Narrative part 2

So Colby and I wanted to collaborate this week and make a stop animation short and knew right away we wanted to work with lego. Our goal was to make a cheesy AWESOME action movie!!

First day we got together with a couple lego sets we bought, one of them being a pirate set and the other Indiana Jones. And I gotta say it was really fun building lego again, it has been a very very long time!! So after we got everything set up we started shooting one of our scenes so we could kinda do a trial so we would be prepared for the next day. Which I am glad we did because we ran into a couple glitches, but after some problem solving we got everything figured out and we knew exactly what we had to do for the shooting day. Our goal was to shoot everything on a green screen ( blue sheet over a cardboard box) and then impose various nature scenes to make our back drops. So after a couple video tutorials and experimenting with a couple of different methods to get the footage into final cut we were ready to start our big shoot!

After we got all the technical stuff figured out, it was pretty easy to do the shoot and it went really smoothly. We went into the shoot with a pretty vague storyboard so we could allow a little spontaneity and because of that we were able to create a couple new scenes. I am really happy with how all the footage turned out and after seeing the final product I am stoked on how well we did at our first attempt. But the best thing that came out of it was the insane learning curve we went through, we learned so much from this project so if we ever do another stop animation it will be 10x better!!

The next stage was the editing which was actually quite easy since we had imported all the scenes as one consolidated clip into final cut. When we uploaded the photos from the camera we threw them into imovie and did a quick job there so when it got to final cut it was a painless process ( other than waiting for the video to render!) But we did watch a couple video tutorials to get certain effects we wanted, which was cool because we did some effects while shooting and after the added effects it made our efforts succeed even more than we expected. Then all that was left was to throw in a title, end credits and music.

Narrative Project

So I wanted to make an old style flip book animation like used with post notes in school.

So I was going to use final cut pro, but i was experiencing computer problems, so i had to a less advanced program

Narrative Project

Well I wanted to go back to my roots, where i used to make flip books with stick notes.

So made a little Gif animation, in that kind of style.

But i couldn't figure out how to put sound on it, so that was the only problem i couldn't solve. 

so the piece is still unfinished.

Surveillance Project

So we had to do something with the word surveillance in mind

The idea I had was take on the people watch cameras at stores and building etc....

Cell phone Project pics

Cell phone Project

Project: Use your cellphone for a purpose radically different from it's intended use

When I first hear what the project was about my first thought was i would throw it on top of a pile of papers and call it a paper weight, but then i thought that was a bit of an easy way out for the assignment and the fact that we had mentioned it in class. So after thinking long and hard I came up with the idea of making a Kaleidoscope type thing and using the cells back light to be the light source of the Kaleidoscope.

Well at first it was going all good, and everything was going according to plan, until i hit a bit of a problem. My original idea was to have a disco ball type, item hang in the inside the of my project. So i made the ball out styrofoam and glitter, now the problem with this idea was that i wasn't reflecting the light properly. After trying many colors and types, i realized that glitter was just not going to work. I was stumped, until i got the idea to make ball or the center piece out of mirrors. I made a Cube form the mirrors and used that instead it worked great. 

Then next problem i had in counters was the reflection mirror this is one that you look down on to see everything. Well after getting to the angle that i wanted, it would just keep falling down, no matter what i did, so i had to settle for a steeper angle that took away form the effects that i was going for

After creating the mirror center, i couldn't the effect i wanted because the cell light was to broad and not giving me a effect i wanted, i soon found out that this wasn't going to work as well i wanted or imaged in my head. I also realized that glue and white paper is not the best way to keep light out of area, but  it seem that i had bitten off more then i can chew on this one i don't get any where the effect i wanted it to have, but it does something....