Research Into Childline

One key piece of feedback I received early in the module about my progression into the project was that an extensive amount of research was key. I needed to know the subject matter I was dealing with in great depth, so basically I had to research ChildLine as much as I could so I could figure out exactly how to make an animation for the charity.

Upon hearing that a massive amount of research was key, I thought the best thing to do would be to get primary research of my own instead of secondary, so actually volunteer in one of ChildLine's help centres. Unfortunately I found this to be a far harder task than previously anticipated and I realised just how much commitment I would have had to put in. I would have had to be willing to donate a few hours of my time a week for at least the next few months. I would have been fine with this, but it became evident to me fairly early on that this would take away from time I should be spending working on my animations.

I also received feedback about my plan and was advised that I sounded a little bit too much like a method actor and a far more effective use of my time would be to still research ChildLine in depth, but to do this through secondary research into ChildLine, so their website.

So this is my secondary research...

I knew of the charity ChildLine, but it wasn't until I started my research did I realise how little I actually knew about it as an organisation. ChildLine do not just deal with one issue, they deal with depression, child abuse, divorce, pregnancy, substance misuse, parental separation etc. Anyway I realised that if I was going to make an effective animation it would make more sense to narrow down my subject matter, for example focus one one issue rather than ChildLine the charity as a whole.

I decided to focus on Depression, the reasoning for this was because of all the issues that ChildLine deal with, I felt I knew the most about this issue, not to say I was an expert, but I definitely did know more about this subject than child abuse for example.

Upon narrowing the subject matter of my animation I found this page on ChildLine's website that deals primarily with depression and it aided me throughout the project.

Most the statistics I found about ChildLine were provided by the NSPCC who provided the charity ChildLine.

ChildLine Timeline:

• October 1986- Esther Rantzen launches ChildLine
• 2006- ChildLine became part of the NSPCC
• October 2009 - ChildLine website launches
• 2012/13 - Website receives 2.4 million visits

ChildLine Statistics:

• In 2014 ChildLine Counsellors answered 508,943 contacts from young people asking directly for help, advice and protection
• 55,000 of these used their online one-to-one emailing service
• 810,000 young people visited the service after September 2009
• Every ten minutes ChildLine is contacted with a report about child abuse or a child's safety
• The main concerns ChildLine are contacted about:
• 29% Neglect
• 20% Physical Abuse
• 16% Sexual Abuse
• 13% Emotional Abuse
• Then the remain 22% of contacts relate to a range of other issues including family relationships, adult behaviour and child health
• ChildLine began it's service in October 1986
• Launched by Esther Rantzen
• ChildLine spoke to 23,000 children in it's first year
• ChildLine became part of the NSPCC in 2006
• 2009- ChildLine's website launched
• In the year 2012/13 ChildLine's website's visits jumped 28% from the previous year with 2.4 million visits
• A Child contacts ChildLine every 20 seconds
• ChildLine counsellors get over a million calls a year from children
• 300,000 in depth direct counselling sessions were carried out with children and young people in 2013/14
• ChildLine has nearly 1,400 volunteers
• ChildLine has helped over 3.2 million children and young people since it's launch
• During 2012/13 ChildLine counselled 278,886 young people and children
• Also dealt with a further 10,961 contacts from young people over concerns about another child
• For first time more counselling took place online (59%) over telephone (41%)
• Contacts about self harm increased by 41%
• 50% rise in contacts from 12 year olds about self harm
• 33% increase in suicidal counselling
• 43% increase among 12 - 15 year olds
• 60 of referrals were on behalf o actively suicidal
• 14% increase from 2011/12
• 87% increase in concerns about online bullying
• Counselling about racist bullying increased by 69%
• 1,400 counselling sessions took place in 2012/13
• Over 35,000 young people came to ChildLine struggling with depression and unhappiness
• Depression and unhappiness was the top reason why young people contacted ChildLine in that year
• 40% more counselling with young people about money problems than previous year
• Out of the young people who contacted ChildLine with wellbeing concerns...
• 56% one to one chat
• 22% email
• 22% phone
• In 63% of counselling sessions, the young person told ChildLine their age
• 13% 11 and under
• 31% 16-18
• 56% 12-15

16-18 Year Olds Statistics

• ChildLine dealt with 54,003 contacts from young people aged 16-18 in 2012/13
• Third of all contacts received in that year
• Suicidal thoughts and feelings - third most common reason for young people to contact ChildLine that year
• Represented 7% of all counselling provided to this age group
• Majority of these sessions were with 17 year olds

