Response to Feedback

I put the video on Padlet to get feedback: http://padlet.com/tjmov16/srtudz8frgc
I do agree with what people have said: 'The structure of the buildings are fantastic' - I put a lot of effort into making the different houses with their individual details and I am very pleased with the way they look.
I do not agree that this is a professional looking animation, though I did animate it professionally, with artificial white light and a white backdrop to perform as the sky. I do not think it looks professional because the first 1000 images were test shots and the lighting changes slightly on all the alternate frames of the long shots (which I cut from the rendered film).
Overall, though most of it is a smooth animation, I am not entirely pleased with the end result. Though the buildings do look pretty good.

My Animation

Barbara

This is my animation. I am not particularly pleased with the way it has turned out as the animation is not how I planned it to be.
I animated Barbara over 3 days, amounting to 2065 frames for the overall animation (some test shots).
As the iMacs we were working on and the shared area could not hold the 15 GB of photographs in their raw sizes (large), I had to import the first 1000 (most of which were test shots) onto the computer and animate 20 images at a time in iStomMotion. When I imported the images into iStopMotion the system crashed. I tried multiple methods of animating the 1000 images, such as moving to other computers and using different software but the computers still crashed.
I did not have time to re-size the images at home, which I realise may have worked better on the machines, and the computers in college could not function well enough to process the images to re-size them.
On some of the frames, the puppet had to be supported, so I had to individually airbrush each shot in Photoshop.

Monty Python

I decided to turn back to my original idea of creating a Terry Gilliam style animation using cut-outs. I initially wanted to help a friend on his animation but I took too much control over the project that it became my own and I feel I may have wasted his time. I created some shapes in Photoshop out of images found on Google (which I had edited the shape and colours of to replicate the Monty Python cartoons). Me and my friend spent a day trying to print the images as all the printers we tried were either b/w or broken, I cut out all the images and put them in the right shapes to resemble characters with different sections so as to operate the puppets without using too many replacements.

When I animated the sequence, we had to delete some work on the Mac to save the animation (though the whole animation wasn't very large and only lasted about 50 seconds). I animated it by moving each cutout a piece at a time for every frame in the movie, I had to concern the 3D environment in the 2D animation which can be difficult when animating one moving object behind a stationary cutout.
The animation itself I was very pleased by, I may even say it was the best animation I had ever done despite the low camera quality and lack of sound (to be added). The animation followed a man with the face of a friend of ours, veiny hands and woman's legs wearing a large black coat walking into shot. The man had magenta skin and made three loud chicken noises before laying a large oversized egg which propelled the character into the air and out of shot. The egg was still but occasionally wobbled and then cracked open (the cracks were drawn using a biro pen). When the egg shattered, an even larger head (of another friend) emerged with stumpy baby legs and sidestepped out of shot while making odd animal noises with it's mouth. The black coated man flew through the sky and knocked down a
few clouds as if they were held up by string (the smoothness of the animation, particularly in the way the head creature walked and squawked and as the clouds fell over was impressive even to me). The man crashed down in the path of the head creature, which walked up to the man and ate his head and shoulder before himself collapsing to the ground. It was the quality of the animation in the last scene alone that I was particularly impressed by - the way the man landed, the head walked and the way it chewed it's food (and the bite marks left on the man).
Unfortunately after i had rendered the file into a playable video format, someone deleted both the animation and the exported movie at some point not long after, I don't know who and why but it meant that I could no longer use my new animation.

Barbara (again)

I took the animated first 1000 test shots and edited them into a short 40 second short film using Adobe Premiere. I did not have any sound for the animation because I didn't think I would be using it, so I just rendered some royalty free music over the edit, added some sound effects (not as much as was needed) and recorded the voice of the character shouting Barbara (which the voice actor had forgot, meaning the final result is only a guess at the voice and not the actual voice itself).
The reason the character of Barbara has such huge legs is because the man is shouting 'Barbara! You're taller than me!' among other insults and various pines.

