Sunday, 30 March 2014

Cartoon Silhouettes


Breaking Characters into Shapes


Trends in Animation

Trends in Animation.

2013

- Frozen
- Despicable me 2
- Monsters University

2012 

- Brave
- Madagascar 3

2011

- kung fu panda 2
- The Smurfs 
- Cars 2


Things the animated films above have in common with eachother.

- Established Hollywood stars, voice acting, Actors such as Russell Brand and Katy Perry.
- All the films are computer animated 
- All of these films are made by big, known companies, e.g. Pixar and       Dreamworks.
- All of the films are heavily merchandised.
- The target audience - Families, children and young teens. 
- Genres of the films - Action/adventure.

Similarities between top animated films

- Sequals means Franchises - If a view enjoyed the first film they will want to go and see the follow up.


- Already got a existing audience

- Merchandise



Computer animated
Well established companies
  • Pixar, Dreamworks, Universal     
Established hollywood stars
  • voiceovers
Family orientated films
Adventure fins
Family audience 


Other successful animated films

Lego movie
Cloudy with a chance of meatballs
  • Humour appeals all ages

Horror animated films

Paranormon
Frankenweenie
Coraline                                       
Nightmare before xmas

CBeebies
Milkshake 
  • Ben & Holly
  • Postman Pat
  • 2D Cel Animation

Adult TV Series
  • Family guy
  • Simpsons
  • South Park
  • Beavis & Buthead

Children/Young Teens TV Series
  • Adventure time
  • The amazing world of Gumball                              

Successful web cartoons

  • Early years entertainment - simple, clean and catchy, there for people to replay viewings
  • ASDF
  • Charlie the Unicorn                             
-Teen audiences
-Short
-Quotable
-Stands up to repeat viewings

Saturday, 29 March 2014

Characters and Shapes

Characters and Shapes.

     Mike Wazowski                           Sully                             Randall

Intelligent, Friendly, Helpful, Kind        Kind, Big, Brave, Strong.           Manipulative, Sly, Clever.

Mario - Adventurous, helpful, brave. 
Wreck it Ralph - Clumsy, Heavy Handed, Strong. 
Don Paolo - Evil and Intelligent.

                      

       Rectangle.                             Circle.                               Triangle.
           
          Hulk                                 Mr Happy.                        Captain Hook.

Hulk - Big, Brave, Strong.    Mr Happy - Happy     Captain Hook - Cunning, Evil

Feedback on my ideas

Feedback on my ideas


 The feedback given to me i think overall is fair and positive. I think I will be going along with the child's tv programme, Rory the Lion. I will take on board all the feedback that was given to me and will add what was said to my ideas, such as using more animals. My feedback also states that it has a catchy name and a simple story line which is good in the way that the children watching won't get confused on whats going on and will be able to understand the story line.


Lion Summary



Summary.

Rory the lion who is always on the look out to help other animals out and solve problems

Personality.

Brave, Strong, Friendly Kind, King like, Fluffy, Willing and always happy to help.







Tuesday, 18 March 2014

Character Design

"Character Design is the combination of physical traits and narrative."

- Narrative (Storyline defines personality, gives context (genre, location and setting) therefore has to feed into look and design of the character.

The face is the primary channel to express emotion. (a reason for the many large headed characters). 

A lot can be said with posture and body language. This allows for personality traits to be identifiable in silhouette. 

Solarski states that how a character carries their physical weight can tell us about their personality - which body part they lead with is important.

Heros will lead with their chest. If a character is leading with their pelvis this shows they are laid back and (or) lazy. If they lead with their head this could show they are intelligent. If a character is leading with their knees this could mean they are sneaky or a coward.

Cuddy

Power and dominance revolves around expanding power. Expand - Takes up space. Weakness - cover up and making yourself look small.






Hero - Superman - Leading with their chest 
  







Lazy - Goofy - Leading with their pelvis








Intelligent - Mike Wazowski - Leading with Head. 











Tuesday, 11 March 2014

Pixar

History and Ownership

Pixar Animation Studios is an American Computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. Pixar is best known for its CGI animated featured films. 

Pixar began in 1979 as the graphic group, part of the computer division of Lucasfilm. In 1982 the team began to work on film sequences with Industrial Light & Magic on special effects. In 1986 the group was spun out as a corporation with investment from Steve Jobs after he had left Apple Computers. Steve Jobs paid George Lucas $5 million for technology rights and put them and $5 million cash as capital into the company.


