Focus Group - Primary Pringles Research

PRINGLES ADVERT FOCUS GROUP RESEARCH

This is the recording of my focus group

*evidence for coursework*

Results:

• "I preferred the one with humor in it"
• "It used the word fun and it made me want to have fun"
• "The song was catchy"
• "It showed the different ingredients, made me want to eat them"
• "I like the information"
• "It was very retro"
• "The flavors bursting"

The Brothers Quay

THE BROTHERS QUAY

·       The Quay brothers are two of the world's most original film-makers

·        Identical twins who were born in Pennsylvania in 1947, Stephen and Timothy Quay originally studied illustration and later on started to make animated short films in the 1970s.

·        Influenced by a tradition of Eastern European animation, the Quays display a passion for detail, a breath taking command of colour and texture, and an uncanny use of focus and camera movement that make their films unique and instantly recognisable.

·        Best known for their classic 1986 film ‘Street Of Crocodiles’

·        They are masters of miniaturisation and on their tiny sets have created an unforgettable world.

Feel free to watch a few minutes of their work, 'Street of Crocodiles', to get a basic idea and understanding of what their work consisted of:

                        

Aardman

RESEARCH ON AARDMAN.

• -         Peter Lord and David Sproxton began their animating partnership at school and then they registered the name of Aardman Animation in 1972.

• -         They were always interested in developing an adult audience so created Conversation pieces which was televised in 1982 by channel 4

• -         Peter and David met Nick park at the nation film and television school and then Nick joined Aardman full time in 1986

• -         1989 They created Lip synch, which one the 1990 academy award for best-animated short film.

• -         1993 Aardman won an Oscar for ‘The wrong Trousers’, which was 30 minutes long, won over 30 awards and became the one of the most successful animated films ever.

• -         Chicken run was the first full-length theatrical feature film which was funded by DreamWorks, and released in June 2000. It was grossed over $220M at the worldwide box office

• -         2002 released cracking contraptions series of Wallace and Gromit films. Which was then later shown on BBC1

• -         Then created the first feature film of Wallace and Gromit ‘The curse of the were-rabbit’ in 2005

• -         Top of the charts in us and UK and earned awards just as Academy Award for the Best animated feature film and BAFTA for Best British film

• -         Flushed away the studio’s first Computer Generated film released in Nov 2006

• -         Shaun the Sheep was created in 2007.

• Aardmans characters all have a distinct look and most share certain features that are similar as well.

Animation Experimentation (part 2)

MEET TYRONE.

In this animation experimentation we practised on how to make an animated character look realistic when talking and moving their mouth. We used different cut out mouth shapes and just swapped them when they matched the words spoken.

I found this quite difficult because i was hard to know which mouth to use as we had to pronounce everything phonetically letter by letter in order to make it look realistic. 

When we recorded the sound for the animated character we tried to go for quite a comical persona with the character, Tyrone. This is because from first sight you see very small and cute character which you expect the voice to be very high pitched and sweet, so what we decided to do was to portray completely the opposite persona which came across as very humorous.

However, the thing which I found most difficult to do was to match the voice recording with the mouth movements of the character. To overcome this difficulty I had to convert the timings for every individual shot to have a more realistic appeal, which showed me to animate even the smallest and simplest animation it consists of having a lot of patience and care. I was pleased with the overall outcome. 

CREATURE COMFORTS - HOW IT'S DONE

CREATURE COMFORTS


Creature Comforts was originally a 1989 British humorous animated short film about how animals felt about living in a zoo, featuring the voices of the British public which were spoken by animated animals in the short films.

It was created by Nick Park and Aardman animations. They chose the animals being animated based on the character's voice and the theme of the conversation.
Beforehand, to achieve a sense of realism they would act out the scenes in real life to see how the characters are portrayed compared to what they would look like being animated.




Here is a short montage which really captivated what Creature Comforts is about and how it relates to real life interviewes.

They mainly use eyes/eyebrows to captivate and convey their emotions across to the public. Initially, when constructing these animation the crew and animators found it hard to and long to make the character's mouth move in every scene so what they decided to do instead is take the mouths on and off, each with a different expression which saved a lot of time.

They also recorded the sound using phonetics, which is very unique as other animations don't do so. in order to do this they would break down each individual word and letter to match it with the movement of the mouth.

