Wednesday, 30 April 2014

Advert Claymation

I decided that on this claymation that it was going to be an advert. The subject I chose my advert to be on was Cyber Bullying. The reason I did this was because I personally think it is a serious matter and needed addressing in any way shape or form. I chose to portray the advert in claymation rather than drawing it because it would save me time so that I could either send more time on the models or more time editing the advert video to make it look more professional. After I had made the decision of what I was going to use in regards to either drawing out my idea, using claymation or cutouts and also the decision on what subject the advert would be based on, I  did a story board on paper of what was going to happen/what could possibly happen and then started making the models.

The first model I put together was the Female, carefully trying to sculpt the body, clothes and hair. I did the eyes separately because I didn't want them to be just two black dots on the face. So I took two small balls of white play-dough and cut out and eye shape, then gently placing two black dots into the white part and then two even smaller white dots to give the eyes a sense of glint.

Front of the Female model:                                                                    Back of the Female model:


The next model I made after the Female model was the laptop that she would use. At first I was thinking of ways to make it, so in the end I just flattened out a decent sized layer of grey play-dough and cut one square out; then measuring out another square using the original as a template. Then I pieced the two squares against each other and moulded both ends that were touching together. Making an L shape so it looked like the start of an open laptop. Following that, I then made another square but this time white and smaller so that I could use this as a blank screen. Placing it onto the grey square that would be the screen. On the other blank grey square, I used a scalpel to create what looked like keys for the laptop.











I then continued to create the next clay model. After creating the laptop, I went on to make a bed that she would sit on. I did this by getting a chunk of white clay and softening it by squashing it back and forth in the palm of my hands to give it warmth so that I could mould the clay into a square. Once I had moulded the clay into a square and smoothed it's edges, I then created pillows out of yellow clay. Using the same method (Squishing the clay between the palms of my hands to create warmth to mould it). When the clay was warm enough for me to mould and shape, I made two little yellow squares using them as pillows. Leading onto making the bed cover, I used the same method but this time with a red-ish orange piece of clay. Yet again, once it was warm enough for me to mould and shape, I flattened the large and thick-ish piece of clay onto the table and then placed the white clay bed onto it. Marking how big the bed was with a scalpel at each of it's edges and then removing the bed so that I could cut out a larger square so that the red-ish orange sheet of clay would fit the white bed. Cutting a quarter of the red-ish orange clay off and replacing it with the pillows.





















After doing this, I then made a little pill bottle out of the white clay I had left over from making the bed. I got literally a pinch of black clay and flattened it onto the table, cut out a small thin strip and then put it around the white bottle I had made. Yet again, I did this by making the clay warm to mould it. After this was done, everything I had to make was finished and ready to be filmed.
















Wednesday, 12 February 2014

Proposal for Advert.


Name: Claire Noble.

Date: Wednesday 12th February 2014

Format: The format of this proposal will be of an advert.

Sector (Marketing): Television Advertisements, Billboards and Buses.

Working Title: Cyber Bullying Advert.

Intended Audience and Age: My intended audience is teenagers. The reason it is aimed at teenagers is because a child wouldn't understand why someone would self harm or consume a bottle of pills, so I thought it best that the advert was aimed at teenagers.

Summary Of Content: A summary of my advert is that it will be about a girl on her Facebook account, posting something on her wall (Others news feed) about being stressed with everything and feeling pressure and some rude and unneeded comments are shown on her post. Making her feel worse and causing her to have a mental break down. She then goes to get pills that she's hid under her bed and takes as many as she can. After that there will be a shot were the bottle is on the floor and her hand is next to the bottle; her body limp on the floor. Then the end credits saying "Children should be able to live a life free from bullying and harassment. It's time that we all took a stand against this." 

Type of Media: The type of media I will be doing is claymation. The reason I am doing claymation is because it will be easier moving the clay figure about rather than trying to draw the figure perfectly on paper. This decision will safe me time and will allow me to add sound effects because of that free time.

Length of Product: The length of my product will be thirty seconds long which is the average time for an advertisement.

Legal and Ethnical considerations: This film may cause harm and offence due to the amount of violence, not suitable for children, and may have gambling in it.



Thursday, 30 January 2014

Making a Claymation video.

With Claymation, I've learn that you have to be careful with Morph's (Or anything you make with Play-Dough/Clay) arms, legs and head because it can be easily broken if twisted too far. In this blog, I'll explain how I made a Claymation in my Media lesson.

