Animation done and dusted, got everything down to how I wanted it, very happy with it! :)

My final part of the animation project has proved a lot more difficult than I had imagined. My problem is syncing the music to the pictures moving on screen. One of the biggest flaws that I should have picked up on at the start was the speed that the singer in the song sings the words "YMCA"! I spent a lot of time in the process of taking the pictures, showing the movement of the mans hands from one letter to another. But in listening to the song, it is so quick that when playing the animation, you won't get to see the full extent of all the images. So I have to decide whether to try and slow down the song, just when the singer is singing the chorus or if I should leave out the pictures in the middle of the letters and just skip from the man doing letter to letter!

After collecting all the pictures for my animation project, I transferred them onto my computer. I tried to get each section of the animation into separate folders so I could slot them in more easily. This also helped because at stages in the photography process I would take a picture, move the figure a little bit, take another picture, and then realise that I moved the image too much. So I would go back and take a picture in between the two previous. But it wouldn't be in order on the camera so when I put them in these folders I could move them into the right order.
After all this, I had to download the music for the animation. Using a website, I was able to do so easily. When I had the music ready, I opened up Windows movie maker. I began putting the pictures in, in order. At first, when all the images were in, the animation was about 20mins long because the images were playing individually long. I adjusted the time for each image back down to approx. 0.2 seconds each. All I have to do now is put in the music and adjust the images to sync with it.

After looking through the pictures for my animation project, I thought that they were a bit minimal, and maybe needed a bit more dancing. So I decided to add in another bit of a dance because I was afraid that there wasn't enough content. So I made it look like he was doing some 70's disco dances moves. I brought his hands down to his hips, put one his hands to go across his waist and then bring that back around and have it ending up pointing into the air! Then I was able to repeat that to make it look like his hand was going back and forth from his waist.

Then I wanted there to be a bit of an opening so I decided that I would change the first shot to a few new pictures I had taken. I would have the first image zoomed into his face, have it synced that when the music started, he would wink. And then it would start slowly zooming out until it got to the image of him with his hands on his hips.

Today I started taking the pictures for my animation. I began by setting up the stand with my camera attached to it. I adjusted it and placed my picture of the "Vitruvian Man" underneath it. My first shot was of the figure with it's hands on his hips and his legs closed. After the first shot I began bringing his arms up around in an arc, taking a picture every few movements. When his arms where at the point that it looked like the letter "Y", I opened his mouth to make it look like he was saying the letter "Y". I continued this process bringing his arms to the positions of "M", "C" and "A". After completing the final letter, I brought his arms from the letter "A" to look like they were going back down by his side. I knew that a certain point in them pictures, I could edit in the previous pictures again to make it look like he is repeating the dance again.

Next step in my animation project, was to print out the colour image of the "Virtuvian Man" by Leonardo Da Vinci. I printed it out on A4 sheet and it covered the whole page which was very handy so i didn't need to crop anything! I began by getting my scalpel and very carefully taking the arms arms off the image at the shoulders. Because there was then a hole in my page, i had to get another image of the piece and get pieces of the same colour background and glued it on behind the original image so that it blended in looking like he just had no arms! Then i had to get two seperate pieces of the same background to be able to cover over two of the four legs shown in the image. For this i could change back and forth making it look like he was kind of dancing. With the arms i had taken off, i had to cut again at the elbows so that i would be able to reposition them to look like he was able to bend his arms! I was then ready to start taking pictures!

The first few days of preparing my animation, i started off by researching the artist and the piece of work that had given me the idea for my animation! i had chosen "The Vitruvian Man" by Leonardo Da Vinci.
After doing my first research, i began building my story board, consisting of a lot of boxes on a pages with sketches of what i had hoped my animation would look like. When in order i could then proceed, knowing where to position my parts, for the animation, every step!

In the past week(s), we have been given our new animation project! We were given the freedom to choose the artist ourselves. I have chosen Leonardo DaVinci's "Vitruvian Man". I chose it because from the first few days of searching for an artist, i realised, i wanted some form of a human being in my animation that i would be able to manipulate! And after looking at this drawing for a while, i got the idea of trying to get the vitruvian man to dance and possibly sing the song YMCA, as his arms were already kind of shaped like the "Y" in the dance routine!
Drawn by DaVinci around 1487/88, it is supposed to represent the perfect proportions of the human figure, as indicated by roman architect Vitruvius, hence the name, in Book III of his "Des Architectura". The man is able to fit perfectly into a square and circle. The text also on the page of the drawing states different measurements of the body such as - "the length of the outspread arms is equal to the height of a man".

This week in L2L, we had a debate on whether Russel Brands ideas on the treatment of drug addicts is fair and whether or not they should be sent to rehab clinics instead of prison. I was on the side saying that drug addicts should not be sent to prison, instead be treated for the disease that is addiction in an environment where they are not branded as criminals.
Each side debated on the use of methadone in the recovery of addicts to get them off the stronger, more dangerous drugs! Our side debated that a more abstinence-based recovery was necessary to get the addicts away from the addiction as it was taking them of all drugs completely. Taking methadone to get them off drugs is still taking drugs. Instead of the money going in to finance these methadone clinics, they could be put into better rehab programs where addicts are helped drug-free!
In doing this debate, it helped me learn how to research a particular topic, find out the pros and cons and then debate them!
I'm pretty sure there was no real winner!!! :)

Learning to Learn - Paul Geraghty no.1

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