Evaluation

Overall, I am happy with my animations. I think if I hadn't chosen a narrative or a series I would have found it a lot easier and less time consuming. I think it was hard in some cases trying to make the characters move in particular ways so that it was obvious to the viewer what was going on. I added titles to all of my animations, I also faded them all out to black.

Episode one - I really like the music of episode one, I changed this a couple of times and had to cut it a few times to get right, now I really like it, I think the music sets the scene perfectly. I like the very simple movements of the dress and the background sliding along to make it seem like she is walking. I also like when she feels left out and sits down and scratches her head whilst deciding what to do next. The only problem I have with this episode is maybe its a little short, but I cut the music first and really wanted to use that piece of music, if I had more time I may have changed the music to a slightly longer piece. My final EPISODE ONE is below....




Episode two - Episode two is definitely my favourite animation. There is so much going on and it is so fast paced. I especially like the way this episode ends, I think it is perfect with the music. I also like the bit where she ties her balloon up to the post, her hands rotating to make it look like she is. My final EPISODE TWO is below...





Episode three - My episode 3 is probably my least favourite animation. I really like the ending but I think it ends too suddenly, if I was to have more time I would probably start this one from scratch. I like the balloons starting from small to large to make it seem like they are coming to her from miles away, I like the 'magical' strings appearing and carrying her away. I do like this episode, but I think it could've been a little better to end the 'series' off. My final EPISODE THREE is below...

Episode 3

For episode 3 I needed some new artwork, I made this in Illustrator. I wanted the group of balloons to be like a colour wheel, sort of representing the rainbow and happiness...



I then imported all the artwork to After Effects and again, I started animating again!


My final episode three is below...

Episode 2

For my second animation I am using pretty much the same artwork as the first, except I have changed the background slightly... Making the skyline larger and adding some bumps and walls on the ground...

I then started on my animation as before, using position, opacity, rotation and scale to create movement.




The only added objects in this episode are the few bits in the background (wall, hills) also the catapult and rocks. I could've made the catapult more detailed with some elastic but I prefer it looking simpler to fit in with the rest of the scene, you can tell its a catapult by the boys hand moving and 'springing' forward to release the rocks. This animation took ages! There are A LOT of keyframes in this episode but I am really pleased with it. My final episode two is below...

Episode one.

To start with I made sketches and storyboards by hand in my sketchbook. I then drew out my shapes in Illustrator...

This was my original girl... Just basic shapes that together make the impression of a little girl in a dress. I was going to have arms, hands and legs too but decided against as I wanted to keep it simpler shapes as the brief says...

Below is one of the boys playing ball, again, just simple shapes and this is where I decided to just use hands, I think the characters will need hands to make the viewer understand whats going on...
Below is my final little girl and boys, I can use the same hands and head for the group of boys, but I will be using slightly different bodies so the viewer can see the difference. Also below is the Red balloon, I wanted just a classic red balloon, the string will be drawn separately...

Below is the balloon seller, again, the same sort of shapes but this character is taller and larger (to show he is an adult)...
I drew a group of balloons for the seller (below). I drew them in groups of 2 and placed in separate layers so I would be able to move them round individually rather than the whole group when animating...
For the background I wanted a very simple skyline made up of shapes on Illustrator...


I then added a gradient...

When I added all the artwork to After effects I decided I really didn't like the gradient with all the simple shades of colour and shapes, I changed it to a plain Blue...

I then started the animation process in after effects. I imported all my Illustrator artwork, making sure I selected the settings to allow me to adjust the separate layers...

Firstly I imported the sound to the timeline. I cut my sound up using Soundtrack Pro and Adobe Soundbooth, I cut all of my sound before beginning the animation's to make sure I had the correct length of music with it sounding/ending ok.

I then started to animate and slowly but surely things started to come together....

I mainly used 'Position' and 'Rotation' in this animations with a few times using 'Scale' and 'Opacity'




Having a narrative in my animation made the process extremely time consuming, there is A LOT of keyframes and movement! Below is my first version of the piece...



I talked to my tutor about my animation and she suggested a few changes, such as, the boys having a little more movement playing with the ball, the girl pulling away the balloon from the seller needs to make more sense to the viewer and she shouldn't walk off so quickly at the end...

I tweeked my animation to what she said and it does look a lot better. I also had to re edit the music as it seemed to short for the animation....

THE RED BALLOON!

The Red Balloon is a short french film made in 1956. It is half an hour long and has little dialogue, it is exactly the type of thing I want to create in my animations. The story is about a red balloon which has a life of its own and follows a little boy around the streets of Paris.