Gender Statistics

• In 2012/13 ChildLine counselled 147,302 girls
• 53% of all sessions
• In 2012/13 ChildLine counselled 48,351 boys
• 17% of all sessions
• In 83,233 sessions (30%) gender of the young person was not disclosed
• Girls contact ChildLine about self-harm much more than boys
• 4th most common reason for girls to seek support
• Ratio of girls to boys concerned about self-harm is 15:1 in 2012/13
• Among girls, suicidal thoughts and feelings is on the rise
• Top 10 concern in 2011/12
• Top 5 concern in 2012/13
• Mental health issues - top 10 concern for girls
• 95% increase in girls talking about feeling excluded or isolated as a result of being bullied

My Final Applied Animation!

Well it's done, and I definitely didn't think I'd say that with time to spare. Admittedly I didn't see our final critique sneak up on me. It was a few weeks ago that i knew I had a lot to do, not just for Applied Animation, but for PPP to. It's not that I wasn't working, because for the last two months I've been animating with much of my spare time, it's simply that I animate far too slowly. I'd like to say that my time management skills have improved from the start of the year, and maybe they have and I am faster at animating. But it's very hard to tell when in the very last week of uni I still had to work through the night before our final critique just to get my animation completed.

But upon showing my final animation I have to say it was basically completed and the feedback I received seemed to say the same. There were a few tweaks I needed to make where it was obvious I could have done a bit better and there were a few things I needed to tidy up, but in the space of about three hours after the critique I was able to fix these problems and upload my final animation.

Looking back on my final animation I am very happy with it, some of the clips are repeated so if I had more time I would have animated more original footage but I feel that the original footage I do have in the animation is successful.

OUAN406 Applied Animation Evaluation

Overall I feel this project was largely successful, but again the biggest problem I've had with this project has been time management, we'll start at the beginning.

I didn't really know how to approach this project. I think it's fair to say it was probably the most difficult project in terms of subject matter. I chose to do the charity option because I hadn't read too many books in the past so felt it wouldn't be appropriate for me to make a title sequence of a book to film adaptation that hasn't already been done. Furthermore I also didn't want to do the idents brief because I've never been very good at coming up with visual gags and also the thought of having to come up with two ideas for two idents seemed too difficult.

I chose the campaign option because I felt even though it might to be the most fun of the options and could be the hardest to get right tonally it could be the most rewarding if its done right. But I feel that pressure of trying to come up with a good idea that visually represents depression got in the way of what was just important in the early development stages. I didn't realise just how much research I needed to do into ChildLine before I could begin coming up with an idea for the actual animation. It's fair to say I should have spent more time on researching ChildLine, but even when I did go about conducting research, I went about it in entirely the wrong way. I felt that the best research I could get would be primary, so I looked into how to volunteer for ChildLine's helpline centre in Leeds. Of course now looking back I realise how ridiculous an idea this was and that it would have just eaten up all my time just to understand a little better what ChildLine does.

I received feedback about this plan and was advised to not do this and to instead go about conducting research by simply taking a massive amount of statistics from the ChildLine website.

The idea for the narrative of my ChildLine animation came relatively quickly to me and once I was given the idea of how to visually represent depression I was ready to animate. After I showed the class my animatic I was advised to change relatively few things and I was given positive feedback about the visual aesthetic of my animation with people commenting that they liked the simplicity of the character and how it made her relatable and accessible to the viewer.

The feedback for my final animation was very positive with viewers liking the choice in music. This was enlightening to hear as the soundtrack choice was very last minute since I was originally collaborating with a student at Leeds College of Music but he had to pull out due to time constraints. Had I another chance to do this project again I would have dedicated more time to the initial research stage and I would have figured out an animation style earlier and begun animating sooner since I had to loop some of my animation since I ran out of time to create new original animation.

Maya Modelling: Turntable

The final task we had to do was to create a turntable of an object we created ourselves. I would have used the Spongebob Squarepants model I had created but unfortunately I didn't still have the original Maya project with the Spongebob Squarepants object on it. So I had to quickly create another object that would be very simple, I settled on a laptop. I feel the turnaround looks very smooth and it was very easy to create, but looking back I wish I had a more interesting object to do a turnaround of. 

Overall I found my experience of animating with Maya to be far more successful than modelling with Maya, this could be down to me slowly learning the tools so I could work more effectively or that creating animations is just a simpler process than modelling.

