Stabilisation

Mat was helping me try to stabilise the camera on my videos so that it didn't move around as much. This was a brilliant idea and I didn't know it was possible but unfortunately it didn't work with most of the clips. Here's what we did:
We opened the video in After effects
-drag the file onto the film strip to make a new composition
-make composition with footage
-double click the footage on bottom left
-find a starting point and click the mark in tool {
-take it to where you want it to end and click mark out }
- right click the composition window (bottom left)
-composition settings
-change the duration time to the length of the chosen clip
-go to the tracker window (bottom right or in tools) 
-select layer
-stabilise motion
-move tracking point to a fairly constant point on the image
-scale the outer square
- click analyse (right arrow) 
- go through each point making sure its correct and move it if you need to
- use page up and down buttons to move through frames
-click apply, x and y
-scale up the image so there are no borders
Then click play and see if it's better!

Unfortunately a lot of my clips shook so much that you had to scale up so much that you lost half the image or it still looked like everything shook at the end. This would have been a great idea and certainly something to remember for the future. I'm glad I learnt this.

Rotoscoping

Here's another video I found on youtube.  I think this will be more like the style of my animation as it is more simplified. I like the way they have used some yellow for the lemons and the sun but that is the only colour used. It draws attention to it and also makes it look vibrant and interesting. I would love to put a bit of colour in like this too but I don't feel I will have time. Also I don't think it will go with my storyline as colour often means happiness and black and white is the opposite. I also realised that on this video the background doesn't flicker at all so I think it might be on a separate layer. I wish I had thought of that! but I've already started now. 

Waltz of Bashir

Waltz of Bashir is an animated feature length movie that appears to be rotoscoped because it looks like this:

However, I googled the making of the film and I found this

'Most importantly, Folman is emphatic that the film was not rotoscoped. "I respect rotoscoping and I even like walking life, unlike my animators" he says. "But, for me, rotoscoping has a big problem in conveying emotions. You see the technique, you see the drawings, and that takes your focus. If the film had been rotoscoped, it would have been hard for the audience to get emotional with the characters."

However I disagree with this because I had to google it to see that it wasn't rotoscoped because it looks like it was. 

I don't think this will effect my animation because hopefully it will help me learn to draw emotions and I will just try to make a really good job of it. Hopefully it will work but if not then I will learn from my mistakes and never use it for emotion again. 

I think it will look better though because it is real people.

Take on me

In more popular culture is this video of take on me by Aha. This is rotoscoped but is a completely different style being hand drawn. This created a flickery effect where the line work changes. I like the changes between film and rotoscope though I think this gives a really nice effect. This would have taken a long tie to create I am very thankful for computers! I think it was a very talented artist that created this though I love the faces. I think they were right not to use colour A) because the comic she was looking at was black and white and B) because it created more of a contrast. This is one of most memorable times we see rotoscoping in common media. We don't actually see it very much anywhere else.

A scanner darkly

This is a feature length movie that was made as a movie to start with then rotoscoped afterward to create the effect that Richard Linklater wanted. At first glance I was thinking: what is the point of this? all that work to rotoscope a film thats already been made. I thought this wouldn't work especially if it was a serious film but it seems to have some comedy in it which would make it work better. This is all painted but it just looks like a transparent layer over the top. I guess that is a compliment to the artists, you can still tell who the actors are and the movement is nice and fluid, I'm just not sure it was necessary for the film. I may watch the full film and get back to you on that. It's very strange watching this style of film because it looks like a cartoon in places and in others it just looks like a film with outlines. I think you would get used to it once you started watching the film though.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405296/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_7

Rotoscoping

This looks like a really good video teaching you how to rotoscope in photoshop that I would like to go back to and follow.
I think this video is good because it's slow paced and is aimed at beginners telling you where everything is etc and how to use the video layers so the layer is only visible on one frame etc. Very clever stuff that I am looking forward to playing with.

Rotoscope

This is the idea of how my rotoscoping would turn out. Nice and simple but still detailed and correct. Mine would have expressions though this is just an example of how it looks. I like how the movement is perfect and natural and the image moves slightly. The only problem I would have with this is finding someone to film. This is something I need to think about. I like how the lines don't flicker and move too much in this. I would like to get that but I think that might require a lot more time and accuracy than I was planning to spend on it. I will try and stick to the lines as best I can but I'm not sure how it will turn out. Sometimes the flickery effect can look quite nice though. I could hold frames to stop them flickering but then they might look out of place with the rest of it.

Charley says

In this video, Charley reminds the child the importance of informing his parents where he is going. This short animation is aimed at children. Therefore it is done in a child like style. That was an idea I had before. This is done in a cut out style which could work quite well but I'm not so keen on it. The other thing I noticed about this was that it was told from the childs perspective in a childs voice. I think this helps the children watching to relate. This is something I will take on board when thinking about my campaign.

Research

I think this is a clever way of using animation to advertise child abuse. It doesn't seem as serious but you know it is. You can show it graphically without it being graphic. It's like the human doesn't treat the animation with respect cause he's just animated wen really it's because he's just a kid. Then at the end he turns into a real kid with the message "real kids don't bounce back". That is very hard hitting. A lot of the time, hard hitting messages are the only way to get to the audience. A problem I can see with this is kids see it as a cartoon and cartoons are funny and not real. I think mixing animation with live footage is a really good idea and might be something I'd like to try. I think it would work well for this subject too however that might make it a bit similar to the existing one.

Research

I found this video for childline on youtube I think its a good way of getting people to donate money because this will help ensure that all calls can be answered because sometimes they can't and that could be the time when a child needs it most. It's kind of a guilt trip but I guess its effective! The beginning of the ad kind of relates to both kids and adults. It shows children how they can talk to someone on the phone but at the end it shows a child dead just because they couldn't get help. No-one wants that. And if you found out about it and realised you could have done something to help you would feel so bad. This shows how effective an ad can be from the childs perspective as opposed to the adults. Hearing the childs voice makes the ending even harder.