It takes a whole day's worth of filming and animating in order to shoot 4 seconds of the animation, which really emphasise how much patience and skills is used to create one single episode.

The animators have decided to use plasticine in order to create their animated characters. They use plasticine because they believe that it is the best and easiest way to really get emotions out of the characters created. They use a mixture of tragic and comic themes in order to get a real reflection of human emotions through animation.

Overall, they turned an interview which could be very mundane and boring into something very interesting and humorous to watch.

·

Research on Pioneers of Stop Motion Animation

PIONEERS OF STOP MOTION ANIMATION.

Joseph Plateau (1801-1883)

• Joseph was a Belgian physicist whom was also the first person to demonstrate moving images.
•  He created the Phenakistoscope which proved the theory of persistence of vision.

Here is a video below showing an example of a Phenakistoscope and what it does.

William Horner (1783-1836)

• William Horner created the zoetrope. 
• A zoetrope is a device that produces the illusion of motion from a rapic continuous of still pictures. 
• There are implication that William stole the idea from someone else but this had not been proven.

Charles-Emile Reynaud (1844-1918)

• Charles Reynaud was a French physics teacher
• He first projected animated cartoon in 1892
• Charles also created the praxinoscope. Like the zoetrope, it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder.
• The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more of less stationary in position as the wheel turned.

Lumiere Brothers 

• The Lumiere Brothers mainly worked with stuff in every day llife
• They used moving images 
• Known as the 'Fathers of Film-making'
• Earliest film-makers in history

George Pal (1908-1980)

• Hungarian-born, American animator
• Graduated in 1928
• worked for Paramount Pictures
• Made puppetoons
• awarded Oscar - mainly for special effects
• George Pal created 'The time Machine'
• Puppetoons were a series of animated puppet films made in Europe in the 1930s and in the U.S in the 1940s.
• Here is one of his many short animations work.

Willis O'Brien (1886-1962)

• Willis O'Brien was an American motion picture special effects and stop motion animator pioneers..
• Willis was the animator of the original 'King Kong' (1933)
• He sculptured and illustrated King Kong.
• He was a pioneer whom inspired generations of 'effects artists'
• Responsible for some of the best images in cinema.

Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013)

 

• Ray was an American visual effects creator, writer and producer who created a form of stop-motion animation known as 'Dynamation'
• Ray made his name by developing fantastic stories and creatures based on legends and mythology and creating a unique genre of fantasy films.
• Here is a drawing of an example of Dynamation.

 

Jan Svankmajer (1934)

• Jan was originally a Czech film-maker
• Specialised in Theatre of mask
• Jan had an impact on films such as 'saw'
• Self-labelled surrealist known for his unreal animation and features.
• Here is one of his most famous piece of work called 'Meat Love' which conveys his surrealism and creative imagination with everyday life.

 

 

*All information received from class-mates presentation ins class*

Primary and Secondary Research - Quantitative / Qualitative (Pringles)

Primary Research on Pringles - Questionnaire

QUESTIONNAIRE:

1. Have you ever tried Pringles before?

   

    YES       NO

2. Do you like the taste of Pringles?

   YES        NO 

3. If Pringles were a person, what personality trait would you say Pringles would have?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4. Do you prefer original flavour or do you like the idea of having other flavours of Pringles?

NORMAL FLAVOURS      OTHER FLAVOUR

5. Where would you most likely find yourself eating Pringles?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

6. Do you normally find yourself sharing Pringles with your friends?

    YES         NO  

7. How much do you pay for for a can of Pringles?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

8. Have you seen previous Pringles adverts? If so, what do you like about it?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________

9. What effect does Pringles have on you?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

10. What target audience do you think Pringles is mainly aimed at? People at what age do you think would buy this product?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

11. How many packet of Pringles do you buy monthly?

   0       1-2       3-4        4-5       6+

12. What do you think would make a good advert for this specific product? Why?

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Results:

Eadweard Muybridge

http://www.slideshare.net/chrisnaufel/eadweard-muybridge-research-presentation-26932112

Persistence of Vision

 

PERSISTENCE OF VISION: WHAT IT IS/HOW IT WORKS.

Persistence of vision is a theory which attempts to explain how the human eye/brain can be fooled into seeing continuous motion when presented with a sequence of still images (film or video frames) at a rate of 10 frames per second (fps) or greater.

