Experimenting with i can animate...

I just realised you can draw in 'I can animate' too so I did this lovely simple drawing to see how it works! One of my best pieces of work I think...

I can Animate...

 

I have downloaded a trial version of 'I can Animate,' it uses my isight camera on my mac though so didn't know what to animate as I couldn't move the camera anywhere! Here is my first attempt ^^ just to get to grips with it.

Nail Varnish Madness from sarah chester on Vimeo.

I found a few more things around my flat and had another go. I think this was a slightly better attempt! I also think it would go with my music I have been assigned.

I can animate is really good because as soon as you take your pictures it put them in a sequence so you don't need to use after effects. It would be better if I had a camera connected by a firewire cable to the software as this way I could actually move the camera! 

The software has given me a good insight into stop motion but I am unsure if I will use stop motion in my final animation. 

Coming up with words

I started writing down everything I thought the music reminded me of and what words came to my mind when listening to the music as I had to pick 3 key words the music reminded me of before I could move on and come up with possible narratives. 

I find mind mapping is the best way for me to get down all of my ideas.

Third Photography Session- Rayograms

Rayogram of: drawn characters on tracing paper, laser cut piece of paper, netting

Rayogram of: Pens

This session we used the machines independently. I drew some characters on tracing paper to see what they would look like on a rayogram. I thought they looked quite good but on some of them you can see the tracing paper- I think this is because I didn't leave them to expose long enough. 

This time I used a number 5 plastic sheet as it gave more contrast to my images, my tester showed that my exposure time should be at least 40 seconds, my last rayogram I did I exposed it for 60 seconds. I think my last rayogram would work well as a background for an animation. I could have one of my characters 'walking' up it as if it were hills. 

Afterwards I decided to stick my drawings in my sketch book as I liked the characters I came up with and I thought they may inspire me in thinking up characters for my animation. 

Second photography session- Rayograms

Greyness shows different exposure times

These are my first ever rayograms! I experimented with different exposure times as you can tell by the difference in colour in some parts of the pictures. I decided to include my jewellery collection as I thought these would make some interesting shapes- the top rayogram shows jewellery I made using the laser cutting machine. 

I found more exposure time worked better than less. In these rayograms I used a number 2 sheet of plastic so it made no change to the rayograms. Next time I want to try a number 5 as this apprently shows more contrast in the image. 

First animation trial

Untitled from sarah chester on Vimeo.

It annoys me how ridiculously long this took me to make! the photographing was fine, set my camera up on a tripod so was really still it was just making it in photoshop was really slow then exporting it as a movie was even slower and you can't do anything with your mac while you wait! Aaaagh.
Anyway at least I did some stop motion!
Here are some notes I wrote about stop motion in my book, it helps me when I write things down! Click to enlarge: