Jennifer Malone

For the stop motion brief, we need to make a letter of the alphabet (mine’s ‘J’) form out of a random object. We need to pick an object(s) that can move or reform into our chosen letter. I’ve had two ideas for this so far.

1.) A pair of socks that roll out into the letter ‘J’.

2.) A banana that peels out into the letter ‘J’.

I’ve tried out how the banana one would look in a dodgey, quick stop motion I made.

I like the movement and when the chunks of banana are pulled away; However, I’m not sure how convincing of a ‘J’ the banana makes at the end. I’m considering using tooth picks to secure and straighten the peel at the top of the banana to create a straight line at top the ‘J’.

Turnabout Sequence: Traditional Animation

Above: Today’s redo of the turn about sequence

Below: Monday’s attempt at the turnabout sequence

Today I approached the ‘turnabout’ using the tips given in today’s class demo.

I realised that in my first attempt, I never did a profile drawing of the head, and instead did two 3/4 angle drawings.

I adopted a more “design” approach in constructing the face as opposed to my typical “fine art” approach; in which I often go straight in with a sketch from a reference photo and find the structure as I go. Instead, I tried to build the structures around the basic shapes and lines created first in blue pencil, refining with the red and creating the final drawing in the graphite pencil.

Here is the link to the Full version of our Ep9. TLOU trailer remake

I took some time today to return to my Mini Me project and see if I could make any more progress. In order to do this I needed assistance from Yvonne, who showed me my way around Adobe Photoshop.

I needed to remove the green screen background from the images of my mini me and insert a new background image.

I learned how to import images to the programme, layer multiple images together, use hotkeys and shortcuts, save files to specific folders on the desktop/ Drive, use the history panel, import media from Photoshop to Adobe Premiere Pro, understand the significance of organisation when managing files for intricate uses such as editing a stop motion etc.. This all gave me a great opportunity to gain a bit of confidence with the technological aspects of Animation that I found a bit daunting this semester.

Progress Made

We had to re-shoot the "Arm Shot" with Ellie to make the bite look more realistic. I went ahead and tried to recreate the bite with makeup. I used a mix of foundation, brown eyeliner and lipstick we had lying around and used a mix of both makeup brushes and a paintbrush to apply them to my arm. Between the limited materials and the use of my left (non dominant) hand, I'm pretty proud of the result. I think the subtlety of the makeup is closer to the look of the bite in the original shot from The Last Of Us.

I struggled for a while with the clip of Ellie looking through the red glass, when editing. I finally managed to create the blue light in the background using a "spotlight" effect in premiere pro. I think this really helped tie the shot together and adds to the overall finish and accuracy of the shot. I was really pleased with the outcome.

Today we filmed our last shot and got to work on editing

The prosthetic

After trying on the latex prosthetic and filming the shot, we agreed to try out a different method for making the bite marks. We will be attempting with wax on Thursday to make the marks and film the shot again.

The Lighting

In the original preview shot, the sun is shining through the window behind Ellie, and she is in the shade. We filmed towards the sun and this lost us the glow through the windscreen and shone too much light on the arm.

Editing

Our group split up all the shots and made a list of the ones we were each responsible for.

I struggled a bit with the colouring in the shot with Ellie looking through the red glass. I’ll return to that tomorrow and hopefully will succeed in getting the background blue and to darken the glass.

Alan @k00288191 managed to animate the smoke into to the title shots that were made by Jaylynn @k00284145 , but I still need to figure out how to insert all the png’s of the titles in a way that allows for the smoke to flow instead of a choppy sequence.

I got my sister to act in two shots today, one as a woman running through the woods and two as a clicker running towards the camera.

The makeup/ costume was pretty basic and fast for the clicker cause the lighting in the shot is really dark anyways. I just brushed some brown eyeshadow all over her face and hands/ feet and threw on some cargos and a distressed khaki jacket on her.

Here is a shot comparison with the shots i took today followed by their originals. I’m pretty pleased with how the clicker scene looks even just the raw footage, and I think the location for the woods scene is really good so I’m excited to see how it turns out in post.

Today we borrowed a trolley from the canteen to use as a hospital bed for one of our shots. We used a doll as the patient and taped the tripod to the trolley.

We got most of our outdoor shots today off campus and again the weather was on our side. Filming Ellie’s scenes were actually kind of tricky however due to the strong breeze. In the show itself, Ellie’s hair is always slicked back in a ponytail. My hair on the other hand has layers and simply wouldn’t cooperate for the shot.

