E4 Ident Proposal

CWC Productions.
E4 ident
Proposal
Title: “Hi im the e4 guy”
Written by Daniel Himus-Riha
A 30 second retro stop motion picture, filmed on the college campus. Using 2 balloons, 50 sheets of purple paper and a guy.
Synopsis
The E4 guy introduces him self dancing from him to walking off the stage to the beat of the music track. Using a camera man to take each shot on a Canon SLR and the actor to create the finished product.
Personnel
Having an organized schedule making sure deadlines are met and assuring that work is kept to time on time.

Resources
Using purple paper for the background and 2 purple balloons to create the background drop. SLR camera and tripod. Sun glasses are used to identify the E4 LOGO.

Schedule
Filimg will take place over a week’s course and the edit another.

E4

The Client; E4 - a digital television channel, the E stands for entertainment.

We need to produce two animations, one ident from 30-60 seconds and one sting from 5 seconds long

The 1st Prize winner will receive a cheque for £5000 and two runners up will each receive £500.

The finalists will also be invited to attend an awards ceremony in glamorous London where the final winner will be announced.
The idents are to be broadcast between weekday and evening programmes. The idents need to reflect the style, branding and attitude of E4.

Claymation Animation

Claymation is the generalized term for clay animation, a form of stop animation using clay. The term claymation was coined by its creator, Will Vinton, owner of an animation studio that worked with clay artists to create clay animation. Claymation involves using objects or characters sculpted from clay or other moldable material, and then taking a series of still pictures that are replayed in rapid succession to create the illusion of movement. Some of the more famous claymation characters in history include Gumby and Pokey, Wallace and Gromit, and comfort creatures.

Pixillation

Pixilation (from pixilated) is a stop motion technique where live actors are used as a frame-by-frame subject in an animated film, by repeatedly posing while one or more frame is taken and changing pose slightly before the next frame or frames. The actor becomes a kind of living stop motion puppet. This technique is often used as a way to blend live actors with animated ones in a film, such as in The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb by the Bolex Brothers, which used the technique to compelling and eerie effect.

Pixillation' was the term coined by animation pioneer Norman McLaren in the 1950s for his technique of photographing human subjects with stop-motion frame by frame animation techniques rather than by live-action recording. He described the process as "applying the principles normally used in the photographing of animated and cartoon movies to the shooting of actors: that is, instead of placing drawings, cartoons or puppets in front of the animation camera, we place real human beings."

Drawn Animation

Traditional animation (also called cel animation or hand-drawn animation) was the process used for most animated films of the 20th century. The individual frames of a traditionally animated film are photographs of drawings, which are first drawn on paper. To create the illusion of movement, each drawing differs slightly from the one before it. The animators' drawings are traced or photocopied onto transparent acetate sheets called cels, which are filled in with paints in assigned colors or tones on the side opposite the line drawings. The completed character cels are photographed one-by-one onto motion picture film against a painted background by a rostrum camera.

FRAME RATE
In motion pictures, television, and in computer video displays, the frame rate is the number of frames or images that are projected or displayed per second.

Object Animation

Object animation refers to puppet animation, pixillation and various derived techniques; take, for example, clay animation, or claymation, for which filmmakers like American Will Vinton, Briton Nick Park and Russian Garri Bardine have become famous.

These techniques all require animators to work with aspects of filmmaking very similar to those that live-action directors have to deal with. In object animation, lighting, camera movement, lens, depth of field and spatial relationships are not virtual, as in cartoons, but real, as in films with live actors.

Cut out Animation

Cut-out animation is a process where by movable parts of the figure are moved to create an illusion of an action.These puppets with movable parts are usually drawn, cut out and pieced together.

Cut out animation is less difficult and time consuming than traditional drawn animation. It is easier to manage and more cost effective for solo animator, requiring only simple materials like plain coloured paper, scissors and masking tape.Of course, cut out animation has limitations. Fluid movements are not easy to achieve with flat puppets. The characteristic of cut out animation is the firmness and rapidness of movement with pauses. It is important to note that cut out animation requires patience and a interesting story idea. Close up shot of face does not work well in cut out animation because it is hard to create dialogue that requires lip-sync which is the animation of the lips and mouth to allow characters to engage in a conversation. As a result, such animation is often a mimed story.



Materials

a) Drawing pencils/ markers

b) Masking tape/ Double-sided tape

c) Glue

d) Blue tack

e) Scissors

f) Plain/ Coloured paper for drawing



Set-up

A table or an elevated platform is required to serve as the work area where the cut-out animation can be created. A digital video camera is mounted on a tripod connected to a computer loaded with the Adobe Premiere software for stop-motion capture on the table.

An ordinary photographic tripod is usually used and the DVC is placed such that it points downwards and would shoot the cut out puppet from above.



Steps to Cut-Out Animation

1.Construct the basic set up accordingly as shown in the set-up section. Switch on the computer and start the programme Adobe Premiere. Select File> Capture> Stop motion.

2. Draw the paper cur outs, in this case, a car, and the background, the road, hill etc. Cut them out and place them together.

3. The moveable parts are attached with either blue tacks or masking tape so that the parts can be removed easily when needed.

4. The car is then placed on a background of the road and the sky. take 12 frames of the car at the bottom of the hill.

5. Move the clouds and the sunrays about during the action sequence.

6. To show the car moving down the hill accelerating, the car is repositioned further apart from its previous position. therefore, lesser frames are required to capture the acceleration down the slope.

7. To show the the effect that the car is climbing up the hill slowly, the car is repositioned close to its previous position. Therefore, more frames are needed to capture the gradual climb up slope.

8. When the entire sequence is captured and replayed, the action sequence will show the car climbing up and down the hill on the road. The animation sequence ends with the train exiting out of the picture.