amanda

In the beginning of the new term, we were given inductions on how to operate the audio recording room and also the foley cupboard. Everyone pretty much was wondering when we would actually sit down in that very professional recording suite to record some cool tracks like proper sound producers. Who'd knew that those inductions were actually to prepare us for a sound project for one of our modules.


Overall, I'm proud of what the entire track & mix that I've produced. It certainly didn't take up much time than I expected but it was a good experience and you can definitely get different sounds from unexpected objects (e.g.: flapping diapers to get a flapping sound of the mayfly).

Have a nice day!

Another crucial part of an animation is lip syncing. Nobody would ever watch a cartoon with lip syncs that don't sync up to the dialogue they hear, would they?

When we were told that our new assignment this week was to create a lip sync for one of 6 given audio files, I was a bit daunted by it as I've never learnt about lip sync before, much less make it. After Ann broke it down into bits for us and telling us how to go about creating a lip sync, it was pretty doable.

On a side note, the audio that I went for was the 'Don't Blink' scene featured in Doctor Who. A classic line suitable for a project like this.

We spent the entirety of our stop-motion session just getting the exaggerated parts of our chosen audio down, and breaking down the words into phonetic sounds. From there, we started sketching out the type of lips that we wanted to use. Funnily enough, everyone started making weird shapes with their mouth while trying to grasp the exaggeration from their respective chosen audio.

For this project, we had to merge not only lip syncs to the main puppet but also body language to not only one puppet but two puppets! Also, let's not forget that we have to shoot it on ones.

I decided to make my lip sync lips in clay and in the style of Wallace & Gromit's mouth shapes. And this below is my final product!



Yeeeeah... it gets a little quick towards the end. I have a tendency to do that, don't I?

Have a nice day!

About more than 3 weeks ago, we were given a brief on a title sequence project, which consisted of:

Having to convey emotions with just faceless puppets and not having any audio/sounds to back it up is a fairly difficult task as it all comes down to body language. As Ursula once said it:

I genuinely liked how smooth it went. If I were to re-do it all over again, I would change the part where the puppet moves his finger in protest, and make sure that it isn't in a perfect arc. All in all, this exercise definitely goes to show that body language is always important when conveying a certain emotion. Have a nice day!

In our very first few stop-motion sessions with Ann, she told us to take turns in trying out what they called as a 'blind animation test', whereby you cover the laptop screen with a piece of paper or whatever you can find to cover the screen up, to prevent you from looking at what you've just taken as a shot.

It sounded fun, and received lots of oohs and ahs from us all. It was also something new that we needed to ease us back into that stop-motion routine. For this exercise, I used one of the puppets that we used in our first term (the robotic ones). I really like how crazy their hair looks, along with their crazy eyes and cool outfits.


Here goes:


Before even taking the first frame, I was just jumping up and down trying to calm myself down as the urge of looking at the screen was intense. Not gonna lie, but I definitely felt almost as anxious as the puppet who lost his keys. 
This was also shot on ones and I honestly feel like I'm slowly getting a hang of it, which is great! It was kind of frustrating when one of the joints just snaps into a position that costs you two to three ones-shots which makes the animation jumpy. 
I also realised that this exercise made me trust my instincts a little more when it came to animating with a puppet. It also made sure that I made my puppet have some emotions which us animators have to convey to our audiences.
All in all, this was an eye-opening class exercise which I truly enjoyed, while working alongside with the others! 
Have a nice day!