Furthermore, television and movie technologies have used this effect to deceive us into perceiving continuous motion, where there is none. This is of course done by displaying a series of still images (snapshots or frames) in fast succession. 10 fps is regarded as a minimum to produce the illusion of continuous motion but a frame rate of 24 is preferable because it prevents the image from being jerky.

Here is a short video explaining how you can use persistence of vision in many different ways :

The Basic Principles of Animation

The are 12 basic principles of animation which were developed by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston in the 1930s. These principles came around as a desire to convey a new way of animating which seemed realistic in terms of how things moved, expressing a certain character's persona as a result.

(1)
SQUASH AND STRETCH. 

This action gives the illusion of weight and volume to a character as it moves, potentially being the most important element as the principle of animation. The most common form of squash and stretch is in the animation of a bouncing ball as shown below: 
As you can see in this picture the ball on the left maintains a constant speed as it bounces up and down which doesn't seem very realistic because this is not how a ball bounces in real life.
The ball on the right does squash and stretch but still doesn't depict the way a ball bounces up and down in real life as the speed is still constant throughout. However, the ball in the middle does convey realism because it does squash and stretch and it also changes momentum as it touches the ground and compared to when it reaches the top.
Even if the ball may not be an exact visual representation as to what a ball in real life looks like it still portrays realistic characteristics of movement as it bounces. 

(2) ANTICIPATION.
This move prepares the audience for a major action that is about to happen. An example of this would be if a character was about to punch another character, he would not straight away flick his wrist up, a backward motion needs to occur before a forward one does, so in this case the character would bring his arm back in order to gain momentum for a strong punch, bringing a sense of realism in the animation.
Equally, this could happen when a person is about to jump: The character would firstly have to bend their knees in order to jump straight after, otherwise it would seem as if they are levitating off the floor. A backward reaction is normally always needed before a forward reaction. Here in an example of one:





(3) STAGING. 

A pose or action should clearly communicate to the audience a character's emotions and persona. The use of long, medium, and close-up shots are also very effective in conveying the way a character's emotion and how they feel. There should not be too many actions and expressions going on at once as it would easily confuse the audience, making it harder to depict what is going on in the story. There should be careful thought on how the background is designed as you can't have an over-the-top background which will shift focus from the character or make them seem less important, unless that is the theme you're going for. 

(4) STRAIGHT AHEAD AND POSE TO POSE ANIMATION.

 
There are two different animation methods to consider: pose to pose and straight ahead. Pose to pose animation involves defining a set of key poses which represent the extremes of a certain action, such as the beginning, middle and the end. The drawings in this method are related to each other in both size and action. This method also helps the in-between animators fill in the gap of the action knowing what the outcome of the action would be.



Straight ahead animation is actually working straight ahead right from the first drawing in the scene. Doing frame after frame, until he reaches the end of the scene getting new ideas as he draws. The point of the story is already known and the staging that needs to be done, but he has little plan on how it will turn out in the end since the time he starts drawing the first frame. The drawings and the actions are new, looking great as the animator keeps the entire process intuitive and creative.




(5) FOLLOW THROUGH AND OVERLAPPING ACTION.

Follow through: This is when a character is moving and their main body stops and all the other parts continue to catch up to the main body until it also finally stops such as arm, hair, clothing, earrings, tail, etc. Nothing all stops at the same time because it is not realistic.
Overlapping: This is when a character changes direction but the character's clothes/hair/tail continues forward. The character's clothes will only follow the character's main body a few frames later. Timing becomes critical to the effectiveness of drag and the overlapping action. 

(6) SLOW-OUT AND SLOW-IN

This is when as a certain action starts there are more drawings at the beginning of the action, only a few in the middle and more again towards the end of the action. Fewer drawings make the action faster and more drawings make the action slower.
This gives off the realistic effect as when someone starts walking in real life, it isn't a constant speed throughout the whole action... You start slower and as you gain momentum you walk faster, until you come to a stop again where you begin to slow down instead of coming into a sudden halt. Here is an example:



(7) ARCS.

All actions carried out simply follow an arc, or circular path, as demonstrated in a human figure or animals. Arcs given animation a smoother and more realistic flow. All head, arms, leg or eye movements are portrayed on an arc.

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(8) SECONDARY ACTION.

This occurs when an action directly results from another action to help increase complexity and adds more dimension to a character's animation. The secondary action should always subordinate to the primary action and never compete with the primary action in the scene.

