Bubble Battle! Pixelation Wip Post 2

Posted on by victoriacourchesne


Our group was Marissa, Hazel, Lily, Mary, and Victoria.

On the shooting day, we all gathered with the props and equipment ready to shoot. Overall, the filming was very efficient. Marissa took the role of the camera operator while Mary helped her set up the shots and composition. I worked as a production coordinator, helped Hazel and Lily with acting direction, and also kept a watch on our bags while we filmed. The shoot took about two hours. But the project was far from over.

We wanted to incorporate 2D effects into the film so we agreed to divide up the shots and work with them in Photoshop. This post-production stage took at least five times as long as the actual filming. We incorporated the use of rotoscoping and frame by frame animation into this last stage. Overall, we were extremely happy with the work we each did for the effects. Lily did an excellent job compositing the film and adding sound and sound effects.

I hope you all enjoy our Bubble Battle.

Big thanks to my group was Marissa, Hazel, Lily, and Mary for their wonderful talents in the film.

WIP Project 3 – Pixilation

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

Our pixilation is about little magic tricks. We saw a video on YouTube which is about a person playing magic tricks with video editing. We saw one of the trick is a photo of kitty, when the photo got slammed onto the table, an actual kitty popped out. We took that as an inspiration to our project.

Our early story scenes

Originally, we wanted to set this story in the classroom but it is pretty impossible because we want a turtle to involve, which is my(Janelle) pet turtle. Bringing it outside and to the school are risking so we moved our story in Janelle’s bedroom.

Our final story :
Janelle is bored so she went ahead to her desk and doodle on a piece of paper. In the same time, Tan came in to see what is Janelle doing. After seeing her drawings, Tan brought out an ipad and an apple pen. She opened Procreate software to draw a black cat. She shook the cat out of the ipad, a little cat doll. Tan was proud of her magic trick. Janelle was amazed but she calmly pushed the doll away, starting to draw on her paper too. A turtle was drawn. Tan still thought her cat doll was better. In the end, Janelle showed Tan the same magic trick but it turned out to be a real turtle. Tan was completely beaten down by Janelle’s greatness of her magic.

Our setup this time is very simple. We only need a paper, an ipad, a pen, a black cat doll and an actual turtle. The only difficulty we have is that this is an one way ticket. As you can see our paper has to be destroyed in the end for the story, this is an one take only shooting.

I forgot to take a photo of the paper before it got destroyed lol
Our STAR of the video!

Thanks for reading 😉 !
By Janelle Thang and Jiawen Tan

Project03: Pixelation| W.I.P.

Posted on by Sammy Liu

Our creative process/brainstorming

We initially took inspiration from music videos that used pixilation/stop motion, such as OK GO’s ‘End Love’, ‘Last Leaf’, and Bombay Bicycle Club’s ‘Home by Now’. Choosing music was the first step; we wanted something punchy and energetic to match the pixilation style. We decided on Time Voyage by Just A Gent because it both had a punchy beat and title/lyrics that alluded to a story. In fact our storyline was inspired by the title: a sci-fi space journey telling of an alien abduction.

Prop Making
We scripted the making of the props to be part of the film. It was a challenge to figure out the shots while also actually needing to complete the props. We used cardboard, tinfoil and construction paper as the main materials, and ink and sharpies to draw and color.

Filming

We had an extremely ambitious trip – to film on the busy streets of Sham Shui Po. It allowed to overcome our fears and insecurities of doing art/drama in public.
_(:з」∠)_

We got a lot of stares from people in cars and buses that passed by, however, even with those many distractions we carried on persevering as a group; discussing and coming up with solutions to unpredictable problems.

Chandi Marsh
Sydney McPherson
Wendy Kong
Claudia Lau
Sammy Liu
(*¯︶¯*)

Pixelation Post WIP 1

Posted on by victoriacourchesne

Our group was Marissa, Hazel, Lily, Mary, and Victoria.

For the Pixelation project, we spent about good week without having the slightest idea what we should make. We knew that we wanted the film to be outside but had no idea to what the plot should be.

Then the idea came: a fighting game film!

The idea was perfect and easy to execute because it required only the 2/5 people to act while everyone else could helping film it. We also were debating on if the film should be outside or inside SCAD, but SCAD having SCAD day be on the day we needed to shoot helped our decision. We chose to film the park just across the street. This ended up being the perfect place to film because there was little foot traffic and we had the SCAD building in the background. The fleshing out of the concept really came when Mary drew storyboards for the project. On the day of the shooting we referred back to the storyboards quite frequently for planning out the shots.

Project 3-WIP 1- Pre-Production

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

For the pixilation project we now are working as a group of four instead of a group of three. My group members now include Julia, Bobbi, and Cameron. Originally, our concept was going to be a rendition of a scene from a fighting game like Street Fighter. We had planned for it to be shot outside by the Gold Coast bridge and we would have a moving camera. However, our schedules didn’t line up well enough to allow us to shoot the production in the day light also the logistics were getting to complicated and would require us purchasing equipment that we would only use for this project. Also, when our schedules did line up it left very little time for Julia and Cameron to edit.

All that taken into account, we decided to change up our idea a little bit. We decided to keep the idea of a fight but scale it down to a type of food fight. The concept is now Bobbi and I fighting for the last Bao. We have planned some fun scenes and left room for Julia and Cameron to edit in some really fun moments. We drew inspiration from the Kung Fu Panda training scene, that I will link below.

