'The Little Anglerfish' by Kerry-Ann Smith

For our previous project Kerry wrote and illustrated a complete children's book titled 'The Little Anglerfish'. You can see it and read the story on Kerry's flickrstream here. As I'm sure you will agree Kerry is a highly talented illustrator, there are so many beautiful aspects of her illustrations from the deep watery feel of her use of inks mixed with salt and bleach to the rendering of the shoal of silvery fish.

Kerry's original story was far too long and complex to make into a 60 second animation, so she adapted it for this animation project. The animation has the same moral, the ugly anglerfish is rejected and finally accepted by the shoal of silvery fish, in her second retelling Kerry has refined the ideas to a more sophisticated, less obvious story. However what Kerry has exploited most cleverly for this animation is the movement of the fish swimming. Out of all the student's work Kerry has really understood and run with the idea of giving her illustrations movement and life. You can see Kerry's full storyboard and animatic on her Flickrstream. Even the quick, rough sketches on the storyboard show the viewer exactly how these fish will move across the screen.

Below are the storyboard instructions;

1. Background fades from black and the anglerfish begins swimming upwards (6 seconds)

2. Flicks to new shot, anglerfish swims up into it and stops, looks slightly left of camera (use a still hold) fish appear in the background (2 seconds)

3. Turns to face the shoal as they swims closer (fish should reflect light as they swim)

4. Shoal swims along (use whooshing sound for each curve) (3 seconds)

5. Lure grows brighter, anglerfish swims quickly off shot (2 seconds)

6. Shoal swimming slowly, anglerfish swims up below them

7. The shoal swims quickly away (6 & 7, 3 seconds)

8.Lure dims and sinks, anglerfish swims downwards after them (2 seconds)

9. As anglerfish approaches the shoal splits and darts behind him

10. Anglerfish swims after them and shoal dodges behind them (9 & 10, 6 seconds)

11. Shoal: foreground. Anglerfish: background. Swims into foreground and the shoal disperses (2-3 seconds)

12. Anglerfish stops, lure fully dims and droops down (2 seconds)

13. (zoomed out) Shoal swims away and then stops and faces anglerfish (2-3 seconds)

14. Fish stop and turn back to face anglerfish, then swim back over to him (2 seconds)

15. Fish begin to circle anglerfish, lure begins to light up (2 seconds)

16. Shoal swims in a loop around him. Anglerfish looks up, lure is glowing bright (6 seconds)

17. Anglerfish swims with the shoal (2 seconds)

Kerry hopes to go on to study illustration and/or animation at degree level, hands up anyone out there who would like to give her a place!

'Bliiink' by Lucy Dobin

Lucy's story developed from two drawings made at the Jersey Museum, one of a stuffed, staring rabbit and one of a stuffed, staring owl. Of course this developed into a staring contest as a Mexican Standoff, with a Cactus judge. You can see the development of Lucy's drawings and her first test animatic on her Flickrstream here.

Her intended audience was older children up to OAP's, this is such a funny story that I'm sure most people would enjoy it. My favourite part is the withered, drooping cactus at the end. Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

1. Rabbit walks down the road (footstep noise) (3 seconds)
2. Owl walks down the opposite side of the road (footsteps) (3 seconds)
3. Rabbit stops and turns to see Owl (camera looking over Owl's shoulder to see from his point of view)
A tumble weed rolls past (whistling wind noise) (3 seconds)
4. Swap sides to see Owl on the other side of the road (camera looking over Rabbit's shoulder to see from his point of view) (2 seconds)
5. Zoom in on the eyes (2 seconds)
6. Both characters jump off the boardwalk and just stare. The Cactus judge appears (camera pans out to show the whole setting) Sun slowly sets (5 seconds)
7. They get a bit more angry with each other, Cactus looks worried (camera pans in even further, close-up on main characters) ( 1-2 seconds)
8. Owl and Rabbit start to shake their eyes start to water, (camera pans in more to show how much they are trying not to blink) (3 seconds)
9. Rabbit gets very angry and shouts "BLIIINK" Owl and Cactus look shocked. Sun continues to set. (3-4 seconds)
10. Night time, moon rises, Cactus falls asleep. Rabbit and Owl keep staring. (3 seconds)
11. Buildings start to crumble and fall down (keep switching from day to night, very fast) (7 seconds)
12. Clock hands moving around fast, pages flying off the calender (wooshing sound) (4 seconds)
13. Owl and Rabbit old and bearded now. Buildings keep crumbling. Keep switching from day to night (6 seconds)
14. All that is left of Owl and Rabbit are skeletons (fade to black after 7 seconds)

The animation is set to the music of 'The Good, The Bad & The Ugly'. View Lucy's animatic here, I defy you not to be humming this music for the rest of the day.

Lotte Reiniger's animations

After researching Lotte Reiniger and watching a few more of her animations on Youtube, I came across a pretty old looking but interesting video showing the process of making a cut-out silhouette animation. You can find the video here.

