key caddy pro is a great tool, it saves you hours of time, it does this by saving the drawings in a tab, you can use these drawings again and again,motion twinning in-between the frames to pull off loads of different effects.
I plan to use the techniques i learnt during this module to create an animation for my extended practice.
For this project i needed to create an artefact, I am not a big fan of maya and i did want to make an animation. I decided to learn a new set of skills. I love drawing and being artistic but don't like the very technical side of things in maya, don't get me wrong i did find parts of it fun but i just prefer to draw, rather than model. One day i was browsing youtube when i came across this guy called Jazza, The video below is the video that got me hooked onto flash.I watched it and thought it was amazing, i subscribed to Jazza(the creator of the animation) straight away and to my joy found out he had tons of tutorials on animation. Jazza speaks in a way that is very chilling and teaches you how to draw through a series of tutorials from how to draw eyes, hands, body anatomy, animations techniques etc... in a very simplistic way. I highly recommend him.
I was not so good at writing at the start of this year but i put my head down and focused. I believe I have put in the hours and improved in my writing skills. Below are 2 videos that helped me, they were very useful.
How to write the introduction to your dissertation
In this video she talks about how to write the introduction to your dissertation, she goes on to talk about how the introduction can be "flamboyant", She has a few very good tips, the one that helped me most was, "why is it important". I was so stuck but after hearing that I had a brainwave, it made think more about how morals effect kids rather than just morals in general. I was trying to just write about what I was going to have in my dissertation. I also heard somewhere to do it at the end, this helped me too.
How to write a First-Class Dissertation more parts on youtube
If your starting your dissertation, this video is amazing and i highly recommend it. In this video u get to hear a recording of a lecture, the spokesmen speaks very clearly and tells you his story of his years in university. It hit home when I watched this video, I believed for many years I could not write that well but never done anything about it, but after watching this video, it made me think, "I" need to get better at writing if I want to get anywhere in life and to even earn a decent wage.
Learning to write more confidently
This app helped me a lot, this app reads the words you put on the page.I used this to go over my whole essay, just to make sure it all sounded ok.
I had never used flash before so i decided to start from the bottom, with the basics, the first thing i needed to learn was how to simply navigate my round flash, i also thought it was best to learn the hot keys for example b for brush(obvious) or y for pencil not so obvious. I watched this video about how to draw mountains and created my own, video below:
Here is my drawing of a mountain, I used the techniques i learnt from this video.
I like the outcome of this piece of work, but what i also learnt from this video was how to shade using the pencil tool. This has helped me drastically, all you do is draw around the bit you want shaded, then use the paint bucket to fill in with a shade that is slightly lower or higher, to make the object look lighter or give it a shadow, now you have crapy pencil marks on your screen, no worry just highlight the area u want to get rid of, go into your colour swatch, click on the colour next to the pencil, then finally click this button(image below)
Below is a page of some of the drawings i created after watching this tutorial (trying to use shading)
Another story that defiantly stuck with me when i was a kid was the story called the lorax below is the original cartoon. and a deep analysis on it.
