Evaluation.

     For the stop motion animation assignment we have had to take continuous photos of a subject which we have then put in to Final Cut Pro and edited together in to a final movie. The movies will comprise of single photographs that will be played at a selected speed so as the images flow together but will still be clear so as to define it as stop motion.
     My idea was to have Charlotte running up and down the steps of a building and then when I edit them I would speed it up so as it looks faster than it was when the photos were taken. I also had the idea of a person running around between trees and other plants but I decided I preferred the other idea so I shot that one instead.
     To take the photographs for the final movie we used a Canon 1000D and a tripod so as the camera stayed level and in the same place while all of the frames were being photographed.
     The main problem for this assignment was having to put the photos in to Final Cut pro and editing them all together so as they were in the correct order and playing at a suitable speed. This caused problems as you had to render the movie every time you changed something about  the speed which requires computer memory that I didn't have so I had to start the process again on a different computer that had enough memory to let me do that.
     Walt Disney and Anthony J Stewart has influenced my work by using different techniques in their work that I have then applied to mine such as different views of the camera and varying speeds.
     I like my final video as it was what I imagined it to be like when I first set out to shoot it however I think that if I were to do this again then I would use a different idea that was much more complex to shoot or edit as my idea seemed very simple and rushed. I think that overall this would look better and also push myself to do better.

Research - Walt Disney.

     Walter Elias "Walt" Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O. Disney, he was co-founder of Walt Disney Productions, which later became one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. 
     Disney is most famous as a film producer and a popular showman, as well as a pioneer in animation and theme park design. He and his staff created some of the world's most well-known fictional characters including Mickey Mouse, of who Disney himself provided the original voice. During his lifetime he received four honorary Academy Awards and won twenty-two Academy Awards from a total of fifty-nine nominations, including a record four in one year, giving him more awards and nominations than any other individual in history. 

     In 1927, Disney created an animation based on the character of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and distributed it through Universal Pictures which became an instant success with thanks to the artist and creator, Iwerks. As the Disney studio grew, Walt hired animators Harman, Rudolph Ising, Carman Maxwell and Fritz Freleng from Kansas City. Things started to look worse when Walt went to negotiate higher pay for the animators but got hit with the proposal by the owner of Universal Pictures, Charles Mintz, of paying Disney less for the animators fees and also that as most of the main animators including Harman, Ising, Maxwell and Freleng (not Iwerks as he refused to leave Disney) were under Universals contract, if Disney refused the terms proposed then Mintz would set up his own studio with those animators working for him. When Walt declined the terms proposed, he lost most of his animation staff as well as the trademark to Oswald which remained with Universal Pictures who continued to produce the animations as they we legally allowed to without Walt being there.

After 78 years of fighting, Disney got back the rights to the Oswald character in 2006 when the Walt Disney Company reacquired the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from NBC Universal.

     After losing the rights to Oswald, Disney felt the need to develop a new character to replace him, which was based on a mouse he had adopted as a pet while working in his Laugh-O-Gram studio in Kansas City. Iwerks reworked the sketches made by Disney to make the character easier to animate, although Mickey's voice and personality were provided by Disney himself until 1947. In the words of one Disney employee, "Iwerks designed Mickey's physical appearance, but Walt gave him his soul." The first animated short to feature Mickey, Plane Crazy was a silent film like all of Disney's previous works. After failing to find a distributor for the short and its follow-up, The Gallopin' Gaucho, Disney created a Mickey cartoon with sound entitled Steamboat Willie. Steamboat Willie became an instant success, and Plane Crazy, The Galloping Gaucho, and all future Mickey cartoons were released with soundtracks.

     Mickey Mouse is now recognised as Walt Disney's most famous animated character after his appearance in Steamboat Willie and is now one of the the main features of Disneyland, Florida.

     From there Walt and the Disney productions went on to produce many more animations such as Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmations as well as drawing up plans for theme parks based in Orlando, Florida named the Magic Kingdom and the Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow (or EPCOT for short). After Walt's death in 1966, his brother Roy Disney insisted that the company name be changed to Walt Disney Productions in honor of his brother. 

Steamboat Willie.

Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse statue, Disneyland Florida.

Lady and the Tramp animation sketches.

Lady and the Tramp animation sketches.

After Walt's death, many more films have been distributed through The Walt Disney Company including  The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Toy Story, Lilo an Stitch and Cinderella which have all been huge sellers and are more recently being reproduced on to DVD format for better quality.

Stop Motion Animation.

Stop motion 1 exported from Final Cut Pro.

Using the Xbox Kinect in the Studio.

     For week 6 of our assignment we started to look at the area of animation that is controlled by movement and will give us a better understanding of how 'Motion Capture' operates. The Xbox 360 Kinect is a good example of this type of animation as it requires kinetic energy (or movement) for the games to work by having a camera as a sensor which tracks the person in front of it and all of their movement and gestures.

     For this task we used the following equipment;

iPad.

Apple Mac Desktop Computer.

Plasma Tv.

Xbox 360.

Xbox Kinect System and Cables.

Extension Lead.

Fully Equipped Photography Studio with Lights and Accessories.

Flip Video Camera.

Tripod.

     All equipment has been safety checked before we used it and was also set up in the studio so as we had enough space to safely use the motion controllers and move around in the large space. 

Using the Xbox Kinect in Medical Science.

A hospital in Toronto is using Kinect to allow surgeons to make hand gestures that control imaging systems while they operate. This eliminates the need for surgeons to leave the sterile field around the operating table whenever they want to pull up images from an MRI or CT scan and the time that they save reduces costly delays. The problem with simulators is that they're too expensive to put outside every operating room whereas Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 is not. If you could get a video game to do the same job as a $100,000 simulator then the money saved  can be spent elsewhere with technological advances within science.

Microsoft Kinect navigates the universe.

What is Kinect?