Pixar were a high end computer hardware company and their main product was the Pixar Image Computer. This was a system that was sold mainly to the government agencies and the medical community. One of the buyers of Pixar Image Computers was Walt Disney Studios, which they used as their device as part of their secretive CAPS project. They used the machine and custom software that was written by Pixar to split the ink and paint part of the 2D animation process to a more automated and efficient method. The Image Computer never sold well. In a bid to drive sales of the system, Pixar employee John Lasseter, who had long been creating short animations, such as Luxo Jr, to show off the device's capabilities, premiered his creations at SIGGRAPH.

As poor sales of Pixar's computers threatened to put the company out of business, Steve Jobs invested more money and took more ownership away from the management and employees of Pixar until after several years he basically owned the company for a total investment of $50 million. Lasseter's animation department began producing computer animated commercials for outside companies. In April 1990 Pixar sold its hardware division to Vicom Systems and transferred 18 of Pixar's 100 employees. 

Pixar continued its successful partnership with Walt Disney Feature Animation. In 1991, after a hard start of the year, 30 employees in the company's computer department had to fired including the company's president Chuck Kolstadwhich. This reduced the total number of employees to just 42. Pixar made a $26 million deal with Disney to produce three computer animated films. The first film was Toy Story. 

Despite the total income of these products, the company was still losing money. Steve Jobs the chairman of the board and now the full owner of the company often thought about selling it as late as 1994. One of the companies he contemplated selling it to was Microsoft. Only after learning from New York critics that Toy Story was probably going to be a success and confirming that Disney would put it out for the 1995 Christmas season Steve Jobs decided to give Pixar another chance. He also then began for the first time to take an active direct leadership role in the company, making himself its CEO. The film went on to gross more than $361 million. 


File:Pixaranimationstudios.jpg

Pixar built a new studio in Emeryville which opened in November 2000.



Pixar and Disney had disagreements after the production of Toy Story 2. Pixar demanded that the film be counted toward the three-picture agreement, but Disney refused. Though profitable for both, Pixar later complained that the arrangement was not equitable. Pixar was responsible for creation and production, while Disney handled marketing and distribution. Profits and production costs were split 50/50 but Disney exclusively owned all rights and also collected a distribution fee. The lack of rights was perhaps the most onerous aspect to Pixar and set the stage for a contentious relationship.

The two companies reached a new agreement in 2004. The new deal would be only for distribution, as Pixar wanted to control the production and own the film properties themselves. The company also wanted to finance their films on their own and collect all of the profits, paying Disney only the 10 to 15 percent distribution fee. As part of any distribution agreement with Disney, Pixar demanded control over films already in production under their old agreement, including The Incredibles and Cars.

Disagreements between Steve Jobs and then Disney Chairman and CEO Michael Eisner made the plans more difficult than they otherwise might have been. They broke down completely in the middle of 2004, with Steve Jobs declaring that Pixar was actively seeking partners other than Disney. Despite this announcement, Pixar did not enter negotiations with other companies.








Monday, 3 March 2014

Animation On Photoshop





How to do this animation.

Once we opened the file in photoshop you have to go to window -> Timeline. If it is not already there then a timeline will open at the bottom of photoshop this is where you can start your animation.

The first thing we had to do is duplicate the file on the timeline 6 times. On the first one we made it so that all was there was the number 3 and the rocket, we then on the second added the number 2, third one added number 1, forth one we added the text "launch" and the fifth one we added the fire underneath the rocket. The sixth one I duplicated again and on the duplicated file I moved the rocket to the top so it looked like it had taken off. I then clicked on the normal sixth file and clicked on the Tweens tool. I then chose how many files I wanted between the rocket taking off and the rocket being high up. I chose 12 and this made it look like it was going up in the air and not jumping. I then realised my Clip was too long and it was taken to much time for the count down and for the rocket to get into the air. I clicked on the first file and held "Shift" and clicked on the last file. I then clicked on the little drop down arrow on the file itself and changed the time length.

To save it, I went to file - Save for web, left all the settings the same apart from the colours which I changed from 258 to 64. I then clicked save and chose  where I wanted to save it.


My Own Animation.






Creating a GIF from a video clip.

To create a GIF from a video clip is really quite simple. All you need to do is click on "File" then go to "Import" then click on "Video Frames to Layers"
You will then need to choose the clip that you want to make a GIF from and once you have opened it, it will pop up with a box. You then want to tick the box next to "Limit Frames" and keep the number as 2. 

On the right side of the box it will have your video clip and arrows and a time bar underneath, here you can choose what part of the clip you want to use as the GIF and cut out parts you dont want and shorten the clip.