post 9:purposes of stop motion animations

Educate- a educating stop motion, is an animation that
 helps the audience to learn something new or teaches
them something they presumably did not know before.
 It could be about Math's or English or about any subject
that can be taught through stop motion. Its main platform
is YouTube ,where parents can access the videos and show
them to their children.

How effective is SMA for educating-
The effectiveness of learning through stop motion varies, some people might find the visual side of the learning helpful (spatial learners), others may not find the videos helpful. The target audience for the educational SMA videos is very young and the information taught is very basic for example numbers, this means it is not effective for teaching older children or aiding their learning. Overall it can be effective for younger children but is not really effective for older children and teaching more advanced knowledge. 




Entertaining- this kind of stop motion is made to make
 the audience feel pleasure from watching the stop motion
 animation. Titles like Wallace and grommet and Shawn the
 sheep were both made to entertain the audience. A stop motion
animation  may be entertaining because it is funny,has lots of
action in, or just because it looks very smooth and realistic.                                                                                                                                                       

 How effective is SMA for entertainment- 
 stop motion animation is effective for entertainment. Over the years many stop
motion films have been made and they
continue to make money and entertain people.
These include coraline, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Early Man. Entertaining SMA has a wide range of audience age.  With an increasing audience for stop motion films and videos, entertaining Stop motion is very effective.









Informative- an informative stop motion animation
 is one that gives the audience information about
something for example an advert informing you
 of the low prices in a store or giving you information
 on a product or service.


 how effective is SMA to Inform -
 informative stop motion is effective if you find stop motion interesting. If you don't find SMA entertaining and interesting you won't pay attention to the video and won't be informed of what it is trying to inform you. So the level of effectiveness for informative SMA depends of your interest of stop motion.

post 8: editing of footage, titles and credits to a soundtrack, using video and sound editing software

Editing a stop motion animation is very different to editing a video. This is because when editing  videos there is no limit to the editing but when editing a stop motion not much editing is typically used. For example in stop motion things like green screens,speed and removing wires is important to make a good stop motion.

Wires are used in stop motion for many reasons, these include making an object or character jump or fly, it could also be used for support for a head heavy object or character.  Wires can be removed using a photo editing software for example,An amateur stop motion may use the editing software Photoshop ,or might use gimp. Photoshop is a better option as it is easier to edit the photos but gimp is also good if your just starting stop motion animation and want a free photo editor.

 A green screen may be used to add a background to your animation,this will take place after all the photos have been edited together and the speed has been adjusted to make a fluid video. Once you have the edited video, you can use a software like adobe after effects to remove the background and add in a new one.

post 7: audio production for animation

Music is a key part of Stop motion animation, and is added after production of the animation.            When the music is being made, they can watch a clip of the animation and see if it syncs as they imagined. At this stage they might adapt the music slightly by making the music softer or louder but overall there will not be much change to the music.


sound effects
 All sound effects for a stop motion animation are artificial and not natural.Creating sounds for your animation can be a long process,that includes finding the right sound for what you want to do.
Sound effects are almost always made using different sounds to what they are needed for. Sound effects are important because it helps to bring the animation to life for the audience. A hard part of sound effect process is picking and syncing the sound to the animation, this is difficult because  if the music is not synced correctly it wont match the animation and the illusion of the stop motion will be broken.

character dialogue
First a character will have a set of lines to say, after being given advice on the delivery, when the director is happy with the lines. The audio is then analysed which includes how many seconds each syllable takes and then what mouth pieces are needed and for how long to match the audio correct. If the dialogue is not synced well with the stop motion, the speech wont look natural and fluid.  The closer you get to matching the audio with the image the more your audience can connect themselves with the world you create.

voice over
A voice over is when a monologue or speech is added over the animation, there will be no movement of the puppets mouth. The voice over could be added before the clip is animated or after, depending on whether it was in the script or not. voice over can be used to introduce a character or can be to give an insight into what the character is thinking .

post 6: set building and lighting

Building a set for stop motion is a long and difficult process. First you must, think about ideas for your set,including buildings, backgrounds  and the texture of the ground. Once you start to have an idea of what the set looks like, you can start to do rough sketches. you may do several sketches before you are satisfied, when your happy with your sketches, you can move on to basic models made from materials like card or paper, this is because it makes it cheaper and easier to make this version of your model.   

The lighting for a professional set at daytime would be very bright and have no natural lighting . They would achieve this by having multiple lights with different purposes. One light will assumes the position of the sun. there will be some back lights to focus on  certain parts of the set (around 3) . A narrow beamed light reflected of a white fill board is used to fill the shadows.


(set A)

set A and set B are very different. Set A has a very bright and simplistic where as set B, looks darker and realistic. The lighting on both is bright but Set B is slightly darker than A.  

Set A's aesthetic is a bit cleaner and smoother compared to set B that looks a bit more worn and dirty.  Both have a unique look, for example A looks like it could have just been drawn with pen on paper where as B looks like it was built in the past. They both look very effective for what they are trying to achieve. 







