Here is my animated Christmas card, for our last project of 2012!
The idea for it is a magical reindeer flying over the city of Edinburgh and lighting up all the Christmas lights and decorations. I didn't really manage to animate the reindeer flying or anything like that, but I did put the reindeer in at the end there. The reindeer was animated on the computer with Adobe Flash, but the rest of the animation was drawn with pencil and pastels. I first walked around the city sketching the scenes from life and taking photos, then animated the Christmas lights. I put some scenes that are personal to me in as well - the castle view from Grassmarket, which I see on the way to uni, and the Conan Doyle Pub!
Anyway, hope you enjoy this Christmas card, and a very merry Christmas to everyone and a happy new year!!
Christmas Lights - Alison MacPherson from ECA Animation on Vimeo.
Monday 17 December 2012
Tuesday 11 December 2012
Time for Tea
Here is the finished animation for the "When Balls Go Bad" project. It is a little over 20 seconds, and is all hand-drawn. I have decided to name it "Time for Tea"...
It goes very quickly and is maybe not too obvious or clear to viewers what is actually going on. The narrative I tried to put in this film was most likely far too complicated for a 20 second film! Hopefully the film explains itself but just incase viewers are confused (and I wouldn't blame them!!), then here is the reasoning - a brief synopsis of the film:
The dog is in an inventor's studio where a "tea making machine" is being built. The dog wants the rubber ball on the shelf so jumps on the shelf which sends the ball flying. The ball then hits the tea-making contraption which is only a 'work in progress', therefore the ball breaks the machine/ sends it into havoc as it is not yet finished or trustworthy! The tea tray hits the old piano which then wobbles and the piano wheel (which is supposed to be unstable in the first place) gets forced off only then to fly across the room like the original rubber ball and cause more havoc. In the end the room is somewhat destroyed by the sequence caused by the dog and the original rubber ball (which then bounces back over to him at the end of the film, the dog having forgotten about it in the midst of chaos). The dog is happy at the end because he is rewarded with a rubber ball and a tin of biscuits, ignoring the room that is now in a total mess!
Anyway I hope you enjoy the very short animation! It was a lot of fun to make, and I learnt much from this project again.
Lastly, here are some photos for those non-animation folks to see a little of what it is like making the animation. Here is a photo of the lightbox where almost all my drawing was done and a photo of all the sheets of paper that made up the finished animation!
It goes very quickly and is maybe not too obvious or clear to viewers what is actually going on. The narrative I tried to put in this film was most likely far too complicated for a 20 second film! Hopefully the film explains itself but just incase viewers are confused (and I wouldn't blame them!!), then here is the reasoning - a brief synopsis of the film:
The dog is in an inventor's studio where a "tea making machine" is being built. The dog wants the rubber ball on the shelf so jumps on the shelf which sends the ball flying. The ball then hits the tea-making contraption which is only a 'work in progress', therefore the ball breaks the machine/ sends it into havoc as it is not yet finished or trustworthy! The tea tray hits the old piano which then wobbles and the piano wheel (which is supposed to be unstable in the first place) gets forced off only then to fly across the room like the original rubber ball and cause more havoc. In the end the room is somewhat destroyed by the sequence caused by the dog and the original rubber ball (which then bounces back over to him at the end of the film, the dog having forgotten about it in the midst of chaos). The dog is happy at the end because he is rewarded with a rubber ball and a tin of biscuits, ignoring the room that is now in a total mess!
Anyway I hope you enjoy the very short animation! It was a lot of fun to make, and I learnt much from this project again.
Lastly, here are some photos for those non-animation folks to see a little of what it is like making the animation. Here is a photo of the lightbox where almost all my drawing was done and a photo of all the sheets of paper that made up the finished animation!
Sunday 9 December 2012
When Balls Go Bad - Animation Development
Now that the final film is finished, I can post about the development of my animation during the time I was creating it! The final film will too be posted very soon...
I made quite a lot of development sketches before and while creating the animation. This helped me to figure out how the action would play out. Here are the storyboards I drew up (which I made into an animatic that I posted on the blog earlier on):
The environment had to be clearly altered by the ball's movement. So I wanted to show the room before the rubber ball was let loose by the canine character, the ball then beginning a chain of reactions with the objects within the room, then the room at the end of the film after it had been completely dismantled by the balls actions and everything is in a mess. But the dog is happy because he got the ball, plus a tin of biscuits that fell of a shelf! (loosely inspired by the risk project also, and all those quotes about taking risks like jumping on a dodgy shelf to get a rubber ball. It is sometimes a good thing to do and has it's benefits... like biscuits).
