Apply: Love Animation Development

We were given a brief to develop and create an animation using techniques and processes of our choice with a very short deadline. Admittedly when I first approached this brief it was with a great degree of skepticism. This early in the course I was slightly against being given to much freedom to create an animation with, and with this brief we were allowed a lot of freedom.

We were given a wide variety of choices of what to base our animation around, for example love, fear, lateness etc. And as you can probably tell these topics are not small and specific like 'phobia of door knobs' for example, they are massive and there is so much you can do with them. I'm the sort of person who often likes being given something small and specific to do. Projects that give you a lot of freedom I do often enjoy immensely and get a lot out of but I am often slightly scared of approaching them.

Anyway, on the first day of the project I came in with a pit in my stomach. Think of an idea... Staring at my tool box I started to wonder about the many sizes of Pritt sticks and why you get so many. Then I compared the largest to the smallest and thought it would be funny if the big one was the little one's dad. That is where my idea formed.

I decided to center my animation on the relationship between a dad and his son, it just so happens their Pritt sticks.

I thought about how best to present my animation and that's when I felt Pixilation was the way to go, why spend ages re-drawing Pritt sticks when I have the tools at hand?

Initially I felt the most effective way to animate my pixilation would be to photograph the Pritt sticks, then add in the eyes and mouth on later digitally. How I mean is by inserting every photograph into Photoshop then scan in the drawn facial expressions and copy each onto every frame. This way I felt would look slick, clean and effective.

(Dad Facial Expressions)

(Son Facial expressions)

(Son Facial expressions 2)

But when I explained this I received feedback and was advised that how I thought it would work was in fact not so simple. I was advised that an easier and a more effective technique would be to simply scan in all my facial expressions then print them onto card, cut them out then simply apply with blu-tac. I decided to use this method.

The treatment of my animation was that we would start with an immature kid who's resilient to learn. His dad teaches him how to stick paper. At first the son Pritt stick is hopeless at it but the dad teaches him (allegory to teaching a kid how to ride a bike). Then once the son gets the hang of it we see him grow up (fade to slightly larger Pritt stick with more grown up face). Then he evolves into a man, the age the dad was when this all started and now the dad is an old man. Then we see the son Pritt sticking, he turns to see his dad smiling proud, the dad fades out symbolising that he has passed away and the son continues to stick. See my storyboards below...

When it came to filming it could be I was not entirely prepared for just how challenging it would be. I had assumed all I would need would be the camera on my phone which takes pretty good quality photos. But when I actually came to positioning it, keeping it in the same place proved to be a complete nightmare. Firstly, I was only using blu tac which was not reliable at all and I was only balancing the phone on a stack of DVDs which were not stable. Anyway that's what I get for thinking I didn't need a DSLR and a tripod. I've got one now.