Maya Modelling: Bouncy Ball

This was also one of the hardest tasks. It consisted of animating two balls bouncing, one had to be solid and heavy meaning when it dropped on the floor it hardly bounced up again, and the other and to be lighter and more squishy so when it hits the floor it bounces immediately up again almost as high. I did have a problem with this animation. Not so much the heavy red ball, but the squishy green ball was a challenge because for some reason whenever it bounced up again to would bounce up faster than it hit the floor which goes completely against gravity. Eventually I fixed this problem and I feel the movement looked smooth.

Maya Modelling: Segmented Pendulum

So building on the Maya Pendulum animation I now had to make a Segmented Pendulum which is essentially the same as a pendulum animation but with secondary movement. This was definitely more complicated to create but once I knew all the controls it was a lot simpler to create than I had anticipated and I feel the movement looked pretty fluid, definitely a lot more fluid than animating with 2D animation on paper.

Maya Modelling: Pendulum

One of the other study tasks was to create a pendulum animation. This too was a relatively simple and quick process and again it was literally a case of just positioning the pendulum at one side then re-positioning at the other and then when I played it back it swung smoothly.

Maya Modelling: Anticipation

I had animated the animation principle Anticipation in the past with traditional 2D drawn animation on paper. But I knew this would be very different. In fact, it was actually far simpler than I thought it would be. In fact it only took me a few minutes and was actually a very informative experience. I didn't entirely understand how to create this motion on Maya when we were shown it the first time but I felt all I needed was another go.

The results I felt looked pretty successful and I felt the ball definitely looked bouncy.

Maya Modelling Do It Yourself

I felt like even though I struggled immensely with the Keep On Truckin' studio task, i felt that the skills I had learnt would aid me with the next study task that allowed us free rein to create an everyday object, but essentially it could basically be anything. I decided to make a model of the cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants. I felt like this would be a good subject to model as he has a simple boxy design with relatively few smooth edges which meant I could essentially make him up with custom cubes.

The results were well, okay. I mean, it's recognisably the character although the design is fairly lacklustre. But I have to say it was a lot faster to create than my truck so I definitely feel like I am getting better at using the software.

Maya Modelling: Keep on Truckin'

As a studio task we had to learn basic principles about how to use the 3D animating software Maya. It was fair to say I didn't get along with this software at all. I've always hads an interest in creating 3D animation as I would love to go work for Pixar. But I just could not get my head around how to use this software at all. I love 2D traditional animation because it is all drawing but I found Maya to be a lot more about moulding objects, like a virtual ceramics.

The first task was to create a truck. Even this, with very simple straight forward instruction I found very hard to get my head around. I basically completely messed up the truck I was trying to create in class so decided to reattempt it again at home. But even at home after having tried top do it once it still took a few hours to do.

The above image is of my final truck. I wasn't particularly happy with it. I couldn't even frame the picture properly but it's finished and now I can move on having felt like iI've learnt the very basic principles about how to use the software.

The Model Part 2

So we had encased the model in plaster and we then had to take the clay off the now dry plaster. With this clay we then flattened it and built up walls around the dry plaster. As some of Garfield's Brother's body was sticking out (where it was sitting in the clay floor) we had to then fill in these walls with plaster. Now we had two halves of now dry plaster so it was time to pull out the plasticine mould of my character. Unfortunately this process did cause damage to my plasticine model and it was fair to say it never quite looked the same again after that.

Now I had two dried plaster halves and a cast in the middle. Then I poured the expanding the liquid expanding foam that our final models would be made out of into the cast through the hole in the cast (Garfield's Brother's feet). It was hard to tell how much of this liquid I would need since it expands so it was essentially a case of a bit of calculating and guessing. When my foam cast had hardened, I tried to remove the two plaster halves.

It was wielded very tightly shut. I had put on a liquid substance in the cast for the purpose that it wouldn't stick to the foam model, but obviously this had not been very successful because I was finding it very hard to detach my foam model from the plaster. Eventually it came free but I wasn't too satisfied with the results. The face was obviously the most intricate part of the model and that is where most of the foam got stuck, some of it got ripped off while detaching it from the clay. Furthermore I feel that I didn't use enough liquid as the mould came out very light and not very dense which meant it was hard to see the little details in the model.

But after giving it a second go, my second foam model came out looking far more dense. But I wouldn't say I was a hundred percent happy with this second result. I feel like I could have done with another session to give this process a few more goes to make a more successful model.

The Model

One of the study tasks we had to do as part of Applied was to over the course of a few weeks develop a basic armature and build a plasticine model for the use of stop motion animation.

