Month: March 2024

Moving on to our next project, we were paired with a Year 2 Character Animation student to assist them with their final year project, which aimed to simulate a professional work environment. Our collaboration involved regular meetings to discuss the project and outline the tasks we would undertake to support them.

My assigned student was Amal Ghamlooch, who had chosen to create a stop-motion project with 2D animation elements for their final assignment. I initiated contact with Amal via email to arrange a meeting and exchanged phone numbers to facilitate communication. Our first meeting took place at the university, where Amal shared their vision for the project.

Amal explained that after working on a 2D animation project previously, they wanted to explore stop-motion animation due to their passion for hands-on, practical animation techniques. Their project concept revolved around an elderly frog aspiring to become a renowned artist, performing at a bar filled with younger frogs in a pond setting.

The inspiration for this story stemmed from a real-life musician in Beirut, Lebanon, who Amal had encountered during their travels. This musician, who was once quite popular when he was younger, served as the inspiration for the frog character in Amal’s project, playing the oud (a pear-shaped string instrument) with accompanying music.

During the pre-production phase, Amal detailed their plan to create nature-themed props using paper and design elements such as hanging flowers for lighting and lilypad stools for chairs. For the character animation, they intended to hand-animate the 2D characters before printing each frame on paper for stop-motion filming.

They then proceeded to show me their animatic and the scenes that I would help in animating. They mentioned that I could adjust the angles of the shots and make simple animations, as long as they were moving. They wanted the characters to have idle animations that weren’t too over the top so it doesn’t draw away attention from the main character.

They also showed me some reference photos of the style they wanted for the frogs. Since these were younger frogs, they wanted them to look cute and smooth. I took it upon myself as well as them suggesting to find some more references on Pinterest to really capture the youthful vibe they were going for.

Once I got the green light from Amal these, I started animating the shot of the two frogs sitting across from each other. I envisioned them as a couple, with one frog looking adoringly at the other. I wanted to show some chemistry between them in a short amount of time.

With a lot of creative freedom, I sketched out rough drafts of each frog, starting with the one on the right.

My main goal here was to show that one frog was in love with the other frog and completely focused on them, making sure that I got the movement down first and then allowed Amal to change the angle of the shot afterward since this was going to be printed out. To make sure I captured the simple movements Amal wanted, I made the frog’s leg move in a cute, animated way to convey feelings of love. I paid close attention to using arcs and ease in/ease out to make the movement look more realistic.

For the other frog, I noticed in the reference shot that he was holding a cigarette in his mouth, so I used that as inspiration for the keyframes. I wanted to show the frogs in a casual and romantic setting, so I had the male frog lean in to show interest and affection. After roughing out the animation for both characters, I combined them into the same scene and synced their actions before cleaning up the animation.

I kept in mind the animation principles and feedback from my tutors on previous projects, adding anticipation and spacing for the male frog’s breath and creating an arc when he leaned toward the female frog. I also drew on my experience with body acting and facial expressions from Silent Film animation to capture the subtle look of admiration on the male frog’s face. I shared the scene with Amal, who reacted positively to the animation when I finished it.

Overall, this experience was incredibly enjoyable. It was my first time assisting with animation for someone else’s project, and it was a rewarding challenge to step outside my comfort zone of animating humanoid characters. Through this collaboration, I believe I have successfully applied animation principles and techniques learned from Unit One practices.

Amal was super passionate and easy to communicate with. They were quick to schedule a meeting to discuss their ideas and send work on the scenes I would be working on. They were very open to giving me some artistic freedom in changing the composition of the scene and coming up with what the action would be for the different frogs. Even though I only worked on one scene, I’ve agreed to work on more scenes after the assessment and shadow them (or even potentially help them with the stop-motion when the time comes).

Reflecting on this experience, Amal taught me to draw inspiration from my travels, culture, hobbies, and interests when brainstorming ideas for animation. Their love for frogs, for example, showed me how personal interests can shape unique characters and worlds. Working with other animators and hearing their ideas pushed me to think outside the box and embrace the creative process, even if it meant exploring unconventional ideas. In conclusion, this collaboration has been a valuable learning experience that has broadened my perspective on animation and creativity. I look forward to applying these lessons to future projects and continuing to grow as an animator.

After I put together the puppet on my own, the next step in the stop-motion process was to bring it to life through slapstick comedy. I teamed up with another animator to make our puppets interact with each other funnily and exaggeratedly. To make sure our comedy was on point, I did some research on actors like Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd who are masters of slapstick.

I studied these actors closely to figure out what makes slapstick comedy work. Some key elements I found were:

• Physical exaggeration like performing over-the-top movements
• Funny chaos, such as making quick and silly chases
• Crazy situations to heighten the action like ending up in strange and funny problems
• Playful trouble, meaning the character gets into funny accidents but always ends up okay.
• Jokes that grow, also known as having a funny idea that gets repeated like getting your head banging against the same thing multiple times.
• The focus on timing, slapstick is always relying on timing, so planning out your idea will allow the maximum comedic effect.