First of all, I gathered all my equipment up like always. My equipment consisted of my Play-dough/Clay Morph, a Sony hand held camera, a Firewire cable and a tripod. When I'd gotten all of the equipment that I needed, I set it all up (e.g. Put the Sony camera onto the tripod, stood up the tripod properly, plugged the FireWire into the iMac and the Sony camera and then placed Morph into the shot I wanted) and then opened iStopMotion to start taking shots one frame at a time. After finishing the shots I wanted, I saved it as "Morph and top hat joy" so that I could tell which iMovie video it was.
 


I then went onto Final Cut and used a Voice Over to sound a bit like Morph. I also used Voice Over to make it sound like he had actual footsteps (Footstep noises) so that it added more effect to the video. Once I had finished with Final Cut and saved it, I then Exported it to QuickTime Player and watched it again to see how my Claymation had turned out. Safe to say I was happy with it!



Finally, after I'd finished watching it through I uploaded it onto YouTube and renamed the video to "Sir Morph". The purple writing "Sir Morph" below is my video post on YouTube, feel free to put feedback on the Claymation!


Wednesday, 29 January 2014

Claymation.

Today in media, we were working with clay/play-dough and were asked to make Morph. Before we started making Morph we were shown how he looks originally, then we were given some orange/red play-dough which I squished and warmed up to mould it. After the play-dough was soft enough for me to mould, I started to shape out Morph's body by pinching bits of the play to make the head, arms, legs and nose. When I had finished shaping the body and moulding it out properly, I then added the eyes which consisted of two white blobs and two black blobs.

I then made a little top hat as a prop because I thought it would look funny and cute to add to Morph's look. With this, I had completely finished with Morph's play-dough model and took pictures of proof that this model was made entirely by me with no help making it.

I then took some equipment from the media equipment room. I took a Sony camera and firewire so that I could link the Sony camera up to the iMac and then I could use iStopMotion again to make Morph move; making a little clay animation. After I took the pictures on iStopMotion and then watched it back to see if I had made any mistakes, I saved and imported it onto Quicktime Player. This allows me to then upload it onto YouTube without any problems (Wrong format and such).

After importing it onto Quicktime Player , I uploaded it onto YouTube and then named the video "Top Hat Morph". With this, I had finished what I needed to do. Then I watched it over two times to make sure it ran smoothly. And sure enough it did. My work was finally finished.




Thursday, 16 January 2014

Drawn Animation

In this post, I will talk about how I used iStopMotion to create a flip book animation and how researching animation helped me to understand how they used to create animation in the olden days when they didn't have the technology that we have now.

First of all, I drew the image of what I wanted (which in my case would be a firework shooting up and then exploding) onto square pieces of scrap paper; being careful to trace it the best I possibly could. When I was finished drawing and tracing the image from the original piece of paper, I then used a scanner as the first experiment. As the images didn't come out as well as I wanted them to, I used another method. I took an animation rostrum, a sony camera and a firewire cable. Then following onto setting the equipment up (Turning the screw into the camera to hold it in place, then plugged the firewire into the camera and then plugged the other end into the Mac) and then searching for the application "iStopMotion" on the iMac; clicking on it and then setting it up so that it would be at twelve frames per second and then set the Preset at DV PAL.



After setting everything up and placing the Sony camera the way I wanted it, I started to take pictures on iStopMotion one picture at a time. Whilst doing this I had to make sure that the pictures were in/almost in the exact same place so I marked the animation rostrum with pencil when I placed my pictures on the rostrum's work space. I could see the next picture because you were allowed to turn the opacity down on the image on the screen. When I had finished taking the pictures of the "moving" image, I took the camera off of the animation rostrum and then unplugged the fire wire; placing them gently onto the other desk along with the animation rostrum. The images that came out were better than using the images from the scanner so I decided that I'd stick with this method and upload the video once I had finished tweaking it. I watched the video over and over again to see if I had made any mistakes (Fingers in the way of the picture, the firework moving too quick, the firework in a totally different place etc).


I had to then export it and then save the video as My iStopMotion Movie Export. I exported it twice just in case it didn't work the first time (I couldn't find it the first time so I exported it again).  Making sure that I saved it into the movies folder and then exported it. I then looked into my movies folder and found that both had exported into it so I watched both to see if they had changed in quality. It had only changed slightly and I chose to upload the second video because it seemed more clearer when I had saved it.


After doing all of this and finally finishing, I uploaded it onto YouTube and waited for it to upload. when it had uploaded, I named the video "Firework" and left a description that said "Drawn by myself, made on iStopMotion and then uploaded here. Enjoy!"