Monday 16th October

So our first problem on the afternoon of animating was that we hadn’t anticipated how long it would take to set up. While in the end it didn’t inhibit us too much, it’s useful to know for future projects that this can happen, and plan for more time needed at the start. Another thing I would do differently next time is maybe make the set, with the cardboard/tissue paper, beforehand, such as on the Friday. Even if it was just a rough estimate, it might have helped. But then again, part of what took so long with the setting up was getting the camera and the light right, which we couldn’t have done before our allotted time in the stop motion room. Going forward with future stop motion projects, however, I think I would plan out a time just for that phase of things, so I don’t feel rushed to get on with the animation the way we did today.

We also had a small communication problem with one member of the group, who had envisioned her 5-second sequence. as a more 2-dimenstional sequence that wasn’t possible with the setup we had planned for the rest of us. Adapting it took a bit of time, which also delayed the overall process, but she did so effectively. However, creating a version of the set on Friday before we got into the studio would have also probably avoided this problem, as we would have been able to communicate better how the whole piece was going to work.

I’m mostly very pleased with my sequence. It took a bit of time for me to sync it up with the sound, and it was a bit awkward having to ask the person capturing the frames to keep deleting them and redo them. This is an area where I often find it easier to work by myself than with others, when I have a very clear idea of what I’m trying to achieve and I know it would go smoother if I could do things myself instead of having to translate it to other people. However, I’m hoping with time this will get easier and I’ll be more confident in explaining what’s in my head.

Having someone else capturing the frames also made me feel like I had to work quickly, particularly since the whole thing was taking longer than we expected. Because of that, my green ‘log’ bobbing up and down on the lefthand side looks a bit odd, because I should have extended that for more than a couple of frames. If I’d had more time, or felt less pressure to get it done, I would have watched that back and redone it, or added on more frames before I moved on to the next bit.