Because of the silhouette technique Lotte Reiniger has used to animation her short stories, the characters lack facial expressions. Instead, the characters are only identified by their appearance, and emotion and expression is communicated through the movements of the figures. I think this is a good example of how simple animations can be made effective and tell a narrative without the need for excessive detail.

Boiling animation

Boiling is the name for the uneven and wobbly lines in animation drawn by hand. Most animators dont like the effect of boiling and try to avoid it, but a few animators do like it, one of the best examples of boiling animation i found was of the old cartoon 'roobarb and custard' created by Bob Godfrey.

You make boiling animation by drawing out the scene you want, then trying to draw it out again as similar as you can make it a few more times, and then putting all the images together on a loop. Because the images are never going to be exactly the same you are always going to get the boiling effect.

Here is a website that explains boiling animation a bit more. http://www.animationpost.co.uk/notes2/wobble.htm

lucy

my research

this post is some of my research for an animation pproject im doing in college.
After all the historical research we had to look at, i looked mainly at 2 artists; David Ellis and blublu.

 

blu does animations but on walls and floors with paint so it looks like his creatures and people are walking all over buildings.  

Ellis does timelapses of his own work but layers peice ontop of peice so he ends up with a painting but underneath could be say 10 others.

They also did a collaboration piece together which covers the whole of a derelict building. its really nice to see the bright colours and soft shapes of david ellis and the harsh black and white

creatures of blu together in animation. 

also thinking about target audiences led me to think about the relationship between skateboarding and art.

 click on the image for a bigger version if you want to read it.

luka.

Alice In Wonderland

I would like to share another favourite animator, Jan Svankmajer . His work will give you the shivers.

Now I love Disney’s version of Alice in Wonderland as much as the next person, but that’s the issue, most people only know Disney’s Alice. Jan Svankmajer has interpreted this classic story in a most frightening and peculiar way, watch it, you’ll never forget it (and you’ll never see the Disney version in the same way again).

See a clip of Jan Svankmajer’s Alice here.

And if you liked that you like the Brothers Quaye too, check out their work here.

Let me know what you think, Joanna

Animagika

Paper Cinema

Lotte Reiniger, Cinderella

I had a gobsmacking evening of Animagika at the Branchage Film Festival last month, watching a Paper Cinema performance and a Lotte Reiniger screening of Cinderella accompanied by Amiina.

Paper Cinema is illustrated and performed by Nic Rawling. He makes hundreds of beautiful pen and ink drawings, drawings of pirates, drunks, children on bicycles chasing trains, girls transforming into birds. These are cut out and stuck onto cornflake packets with lollypop stick handles. Nic works with another puppeteer, together they work through the pile of illustrations, wiggling them about and shooting them backwards and forwards in front of a camera that projects onto a big screen. At the Animagika night the film was projected onto a huge screen on the Opera House stage and an amazing musician sat with them improvising music to the story as it played out onto the screen.

It was truly entrancing to watch the story unfold and to be able to see the puppeteers working at the same time. The handmade, hand manipulated drawings reminded me of the early television animation of my childhood, Bod and Mr Benn.

Watch Paper Cinema and Kora present King Pest here.

Watch Bod here.

Watch Mr Benn here.

Lotte Reiniger made her animation of Cinderella in 1922, she was a pioneer of twentieth century animation and made the first ever full length animated film.

She worked in black and white silhouette cutout animation inspired by Eastern European traditions of shadow puppetry. The version of Cinderella that I saw was truly gruesome, the point at which the ugly sisters hacked off their toes and heels to fit the glass slipper on their feet was stomach churning. How wonderfully clever to cause such a physical reaction with simple silhouettes.

The original film is silent, at Animagika it was accompanied by Amiina, the percussion section of Sigor Ros. They played a selection of wonderful instruments such as musical saws and wine glasses. It was a perfect marriage of sound and image.

Watch Lotte Reininger’s Cinderella here.

Hear Amiina here.

Joanna.

PS. Join Branchage on Facebook, make sure that you don’t miss out next year.

Flickbooks Flipbooks

The students spent the day making Flickbooks, you can see videos of their first animation attempts on their Flickr stream here. Why not leave them a comment...

Joanna

the animation brief

"You are asked to develop ideas from your illustration project to make a short, digital 2D animation piece lasting between 15 seconds and 1 minute. Your animation must be set to a soundtrack and be carefully planned with drawings, designs, a storyboard, a script and a production schedule.

The animation must be digitally produced, it may be a stop-frame animation, time-lapse photography, sequential photographs, collage, cut-out animation or an animatic. Your choice of style of images and animation should reflect the story that you are animating (based on your mixed media illustration project) and the audience that you are choosing to target. Your choice of style should also be informed by critical research of past and contemporary animation styles."

Watch this space to see what happens next...

Joanna