I wanted the room to be a sort of 'W.Heath Robinson/Inventor's studio' so I put in a contraption/invention that would help the chain of reactions and relate back to this original inspiration. It could also help the narrative and animation be a bit more dramatic, although probably quite far-fetched. Then again however - Robinson's inventions are very far-fetched and silly!
I decided this contraption should be a tea making machine because I noticed a few of his sketches included people having tea (I especially liked the one of a horse's head being used as a tea tray... very silly of course... but I managed to reference it very briefly in my final film, so see if you can spot it!!). Designing the tea making contraption was challenging and took a lot of thinking through and sketching out ideas! I took most inspiration from Robinson - his designs also included lots of cogs, wheels and strings. I think the final version of the invention in my film is still a bit unbelievable, but with more time maybe I could have made it work a bit better. Keep in mind when watching the final film that the contraption is meant to be a "work in progress" and any disturbance could cause havoc!
(also if you remember the video by "OK Go" in my initial research post, that is where the inspiration for the piano came from. There is something very comical about a piano... whether I achieve that in my own film I don't know, probably not, but I can but try!!).
I wanted to know whether the animation would work timing and movement wise - so I sketched all the scenes first which I would then go over later with pen, neatening up the animation and the sketch lines. Here is the sketch test I made:
This sketch test was the task that took the longest time during this project; I was a bit slow and relaxed when creating it, and I now think I should have made done this much quicker so I could focus more time on finishing up the final animation. But I have learnt much from this project again!
When working on this project I also realized the importance of the previous project! What I learned from making the simple bouncing ball animations was vital when creating this animation. Not only was I again animating a bouncy rubber ball but also a dog jumping, a tin falling of a shelf, a kettle and tea cup falling, and piano wheel - for all these things I had to think about weight, material, arcs, and the time these things would take to fall and jump and land etc.
The final film will be posted very soon...
I made quite a lot of development sketches before and while creating the animation. This helped me to figure out how the action would play out. Here are the storyboards I drew up (which I made into an animatic that I posted on the blog earlier on):
The environment had to be clearly altered by the ball's movement. So I wanted to show the room before the rubber ball was let loose by the canine character, the ball then beginning a chain of reactions with the objects within the room, then the room at the end of the film after it had been completely dismantled by the balls actions and everything is in a mess. But the dog is happy because he got the ball, plus a tin of biscuits that fell of a shelf! (loosely inspired by the risk project also, and all those quotes about taking risks like jumping on a dodgy shelf to get a rubber ball. It is sometimes a good thing to do and has it's benefits... like biscuits).
I wanted the room to be a sort of 'W.Heath Robinson/Inventor's studio' so I put in a contraption/invention that would help the chain of reactions and relate back to this original inspiration. It could also help the narrative and animation be a bit more dramatic, although probably quite far-fetched. Then again however - Robinson's inventions are very far-fetched and silly!
I decided this contraption should be a tea making machine because I noticed a few of his sketches included people having tea (I especially liked the one of a horse's head being used as a tea tray... very silly of course... but I managed to reference it very briefly in my final film, so see if you can spot it!!). Designing the tea making contraption was challenging and took a lot of thinking through and sketching out ideas! I took most inspiration from Robinson - his designs also included lots of cogs, wheels and strings. I think the final version of the invention in my film is still a bit unbelievable, but with more time maybe I could have made it work a bit better. Keep in mind when watching the final film that the contraption is meant to be a "work in progress" and any disturbance could cause havoc!
(also if you remember the video by "OK Go" in my initial research post, that is where the inspiration for the piano came from. There is something very comical about a piano... whether I achieve that in my own film I don't know, probably not, but I can but try!!).
I wanted to know whether the animation would work timing and movement wise - so I sketched all the scenes first which I would then go over later with pen, neatening up the animation and the sketch lines. Here is the sketch test I made:
This sketch test was the task that took the longest time during this project; I was a bit slow and relaxed when creating it, and I now think I should have made done this much quicker so I could focus more time on finishing up the final animation. But I have learnt much from this project again!
When working on this project I also realized the importance of the previous project! What I learned from making the simple bouncing ball animations was vital when creating this animation. Not only was I again animating a bouncy rubber ball but also a dog jumping, a tin falling of a shelf, a kettle and tea cup falling, and piano wheel - for all these things I had to think about weight, material, arcs, and the time these things would take to fall and jump and land etc.
The final film will be posted very soon...
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