The Puppet

I used wire to create the basic armature for the puppet. It stands about 6" tall as it is meant to be a short character who is jealous of Barbera's height.
The design of the character is based loosely on the paddington bear puppet with influence from Tim Burton's animations. The design choice came about as in my previous animation project: 'Being fr the Benefit of Mr. Kite!' (abandoned) the characters were initially inspired by the artistic style of Nick Park and Aardman Animations but I decided to alter them by using fabric to produce certain clothing, like coats or scarves - eventually some characters consisted entirely of material clothing with plasticine used only for flesh.

The plasticine I used was Newplast, I used this as it is a high quality product and is highly reliable. It is not too oily and therefore gives a matte look and is easy to animate. It is also the sole brand used by Aardman animations among many other industry professionals.

Unlike other puppets I've made, I produced this one completely naked and built the costume up around it.
The costume is a pinstripe suit, recycled from an old pinstripe skirt and the shirt is made from curtain material. I made four different shapes for the shirt and glued them onto the torso. The trousers are sewn, I made the two legs longer than the legs of the puppet to emphasise his lack of height. The trousers were glued to the back and hidden under the shirt. The blazer was also sewn, the edges were glued to save time but the shoulders and arms were joined with needle and thread. Once dressed, the character looked convincing.

Set Update

 Since the initial design for the set, I have made some changes. Though I still want the animation to take place on a street; I want to make it a completely white street.

This comes after seeing the sets used in the original Paddington Bear series, where they would be completely white (presumably made from foam-board or card) to save time and money.

I think that having a plain white set with only the minor details such as windows and doors to be drawn with pen and ink is a much better idea than trying to replicate an actual street using printed cartridge paper and cardboard cutouts. I think this because not only will it be a direct reference to Paddington Bear, but it will also be a lot cheaper to produce and it will be more aesthetically pleasing.

I am making the set from cardboard with sheets of thick A4 paper stuck on using strong sticky-back tape (like what they used to tell you to use in Blue Peter all the time). Measurements for windows and doors are marked out thinly with a pencil and then drawn on with pen. The windowsill and doorstep are made using cardboard cutouts with the edges drawn in pen also, this gives them a shadow which in turn gives the set more depth.

The details are drawn roughly and with crude lines with little care for neatness, itself reminiscent of the artwork by Tim Burton and low budget cartoons of the 1960s-90s.

The Main action I wanted to take place on some steps outside the house. The steps were made from a thin cardboard with paper stuck to the alternate side where the measurements were marked out. They were held together with masking tape and glued on the inside with hot glue, the result is better than I expected as I took my time particularly on the stairs.

The door is made with a thicker cardboard, I cut the indents with a scalpel and glued paper to the back to make it 3D. The handle consisted of two cardboard pieces which were carefully cut to scale. All the edges were drawn with pen so as not to make it out of place with the rest of the set.

Five additional smaller houses were made and glued to cardboard boxes, the smaller houses give a forced perspective making the street look larger than it actually is.

To the main houses I have added three extra windows on the second level and I added a roof also

Animation Background

I want the street set to look similar to this

I wanted the character to be begging from the street so I drew a sketch of how I wanted it to look with plans of the materials I need and the size of the set parts. I think if I do the animation at home rather than in-college, I can easily control the lighting and will have more control over the storage of the plasticine character and the set. I also have a large collection of props and set pieces from previous animations, along with additional characters I can use in the background and can use to make the set larger.

Animation Idea

My Ideas

I want to animate 'Barbara,' an impression my brother does about someone who gets locked out of her home and begs for the love of Barbara. I plan to animate this with claymation as I have made dozens of plasticine models in the past and spent 3 years planning on a claymation series (until I scrapped it). The animation would take place on a street, outside a front-door. It would be 30-60 seconds in length and would feature only a voice recording of the Barbara impression as performed by my brother. The character would be produced much in the style of the Wallace and Gromit characters (to draw a similarity, as I will be using my own artistic style) - the mouth replacements would be based on Rex the Runt as this would be easier and quicker to use.

My second idea would be to animate a section from a podcast / radio show / stand-up performance, much the way that Chris Salt does with Lego. I would either animate this with Claymation or Lego - I could animate a section of the Adam and Joe podcast or a part of an Eddie Izzard performance, like the famous Lego Star Wars Canteen sketch.