Before the first session we had to bring in a design of the character we wanted to create, our character had to be about the size of a piece of A4 paper and be standing face on with their arms outstretched. For my character I drew Garfield's Brother. I had trouble coming up with an idea of what character to draw for my model. I knew it had to have a relatively simple design as it was going to be made out of plasticine.

I decided on creating a new character that would be Garfield's brother so it was like I wasn't ripping off the Garfield character and simply copying it, instead I was kind of making my own version of Garfield with Garfield's brother who I portrayed as a drug addict.

The first day of model making was assembling the wire armature.

(Example of a wire armature)

Assembling the wire armature was quite a difficult process, it was basically like building the skeleton for our character so if this stage didn't work we would not be able to proceed, furthermore if the armature didn't look right our entire model would not look right. The wire we used was very bendy but also very tough and I was amazed at how strong our wire armature was once we had finished putting it together.

The next step was to put a clay mould around the various joints (as you can see in the right half of the above image). This was important because the plasticine would not be able to stick to the armature without it. 

Once that was done it was time for the third step which was to apply plasticine to the armature. This was by far the most enjoyable of the tasks because it allowed me the chance to actually mould the character's likeness into the plasticine.

Above is my model with plasticine moulded onto the wire armature. Overall I was very happy with the model thus far. I felt like I had created a likeness to the original Garfield while having also created my own thing. One concern I did have at this point was that he would be too top heavy. If you look at Garfield as a character, he has got a very large head which works fine in a comic. But it did mean when it came to moulding him as an actual plasticine model the weight of plasticine did way him down to the point I had to use a pencil to stand him up. As you can see his eyes are a different colour. this is because we had to mould eyes separate as in the final thing the eyes are going to be separate so we can move them around.

The next step was to place our plasticine into a casing made entirely of clay. Almost like placing our model in a clay box. One issue with my model was that because Garfield's Brother's head was so large I had to use a lot of clay in order to build a border high enough to go above his head and it had to be higher than his head. The reason for this was because in the next step we had to fill the box with runny plaster. 

We only had a limited time to do this before the plaster hardened so we basically had to get it right first time meaning the walls of the box had to be air tight so no liquid could escape. Once I had completely filled the box with plaster I had to wait for the plaster to set which was done in a matter of minutes. 

I had a black dog, his name was depression

I found an animation online called I had a black dog, his name was depression by The World Health Organisation online and it really inspired me with my own animation. Again, like the ChildLine animation it visually represents depression in a very simple way, but because it represents depression in a very simple way it makes it less scary and more approachable.

ChildLine represented depression as an uncomfortable helmet and this animation represents depression as a big black dog. I feel this is more effective that representing depression as some sort of giant terrifying monster because if they did represent depression as something a lot scarier I feel it would make young people who might have depression less likely to want to combat it. Because both these short films represent depression as something so simple and a part of everyday life I feel young people who are feeling depressed might watch these shorts and think hang on, maybe I can fight my depression and maybe depression isn't so scary to fight, why should I let something so simple take over my life?

The animation style is very simplistic but this simplistic style really works as it again makes it very accessible to the viewer. Because our protagonist in the animation who has depression looks like anyone, this means he could be anyone which makes him relatable.

The simple style of this animation inspired me to go with a simple visual style of my protagonist, because she has a fairly simple design it means the viewer can watch the animation and relate to her easier. And then the design to go with this visual style received very positive feedback.

Feeling depressed, sad or unhappy? Get help & advice from ChildLine A film By ChildLine

I needed to research other short films that dealt with depression in order to understand how to make a short film of my own. One short film that that heavily inspired me with creating my own animation was the above short film that is an official film by ChildLine. It basically chronicles the life of a girl around the age of the character featured in my animation and her day to day struggle with depression.

I really like this short as it doesn't go overboard with it's visual representation of depression. Depression is not often a visible illness so visually representing it is quite difficult but I really like the approach ChildLine took.

Depression in this short film is represented as a big uncomfortable helmet our protagonist has to wear everyday. It is like a prison that shuts the outside world out. There is a narration that runs throughout the short that is the main character describing life with depression. She talks about how life with depression can make even the most mundane of day to day tasks impossible. And how this is represented is with a scene in which our protagonist tries to brush her teeth and ends up just rubbing toothpaste on her glass screen.

It's not a particularly cutting edge way of visually representing depression but the above scene is an example of why this way of representing depression is very successful. Because the video is not all doom and gloom in fact it's actually quite funny, and because it's funny it makes it easier to watch and more relatable, particularly for young people who might have depression. Because this video is so easy to watch and so accessible it might encourage more young people to contact ChildLine if they are feeling depressed.

