Animation practise

Cut Out stop motion 

For this animation my role was the modeler. This roll required me to move each piece of the cut out for each shot to create the sense of how the body moves.

In cut out animation we thought about secondary action. For example we made one of the characters hit the other so we had to think about his legs moving as well as the arms. Also, we had the legs move with it this is using the principle of anticipation. This is to show the movement of the body to make it feel more realistic. 

To improve our cut out animation we could keep the camera in the same positon by putting it on a tripod. This will help to create the illusion of a free moving image rather than individual images put together. 

Claymation

For claymation I took the role of the modeler again. It's slightly different in comparison to cut out as the principles in claymation  as the principle of staging applies more in this, with cut out it's 2D and flat on a table whereas claymation is using 3D characters.
I found it more challenging to use follow through because the clay is all stuck together, making it harder to not make everything stop at the same time. To make our claymation better I would focus more on every part of the model and include the principle of squash and stretch in it by giving the character a face so we could show emotion through that element.

Pixelation

 For pixelation I was one of the models. Being a model was more challenging than I thought it required me to only make subtle movements for each shot to make a free flowing, realistic animation.
I think that with pixelation its easier to use the principles of arc, secondary action, and anticipation because it's natural for your body to do all of those elements without thinking about it.

This was hardest to create something imaginative compared to the others as there is only a limit of what your body can do, however we made the illusion of Chris floating in the air by taking shots of him jumping (while off the ground) which is something we can't do in a film.

sand animation

 I was the photographer while making Sand animation. Being photographer I was constantly focusing on the position of the camera. I had to try and keep it in the same spot for each shot so the illusion of it all being one moving image rather than single shots put together wasn't lost.

I think our sand animation worked really well as we had good timing and good appeal. Our idea was clearly shown in our animation, showing steps of 'evolution' and didn't jump from one thing to the next, you could see it evolving in the sand.

Small Objects

I found this one the most difficult. It's hard to use the principles of secondary action, arc, follow through and over lapping anticipation and squash and stretch as the objects can't do it. Therefore you have to make sure that timing, staging straight ahead, pose to position and others are accurate to still give the effect that it is one moving image.

Slow in and slow out is also used for this, I think we could have focused more on this principle as we jumped a few places due to it being difficult to move objects in certain ways. We also could have changed the back ground of this animation as it could distract the audiences attention and loose their focus. Instead of having the class room behind, have a plain simple backdrop or screen. 

Over all I enjoyed making animations. My personal favourite one would be claymation as it allows you to be creative with what you can do and I also found easiest to apply the principles to.