Planning

Outline your plans and preparations for producing your animation sequence.
I plan to create an animation which illustrates the lyrics of the song 'Wild Young Hearts' by the Noisettes, in paper cut outs. After creating a detailed storyboard, I will begin to create the necessary shapes, words and objects. I will then create the graphics that need to be computerised, and also begin to animate them on the computer. After that, I will start to shoot the paper scenes, and work on my portfolio - I will try to do some of each every week. I will also begin to fit each finished section to music, allowing me to take out any ideas that are not so good, or will not fit in with the music and lyrics properly. Above is my production plan, which I used throughout the production of my final animation.

I will use the program iStopMotion to shoot the scenes, After Effects for animating with the computer, and Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to create or edit images. The animation itself will be cut down and edited on Final Cut.

How has development work influenced your final animation?
The early work we did in groups (messing around with/studying/trying different techniques) gave me ideas of which techniques I definitely did not want to do. We also watched a huge variety of animations, ranging from 'Peter And The Wolf', by Suzie Templeton, to 'Charlie The Unicorn'. These animations gave me ideas of what was effective, and also provided an understanding of the techniques (for example, stop motion). I also browsed many art books once I had started production, to provide ideas for certain images and sections, for example the trees. Although I didn't use a specific image to develop, they gave me ideas. Most of my development was done through watching other people's animations (see the 'Initial Ideas' post).

The thing that changed the most was the amount of sections in my animation. In my storyboard, I planned for way too many things to happen in a short space of time. It wasn't possible to squeeze some of the ideas into such small time frames, and I simply didn't have the time to actually create and animate all the ideas. The one image that I did use to develop I found on google images, and I used it for my flames section. I used the idea, and then developed it to make my own flames.

I also had to change the style in which I wanted to have everything - at first, I didn't like the idea that not everything was going to be perfect, but realised that I simply didn't have the time.
Many of the skills I learnt during the development and production stages of animation were transferable - to ICT mostly, but also art. I got used to using iMacs, and got more comfortable with Photoshop and Illustrator, software I didn't have much experience with beforehand.