The team:

Alan - @k00288191

Nessa - @k00288409

Jaylynn - @k00284145

Kyra - @k00284075

Locations:

On Campus: first year corridor outside computer lab, second floor corridor, hallway outside canteen, side of main building near school car park, confessional box, stairs near the gallery

Off Campus: O’Brien’s park (across from school), under bridge near Grove Island, Grove Island car park, pickup truck, Alan’s car, wood’s near my house, my house, Jaylynn’s shed

Props/ Sets preperation:

Gun/ rifle, map, bite marks, “paralax” building set, sheets hung on windows, photoshop vehicles bridge (insert Joel Ellie walking), confessional warm source light in window, doll on trolley, baseball bat, baby, shells, grenade

Costumes:

Joel- rifle, strap, backpack, grey shirt, brown jacket, boots, jeans

Ellie- black & green t shirt, skinny jeans, sneakers, red short sleeve shirt, backpack. Plaid red and cream shirt

Marlene- khaki/ stone trousers, black/ grey tank top, boots

Anna- yellow dress, white sneakers, khaki jacket

Today we got started with a few shots. We met in the college for 8 am cause we found out that the sun would shine through the windows of the main first year hallway (outside computer room) at that time. We hung sheets over the windows and borrowed a red gel sheet from the photography room to film this shot.

We also filmed in the hallway outside the canteen and adjusted the lighting of the corridors accordingly. Thankfully we didn’t receive any real complaints from anyone bothered by the light changes or other obstructions.

Tomorrow we plan to get some of the off campus shots. We will be filming mainly around Grove Island.

We are still working around the bite mark prosthetic. Alan @k00288191 has attempted to make a bite mould and prosthetic with latex. We’ve yet to see the final results but given how our group hasn’t a lot of experience with such processes, we may have to reconsider how we will pull off this detail in our trailer.

Today, our group went “location hunting” to try and determine the best places and conditions that would be best for filming each shot. We found places on campus and in parking lots/ parks off campus that we found would be pretty suited to the scenes in our trailer.

Above is one location (near my house) that we will use to film a scene of Ellie’s mother running away from the camera.

Above is a list of costume materials/ props/ tasks I personally needed to arrange in preparation for the shoot.

There is also the first shot list we wrote out to try and break down the trailer shot by shot to see what exactly was needed to be done and gotten in preparation and to understand what we were working with.

Pixilation Challenge

For the pixilation challenge, we (our team) decided to go ahead with a video game fight scene. We wanted to create a character selection lobby with jumpy movements from pose to pose, to replicate that of the older video games.

What pixilation allowed us to do…

Create broken/ jumpy movements and effects

Disappearing, reappearing off screen

Shuffling on/ off screen

Blood pouring effect/ create wounds

Damage health bar adjusted

Editing

Using Adobe Premiere Pro ,we could see all of the images and photos taken in sequence. This allowed for cutting, adjusting images and rearranging or copy and pasting images also. I found this process rather tedious as I couldn’t figure out away to collectively shorten a block or group of images in duration altogether.

The setup…

Yesterday we set up tripods, ring lights and green screens to get our shots of the mini me’s. Today we went through the editing processes in photoshop and Adobe Animate. I struggled with this part because I am not very comfortable with computers, yet.

The footage…

Here's a list of links to videos that I found interesting for next week's project. I think I'd like to create a fight scene using pixelation.

I'm inspired by a scene from the Last Of Us where a "child clicker" jumps and viciously punches Kathleen. I think it's something to do with the speed of the punches but I remember being almost excited by the scene when it happened. I think that using pixelation to give the illusion of speedy fast punches and unrealistic fighting techniques. Old video games or even modern ones like Mortal Kombat also have that sharp fast movement that I'd like to imitate.

Mini Me Build

So today I began constructing my mini me. I’m not too sure of the resemblance as of yet, but I shall make efforts tomorrow to salvage it a bit.

I used tinfoil and a thin foam sheet material to create a light weight base structure. I then used air drying clay to create the facial features and hair. I’m gonna try and add more texture to the hair using twine tomorrow. I used this navy material to look like a cowl neck top, and tinfoil as earrings.

Phonemes for voice over and mouth shapes.

The line: Dyu know what I mean?

I’m not sure what made me pick this line other than the fact that its short, said rather often and I think it has a decent but manageable range of phonemes in it to use.

It looks like I’ll need to make about seven lip shapes to change in and out for my mini me for this animation.

Materials for Mini Me Build:

Clay

Tinfoil

Fabric for hair

Jewellery

Material for clothes

Double sided tape/ masking tape