The Soundtrack for Fate of the Cryptid

The soundtrack was created in Apple Garage Band. I put the edited Cryptid movie into Garage band and added a software instrument - I used two instruments in the soundtrack: the Floating Embers keyboard sound (because it's simple and requires little rhythm) and a single piano chord for the final shot. I then exported the clip by selecting 'Share' and 'Export Movie to Disk.'

I think the soundtrack adds to the negative feel of the film. It makes it seem less tedious and more endurable to watch.

The Fate of The Cryptid

The cryptid creature was created using crude plasticine, so it was made to look like a worm to make it easy to animate with. It is a simple sausage shape with a rounded nose and two spherical eyes, a mouth was made but not designed to move.
The animations were made using Apple iStopMotion. There were two 10 second animations in total. Each clip was created by moving the puppet slightly for every frame of the animation and take a photo to insert into the sequence.
The movie was edited in Apple iMovie, using the title and transition effects (which were harder to use than Adobe Premiere). I imported the two files into the programme and put them into it's excuse for a timeline (though a more advanced version was available) and chose an opening and closing title. I cut a clip from the first animation and cropped it, the clip was then edited to make it appear darker. The final shot fades to black and white, done with a cross dissolve and slowed down by 25%.

the Word

the word is a portmanteau of 'worm' and 'turd'

Art Clokey

Clokey was born in . He began making animations in 1953, beginning with Gumbasia: an experimental film created as a parody of Disney's Fantasia. From Gumbasia sprung Gumby: the green Plasticine model whom Clokey is most famous for creating.

Gumby animations began in the late 1950s, they continued right through to Clokey's death in 2010. The character became really famous in 1982, when Eddie Murphy voiced the character in a number of Saturday Night Live sketches. It was this rise in fame that gave way to Gumby: The Movie in 1995. It is possible that Gumby inspired the, slightly later, Morph animations by Peter Lord - a great many themes are brought through from Gumby into that character.

The significance of Clokey is his early experiments with clay animation. Though he definately wasn't the first to use clay to animate characters; - he was a pioneer who, without him, Claymation would not be the same today.

Pixilation

The use of live actors in a stop motion sequence.

A classic example of this is is in the Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb, in which actors are animated using stop motion techniques and integrated with claymation clips, notably, the film becomes less jumpy as it progresses and the animation gets much smoother (probably due to the production team being so used to the setup)-

                                              The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb
Pixilation is also used in some of the early types of film, when film cameras were not available, actors had to use pixilation to move around in the shot

Really Early Animation

Phenakistoscope

An early animation technique, first pioneered by Greek mathematician: Euclid, and later by Newton; the Phenakistoscope was only fully realised in 1829 by Joseph Plateau. It could only be used by one person at a time, the user would spin the disk near their eyes and facing a mirror, so that they could look through the slits and watch the animation in the reflection.

the Zoetrope

Often used as a child's toy, the Zoetrope was invented around 180 AD, it was developed in 1833 in Britain by William George Horner and commercially released in Britain and the US. It works by spinning a drum with slits and frames of an animated loop spaced inside it, when a viewer looks through one of the slits, they can see the animation. Some subway stations have animation frames painted on the walls, so that passengers on trains could watch the animation while traveling at high speed. The world's largest zoetrope was made by Sony, it features as the subject of animation Kaka

1960s and 70s Cartoons in Britain

Yellow Submarine

Released in 1968, it was the first major Hollywood movie to feature the limited animation. The first movie to experiment with limited animation was 'the Dover Boys:' a Merry Melodies cartoon, the style would only be used in short films or TV. Limited cell animation was used considerably throughout the film although it was mixed with other limited forms like in the Eleanor Rigby sequence, where animators coloured black and white photograph cut-outs and moved them frame by frame (the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's animations in Do Not Adjust Your Set and Monty Python). Notably the film greatly contrasts the 'Disney' style animated films which existed before. Although the movie was American made, it features all British characters, settings and was partly produced in Britain. George Dunning, who previously produced the Beatles Animated Series in America, directed the overall film (with many individual sequences directed by Bob Balser and Jack Stokes). Though the animation style was similar to that of Warner Bros. -the design of the characters and scenery give the film it's recognition, derived from Heinz Edlemann's concepts, giving it the opportunity to add surrealistic elements.
 

Jamie and the Magic Torch

The show ran from 1976 to 1979 and was written and narrated by Brian Trueman, who went on to write Dangermouse and Count Duckula in the 80s and 90s. The programme followed Jamie and dog: Wordsworth on their adventures in Cuckoo Land. The pair would often meet with psychedelic characters like Officer Gotcha who always rode a unicycle, ate truncheons and was always chasing Yoo Hoo Bird, in fact, many characters were on wheels and some never moved at all. All characters but Wordsworth didn't move their mouths when they spoke either, another method of limited animation.
 

Bod

Bod ran up to 1984, but started in 1975- although there are only thirteen episodes. It was very basic, one voiceover and no backgrounds- the characters themselves look like they have been drawn at microscopic level and scaled up. The one factor which makes it so memorable is that each character had their own score, and each of those are now retro classics. Bod is a boy (although he is bald and wears a dress).
 

Willo the Wisp

Willo the Wisp was created in 1981. Written and directed by Nick Spargo, it followed the tradition of having one voiceover for narration and the voices of all the characters. Willo the Wisp was particularly famous for it's voiceover: Kenneth Williams, popular with adults for being in the 'Carry On' films since the 50s. Willo the Wisp was a ghost charicature of Williams, notably the character of Willo the Wisp narrated the story (instead of an unseen narrator). The characters themselves were very popular with all ages; although the plot would be aimed at children, the jokes outlined in them could also be enjoyed by adults. Mavis Cruet the overweight old fairy and Arthur the cockney caterpillar were the shows main characters. The villain was called Evil Edna, a witch in the form of an old television who would zap people with her aerials. Other recurring characters include 'the Moog' a dim witted dog, a clever cat oddly named: 'Carwash,' and 'the Beast'- similar to 'Beauty and the Beast,' Edna made Prince Humbart the Handsome into a beast because he bumped into her and because he had a lisp.

The show was revived in 2005 with some small changes: Marvis was now slightly slimmer, Willo no longer looked like Kenneth Williams and, most importantly, Evil Edna was a modern flat-screen TV who moved arround on a tall, wheeled stand.

the Clangers

Soon for a remake, the Clangers was a series which ran from 1969 to 1974. It featured a planet on which Clangers lived in craters protected by dustbin lids, the Clangers were knitted and spoke only in 'alien' language (produced by reading the script into a Swanee whistle). The series was so well thought out that the Clangers themselves, communicate via Nuclear Magnetic Resonance because they live in the vacuum of space but they have been translated into whistle for human audiences. The fact that they communicated like this meant that the script the Clanger voiceovers read often included swearing (only audible as a whistle), the script read by the narrator didn't feature swearing... Because it was a children's programme.

In addition to these were shows like: Bagpuss, Trumpton (et al), Crystal Tips and Alistair, and Mary, Mungo and Migie. All of the above shows featured only one voice: the narrator, which was a cheap alternative to having each character individually voiced.