Honda Diesel Ad

Earlier I blogged about Nightmare Before Christmas and how that shows part of my personality. Well I feel that this represents another, contrasting part of my personality. I also really like colourful, bright things. Perhaps child-like at times. It shows the bubbly, friendly, somewhat outgoing side of my personality. Maybe I could some how use the juxtaposition between the two in my work.

Jamie Dean

I really like this stop motion animation. I love the old feel it has through the grey scale and jittery, achieved through the use of super 8 film. I would look at using filters and effects to recreate this style in my own work.
 The items used within the film also add to the old look of it. I really like the simple animation and the jerking movement of the obejects. This reminds me of old childens stop motions such as Camberwick Green and Trumpton and could be recreated through playing with the frame rates and/or shooting fewer frames.

The animator has used focus settings to create parts of the animation that started out of focus and then focuses in. I like this effect, it is surreal and really adds to the effect of the film.

The music really adds to the effect of the dark feel of the film, the spacing between the bass and the treble within the song and the contrast within this. The slow, lingering tempo of the song adds to the creepy effect as well.

The overall feel of the short film is Gothic and Surreal. I really like this. Again it shows the side of my personality that really likes creepy, strange things.

Erica Russel

I really like this animation by Erica Rusell, the smooth movement and the complex dancing that they do is amazing. I also really like the way it becomes abstract, with simple shapes making up the human form.

The materials she has used seems to be pencil crayons or pastels, ink at times, graphic markers or similar and possibly some computer based animation at times.

I could perhaps use abstract shapes, and ideas to communicate meaning in my work. I can also look at experimenting with different materials to see what works.

Nightmare Before Christmas

I think that the smooth motion of the puppets is great, especially the spider like way that Jack moves, very creepily. I think that the way they achieve in stop motion is amazing, the skill and patients that it must take.

Zero the ghost dog is created through double exposure (source: the DVD extras for Nightmare), which is now something that we can do through computers and take for granted. I think it is great that they had the manual skill to create the effect, which looks so much more interesting then a computer generated effect may look.

I generally really like Tim Burton films, I love the dark feel to the films. The shadows, creepy figures and strange buildings. It all adds to the feel of the films. I think that this represents part of my personality, I love the strange, the horrific, and dark, creepy stories, images, films etc. This is something that could think about including in my work.

Stop motion puppets have been used to create this animation. Lip syncing is created using different puppet heads, which are replaced to create the mouth shapes of the vocal sounds. Many of these have to be used for each sound to create realistic, smooth motion between the vocal sounds. The puppets joints will have hinges or ball joins which you are able to move but are stiff enough to stay in place so that each small movement for every frame can be captured to create the smooth movement of the puppets.