it would have to fit in with the film so people could recognize them.

In this first one I thought the pigeon was maybe a little to bold so I just moved the opacity down.

I used my flour sack from 2nd year for this card, this it so it would match my CV. I decided to do this as when I leave and I'm handing out show-reels it would be better for everything to match.

Posters

Posters. In the end I ended up with two posters one by Bron and another by Cat. I had asked Cat to make me a poster weeks before but just got it days before deadline. I needed the poster earlier as i had wanted to use it as my title screen for my film. So as time ticked by and they was no sign of a poster I asked Bron if she needed any more hours and got myself a title page. But I was so impressed with the poster Bron created I wanted to make it my main poster.
Here is the two posters:

This poster was created by Bron.
The next one by Cat:

This Poster didn't really have what I was looking for. I was wanting a 1950's style dramatic, over the top, painted style with a bold brash front.

But Kat did come over and ask what things I would like her to change, I told her that I didn't like the floating pigeon and that I didn't like the colour of the font, I wasn't it to be bold and brash. This is what I got: 

I think this one is much better.

Editing and Shake

After I had finished animating I had a lot of editing to do. One of the big things I needed doing was to make the arrow move. I got Natasha to help me with this. We used shake. Natasha also created the smoke and grain falling in shake and the pigeon droping and seagull diving. Natasha was a great help and it was a very long hard day at a computer. She helped me to get out what I was wanting into my peice.
Here is a couple of sence completed in shake:

    

In this one we moved the arrow in shake. All the seagull and pigeon movement was done using stop motion before hand.

 

    

In this one we also moved the arrow in shake. We found it hard to make the end of the arrow go behind the centre part of the gage. It was all about layering, we had to make another centre part of the gage to layer on top. 

I had the edit a lot of blemish out of my work like shadows and the edge of the card, I did it all on photoshop.

Here's some before and after stills:

Before:

After:

This was done on photoshop by taking a blank frame of the sky and stretching it so there wasn't the joining line on it then dragging the original frame in making it another layer and cutting the seagull out.  

Group Work

For my group work Im doing a seven second animation for Jo's peice, this is when her character goes though the door and has turned from a 2d drawing into the stopmotion model. I had to make the model, Jo gave me the caractors turn around, which I then added a armiture to. I made the armiture out of Balsa wook and aluminuim wire, which I then shaped. I then covered in purple modeling clay. The set is just green screen as the film has a black background, we decided to get the best effect would be to be able to key my background out so Jo could add the same background as the rest of the film.

I am also inking Brons 2d frames. This consists of drawing around each frame with black pen then rubbing out the pencil lines.

I would animated Jo's section then show would I'd done to to Jo. Here is the first test and second test:

Jo like them, but she wanted the man to go react more, to freak out more. So I animated it again. Here's test number three:

This time Jo's wanted the man to have more of a run off and to freak out more, I did find it hard to visualize what Jo wanted and I was also finding it hard to animate with the model. I found that because the model was very tall, with just wire for legs he didn't like standing up on one leg, even with magnets on his feet. To over come this I had to rig him up. Here is test number four:

This time he side sets in, and freaks out, Jo like this one, but she wanted the man to be looking up when running out not looking at the floor like in this shot. So I did it again, test Five:

Jo like this one the most, so all I had to do was edit the background out and turn it black then layer the door on. During editing I found that the man didn't step out the door far enough, so when he put his arms in the air it would disappear behind the door. All I did to over come this was when the man stepped thought the door I moved him on photoshop over to the right a little more so that wouldn't happen. Heres the final shot:

I also did some 2d clean up for Jo's project. Rubbing out pencil lines and tiding up on photoshop.

Animating my film

With all my models, props and set build I started to animate my film. My film was broken up into which sets I would use, how hard the shot was going to be and if I would need Ashley help animating it or not. Ashley used up some of her hours working on my film, because I had so many charactors in some sences I would need a extra pair of hands to animate.
The first shot I did was the close up of the Robots head, this was a very easy shot to do and it concised of taking one picture the rest was to be done later on After effects or shake to get the arrow to move.
The next shot I did was some more stills of the far away set, I just wanted to do some test and see what is would look like, as I was going to have a meeting with Sean later that week I wanted to show him what it would look like.
I also did a test of the Main Pigeon walking.
After meeting up to go over some of my early animation with Sean. He said that it was hard to tell the differance between the grain and the gravel floor, I took this on board and after looking at stopmotion television shows like Bob the Builder and Pingu I decinded to go for a much simplar set. The path the hills became just chalk on card. Everything else like the Robot and the sky was left the same.

