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.
Wednesday 14 December 2011
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.
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.
Wednesday 7 December 2011
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;
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.
5 Uses of Xbox Kinect in Education.
- Establishing interaction
- Meet students from other schools, but instead of just talking, shake their hand.
- Similar to Second Life, but instead of a mouse and keyboard, you’re using your hands and feet to interact.
- Make students do a jig to retrieve resources.
- Practice proper footwork for the upcoming dance while watching how others are dancing.
- Pick up items and explore its features
- Storage and retrieval of classroom media
- Find your teacher’s virtual classroom, go to their virtual file cabinet, and pull out the latest homework.
- Yes, we can already achieve this by accessing teacher web pages and finding course content, but augmented reality approach is much more engaging, and we all know engagement leads to increased learning.
- Logging access & record keeping
- Instead of depending on student reliability to tell us if they studied for a test, we can access the log history to see who logged in and when.
- Enhancement of real-world environment
- Forget about brick-and-mortar schools. Build your school in the jungle or rainforest.
- Student Familiarity and Ownership
- This is a technology many of our students are familiar with. In fact, I would venture to say that many of our struggling students spend a lot of time gaming. This outlet might breed confidence because of the familiarity they have with the technology.
Six Possible Business Uses for Xbox Kinect.
PowerPoint presentations with more oomph. What would make PowerPoint slides more interesting? How about a “wax on, wax off” Karate Kid (the first one) hand wave? Just imagine the fun gesture things you could do to move along a slide show. If you were buff, say like a gymnast, you could do all sorts of interesting things to move a presentation along. Of course, your antics may distract from your beautiful slides, but most of us wouldn’t pay attention anyway.
Teleconferencing. More intuitive video conferencing — telepresence anyone? Microsoft said Video Kinect will be more intuitive and track your movements and adjust automatically. In other words you can walk around without leaving the camera. You can seem Microsoft building this feature into Office at some point.
Vertical industry uses. In the healthcare industry, you can envision a doctor gesturing to go through a series of X-rays. You could also do this approach with touch, but Kinect for business could eliminate the need to carry a tablet around.
Employee training. In a factory — or any other environment where change management is critical — you can envision Kinect being used for simulations of specific tasks in a nuclear reactor, assembly line or anyplace else.
Modeling in creative industries. An architect could use Kinect to spin virtual models and manipulate them with his hands.
Better security. Xbox Kinect is supposed to recognize you and your gestures. Apply this technology to your laptop or PC and the security implications become clear. Kinect could eliminate passwords. One downside: You could get a black eye and break an arm playing rugby and your PC may not know you since a) your face will be a mess and b) you’ll be left to gesture with one arm.
Wednesday 30 November 2011
Stop Motion Photoshoot Contact Sheet.
This is the contact sheet for the shoot and all of the images can be found on here.
Evaluation of the Stop Motion Photoshoot.
I think that the photoshoot went really well as our group worked really well together and someone took charge to help organize where everyone was and who was doing what so as we didn't get confused or move something that we weren't meant to. I also think that although our idea was fairly simple, it was executed very well by all of the group and the outcome looked very good. I also like the set that we created out of material and stones as it added character to out idea and looked good on the photos.
I think that we could have come up with a more complex idea had we have had more time like the other group did however our idea was simple and rushed as we weren't sure of what to do. I also think that we should have tried harder to keep out of the shots as in some of the images you can see some of us as well as getting in the way of the flash which resulted in some of the images coming out darker than others.
If we were to do this again, I think we would come up with a more complex idea and execute it better by keeping people out of the way when the shots were taken. I think we would also use different materials on the set so as to make it look more realistic and have less of a cartoon feel to it. We would keep the same person to lead us though as they knew what to do and did that very well by telling us what to do and helping us throughout the shoot.
I think that we could have come up with a more complex idea had we have had more time like the other group did however our idea was simple and rushed as we weren't sure of what to do. I also think that we should have tried harder to keep out of the shots as in some of the images you can see some of us as well as getting in the way of the flash which resulted in some of the images coming out darker than others.
If we were to do this again, I think we would come up with a more complex idea and execute it better by keeping people out of the way when the shots were taken. I think we would also use different materials on the set so as to make it look more realistic and have less of a cartoon feel to it. We would keep the same person to lead us though as they knew what to do and did that very well by telling us what to do and helping us throughout the shoot.
Studio Equipment List.
Canon EOS 5D.
Canon 24-105mm Zoom Lens.
Cambo Camera Stand.
Soft Box Wafers / Strip Light Wafters.