Alternately, I would like to try cut-out animation and produce a sketch somewhat similar to Terry Gilliam's from the 60s, 70s and 80s - though I would prefer to use plasticine as I have had more experience using it.

Stop Motion Animation

This is my blog on the history of stop motion animation, it ranges from the earliest forms of animation, through it's developments in the 20th century to the present day. It features different forms of Stop Motion including; pixilation (the use of human puppets in animation), Time-Lapse, Cell and Claymation.

The Persistance of Vision

The persistance of vision is the rate at which the brain perceives motion.
For the human brain, the persistance of vision is 12 frames per second (though the typical video is 24fps or more - which fools the audience into believing the movie is real).

Cutout Animation

The first major movie animations were produced by Lotte Reiniger, she used a technique called cutout animation which used cutout character torsos with separate limbs which were arranged and animated in much the way stop-motion is: by taking a photograph each frame and moving the cutouts to emulate motion.
Many 60s-70s children's cartoons were animated with cutouts: Mary Mungo and Midge, Crystal Tips and Alistair as well as the original series of Captain Pugwash and Sir Prancelot, not forgetting Ivor the Engine or Noggin the Nogg.

Terry Gilliam

When I think of cutout animation, I think of Terry Gilliam. The famous movie director and comedian started out producing cutout animations for Do Not Adjust Your Set after previously working on photo strips for Help! magazine. Working on the show he began on what would be the early blueprint for the Monty Python Cartoons which he worked on while also writing and acting in the live action sketches. Monty Python was formed from a small number of comedians which had worked on Do Not Adjust Your Set and I'm Sorry I'll Read It Again. The group produced the television show: Monty Python's Flying Circus as well as four movies and a small number of live shows when the group occasionally reformed.

Gilliam's animations are well known for their use of old stock imagery, usually recoloured and often embellished by cutting images out and sticking them to others or redrawing certain parts - much the way that Cyriak does now. The use of stock imagery combined with Gilliam's own drawing work provided the surreal look the show was themed upon. It also allowed for an easy and quick method of animation which in turn added to the smoothness and surreal element of the show; for instance, an entire scene could be animated in such a way that it blends perfectly into the next live action scene.

Although Gilliam no longer produces cutout animations, references to his early work crop up all around, in one of his recent films: the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus; a huge similarity can be made to his cartoons, most notably in the Jude Law dream sequence - which features dancing policemen in skirts, a giant policeman's head, and lots of Russians running under the dress of a giant old lady who's head comes off to reveal she is actually a machine being operated by the devil.

South Park

Having been inspired by Gilliam, Trey Parker and Matt Stone created South Park. Though the original sketches and pilot episode were created using traditional cutout stop motion techniques, the programme is actually animated digitally. The use of digital animation is much quicker to that of stop motion and despite being made digitally, it still retains the image of a cutout animation.

The series started in 1997 and is still ongoing with a huge fan following, though it's jokes are often controversial and in many cases offensive.

Time Lapse

Time Lapse is the animation of a sequence of photos or videos taken at regularly spaced intervals to show the progression of a long period of time in a short film. The technique is to use the photos in the same method as a regular animation of around 12-24fps. Short time lapses can be done by speeding up a regular paced video, though longer time lapses use photographs. The typical time lapse to use video would be the speeding up of people in a busy environment, possibly the movements of traffic, or the speeded up drawing/editing of a picture.

The decision to use video and the size of the interval between shots is entirely dependant upon how much of the shot will change in that time and how long you plan to show in the time lapse. For the blooming of a flower, intervals can last anywhere between 5 minutes at a time and 15; for the progression of a day, anywhere between 5 and 30 minutes; for a lifetime in time lapse, it could be a day, a week, a month or even a year.