LeAnn, Julia, Bobbi, Cameron

WIP post – Project 2 Cutout Animation

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

For project 2, we continued working with animal characters. This time we have two characters : a kitty and a doggy. We have already did death scenes in the last project so this time we wanted our animation to be peaceful and cheerful.
Here is our first story plot : A kitty is playing with a ball, the ball then hits softly at a dog’s nose. The dog looks scary and evil but turns out to be a very friendly dog and plays with the kitty. The kitty cuddles the dog in the end.

First storyboard

We were shopping in the stationary shop for color papers for this project. We found something extra and interesting : Washi (Japanese paper).
We then discussed about adding this paper into our project. We remembered that Professor Jake mentioned that our characters from last project were not symbolic enough to stand out in the animation. We usedthis suggestion into our project 2.

Normal color papers : Objects(Ball, sun, grass, bushes, flowers)
Washi (Japanese Paper) : Characters (Kitty and dog)

We thought even further to make sure everything is settled for making and shooting. We added a final tool for our cutout animations. Since we have thin papers, to prevent them from flying off the scene, we pasted them on plastic pads so that we can create puppets and made them a little popped up from the scene.

Here is the final props we have for the project.

Here is some of the sneak peak of our animation :

Made by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle and Jiawan Tan

WIP _ CutOut Animation Project 2

Posted on by Bobbi Ho

Our idea for the cut out animation was already thought of right when the project was assigned. It was a small idea, which was then confirmed by both Cameron and I as something cute and manageable. I first came up with a short storyboard that lead to a short GIF of what we would be doing. The next thing was to buy the materials. We didn’t need that much materials so we were able to buy colored post its, which we could use for other things. It was a better solution than buying the large sheets of paper that we wouldn’t use again. Using the post it, minimized our frames, which became a problem later on with the sizing of the bee. After cutting out all the frames, we shot each one together, using Cameron’s living room table. The size of our cutouts was the perfect size to shoot using the glass table.

Bobbi Ho

Cameron Gordon

Cut out animation WIP 2

Posted on by victoriacourchesne

Work in Progress Post- Project 2 : Production. Posted by Victoria Courchesne,

Team: Eunhae Mary Park & Victoria Courchesne

For the cutout animation project, our production process required us to have a homemade set up. We made sure to plan a whole day just for the creation of the assets, which in all took 7 hours to make. Then on the day of filming we set up the “set”, taping down the edges of both the frame and the camera so the shots would be consistent.

Overall, the hardest part was animating the astronaut. The original plan was to put pins in his body as joints, but the pins were too big and so we went without bindings of any kind. This turned out to be rather difficult since every piece then had to be carefully grabbed with tweezers and moved slightly over. If you’ve every played the american game operation, just imagine that but 1000 times more intense. If we were to do another cut out animation, we would create a much larger puppet with pin joints to animate.

We decided to use a ironing board as a camera tripod and hovered it over the table upon which the cut outs were laid.

For animating the silhouettes, we looked to Lotte Reiniger in how she animated the silhouettes in “The Adventures of Prince Achmed”.

In conclusion, we learned from the process of creating a cut out animation and was able to appreciate the grand efforts  Lotte Reiniger went through in the creation of “The Adventures of Prince Achmed”. It is impossible to imagine the difficulty she undertook with the materials available to her at the time, but it also allows us to appreciate her film even more.

Project 2 – WIP 2 – Pre-Production

Posted on by Julia Reymundo

LeAnn and I have revised our creature concept. We thought that the original concept would be easy to manipulate and pose, however, we underestimated the size of the paper binders (pegs) that we used. Because of the size of the pegs, this limited the maximum movement of the puppet. The pegs would collide and it would cause it to get stuck together. As well as lack of resources we couldn’t gather because of unforeseen occurrences. So that it would be easier to animate, we revised the design.

So for the final design of our character, we chose to have it to be worm-like. It would be easier to rig and would have enough space for each peg to move – thus it will have a more fluid movement. This creature haunts and roams the depths of the ocean. The creature’s purpose is unknown but we have yet to see what’s to come.

Aside from the creature, we also have foreground and background elements that will move throughout the animation. We’re currently still working on the animation. Here is a behind the scenes look at LeAnn creating more elements for the animation.

Julia Reymundo & LeAnn Schmitt

Project 2 – WIP 1 – Experimentation

Posted on by Sydney McPherson

For our second project, Chandi and I wanted to be a little more ambitious. Before we met up to brainstorm an idea, I started doodling a character to practice the cutout technique. I made some quick sketches of a girl in a dress and I drew out each body part separately. Then I cut out the dress, legs, arms, head, and so on. Soon I realized I might need more poses for her legs, so I drew a couple bent legs and one of her standing on her toes.

The coffee table in my dorm has a glass top, so I used my phone and an app called Stop Motion Studio to shoot a quick test animation. The character isn’t connected at the joints yet, but I was still able to learn a bit about the technique we’ll need.

I went out and bought some fasteners that we can use for the joints on our actual characters and they’re quite big, so I know we can scale up our characters and backgrounds a bit. I also bought some scissors, so I don’t have to keep borrowing my roommate’s!

Chandi and I came up with a fun idea about a girl who is performing on the street for tips. She will trip and fall into a sewer that has toxic waste in it. She’ll then emerge as a mutated monster will glowing yellow eyes. As a monster she will now force all the people watching to dance for her. We might add an ending where someone comes and gives her an antidote, but for now the plan is to just have the camera pedestal towards the sky and it fade to black.

Storyboards and Character Experimentation
Test animation

Sydney McPherson

Chandi Marsh