DFPR1101_Thomas Hall

Crafting the Digital Image: Learning Report
In this learning report I intend to review my work throughout my module focusing mainly on my pixilation work as I feel that is where my strengths lied. I then plan to identify my weaknesses and strengths in my approach to this module before finishing with a statement of intent acknowledging how I can improve my work quality in the second year as well as my skills and knowledge in my chosen field.
For the Pixilation brief I was in a group of 6 people which I found quite had as it was difficult to get my ideas across to the group at some points, but I also enjoyed this experience as it gave me a chance to see how other people work to produce ideas and then develop those ideas. One of the main problems with been in such a large group was that half of the group lives quite far away from campus which meant it was harden than normal to arrange times out of lesson for us to meet up.
After researching a range of pixilation’s I found one that was created for a song by Slipknot called ‘Vermillion’ [1] this inspired our idea (thought up by Kong) of basing our pixilation on a doll, we then had the idea to make it similar to a silent movie after looking at some old silent movie clips on the internet. We then went away and decided to next meet up with 30 seconds of storyboard each for the animation so it came to 3 minutes of storyboard but I ended up having to do two sections of the storyboard as one person from are group didn’t feel comfortable planning out there part.
We then went onto practise doing certain shots we wasn’t sure about like when the table cloth is put down on the table as we had a few different ways we could of shot it, we did this in the sound room as when we got there the film room had been fully booked all week. We had planned to do the whole animation in the film room but with it been fully booked we had to find another room to shoot it in, We eventually found a room we could use in the garage that didn’t have windows so we could setup are own lighting which we desperately needed to do.
When shooting this pixilation we chose to use quite a lot of over the shoulder shots and wide angle shots as well as using different lighting to give more of a gloomy effect as most of our research into old horror films reflected upon this. We then used Istopmotion HD to put all the shots together at a speed we liked when we came to do this we realised we hadn’t taken enough shots to make it 3 minutes as we had taken the photos at 6 fps instead of 12 so are animation ended up only been about one and a half minutes long.
I feel in the end we really surprised our self with some of the shots we produced, my favorite has to be the shot were the doll is climbing over the table to attack the girl as her arm seems to extend as she reaches out we produced this by zooming in as the doll got closer. My least favorite shot was were the girl gets pulled into the book which was actually part of my storyboard but when we came to do it we didn’t have much time left and it shows that we rushed it because when we zoomed into the book we forgot to remove the shoes which should of gone after one image, the girl also disappears into the book way too fast. Another part of this Pixilation I was not happy with was the part were the table cloth opened up as I feel even though we did practice the shot a few times we didn’t do it to the best of our ability. I fell if we get more time we should reshoot that scene as well as a few others to make it as good as we possibly can.

While tackling this brief I am really disappointed that we didn’t explore the limits of pixilation that I have seen been reached in other pixilation videos on the internet. Been a stop motion animator primarily I know of quite a few techniques that we could of used like making people and objects teleport and disappear or making them shake violently so that they become distorted but unluckily we didn’t experiment much with these things which made our video look more like it was recorded than a sequence of photographs played a high speed.
I feel I performed well throughout the first semester of this module as I turned up to almost all my lessons and managed to keep up to date with the work given as well as produce it to a good quality, I think this was partly because I was in a group for most of the work for the first semester as well as the fact that I enjoyed the work given to us a lot more than the work in the second semester. As I went into the second semester I feel the quality of my work dropped as well as my attendance for the lessons I feel this was due to a few reasons, firstly I was put off the module by the work we got set in the start of the second semester as I did not enjoy the sound design part and felt it was not really needed in my pixilation as we had developed it to work as a silent movie and felt mostly as a group that it did not need sound and by adding sound we ruined the horror factor, then as the work got a lot more technical I started missing lessons which made me anxious to come in to the lessons as I knew I would be catching up, from their I hit a downwards spiral where I didn’t do much work which I am deeply disappointed in myself for as I have always tried my hardest with any work given before coming to university I think this was because I found it hard to settle into university life and still manage my work appropriately.
Because I missed a lot of lessons in semester two I didn’t really learn how to use After Effects as much as I could of, as it got near the end of the year I did go through the tutorials to learn the basics of the program but because I had to rush through them I don’t think I will be able to remember quite a lot of it by the start of next year so I plan to improve my skills in After Effects over the summer holidays and hopefully catch up on some of the things I missed. I wasn’t necessarily proud of the animation I produced for my end of year animation I produced on After Effects but considering I didn’t have a group and I had fallen behind in the work I think what I produced was acceptable. If I’d had more time I would of liked to have made a proper gun fight instead of just a western draw, for this I would of got my actors to practice their roles more and I would of liked to add some zooms, pans and tracking.
Statement of intent
Next year I will defiantly pull my act together, I plan to start going to all my lessons as well as staying behind each day to get any set work done instantly instead of letting it build up like I have done. I think this will be easier because I have now realised how hard it is to catch up on the work load when you have fallen behind as much as I did, I also realise it will be a lot harder in the second year and that I need to start building up my show real so I have decided to put this year behind me and in some ways am glad of how it has worked out because it has taught me that I can’t let myself fall behind and I think it is better to learn this lesson in the first year than the second or third.
Because I would like to specialise in stop motion next year I felt the pixilation part to this module greatly helped me as it showed me how to use high quality cameras and it also helped me get used to working in a group on something as time consuming as pixilation or stop motion without having much conflict between the group.
By this time next year I hope to be completely on top of my work and ready to hand in a good week before the due date, I also plan to have wide range of professional standard animations that I can take the best parts off to add to a show reel which Is defiantly needed by that point so I can apply for jobs in animation throughout my third year of university.

Bibliography
[1] Slipknot - Vermillion [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube. 2014. Slipknot - Vermillion [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppoo1EJ-Vrc. [Accessed 12 May 2014].

DFPR1101_Thomas Hall_13007505

Wednesday, 14 May 2014

Learning Report

Quick Draw (After Effects Animation)

A thousand Beautiful things (pixelation Animation)

A Modern Day Fairy Tale (colour and lighting)