Post 90s Animation

The Simpsons et al

The first episode of the full series of the Simpsons was broadcast the Christmas of 1989. The series gained popularity and is now one of the most famous cartoon series in the world. It is best known for it's adult humor which makes it appeal to teens and older - actually, that's a lie: it's best known for it's yellow skinned characters which were coloured so as they would be easily identified when seen on-screen. In 2007 a feature length movie was produced and coaxed the production of the series into using digitally drawn cells instead of the scanned plastic cells they had insisted on using prior, when most other cartoon series had moved onto digital such as Futurama and Family Guy, which were also produced by Fox and both were aimed at an adult audience.
Family Guy was aimed at a much older audience. It started as a couple of pilots called Life of Larry and Larry and Steve which were broadcast on Cartoon Network in the mid 90s. Family Guy was first shown on TV in 1999 and has since been one of the most successful shows made by Fox - in the UK, it is constantly the most watched programme on BBC3. Unlike the Simpsons, it focused mainly on adult themes and references, though the plot-line often remained simple and light - often evident in it's somewhat childish characters.
Futurama was produced by Rough Draft Studios, one of the first major computer based cell animation companies to produce a long running series. Futurama began in 1999, the most notable aspect of the show is it's use of 3D animation which is used in such a way as to replicate 2D animation. The original run was cancelled but a number of straight to DVD and eventually broadcast movies were produced and it still has a strong audience, with it's final season having aired in 2013 - the final episode: 'Meanwhile' has received critical acclaim.

Aardman Animations

The company was founded in 1972 by Peter Lord and David Sproxton. The company rose to fame when they animated the character: Morph for the Tony Hart show, HartBeat. In 1989, A Grand Day Out; the first Wallace & Gromit film was broadcast on channel 4, the subsequent films were produced with BBC funding and featured the animation and design talents of Nick Park. The series contained a number of adult references and is still popular today. Although Aardman produces all types of animation, they are best known for their claymation - with successful family films like Chicken Run and The Pirates! Aside from family and child orientated animation, Aardman is also known for what it calls it's 'Dark Side' - Angry Kid uses real life actors as it's puppets with masks forming as the replacements; Rex the Runt, this is a claymation aimed at teens and older which is made to look two dimensional despite the 3D characters and set, it also features numerous comedic references to other Aardman animations which is sometimes evident in their other films.

Cartoon Network Studios

Cartoon Network launched in 1992, after 4 years of development following the success of Nickelodeon in the late 70s and 80s. To start, the network mainly broadcast repeats of old Time & Warner cartoons and MGM cartoons, having bought out Hanna-Barbera. It started out producing it's own shows when Nickelodeon began commissioning series like Rugrats and Ren & Stimpy.
By the mid to late 90s, shows like Ed, Edd and Eddy and Dexter's Laboratory - some of their most successful series. These (among others) used a very surreal, contemporary style of drawing in it's animations which made them quicker and easier to produce.
As well as it's typical child orientated content, the network is famous for making animations which have an adult audience. Cartoon Network often released programmes for adults in it's late night slots where previously would be black and white movies; this would eventually spawn the Adult Swim channel - which was entirely devoted to cartoons for an older audience, like Family Guy and Futurama which featured when Fox cancelled their original run, along with it's own content like Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

Cartoon Network is best known for producing cartoons aimed at both adults and children: more recently - Adventure Time, Regular Show and The Amazing World of Gumball (produced by Cartoon Network Development Studio Europe, based in London). All these shows have humor shared by both adults and children; while they may not have inappropriate language or themes, they are redundant of the need to directly educate or baffle children with action and suspense. The style of these three shows are very different to each other; Regular Show uses dull colours and a hand drawn, 2D quality where the characters have long, thin limbs and the series features countless references to the 1980s. Adventure Time has a brighter, more naive and child-friendly design which sometimes contradicts it's themes and caracters which are often dark and twisted in a comedic and often ironically childish manor. The Animation, although digital, still remains traditional cell (or layer) animation, aside from the famous guest episode by David OReilly. The Amazing World of Gumball uses a miss-mash of animatic styles to create it's 'amazing world,' the environment which surrounds the characters is 2D yet consists mainly of crudely photoshopped 3D stock imagery to give it a unique fabricated landscape. The use of colour is more boldly used than Adventure Time, with the main character: a cat, having bright blue fur - something reminiscent of Henry's Cat and the Pink Panther. Other, tertiary and minor characters are animated using a variety of styles to complement the cartoon world - 3D characters, such as a banana, a T-Rex and a Monkey wearing a dress (voiced by Sandra Dickinson) as well as conventional 2D characters which are animated digitally in a similar way to cut-out animation, with layers of pre-drawn templates mixed traditional tweening methods.