Sync Lead.
Bowens Pulsar Radio Triggers.
Bowens 500W Lighting.
Final Group Stop Motion.
This is the final Stop Motion movie that was exported from Final Cut Pro and converted through QuickTime so as to change it to MPEG-4 format that would play on most computer programmes.
Adding Music to a Video.
This is the Sequence bar where I have dragged and dropped an MP3 file in to the window which is indicated by the different icon on the left hand side of the file name. We don't need all of the song, only a select bit so to edit it, we double click on the music file.
This window is then shown where the entire song is shown in noise bars so as it is easier to tell what section of the song that you are on.
To select the section of music that you want, you choose the time on the scale where you want to start the section of music and click on the arrow button below the scale that indicates where the music will stop. You can see the little blue arrow on the timing section that shows this. To end the section, you do the same but with the inverted arrow which also shows up as blue on the timing section.
You can then drag and drop the music on to the sequence below the movie itself, however, the piece of music is too long for the length of the movie so we need to use the 'Razor' tool to cut off the piece of music that we don't need.
By using the 'Razor' tool, you can see that there is a line in the music that is of equal length to the movie section. That is where the cut in the music is and we can use the arrow tool to both move it away from the rest and then delete it as we don't need it.
Both the music and movie are now in line so the music will start and finish when the movie does. All that's left to do is render the whole project.
To do this we do the same process as last time by choosing the 'Sequence' bar and then 'Render All' however, we then choose to render both so as they both work together.
This is how the final rendered project should look like, making sure that both the movie and music work together.
Putting Pictures in to Final Cut Pro.
To edit your pictures in to a movie, you first have to open Final Cut Pro.
You then open the images in the folder where they are located on the Hard Drive or computer and select them all by pressing the 'Apple sign' (on a Mac) and 'a'.
You can then drag and drop them in to the sequence box in Final Cut and they will all appear as separate images ready to be put in to the timeline. Select all of the images again the same as before and drag them to th beginning of the timeline for images and drop them in to place.
This is then what the images will look like however they are too big and slow to make it appear as though it is a movie, so we will have to group all of them together by clicking on one of the images and then pressing 'Apple' + 'a' which will change all of the image icons to brown.
You can then choose 'Sequence' and then 'Nest Item(s)' so as all of the images will be nested in to one sequence.
This is how the photo sequence will appear on the timeline now that all of the images have been nested together to make one sequence. The images will still be played slowly though so we will have to speed it up to make it look like a proper movie.
To do this we go on the the 'Modify' tab and then choose 'Speed' to alter how fast it will be played.
This is the option you get when the speed box comes up and I have changed the speed too 3000 Percent so as it plays fast enough to merge the photos together.
By altering the video speed, it brings up a red line above the sequence box that indicates the photo sequence needs to be rendered so as it will be able to ply smoothly. You go in to the 'Sequence' tab and then choose 'Render All' and 'Video'. This will then remove the red line and the image sequence will run smoothly.
This is the window where you can see what the video looks like and what you have to change to make it better or to change any errors that have happened during the making of the stop motion.
Research - Anthony J Stewart
Anthony J Stewart is a British photographer and I.T. Consultant who has moved to Wiltshire after a period of living overseas. He has a particular passion for taking the style of a building or object and portraying it in a different way; possibly capturing something new or different about that building. Some of the buildings you will be able to recognise immediately others not, which makes his images all the more striking. He works in both colour and black & white and he is continually striving to create unique images out of both ordinary and landmark buildings.
Stewart also specialises in time lapse movies that are separate photographs all merged together by using a programme such as Final Cut Pro for example to make the photos into a movie where you can add music and change the speed that the movie will play at.
I like Stewarts work as the photos are taken from a good perspective where he can get a lot of detail in his photos as well as them being clear and also has a clear theme throughout the whole of the movies which is good as you can see his ideas through what he is doing in his photographs and overall movie.
Stewart also specialises in time lapse movies that are separate photographs all merged together by using a programme such as Final Cut Pro for example to make the photos into a movie where you can add music and change the speed that the movie will play at.
I like Stewarts work as the photos are taken from a good perspective where he can get a lot of detail in his photos as well as them being clear and also has a clear theme throughout the whole of the movies which is good as you can see his ideas through what he is doing in his photographs and overall movie.
Chicago St Patrick's Day - Dyeing the river Green.
This 60 second stop motion video was taken from the landmark Wrigley Building in Chicago. It shows the very famous greening of the Chicago river to celebrate St Patricks Day.
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