Experimental Animation

The idea of this topic is to try out different animating techniques. We have decided to use two different mediums, for the first half of our animation we will be animating it as stopmotion and the second half will be pixilation.
We have decided to do this to differentiate between reality and what our character is imagining, an added twist is to have reality represented with stopmotion and his imagination represented with pixilation.

Planning

The basic jest of the story is that our character has no money and is trying to figure out a way of getting some. The group split into two and we each took a different medium, I worked on the pixilation half, this was depicting our character thinking of different ways of obtaining money. He comes up with a couple ideas and thinks them through, first he thinks about robbing a bank but then considers the consequences and decides this isn’t such a good idea, he then comes up with the idea of growing a money tree and sees himself rolling in money once the tree has grown.

Working progress


I really enjoyed working in pixilation I found it to be very enjoyable and fairly quick to capture compared with other animation techniques; I did find it was harder to keep the image consistent though due to the fact that I didn’t realise I had moved between shots, when you watch the animation our expressions change and I’m looking in different directions in the pictures.

Final Animation

money. from Richard Whillock on Vimeo.

Evaluation

I like the aesthetic quality of the animation and the combination of both techniques. The only issue I have with the animation is that the plot is a bit fractured and isn’t very clear, From an audience’s point of view the story needs some explaining before it becomes clear what’s going on. As we came up with the idea we didn’t realise this until we had played the video to an audience and got their feedback. In the future I will run my ideas past someone who doesn’t know the plot and see if they can make sense of what’s going on befor I start animating to avoid this problem.