The moral of this story is that greed can be the path to destruction and that we should care about animals,plants and nature so that we don't ruin the environment and world that we live in. This story is about a guy called the Onceler who destroys a place on earth because he is greedy,the place he destroyed was bountiful and plenty where all kinds of animals lived in peace and tranquility. The story starts off in a place that is all covered in smog and dirt where the wind smells sower and slow when it blows and where birds do not sing except for old crows and where gricle grass grows, this is telling you that this place is very disgusting.The narrator then tells you that there once lived a creature called the Lorax,The Lorax is a creature that speaks for the trees, I believe the Lorax is a metaphor for someones conscience.The story then continues as it introduces you to two characters a boy and another called the Onceler,the Onceler is the guy who got greedy and wrecked everything in this place.The story moves on as the Onceler starts to tell the boy his story about how this place once was, the whole mood then changes as he starts to speak,the animation turns to bright colours as the Onceler takes the boy back in time with his story.The Onceler starts to tell the boy about how the place that he's in was actually once upon a time bountiful and plenty and starts to tell the boy about why the Lorax left. The story continues as You see a place that looks nothing like the one at the start,it looks so different,the place is filled with truffuler trees and happy animals from birds that sing and fish that hum and bears that live without a care in the world having fun. The Onceler arrives with his donkey and wagon,he then stops in his tracks as he sees the truffuler trees and throws out his stuff and builds a shop and cuts his first tree down with out any remorse,the tree falls down with a massive thud.The Lorax appears out of the stump of the tree that once stood and tells the Onceler that he is not happy with what he has done.The Onceler then replies by telling the Lorax that the thing he made out of the tree is called a thneed and that it is revolutionary but the Lorax just warns him not to be greedy.(the start of the morals in this story)The Onceler then sells his first Thneed but he is not happy as he is greedy and wants to make more money.He starts to ring his relatives to come down quick and help him expand.The Lorax tells him and his family to be careful as it takes so long for them to grow,they do not listen. His business is going fine but the Onceler is not happy and wants to make more money, he invents a new contraption that can cut 4 trees down at a time and starts to build a bigger factory. Meanwhile as the Onceler's business is getting bigger its wrecking the environment.The Lorax has to tell all the animals to leave for various reasons such as their is not enough food,the skies are dirty and the water contaminated.The animals in this animation are very well done witch could make a kid emotionally attached to them during the show thus making kids think about how their actions could harm others.Getting back to the story,The place starts to look dirty and disgusting but the Onceler does not care as he just believes if he didn't do it someone else would. I believe this is a very bad way to think because it is just an excuse to make you feel good about the bad things you do in life,if everyone had these views the world would have been destroyed already.The story is coming to a end as the Oncler is sitting on top of his factory when the Lorax appears yelling at him to stop but it is too late as they hear the whack of the last tree being cut down. All the Onceler's family just disperse as all they were there for was money,the Lorax leaves too as he is not needed anymore for everything has gone and the place that once was no longer exists.The story then takes you back to the present as the Onceler is full of regret as he has destroyed the place. He throws down a seed of a Truffuler tree and tells the boy that unless someone like him that cares a awful lot is around nothing will change and that he needs to protect the trees that he grows from axes and give it clean water and fresh air so that the place can become beautiful once more.The boy then walks away and you assume that he will plant it and start to make the place greener and beautiful again and that the Lorax will return.This story reminds me a lot about business today for example Macdonalds and the way they cut down vast amounts of trees in forests just for money destroying habitats just like the one in this story.In conclusion i believe this story is telling young kids in a friendly and engaging way that they should not be too greedy as all it will lead to is ruin and to take care of nature as once its gone it will take forever to grow back.