The Internet

With the rise of computers in the last 20-30 years and the introduction of the internet (nice isn't it?) - the number of independent animators and animation companies has grew rapidly. Animation is no-longer just for children and on sites like YouTube and Vimeo, users can subscribe and watch all their favourite animations from their favourite creators for free.

David Oreilly (who animated the latter Adventur Time clip) is perhaps best known for his internet short: The External World; wherein, the animator has a stripped back, basic use of 3D animation in order to cause the characters and the film itself feel generally quite creepy - given also that a lot of the themes are of a very grim nature, including suicide, sex and abuse (making it a truly dark comedy). The film also features a number of vocal talents such as Julian Barratt and Adam Buxton.

Tom Ridgewell: not an animator, but a writer. He manages 'Eddsworld' after it's main contributor: Edd Gould, died. Gould had been making animated shorts since 2003 using Flash on his computer and uploading them to NewGrounds - eventually forming the Eddsworld series which followed him and his friends as they have childish and outrageous adventures and manage to drain the atmosphere with their key characteristics, whether it be anger, violence or vanity. After Gould's death in 2012, the series has been taken over by friends and fellow animators - the current series is animated by Paul Ter Voorde (who often makes cameos as a sarcastic army-type who sometimes only subtly appears in the background). Although there is a distinctive difference between Gould and Voorde's drawing style, the animation remains the same. Voorde has adopted some of Gould's drawing style (leaving in overlapping lines and keeping the look of characters sloppy and hand-drawn) even to the extent of the 'Rhubarb and Custard effect.' 

Ridgewell has worked with a number of animators on various projects - the most famous of which is asdfmovie. asdfmovie began in 2008 as an animated version of a comic he had drawn, featuring the voices of him and his friend Christopher Bingham (in the above Aardman documentary). The short gained popularity, especially with the release of asdfmovie2 (animated by Gould) and the series kicked off; it is now in it's 7th sequel with 7 additional supplementary shorts. The style of asdfmovie is difficult to pinpoint as it is very similar to the pre-existing Cyanid and Happiness cartoons while also being true to Ridgewell's own drawing style (search for Bing and Spamcat) - their most distinguishing characteristic is their lack of colour which itself makes colours stand out on screen. The humour is somewhat childish and 'random' meaning that it can be enjoyed by audiences of all ages for the unexpected turn of events each sketch takes.

Another (of the hundreds) animator is Harry Partridge, who uses a very hand-drawn classic cell animation style, like Disney or Warner Bros. but, again, with adult content often featuring anti-climaxes which avoid the expectation of the audience while also bringing them often to a more realistic ending (though this is not the case with Dr. Bees).
In addition there's Oli Putland, twho typically uses claymation in his cartoons. The characters in these stand out because of their shapes and sizes - this being that they are always animated with thin 2D plasticine shapes and are superimposed into the shot, allowing for surrealistically contorted creatures you would usually find in cell animations. The animator also produces a number of cell animations - the video for Steal This Song by Mitch Benn, for example, in which he adopts the style of certain 60s cartoons, particularly the Beatles.

Cyriak uses a combination of video clips and photos in his animations. Much like Terry Gilliam, he uses a similar cut-out animation style - only they are animated using Adobe After Effects, which means they can be more complicated and outlandish. Most famous for his distortions of animals and body parts, he also produces more traditional looking animations like Adam Buxton's Counting Song - which is animated much like the rest of his work but with a different style. The most famous of Cyriac's cartoons are actually the most simple - 2010's 'Because' featured thousand of 3D renditions of his face forming different patterns and shapes which all revolved around each other and eventually formed a rocket which propelled itself out of the animator's computer, whereas Cows & Cows & Cows only had cows morphing into other cows and rearranging their size and shape.