Having to changed the gravel floor was kind of a bless in disguse, I was finding it a pain to animate with the gravel as it was always moving and getting stuck into the pigeons feet. I spent half my time sorting out the pigeons feet before I could start the next shot.
Animating was going smooth, people didn't really notice the change in sets, like from small pigeons to big pigeons which was great. I found it hard to animate the smaller pigeon because they couldn't move much I want screen time down to a minuman with them, but they had to be some long shots.
I enjoyed working with Ashley, she helped me alot, she brought a fresh pair of eyes and could see things I couldn't see, althought sometimes a though she was to ruff with my models, but I think that was me just getting over protective.
I found the seagull to be the worse thing to animate, everything else move nicely and did what I wanted it to do, but not the seagull. I think when making it I was itching to start animating and rushed him. He didn't really turn out like designed and I found him bulky. Lucking he wasn't in many shots. I had some shots where the seagull was in the sky, here he had to be rigged up. When rigging up a model I used thin fishing wire the a medal frame, rigging is hard and you have to be patient. When you use wire the model takes a long time to settle after you move it so you've got to wait each time or you get a blared picture. I found that out the hard time more then once.

I put this shot in because it shows me working with Ashley and with the seagull.

So sence where I would have needed a rig like the pigeon falling off the bench and the seagull driving I decided that this would be easier to do on after effect or shake.
It took me about a month to animate.

Here's some of my early animation tests, this first one is Pigeon walking to robot foot, on the old set:

Sound Effects

Sean had managed to get us time in the media building and in the sound booths so we could make our sound effects. We where tourt how to use the basic of Cubebase and rocording equipment. I worked with Bron and Jo to make sound effects and music for all three of our films.
I took to understand Cubebase more then the others so I did all the technial things like the seting up of cannels and the recording. Firstly we worked on Jo's, her peice is set out of this world so she wanted other worldly music, and not really any sound effect as her peice is set in space they wouldn't be any. We created her music by using the MIDI keyboard, this meant we could get any sound we really wanted and warp it and tune it in Cubebase. We brought up I copy of Jo's animatic and Bron played along to what she saw. I recorded it.
The next week we all worked on Brons sounds, she wanted the sound of a drum kit falling down so we all had great fun hitting things and recording them and layering them up to make the sound required. I had the great honer of being the scraping noise Bron needed as we record me being draged across the room sat on a chair. I also played the drum for Bron peice. This was because I new some one who is doing muisc tec at uni so has all the recrding equirment and plays the drums.
We then got onto recording sounds for my peice. A lot of the bird noises where found on BBC sound CD's but we had some fun recording the pecking and pigeon walking noise. I had took in some gravel and we used different things to try and get different pecking sounds, even chop sticks at one point.

Model and Set Making

After going thought my storyboards with Tandy I decided to cut down on the amount of pigeons I was going to have in my film. I cut it down to three pigeons instead of five.
I made these pigeons out of Balsa wood and aluminum wire, once they where glued into shape I shaped the wood, smoothed off the corners and made them more rounder. After that I covered them with tights and stuffed them. I use tights because its very stretchy, and just normal stuffing. When I got the pigeon shape I was looking for I covered the models in gray material, sewing it together, leaving the feet and beck on show. The feet the beck where cover in modeling clay, the eyes where added last, also using modeling clay. 

The Seagull was made in the same way.

Once these where all made I moved into making my sets, this way I could get the right proportions from model to set. Doing this I found out that my Robot was going to be huge,compared with my work area. To get around this I decided to make I smaller scale set, which would be of the Robot on the park bench with little pigeons.
These little pigeons where also make on wire and wood, but they didn't have as much move ability as the bigger one, but this should work out alright for long shots.

My set where made using a base on MDF, I got a packet of fish gravel and made a path, used green material for the hills, the bench was made of wood, as was the robot, and as the robot didn't move he was made a solid model. His clothes where made of black material, which just covered the wooden skeleton.

The grain tray was made by painting some of the fish gravel yellow and sticking some of it onto the MDF. The rest was left loose. I did this because I had left the places where the pigeons or seagull would stand just plain, the loose ones where to cover the gaps if they weren't on set.
Jo made me my sky backgrounds, these where just chalk on card.