Applied Animation: Final Critique

Finishing my Applied Animation was a mad rush to say the least, but after working through the night I was able to show it in time. Overall I was very happy with my final animation and watching everyone else's animations was a very rewarding experience as everyone ha created something very different. It was a little hard to know how well I had done since no one else had picked the charity studio brief but the positive was pretty positive so I have to believe I did a good job.

I was told that it would have been good to include more information about ChildLine in the animation as the only text I do have in the animation comes at the end.

Applied Animation Development: Putting my 2D Drawn Animation With My Stop Motion Lego Animation

So, I had all my Jpegs from the footage I had taken of Lego bricks and now it was time to put these Jpegs together with my hand drawn animation. This was essentially a case of opening up my 2D scenes on Photoshop where each frame is a layer and placing the Lego Jpegs behind the layers with the girl on it. Then I would save the two layers together and have my final Jpegs.

Above is an example of a final Jpeg where my 2D drawn animation has been combined with my Lego stop motion animation.

When I placed the images together I was very happy with the result. I had seen plenty of Lego animations in the passed so knew that animating with Lego was nothing knew but off the top of my head i couldn't think of any animations where Lego was only used to animate the backgrounds so I felt that this idea was going to be a risk and could either work or just look wrong.

But, when I played back a scene of footage that featured the girl walking towards the camera and the Lego moving in the background I felt it looked very successful. At first I felt that the lego moved a little too fast and could look a bit jarring to the viewer. But because I used Lego bricks that mostly weren't too bright and colourful and instead opted for more beige bricks, it looked far easier on the eyes. 

I also liked how compositionally it made the girl stand out more since she is completely white on a coloured background. I then felt that there was no need to colour her in as this could make her stand out less let alone shade her which saved me a lot of time.

Applied Animation Development: Audio

A friend from back home got in touch with me aboiut the possibility of collaborating on a project together. He goes to Leeds College of Music and knew I went to Leeds College of Art. I felt this project would be the perfect opportunity for this collaboration so contacted him back. I told him what the subject matter was and that it couldn't be too joyful. But saying this, I didn't want the animation to be too dark and depressing, that is why for the visual look I incorporated lego bricks (typically thought of as a fun past time associated with happy childhood memories) so I felt the music should match this tone.

Unfortunately due to the pressures of his own work, Tom didn't end up having the time to put something together for me. This was completely understandable as I too was aware of how work can pile up and take over your time. Had I done this project again I would have contacted him sooner. But due to time constraints I didn't get around to contacting him until the last week we had to work on this project. This meant I had very little time to find an alternative track to use.

I ended up using the song Paradise Circus by Massive Attack.

I felt this song was the perfect choice as it definitely isn't a song that is particularly uplifting, yet it also isn't too dark. The last thing young people want to hear when their already feeling depressed is a song that is very dark so I knew I needed to avoid this. 

Applied Animation Development: My Day Animating with Lego

So when I had the idea to animate with Lego it seemed like a slightly far fetched, definitely experimental idea. I knew I wanted to animate with it for something, but what exactly I had yet to figure out. The idea to use it to animate the background of my applied animation seemed like a good one because it is incredibly accessible to young people. I'm fairly certain that anyone within the age range of five to eighteen would be familiar with Lego. I feel that therefore, incorporating Lego into my animation makes my animation more accessible to viewers, the idea of incorporating something that is typically associated with happy memories of childhood that we can all relate to.

Animating with Lego would be a far easier way to create a background than my original idea to film footage and then rotoscope my backgrounds... or so I had thought. When I was a kid I used to make Lego animations that featured an action figure Godzilla destroying a city and I remember these animations as being fun to create and not particularly labour intensive. But now returning to animating this medium, I found the process far more challenging. 

I found that I would get confused about what bricks go where and often when I played back the footage I would find that I had lost track of the bricks I had used and it would look all jumbled up. 

After many failed attempts and around four to five hours later I had created many, many frames. Some sequences were good and consistent, others were jumbled and messy. I took the frames off dragon frame and spent another day importing them into my own animation behind what I had already animated, saved each individual image as a final frame, placed these frames onto premier and played back five seconds on animation.

My results were very successful, at first I thought the backgrounds might be too vibrant but on further viewings I feel it complimented the animation. The feedback I received was also possible with Oscar saying that the animation was original and he liked how he'd never really seen Lego animated as a background for an animation before.

Animating Lego for a background was an experiment, but I feel this experiment payed off.