Another big role model for me when i was young was Dr Seuss, my Dad read me stories by Dr Seuss almost every night, the morals from these stories have defiantly stuck with me.I must put something in about the Sneetches and Dr Seuss
The moral of this story by Dr.Seuss is it dosn't matter who you are we are all equal. This story is a story about a group of creatures called sneetches that have problems with equality. The story starts out by highlighting the fact that the sneetches with stars on their bellies are the ones who believe they are the best. You see a mum/dad sneetch telling their kids not to play with people who don't have them on theirs. This is very moving as it makes you think of racism.It also shows how kids will almost always listen to their parents at a very young age. The story then continues,highlighting the fact that the sneetches without stars on their bellies are shunned out of every occasion and are made to feel inferior to the sneetches with stars on their bellies. This reminds me of the school playground, for example if you look different as a kid to other kids at school because you have a deformity or if your a minority you are seen as a lesser being and made to feel bad about yourself. The story then changes as a stranger approaches the beach with a solution to help the sneetches without stars on their bellies feel accepted. The stranger has a contraption that modifies the sneetches with out stars by putting stars on their bellies for financial gain. This reminds me of the media and how they make money by making people think they have to change the way they look by changing their appearances just to fit in, for example the way the media makes you think that if you do not look a certain way you are not as good as others.The media does this by choosing the people that look a certain way or by photoshopping the hell out of people to look a certain way ( the ideological look of beauty ) for girls its normally blonde hair and thin and for guys its tall and muscly. This makes kids believe that they are not good enough if they don't look like this. This causes kids to act a certain way,bully other kids,change their appearances and even in some cases suicide,all because kids dont feel like they fit in. Getting back to the story, The sneetches that had the stars on their bellies at first find out that the sneetches without stars on their bellies have them on theirs,they are not happy about this so they have a meeting with the stranger. The stranger tells them not to worry as he has a contraption that can change their appearances so they can tell who is who again.They all are very excited and they all rush to the new contraption that takes the stars off their bellies.When they get out they are all very delighted as they can tell who is who again thus making them think they are the better sneetches again and making the other ones feel crap again. Then the story changes as all the sneetches keep going in and out of both of the contraptions until they have used all their money. The stranger laughs and tells them that they will never learn. The stranger is very wrong as the sneetches can not tell apart who is who and on that day they get very smart and decide that sneetches are sneetches and that no kind of sneetch is a bad kind of sneetch. This remindes me of anti bullying classes and anti racism classes etc.. thus showing kids in a very fun a enjoyable way that it does not matter what you look like as we are all the same on the inside.
Chapter 1:introduction
Chapter 2:Animation,the invisible role model (how no one suspects animation and the effect it has on kids and their ethics and morals for good and for bad-talk about the lorax and sneetches and talk about hidden messages in cartoons )
Chapter 3:Animated cultures around the world( compare animation in different countries for example anime and the culture their and disney style animation and our culture, and the effect it has on cultures)
Chapter 4:The use of animation for propaganda ( propaganda war cartoons and racist cartoons and its affect on the way people think ) Animal farm,
Chapter 5:conclusion
bibliography
For my dissertation i need to think of a topic, i know i want to do something about animation but what? I need to think about animations to get the ball rolling. I remember watching tons of animations as a kid my favourite animations were and well still are, The Lion King, Jungle book, The sword in the stone, Beauty and the beast, Pinocchio, The Magic Cauldron, The Quest For Camelot, looney tunes, The Simpsons, The great mouse detective etc,, I watched some sort of animation nearly every day as a kid from morning t.v to films etc..
I started to watch some animation on youtube and on t.v, but whilst i watched i analysed what was going on, it was weird to re watch some of the animations, the ones i had not seen ages, I noticed so many new things when watching. I was shocked to find out that all of the Animated Feature Films had some sort of moral or lesson to learn, some were good but some were bad.
This got me thinking, i watched many animations as a kid, but have any of them stuck with me?
I think they defiantly have for example, from the lion king alone i learnt about the circle of life, not to run away from your troubles as they will always come back to haunt you and to respect your elders.
Below are two of the Animated features i looked into in detail.
Brother bear
Brother bear is a fairly new animation about a man called Kenai, a man who turns into a bear, throughout the film he learns loads of lessons, for instance he learns revenge is the right path, to listen to your elders, and not to judge someone based solely on their looks.
Brother Bear
This Film was one of my favourites growing up, the funny thing is this film also teaches kids, rather like brother bear, "to not judge someone based on appearances". The way they use elements of c,g and hand drawn animation in the clip is amazing, the power this had on me, by filing me with joy is astounding.If it made me feel like this, imagine what it would do to a small girl who has dreams of being a queen...
while thinking about what i'm going to do next, once I graduate, I want to travel, I want to use the skills I have learnt, so how do i choose, then I thought I should look into the different studios around the world and see if i can combine the two, New Zealand has some really exciting animation things happening now, maybe I should start my trip there and see what I can make happen! This is one of a few new animation companies making a mark in the animation world, great website too. www.oktoboranimation.com
