Inspiration For The Idea
For this idea, I will be following off from my original idea that I did for my first animation project at the beginning of the year. This idea involved using foods to create a story and relationship between the characters I made up. I chose to use foods that had a flexible way of use. As an example, bananas can be peeled, sliced, and mushed which means they have a strong variety of uses. Foods like this are useful to create characters out of. As a second example, I used peanut butter in this animation as well because you can spread it. Essentially, I’m looking for foods you can mush, spread, slice, peel, bake, fry, and snap, since they will be easier to make ideas and put to use in the animation.
I want the foods to link and make sense together so that coming up with a story is a simpler task. With my last animation, I used bananas, peanut butter, and toast because these foods would normally go together. This is why it would make more sense to use things like toast and jam or cheese and crackers or something along those lines.
Ideas
My first idea is to have something that is a more wet kind of food so I can create a scene where food goes swimming and gets messy. I have a feeling this would be quite comical, but I’ll come up with some other ideas as an alternative for this. To make a scene like this I have decided to use crisps and dip. These are foods you commonly see together so I thought this was a good idea.
As an idea for a second scene, I think that using scones and jam and cream to continue the lunch theme. I thought this made sense because the last animation I completed had a breakfast theme. I could make a scene where the cream spreads itself over the scone to complete the meal.
The idea I have for the third scene is to implement the use of a sandwich. The idea is that the scones slide off the plate and the open sandwich moves onto it. Then all the fillings come and jump into the sandwich and another piece of bread makes its way on top to finish it off.
The next step is deciding the point of the story and choosing what order to do the scenes. I need to decide how to thread the scenes together so that each scene transitions well. This has all been talked about and developed within the script.
Ending
To finish off the animation I want each of the foods to return back to where they came from. This will create a looping look to the animation. I like the idea of the animation ending where it started.
As an alternative ending, I want a wide shot showing all the foods together to show a completed meal. After this, I’d love to have some text come up that links back to the title of the animation.
Sound and Music
To keep the humorous presentation for my animation, I’m planning to use childish sounds. One thing I want to improve on is the atmospheric sounds besides the voices of the characters. I would like to implement sounds of the foods scraping against the surface as they move. This makes the whole thing more realistic and less empty, which was lacking in my last animation project. In terms of music, using something joyful and silly sounding would match the humorous theme of the animation. I will use one song the whole way through since this animation will only be around 20 seconds, as mentioned by the brief.
Analysing Original Stop Motion
Something I noticed is that, in order to give the characters more personality, they use eyes. This is something I could add on to my animation that would also be an improvement on my last animation. One thing I could bring in standing up the characters instead of having them lying flat the whole way through. This would bring in a level of difficulty and will allow me to challenge myself. To do this, I will use blue tack behind all the objects I am using. This acts as a support for the foods so they can stand upright.
Script
Script Breakdown
Storyboard
Lists
Equipment:
- Tripod
- Camera
- Microphone
- Editing Software
Props:
- Plate
- Crisps
- Dip
- Scones
- Jam
- Cream
- Bread & Butter
- Ham
- Cheese
Sounds:
- Sound Design Of The Food
- Sighing/Frustrated Sounds
- Childish Giggling
Shot List
Film Schedule Day One
Film Schedule Day Two
Filming
On Tuesday 23rd I began filming. For the setup, I had a tripod with the camera on top. I didn’t need the microphone as animating doesn’t pick up sound so I decided that I would use the mic separately to record the sounds afterwards. I made the area clean and moved the camera to the angle I wanted and changed the aperture to fit the correct brightness. It was a very dull day, so I had a lower aperture. While filming, I wanted to be fast because day light was limited an I wanted to get it done as soon as possible so I could start editing straight after. So, my main goal was making sure everything was moved the right amount between each frame and that I was completing it with speed. When animating I started with picking out the object and moving it slightly in the direction that I wanted it to go. The beginning was much easier because I was only moving one object at a time. But as the animation went on, I brought in more objects which meant there was more to think about. That is the challenging thing about animation is remembering all the things you must move between every shot. This can also make it take a while. So, when I first started, I was much faster, and it was easier to think about what I was moving. All of this added in a sense of difficulty which I hadn’t had with my past animation. Working with food meant had to be careful not to get my hands to dirty because I was working with the camera at the same time. Overall, everything went smoothly and in total scene 1 took an hour to complete.
Editing
When starting editing, the first step is putting all the images together and setting them at the correct duration. After the animation is pieced together how I want it, I move onto colours. I like to go over brightness first and then I focus on white balance and colour temperature. So far, I have just pieced the images together. This means I can now see how the animation looks without all the extra editing.
I have now started fixing the brightness and contrast of the images. The aim is to make each image look the same in terms of lighting so that it prevents the animation from looking messy and flashy with inconsistent changes throughout. I have completed leveling out the colours up to the halfway point, so I now have 20 seconds left to do.
After I had done some of the editing of the images I moved onto sound. I used Audio Hero to buy sounds that would fit the animation. I ended up spending around 10 credits for all the sounds I bought. The first step is finding a suitable comical song to play in the background. On Audio Hero, you can put in specific genres and moods to filter the search so that you can find the exact thing you’re looking for. I looked for something that was near 35 seconds because that is the length of my animation. When looking for sounds I looked for things that matched my character’s personalities. I got one sound for each character. For the scones, I got a sound of two girls laughing. For the crisps, I got a sound of five girls laughing. This lessened the number of individual sounds I would need to buy.
When adding the sounds, I lined them up where they best fit in the video. Luckily, the music fitted perfectly to the length of the animation which was what I was hoping. To finish the editing, I went back over the brightness for the rest of the video that I hadn’t done yet. Once the whole thing had been smoothed out the video was entirely completed.
This is the completed project video:
