Animation PitchLeah Reay

Purpose • The purpose of this task is by the end of it i should have created a 30 second ident for an online TV channel. There are some examples below of some popular idents.

The difference between these and the purpose of mine is that mine is going to be made and

created by stop motion.

ConceptThe concept of my ident is going to be based on a new channel

that has recently been created which is called bubblextra. The main target audience for this channel will be ages 8 - 14. Within the ident i will show a variety of the different programmes that are aired on it and collide them togeher. There are not many programmes on this channel; a lot of them will be based on monsters etc. The channel will be targeted at both boys and girls. The materials i am going to use for this ident will mainly be playdough and metal wiring to have movement with the playdough. My inspiration for this idea came from the frequent research i did on some playdough stop motion videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzDJQoUdTuk from looking at this link i found that it helped me in my research because it is such a smooth movement although the idea and concept of this link is not similar to mine but it gave me some insight in how to make my movements smoother to create a less jolty effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHEkuxS3l4U This video clip gave me more of a visual idea on how i wanted mine to look.

Lighting

As I will be using a white backdrop for my background this will give me the opportunity to really work with the lighting. I will probably use a blue light on some of my monster characters to represent there characteristics in the ident. In general the lighting overall will be natural lighting and will be reasonably bright. When the clay army come onto the screen from the back of the set I will use a spot light effect to focus the attention onto them characters.

This will be what the white backdrop is

going to be like with the spotlight effect.

This will be similar to the colour of lighting I will be using which will be a blue

colour on the white backdrop.

Colour

-The colour of the letters bubble will be blue.

-The colour of the letters xtra will be pink.

-The colours of the first monster character will be a green.

-The second monster which is the octopus, this character will be purple.

-The group of clay men will be red.

- The backdrop will be white.

Characters

This character is one of the main charcters

throughout the animation.

This is one of the main characters there will be multiples of these.

This is also one of the main characters

throughout the animation.

In terms of characters I will have 2 main characters and one background character which will be the main part of the production. They will each hold a main role throughout the animation clip and each have a strong unique style. I decided I would only have three characters as I did not feel any more where needed otherwise it may look to crowded on the set, seeing as it was set on a3 piece of paper. It may also have got slightly complicated with so many characters on set which I probably wouldn't have been able to handle. This would have resulted in a downgrade in the overall smoothness of what is happening on screen.

Character - Green Monster

The first character I thought of was the Green Monster. This was the very first main character as I decided it would be the first character on screen. I designed the shape of the monster including all of the features on it so it did not look terrifying as I had to bear in mind it was an animation directed at a children's audience. To keep the monster from looking to scary I added a smile onto its face which cancelled out anything that came across as to much for children's viewing. However, I wanted there to remain some scary aspects so I added claws and horns which still connotes the idea of something being frightening.

Character - Purple Octopus

The second character I designed was the purple octopus. The aim of designing the purple octopus character was to make it the most friendly one amongst all three characters as I wanted an even balance of frightening and scary characters due to it being targeted at 4-10 year olds. The octopus character had a basic shape and design to it as I simply copied the style of a real life octopus. However, The octopus I drew was carbonised to suit the arts and crafts theme.

Character - Red Man

My final character was named the red man. This character had the most simple basic design of all. My main reason for choosing such a simple design on my final character was because when filming there would be more than one of this character and it would be duplicated into around 4-5. I made the decision to make it such a simple design as it would have been a difficult task to move around each one without anything falling or breaking of the character. I feel by choosing the simplistic design it resulted in a smooth movement in the end result as I had more manoeuvrability with each individual one.

Colour - Green Monster

In terms of colour I went with a light green for the main body and a darker green to add smaller features like mouth,horns and claws. I decided to go with a darker colour green for features to make them easily recognisable and stand out as there was huge use of colour through the different characters. The colour green was used to attract the boy audience to my channel as green is known for being a popular colour amongst boys.

Colour - Purple Octopus

The colour chosen for my octopus character was purple with small pink dots. I chose this colour mainly to attract the female side of the audience as it was important I remained to target both boys and girls. I believe by using purple I will manage to keep a strong female audience viewing. As the purple octopus was supposed to be the least frightening character I specifically chose a brighter colour which automatically takes away the sense of something being scary.

Colour - Red ManI chose the colour red as it was a simple basic colour that had not yet been chosen. I also felt i represented both boys and girls so remained a mutual colour for the stop motion animation. I also went with the choice of red as they will be coming from the back of the setting as if they are coming out of the white backdrop. The colours white and red both contrast well together which will make a big impact as they are coming towards the screen.

Colour - Backdrop and letters

My backdrop will be a bright white. I have gone for the colour white so i would then be able to chose from a variety of different colours without having to worry about colours clashing with the back setting. which could have been a problem.

The reason i have chosen to use blue for the word bubble and pink for the word xtra is to represent the fact that the channel is targeted at both boys and girls.

Limitations.

I found when I was drawing up some ideas that I had to go back and change most of them as a lot of them were not realistic to do with stop motion. Some of the limitations I faced where the amount of characters I got to use. as you have to move each individual character I had to narrow it down too 3 or 4 instead of 5 which I previously wanted to have. The actual software i will be using is very basic animation software so it prevented me from being able to film in the way I wanted to which was moving the camera around more in tracking shot motion but it would of

been to difficult to do. Also the budget I had was very limited so i had to be wise about the materials I chose to use, this resulted in me having to work with clay instead of play dough.

StorylineThe idea what I was going for was the green man comes onto the screen and pops balls of clay out that then form into the letter bubble. The octopus then makes an appearance and drops the letters extra next to bubble which forms the words bubble extra. To clear everything of the screen I introduced the red men into the mix who messed up all the letters on screen. This resulted in the green man vacuuming up the mess of clay on set. The green man slides into the middle of the screen and says goodbye to the audience. I chose to add in a wave at the end as I feel it makes it more personally targeted at my audience.

AudioIn terms of audio I was not entirely sure until filming was completely finished and I watched the animation back. Audio was not something I thought out until the very end as it was not a huge worry until then. Once the production had been filmed I tried numerous different sound tracks over the top of the clip, I felt that none of them worked very well or they had been used before on a kids channel which is not what I was going for. I decided to record my own sound effects through the use of garage band. This allowed me to experiment with the sounds and also gave me a lot of freedom to work with the sounds I am using. I was able to record an individual style of sound for each character including when the letters came on screen. This resulted in a much better end result than if I was to play one soundtrack over the top.

Continuity

Editing and taking into consideration continuity is ensuring the editor cuts the film together in a smooth and clear storyline in one fluid action movement. A film that has good continuity editing will be understandable to the audience very easily with a clear storyline line that happens from start to finish ensuring that the clarity is shown all the way throughout. The idea of continuity editing is to allow space, time and action to progress in a smooth movement over numerous different shots. In terms of continuity throughout the animation I feel this was one of my strong points as I had my doubts at the beginning about the possibility of clay falling or mushing together. However, each time that happened it was corrected therefor there was no continuity errors.

Consideration Of movementIn terms of the movement of

characters and letters I ensured each movement was small and

only inches at a time. This ensured each movement was refined and smooth. When the

animation gets played back it will be extremely smooth. Although

this will take time it will be worth it for such a fluent movement

across the screen