Danny Hard At Work......

I contributed to the pre production by creating the; story outline, storyboard, script and budget. The group made individual mind maps to get across their ideas and creativity. I found the budget easy to complete, whereas I took more time over the script and story board. This could be because I had to be a lot more creative, thinking about the ideas than I was working out the estimated budget. All these steps were necessary to attempt to create a high quality advertisement, engaging the target audience thus getting our intended message across.

With the information we received from the focus group, we then analyzed and evaluated the results in a final evaluation of the audience. We compared techniques used in professional animations to similar ones used in our own and how we have been creating our animation to near-professional standards.

Once we finished our final edit of the animation, we had to get our video reviewed by our target audience in a focus group. This was important because we got a good understanding of the target audience's psychographics, so we knew what we did good and what we could change. We uploaded the video to youtube and each member gathered 5 members from the target audience, therefore we received a mix of answers from a good selection of people.

After the previous two days of capturing the raw footage needed for our animation, it was time to start the editing process. Danny created a first draft of the animation, while me and Liam helped give creative ideas. The outcome of the first draft was very successful, in my opinion. With the use of music and narration, it really gave it a better effect than we previously thought. With use of Adobe After Effects we aim to give the finished article an even more polished look.

Todays task was to start filming our animation. We were assigned a room with specialist lighting equipment, a iMac with iStopmotion and a camera with a tripod. We started to set up our first scene by clamping down the road to a sturdy table, however the road was not flat all the way, which was a problem because if we put too many clamps then it would be seen in the shot. We had the background set up on clamps that were held up by poles, this gave it a very stable stance while filming.

We found it very hard to create the illusion of motion, it got even more difficult when our clay model got hot due to being exposed in the light for a long period of time. This caused the model to be less sturdy, also the colours were blending which affected the continuity. To stop this from continuing we had to to stop for 30 minutes every few hours so we could put the model in a fridge to harden it up.

We then started to set up our second scene, which was at night. To get this illusion we put a blue filter over our lights. This gave it the appearance being at night without being too dark.

Today, my group and I started to create our sets and characters. The main set was completed along with the characters. There was some problems when I was trying to make the wolf character, which was made out of black card and cardboard, one of the problems was trying to make it stand up, which was pretty much impossible. The solution I came up with was to stick the wolf to the background with removable limbs so it was easier to animate. Another problem was the scissors used didn't cut through the cardboard effectively enough, causing rips and tears. I then used a Stanley knife so the cut was more effective and straight, giving it a smoother outcome.

The next task was to record the voice over, Kieran was our narrator and recorded his lines in a superb professional standard; adding to the dark effect and the suspense of our animation.  He recorded the short back story of the main characters and the sound effects such as the gasp. It was difficult because the group on many occasions starting laughing, causing it to drag on.

My group and I have tried our best to work to professional standards. I created a production schedule, which was important because it gave us directions on what task to complete each day. The production schedule stated that the mood board and research were the first tasks to complete. For our research we found inspiration from various movies, television shows and music videos. The group has also started to record a meeting each day tracking our progress in a professional standard, taking punctuality and attendance into account.

We watched an episode of Family Guy where the character Brian consumes magic mushrooms, resulting in Brian experiencing disturbing hallucinations. The disturbing images seen in the episode were good examples of how we made our sets and backgrounds, we also used inspiration from "The Nightmare Before Christmas" where they have also used weird and twisted backgrounds. We then watched the music video to Radiohead's "A Wolf At The Door", where a wolf character is seen at various points in the video. The style of wolf used in this video we found very interesting so we decided to replicate it in our own video.

The next task on the production schedule was to produce a script and storyboard. We watched the making of NYTOL advert by Aardman Animations. The advert itself lasts for 30 seconds, which is a similar length to ours so we looked at their production for an idea how to run a sufficient one. They made a detailed storyboard to show the shots used and the length of the video. They also had a one side script explaining the scenes and dialogue which was relevant to refer to when we created our own storyboard and script.

The proposal to the client was the days task in college, we had to create a proposal persuading the client to invest in our production. I contributed by talking about the storyline of our animation and what it means, the management of the production, deadline, budget and ensuring the procedures are completed to a high standard. I came across some problems e.g. writing about quality procedures, I overcame this problem by talking about our pre-production and how it will make our advertisement achieve its greatest potential. The proposal the group made consisted of; the story outline, budget, deadline, research, production schedule etc.

We then had to create a presentation/pitch to the client with the information from the proposal, explaining why they should invest in our production. This was important to practice creating presentations and pitching to clients, due to the fact one of us one day could have a career where it is necessary to do this. Each person of the group created three or four slides on their topics they covered in the proposal.

A few days ago I learnt how to operate Adobe Flash. For me, the most relevant aspect was learning to reduce my workload, which resulted from pressing F6, copying the frames I made. I have significantly improved my understanding of this software, this means that I am capable of creating a short animation on this software.

In todays lesson the class attempted to create a claymation. We made some practice models and experimented animating the model to walk, blink, smile and cry. It was very interesting and helped develop my claymation skills, which I had none of before this session.

Today in college we created a survey to discover information on our "target audience" that we would need to create our animated advertisement at a later date. We demonstrated working to professional standards by creating a 10 question survey filled with questions gathering information on our target audience, ranging from their gender to their opinions on drug use in their town.

We then learnt how to operate Adobe Flash, which I have to say was extremely interesting. It was stressful at times and needed a lot of patients to operate it, but however I enjoyed unleashing my creativity on the software. The class was asked to make a  face, going from a smile to a frown. The outcomes were successful and some were even quite humerous and I am looking forward to creating a 2-D animation on this software promoting our production company.