The main plot:

"The film, which has a music score but almost no dialogue, tells of Pascal (Pascal Lamorisse), who, on his way to school one morning, discovers a large helium-filled red balloon.

As Pascal plays with his new found toy, he realizes the balloon has a mind and will of its own, and it begins to follow Pascal wherever he goes, at times floating outside his bedroom window as Pascal's grandmother won't allow it in the apartment.

The red balloon follows Pascal through the streets of Paris, and the pair draw inquisitive looks from adults and the envy of other children as they wander the streets. At one point the balloon enters Pascal's schoolroom, causing an uproar from the other students. The noise alerts the principal, who becomes angry with Pascal and locks him up until school is over. At another, Pascal and his balloon encounter a little girl (Sabine Lamorisse) with a blue balloon that also seems to have a mind of its own.

In their wanderings around the neighborhood, Pascal and the balloon encounter a gang of bullies, who are envious of Pascal's balloon, and they soon destroy his new friend.

The film ends as the other balloons in Paris come to Pascal's aid and take him on a cluster balloon ride over the city."

The New York Times review of the film...

Some more clips from the film...

The film is beautifully shot, some stills from the film are below, I won't be drawing detailed characters but I think it helps my research and my ideas looking into the film in detail...

First ideas...

Deciding what music I wanted to use really gave me ideas of what kind of animations I want to create. Firstly the Lemon Jelly songs... Watching their videos and looking at their artwork makes me want to create an almost mini music video to a snippet of one of their tracks. An abstract short piece of video art. Bright, intense colours and swirling, abstract shapes moving depending on how the music goes, for example, a heavy bass track would have heavy, bold shapes moving with it where as more of the classical piano music would have floaty light shapes...

I have decided that I want to use Yann Tiersen's music for my animations. At first I was only going to use it for one but I think I am going to link the 3 animations up in some way so will be using similar music. I wanted to have some kind of basic narrative in my animation and as they are only 15-20 seconds long I though a good idea would be to create a mini series, so, I will end up with 3 separate animations that go together.

His music is either really sad and dreary or happy and upbeat, its very very French with use of accordions, piano and violins along with toy pianos and xylophones. His music is similar to The Penguin Cafe Orchestra, their music is always used in short films/animations for adverts etc. Listening to this music put an idea in my head of a little girl walking around Paris. I want to base my animations on a simple story about a little girl and what she gets up to.

I started thinking more about this little girl character and Banksy's famous girl with balloon graffiti came into my head... He has a couple of versions, below....

I really like the idea of the little girl character carrying a balloon around with her, the story can mainly be based on this and what happens to her and the balloon... I know the main objective of this project isn't the narrative or detail but creating a simple narrative and characters and using them correctly with the right movement I think will work really well, i'd much rather have some kind of story line than just an abstract piece.

All about the music...

I want to set my short animations to snippets from songs. I have been thinking about what kind of music I want to use before what actual shapes/stories I want to create. I think the process of picking the music will give me different ideas and help 'set the scene' of what I want my animations to look like...

Firstly I thought of Lemon Jelly (Who I previously talked about in my blog and sketchbook) A few of their songs are below...

'In The Bath' The beginning of this track would be great for a short animation....

'The Slow Train' would also be great, simple shapes creating a train moving along a track

I actually found a video that someone made for uni that goes with this track...

'Nice weather for ducks' I really like the idea of using this for one of my films. The image of rubber yellow ducks comes to mind with big splashes of water. I found a project online that was made to go with this song, it was made using Photoshop...

The Clash... I thought would be cool to set a short animation too, short punchy punk songs could work well with fast moving changing shapes. Although 'Lose this skin' (below) very different from other Clash tracks I love and really want to use for one animation!

'Janie Jones' A snippet from this song would work really well with a fast paced animation...

Much like Janie Jones fast paced beats and lyrics the beginning of Elastica's 'Connection' would be brilliant for this...

The classical route...

I want at least one of my animations to be set with a classical soundtrack...

Clair de lune is one of favourite pieces of music, below is the music with a video someone has made which is actually quite inspiring for my project...

Ludovico Einaudi's music for This is England is also a beautiful music for a 'sad narrative' in one of my animations...

Yann Tiersen is a french musician who mainly writes music to accompany films, his soundtracks include Amelie and Goodbye Lenin. Some of his music is below...

Whilst looking at Yann Tiersen video's on YouTube I came across this short animation that accompanies one of his songs for the Amelie soundtrack, it is a beautiful piece...

That film 'The Piano' was made by 'Aniboom', I looked into more of their animations, some of them fantastic! They are nothing like the animations we are making but are definitely worth looking at. 'This animation is about your life' is another Aniboom film below...