 





                                               (set B)

             

post 5: model making techniques, Armature, Sculpting,Cut outs

Armature- First a design must be drawn and given measurements and dimensions. Your armature should be able to move around like a human with working joints and easy to bend arms and legs.
An armature model will have the most movement out of all of the puppets, and is the ,most common type used in professional stop motion animation. Armature can also be used  with interchangeable pieces to improve the puppet.


Modeling- first you need to design a character ,once you have designed your character you can then use a material like clay to mold your character over a bendy metal body.  Once you have molded your clay around your metal body you can start to ad detail to the face and body.


cut out animation- cut out animation is a 2D animation that is made out of paper or card.
Cut out animations tend to be quite basic and
not have much going on in them, so the cut out pieces don't take long to make.
 

post 4: Technological Developments, Eg use of 3D printing

3d printing is starting to be used more and more in stop motion this is because it makes it more easy than ever, to make more intricate and small pieces.  It is also very good because the pieces for the puppets will have almost no imperfections which means the animation will look better and more realistic.When using 3D printing to make facial expressions, your imagination is the limit, meaning that if you can design the face you can print and produce it easily. An example of a  stop motion animation that used lots of 3d printing was kubo and the two strings which produced loads of interchangeable face pieces for the movie.  3D printing  could be the future of stop motion animation, because of everything that can be achieved with it, like sets, puppets,faces or objects.

post 3: frame rates required to create a smooth illusion of motion

*The fps is the amount of frames per second, the higher the frame rate the more fluid the movement of the video is. when a stop motion has a higher frame rate,the illusion of movement is much more believable compared to a video with a low frame rate ,where the video will look choppy and unrealistic.

A 12 frames per second animation doesn't look very smooth but will still show some properties of having the illusion of movement. This is because the human eye can only process around 12 images per second, meaning that human eyes will see movement in the animation, but it will be choppy compared to a 24 fps animation that would look smooth. (TechTerms february 3rd, 2015)

Filming at 24 fps is very fluid and  looks very smooth and it wont look choppy or unnatural, filming at higher fps that 24 or 30 is not needed very often and a lot of people prefer the look of 24 fps to 60 fps .

25 fps for television looks good on the screen and allows it to look fluid and natural, this is fps is often used for television to reduce flicker on high frame rate displays although 25 frames per second looks smooth , at cinemas a movie will be shown in 24 fps this is because it is easier and cheaper than filming it and showing it at a higher frame rate. (film independent 2016)   . (TvTechnoligy February 23 2018 )

Wallace and gromit was shot in 24fps.(Andrews amazing blogs,February 25, 2015)
and coraline was also shot at 24 fps (https://shotonwhat.com/coraline-2009).
24 fps for stop motion is very smooth and if they had of used a lower fps
the animation wouldn't as smooth and would look more choppy and not fluid.
If a higher frame rate was used the smoothness and fluidity of the animation
would increase but it would be harder to make.

A1 the process for creating stop motion animation

learning aim A:understand the characteristics and processes of stop motion animation

post 2 visual development

narrative development- the idea process begins,and characters and storylines are starting to be made.
This may be an idea by only one person, or may be by multiple people. creating a character can either be made with no inspiration, or can be partially inspired by real life for example a friend or family member. In Wallace's case wallaces look was inspired by a  postman nick knew and the name was inspired by a dog he met on a bus and Gromit is named after an electricians grommet                 (Wallaceandgromit.com ND).  Nick park made these characters purely from his head. when it comes to Coraline (2009) Henry Selick had to adapt the book version written by Neil Gaiman and begin a creative process of visual development. This includes the look of the characters, and his interpretation of the story. Designing a character from scratch  is often very difficult but  3D designing software's are rapidly improving making it a lot easier to create characters faces and designs. Once an idea  is created and developed they move on to storyboarding.

Storyboarding- a story board is made to give a rough idea of what will happen in a scene. In stop motion a scene must be planned heavily first and thought through, because they can not just delete a scene that someone might have worked on for months. Storyboarding is also important, to make sure everything has structure and doesn't fail when creating the stop motion animation. In Nick parks story board although, the angle doesn't change you can see the movement happening in the picture; where as in the Coraline storyboard the angles of the shot change frequently,which   gives the storyboard a less fluid and smooth look to Nicks. In a live action movie the story board can be more "vague" as the the storyboard is only really guidance where as in stop motion the story board should show all the motion and action in the scene's and help let the animators bring the story to life. storyboards are then turned
                                                      into animatics that can aid the animators and editors with syncing
                                                      the sound tracks and making any adjustments or changes before
                                                      starting the animating process.

Treatments and pitches- before a stop motion can be commissioned it has to be pitched. If they like  idea you are pitching ,they may ask you to draw a few storyboards or prepare a script. If they like these they may hire more writers or script writers to improve the script. lots of ideas may be rejected or changed for example a character you have created or parts of the story. Also when giving a pitch you must expect the possibility of getting turned down. For example the stop motion animation version of coraline  had to be pitched to Neil Gaiman before they could go any further with the production.