I HAVE MOVED TO DONTHATEANIMATE.COM

Evaluation

Thu, 24 May 2012 18:43:00 -0400

I am really pleased with how my domino effect animation turned out, especially as it is my first fully rendered 3D animation! I genuinely think it looks good, and is an effective way of showing a domino effect/chain reaction. I am especially proud of my alarm clock as I took me a long time to model and because I think it looks very realistic (apart from the fact it doesn’t look very stable on it’s two feet!). My favourite part of the animation is the ball being flung from the spoon, as I think the movement is spot on.

My main issue with the animation is that it is the tiniest bit blurry because the video had to be slightly stretched to become widescreen. However, I think it isn’t massively noticeable until the end and it doesn’t detract from the overall animation. I’m not 100 percent sure about the lighting either, if I could re-do it I would brighten the lighting and make sure the shadows weren’t as dark.

Final animation

Thu, 24 May 2012 18:43:00 -0400

Textures

Thu, 24 May 2012 18:42:00 -0400

These are the textures I decided to use for my animation:

Wooden table and floor texture

Small ball texture

I wanted a really bright colourful texture and thought this was perfect.

Wall Texture

Video references

Thu, 24 May 2012 18:41:00 -0400

Dominoes falling reference

Alarm clock

I want my alarm clock to be an old fashioned bell style alarm clock as I think they would appeal to the audience more.

Modeling practice

Thu, 24 May 2012 18:41:00 -0400

Before starting my animation I practised modeling a few different objects:

Drawer

This drawer was the first thing I attempted to model. I don’t think it turned out very well apart from the handle (which I had help with!)

Apple

I am really proud of this apple! I learnt how to assign materials with this model.

Solar system

This was the first animation I did in Maya. The planets orbit the sun and rotate on their axis.

Cog

Chosen idea

Thu, 24 May 2012 18:39:00 -0400

The idea I have decided to go with a simple chain reaction, however the idea behind it is an alarm clocking going off and a series of objects in a chain reaction to knock it over. I am a regular ‘snooze’ button addict so this idea is perfect for me!

The animation will start with the alarm clock going off, then a hand coming down on a spoon, the spoon flinging a small ball, the small ball hitting a domino, the domino starting a domino effect with other dominoes, the dominoes hitting a big ball, the big ball rolling and knocking over the alarm clock.

Storyboard

Thu, 24 May 2012 18:39:00 -0400

Ideas

Thu, 24 May 2012 18:38:00 -0400

Sound effects

Wed, 23 May 2012 19:37:00 -0400

The only sound effect I need for my animation is the sound of an alarm clock going off. Here are the sounds I looked at:

This sound is from a modern alarm clock which is too digital sounding for the alarm clock in my animation.

I won’t be using this sound effect as it is too high pitched.

This is the sound I have decided on. I think it will fit in with my alarm clock because it is very irritating to listen to and I think the sound quality is better than the others.

Rube Goldberg machine

Tue, 22 May 2012 19:12:00 -0400

For my animation I like the idea of using the Rube Goldberg machine. Rube Goldberg was an American cartoonist and inventor who drew a series of popular cartoons which depicted complicated machines that would perform easy tasks in indirect, long-winded ways. Because of this, the ‘Rube Goldberg machine’ has become an expression.

This Rube Goldberg machine is used to pour milk and cereal into a bowl:

My favourite example of a Rube Goldberg machine in animation is in this clip from Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers, where a machine gets Wallace out of bed, into his trousers, and sitting at the breakfast table with some toast.

A Rube Goldberg machine isn’t necessarily a domino effect, however it definitely can be used to describe one if the chain reaction is an indirect way of making something happen that could be achieved in a much simpler manner.

Research

Tue, 22 May 2012 18:58:00 -0400

I think the chain reaction shown in this Honda advert is really original and interesting because it uses parts of the car the start the cars engine at the end. It is a clever idea, especially when used in an advert because it advertises the product in a fresh way.

I have loved this Guinness advert since the first time I saw it. I like how it starts off small with the standard toy dominoes and gradually grows bigger with the fiery hedges. MY favourite bit has to be the climax when the books are opening to resemble a pint of guinness being poured.

I like how the domino effect has been used in this music video for The Bravery’s song An Honest Mistake as the dominoes fall over to reveal patterns.

I think this domino effect is too literal and boring. There is such much you can do with the idea of a chain reaction rather than just using dominoes.

Domino effect animation project

Tue, 22 May 2012 18:50:00 -0400

We have been set the task of creating a ‘domino effect’ animation.

Wikipedia describes the ‘domino effect’ as:

The domino effect is a chain reaction that occurs when a small change causes a similar change nearby, which then will cause another similar change, and so on in linear sequence. The term is best known as a mechanical effect, and is used as an analogy to a falling row of dominoes. It typically refers to a linked sequence of events where the time between successive events is relatively small.

Intro to Digital - 3D animation project

Tue, 22 May 2012 18:47:42 -0400

This term we are focusing on 3D animation, which I am really excited about as it is what I would like to specialise in (depending on how this project goes!). I’m really looking forward to exploring how the animation principles work within 3d computer generated animation.

Spoon references

Mon, 14 May 2012 19:02:00 -0400

I don’t want my spoon to be too ornate like this one.

I want it to look like this.

Final animation and evaluation

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 02:32:00 -0400

This is our final animation:

I really enjoyed animating this project, I loved making the furniture for the sets and designing the characters. I think our characters were the best part of our animation as I think they were very well made and would appeal to the audience.

We thought a lot about the 12 animation principles while we filming, for example using secondary action while the man is reading (he scratches his head), to make the character more believable.

Unfortunately, because we didn’t have access to Dragon Stopmotion, I think a lot of the animation looks very jolty and not smooth. To rectify this in the future I will make sure to have Dragon available when filming, and use the Onion skin feature.

Sound effects

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 02:31:00 -0500

The sound effects we will be using are a scream, a clock ticking, a radio interference noise, a door opening and slamming, footsteps and a sniffle.

For the scream we decided to use a woman’s scream as we thought it would be funnier the man having a manly scream.

Tests

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 02:31:00 -0500

We took a few tests before we started filming.

We took a quick video of a walk cycle to use as a reference for animating our character.

Video of Sarah reading to use as a reference for the man reading.

We were originally going to have the man brush his teeth in the animation so we took this to refer to.

We tried out various lighting and aperture settings before we started filming.

Too dark.

Too white/ over exposed.

Light reflecting in mirror.

Too much of a shadow.

We played around with shutter speeds and when we left the shutter speed to long this happened!

Set research

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 02:16:00 -0500

I looked at some examples of stop motion house sets to get an idea of what I wanted.

I like the trees here, however we aren’t setting our animation in winter.

I really like the clutterness of this set.

Final design

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 02:13:00 -0500

We originally wanted our yeti to look like this, however we changed our minds so that we could have longer arms as we thought it would make him easier to animate.

This is the slightly edited version with edited legs to make him taller.

We will use a fleecey material to make the body.

Yeti design

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 01:45:00 -0500

Too round.

Too ape-like

Too mean looking.