Project two- Pirates- Puppet Making and Filming

 

Project two- Pirates

Puppet Making and Filming

Mock up made from tracing paper to get an idea on how the character will be able to move.

The main character, know only as The Captain and the puppet of him was made by Rosemary. Rosemary was the one that could be called the Director of the project as she created the storyboard and main character as well as being able to set out asks to everyone when needed. However, non of us had any official roles or titles giving us all equal footing in the project.

 All the puppets and most of the props where made digitally. Only the backgrounds are completely traditional media.

A design for a female pirate made by David Adams. She was sadly used in the actually animation. 

A test for various materials for the backgrounds done by Christina. Everything from paint to pastels was briefly tested in this mock up background but watercolours pencils was ultimately chosen as it was quick to easy to use, it had a very nice children's book like quality to it and pirates tend to like water as a general rule.

All the parts had to be printed out and manually cut out. We used a mix of scissors and craft knifes. The images where stuck down on thicker paper and then the edges of each piece was coloured black in order to have the characters look more natural against the background.

The crafts posed some issues has it was easier to make mistakes with them. 

Mouth pieces were cut out and stuck on the timing chart in has the mouth has it had changed from a smile to a frown to could have caused some confusion. This also helped keep things organized.

all of the parts were sorted into sturdy envelopes to prevent pieces from going missing. Pieces still went missing.

We soon realised than we didn't know when each scene started and ended. So a very basic timing charts was made in Microsoft Word which details which scene was at which time, what background we needed to used and any sort of camera movement which wasn't done in editing.

This was the rostrum we used. the panels are able to be moved so we had to plan each scene out carefully. In the final fil you'll see we even used the various perspectives in make certain items appear bigger or smaller.

 

We found out during filming that the mouth pieces were too big so we had to make new ones from scratch using the originals as examples.

The software used is Dragonframe 4 which is specially designed for stop motion animation. Similar to something like Adobe After Effects, all the folders and their have to be kept together.

The team working together. Except for Christina, she's taking photos behind peoples backs.

The Captain hasn't taken to lockdown all too well.

Final with no Sound

Compressed for Blogger.

This version is the work made with Dragonframe 4. We actually had issues exporting the film as images were removed from the X1 file by accident, which is where all the higher quality images are export is stored, causing them to be missing in the final project. This took a while to figure something was wrong as these images were still in the feed folder which is where the images used in the actual software are stored, meaning everything looked ok in the program, thankfully we asked the Universities technician for help.

Compressed for Blogger.

Final  Animation

Compressed for Blogger.

The Final version has been edited curtesy of David Adams. 

Our main goal with this project was to have a lines worth of lip sync and to create a cut out animation that matched the theme of pirates. In this regard I would say that we passed with flying colours as not only are there two scenes with lip sync but also a walk cycle and basic camera work. Despite having very distinct styles both Rosemary's and David. A's puppets blended very well together in the final project and the Captains puppets itself was quite complex.

The team gets better with communication and planning with each project as we focus and playing to peoples strengths. 

If there is anything that could have been improved it would likely be the removal of some of the shadows as in some shots you can see the silhouette of someone's hand.

The timing in some for some shots could also be better such as the scene with the sword thrusting and with the Sugar, tea and rum. It's pretty clear that some scenes were more planned out than others and as a result some movements are all more fluid and others.

And Lastly, we can always improve when it comes to versions aspects of exporting and editing film.

Given how rough the past year and a half has been on everyone gave it 100% and more so. And had a pretty good time despite the madness.