After studying various videos, I wanted to apply those aspects of physical comedy to my own animation project. I collaborated with my partner to brainstorm ideas and create storyboards.

We decided on a scene where one character pushes another, as we believed it aligned well with the key elements of successful slapstick comedy.

Overall I think this stopmotion experiment had good elements, such as playing with timing and adding that playful trouble with the sudden push of the puppet. Also what I think that I did successfully was adding life to the puppet even when it was standing in place by moving the clothes and hair around. However, I identified areas for improvement, particularly in terms of physical exaggeration and timing.  When also thinking about the principles of animation the timing of the anticipation could have time a lot better when the puppet looks towards the audience and winds up to push the other puppet, this would have improved the slapstick comedy a lot more.

After completing that stop-motion I wanted to have another go at some form of slapstick comedy again, but this time I decided to focus on animating just one puppet to really nail the physical comedy and action.

I started sketching out different ideas for storyboards, looking for ones that really stood out to me.  I again came up with multiple ideas as I wanted to push the boundaries of my creativity and make the ideas as ridiculous as possible.

Next, I sat down with my tutor to go over the storyboards to get some feedback. We decided to go with the idea of a ball hitting the character, as the other ideas seemed a bit too complicated and didn’t have that quick, to-the-point physical comedy. My tutor also suggested I shorten my idea to make sure I didn’t drag out the stop-motion process. After making a few cuts, I began working on the animation.

With the finished product, I can say that I am a lot more satisfied with this second experiment given the time I had. I was able to add more physical exaggeration to the performance as well as play with the timing of the ball and the anticipation of the character getting hit and reacting to seeing the ball. If I were able to do another experiment with the puppet again, I would try and have the character move around the stage more and allow the character to have more body acting. In retrospect the animation that I did it felt that I wasn’t able to move the character around more and there was more focus on the ball, which I did want, so the next time I will need to plan even more carefully to see if there are things that I can change to make the slapstick comedy more interesting.

Mental health can be a difficult thing to show due to the nature of most mental illnesses being internal. This creates a challenge for TV, movies, and animation to accurately depict these kinds of things without being stereotypical. In this research blog, I am going to find out how using film analysis can help depict mental health with the movie “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” as a reference point.

Puss in Boots got a lot of attention after its release for not only the stunning visuals of its hybrid animation but in the moment of how Puss in Boots deals with anxiety and panic attacks. While you can see Puss in Boots get visually more panicked with an elevated heart rate and the loss of his motor controls as we see him stumbling and running sporadically.

But by using camera work we can create a heightened mood for the story.

When Puss begins to have his panic attack there is a dolly zoom edit that is used, this effect in live action is done by moving away or towards the subject (also known as dolly in/out) while zooming in the opposite direction. This camera effect usually helps in indicating an emotional or tonal shift in the story, in this sense for Puss in Boots it alters the space around him as his mood changes.

Another camera work that helps visually depict his panic attack is the use of close-up shots as he is running in the forest. Using this type of shot can help for a more dramatic effect and elevate the specific mood, which in that scene does intensify the feeling of panic as the extreme close-up distorts Puss’s face and body. These shots too it also blur the surroundings around Puss which emphasises the panic state he is in the contrast to cleaner shots of Perrito the dog searching for Puss really helps externalise Puss’s internal emotions.  

By also following the principles of animation we see everything exaggerated, most noticeably in the forest scene, where combined with the blurred focus and the close-up shots combined with his exaggerated movements help push the idea that he is not in the right mindset.

But when going back to the visual side of the scenes the colours that are used in the scenes help the change in mood, where before the colours consisted of warmer colours such as orange to evoke this feeling of warmth and humour, but as one the antagonist of the movies enter the scene, the colour change to a much colder colour palette of green, visualising a sense of fear and coldness.

When combining all these techniques together, what makes it more realistic is the moment after Puss’s shots of his panic attack where everything had been exaggerated. We go back as an outside viewer where the shot is much clearer and only see the physical reaction of Puss having a panic attack, and experiencing the aftermath of the panic attack. However, as the viewer we are satisfied with what has happened as we already know what is happening in Puss’s head, earning this kind of depiction of anxiety and of a panic attack.

From only a scene that shows Puss in Boots experiencing a panic attack a minute long, there were a lot of techniques that were used that helped us as the audience understand the feeling of what Puss is going through. Through the exaggerated movements, the camera shots, and to the colour scheme, I learned about how these things can further push the emotion of a scene/ story. This can be used in my own projects or in future university projects like the LIAF project and help push me as an animator to think about other ways that we can convey these types of emotions.