Final Animation

Seaside

In my final piece I have decided to improve on my “Body Paint” experiment. In the Peter Gabriel music video I was so taken with the way they had applied the technique, I felt this was the one to pursue. Because I was using my own hand this was limiting in my movement around the set and I had to spend quite some time considering how I would manage this. So with regard to directing and staging I finally came up with the idea of extending the set to about 80cm in length, this would then allow me to pan right to the upper shore. This freed up my left hand. Also by taking my hand out of the frame I also eliminated the problem of keeping the tide ebbing and flowing whilst I had the other characters moving around. I think as well as this being incredibly difficult to manage (I’d have to be painting the sea going out as well as coming in) it may also be too busy and distract from the story I was wanting to portray.

I used 2 point highlighting at either end of my set and excluded all natural light. I improved on my original set by adding sand so that wheels would also be able to make traces as would the 3 limpets bringing more life, movement and texture to the animation. The addition of the pebbles framed the right of the set and stopped the eye wandering off.

I wanted to shoot at a lower level than in my original so that the audience would feel more part of the scene and have some eye contact with the characters. In doing this I have also had to create a backdrop which I did in the form of some brown paper to give the impression of a sand dune, I was quite pleased with the colour match. As the upper shore was all rather neutral and natural in its tones I decided that limpets would benefit from different coloured eyes to make them stand out. 

I did experiment with some Claymation characters but even with a wire frame found it very difficult to create a satisfactory character with moveable limbs that would balance. This was when I turned to “Trap Door” to consider simpler forms. I knew that I may well be working with one hand and know how sticky plasticise can be so to use solid objects - the limpet shells – as a base to add features to felt like a rather good solution. I feel that by using the limpet shells I have created an element of surprise, the beach is all nature, pebbles, sand and molluscs, so it brings humour when their eyes appear.

It took me a couple of attempts to get the story boarding right as I was working out how the scene change would work, the characters major and minor movements, and having enough hands to do it all

The second story board is a much simplified version with basic moves.I found the timing needed adjusting on my first review of this animation, in order to have the right amount of frames throughout for smooth viewing. I had taken a one frame per move but because I had done so many frames for the tide, the second part of the animation with the limpets was way to short – in length of time - I really didn’t want the first scene of the ebbing and flowing tide to be any longer as it felt well timed as it was but the second scene with the limpets was too frantic and too short. My solution was to make twice as many images for the limpet scene. I copied them all so had 2 frames per move. When I re-ran this through Gifmaker it had a far better appearance.

Lost at Sea

So in my final piece I have begun with “slow-in” as I introduce the audience to the primary object in my animation - my hand. I really liked the way this also gave weight to my hand as it thudded down onto the sand. Like in the Peter Gabriel video where his face melts into its surroundings, my hand is gradually absorbed by its environment – the beach; the sand gradually creeping over my skin. Then with the use of multiple shades of colour, I introduce the sea, the tide comes in and recedes - I was able to duplicate the images I had taken of the sea coming in and then play them in reverse order to create the ebbing tide.

Now that I had set the scene, I am able to pan right to introduce more characters. I chose to pan to an empty shore in order to prepare and engage my audience in anticipation of the story to follow. Slowly in came 3 limpets acting quite naturally until they all turn to see another limpet on wheels, their characters are suddenly enhanced and given appeal by their big blinking eyes. I chose to have their eyes appear one at a time to enhance anticipation and to give direction to the audience. As well as needing the eyes to be big enough to be clearly seen, the use of big eyes is appealing and we as humans are naturally attracted to them.  It is a deep rooted thing, built in nurturing, babies have disproportionally large eyes and this is what we pick up on in the animation.

Having the 3 limpets move back gives centre stage to “wheels” as it skids in and pulls a wheelie then reverses and comes to a halt to bask smugly, momentarily unaware of what is to come. The 3 limpets add to the atmosphere as they blink and suddenly appear to have raised eyebrows in alarm of what is to come.

Now that the audience were aware that my hand was the sea, I decided it was fine for my hand to just appear as the ocean seeping away “Wheels” without any more of the flowing tide.

I hoped that the 3 limpets running off quickly at the end would be humorous simply because it is a ridiculous idea that limpets would fear the sea. It took me quite a while to realise that the numbers of the jpegs had anything to do with the order in which they loaded into Gifmaker. Because I was running about 30 copies in reverse it totally threw my sequences out. I worked it out after much frustration and renamed them all in the correct numerical order. On discovering that I needed to double up on the whole limpet scheme I needed to renumber again.

So the narrative is simply: It’s a day at the seaside, tide is doing its usual ebbing and flowing. Limpets are doing their usual scuttling around till the crazy new kid on the beach turns up. He is so busy showing off his new accessories he forgets where he is and is swept away.