Example: If a squirrel is running across a lawn the movement of the squirrel's legs (considered the primary action) would be animated to express the light nature of his character. The agile movement of the squirrel's tail (considered the secondary action) would have a separate and slightly different type of movement than his legs. The squirrel's tail is an example of secondary action.


(9) TIMING.

Timing, or the speed of an action is an important principle because it gives meaning to movement. The speed of an action defines how well an idea will be read to an audience.Timing can also define the weight of an object. Two similar objects can appear to seem very different weights by simply changing the time of the action as shown below:





The basics of it are that more drawings between poses slow and smooth the action, fewer drawings make the action faster and crisper and a variety of slow and fast timing within a scene adds interest to the movement. 

(10) EXAGGERATION.

Exaggeration is the extremes of a facial feature, expressions, poses, attitudes and actions.Exaggeration does not just mean distorting the actions or objects, but the animator must carefully choose which properties to exaggerate. If only one thing is exaggerated then it may stand out too much. If everything is exaggerated then the entire scene may appear too unrealistic, the balance must be right.
Exaggeration is used in animation when trying to decide whether to be realistic or not by playing with the levels of exaggeration used an animator can achieve this. Exaggeration can be used on the character or elements in the storyline itself. 

(11) SOLID DRAWING.

Solid drawing being able to draw your character from every angle in a believable manner so that they look alive. An animation looks more realistic when you take into account the angle you are looking at your character from and make sure the perspective is right. The basic principles of drawing form, weight, volume solidity and the illusion of 3D apply to animation as it does to academic drawing, as shown in the picture below of the world-famous 'The Simpsons' animation.


(12) APPEAL.

All characters must have appeal. Appeal was always very important from the start. It means anything that a person likes to see: a quality of charm, simplicity or a pleasing design. Your eye is always drawn to the figure that has appeal and once there it is held whilst appreciating what you are seeing. Both a hero or a villain can have appeal otherwise your eye is never concentrated on the protagonist.

Stop Motion Animation Experimentation

Play Dough Animation Experimentation:

This was my first attempt at using play dough to make a stop motion animation clip. I found this quite difficult to make because whenever you constructed the character you had to make sure it looked the same throughout the whole animation and sometimes the play dough character would fall, meaning it would have changed positions from one shot to another which made it look jerky.
                                                                     

We should have taken more pictures and kept the camera more stable by using the tripod. Sometimes my hand also appeared trying to move the play dough character, this was probably because there was a lack of patience and the pictures were being taken too quickly. The principles of animation didn't come across as well as I would have pleased because when the character on the left went to punch the other character there was no anticipation or backward movement which made it look very unrealistic.

Cut-Out Experimentation:

In my first attempt to work with cut-out animation it was very hard to portray the principles of animation which would have made it look realistic. This is because there were several different parts of the body you had to move at the same time which was quite hard to process in my mind all at once, so what i should have done is written all the different parts of the body I had to move down which would have made it look more realistic. 

However, i felt as if there were enough shots not to make the video seem jerky and we did take both characters' movement into consideration as an action-reaction effect. When one character hit another character, the other character would also have reacted to the hit which helped the audience to understand what was going on in the video. I should also have studied the anatomy of the body to understand how each individual part moves together to make it seem even more realistic.

Pixelation Experimentation:

With my first attempt of pixelation, I feel as if this wasn't very successful because the pictures were taken too quickly and we weren't patient enough to take each individual picture shot-by-shot. We tried to make it seem as if i was being levitated by Ruby and Izzy but because we programmed the settings to be on burst. Instead of retaking the pictures, I would have altered the time each frame showed which would have made it of a more realistic speed from 0.2 seconds to 0.5 seconds.

Sand Experimentation:

For the sand experimentation I felt as if this was my most successful animation because we tried to portray to the best of our abilities the human evolution and it is very clear to see what is going on in the animation, which was our main aim. We found it difficult to change one image to another as the changes couldn't be too big otherwise it would have looked jerky but with sand it was difficult to keep the appearance equal to the previous image. In order to achieve this we should have made as little movement with the sand as possible, still making sure we didn't loose any volume of sand as it showed up with different shades on the picture.

Small Objects Experimentation: 

I found small objects animation very difficult to make because as they are already made projects you can't necessarily change the object's expression or the way they move. We aslo couldn't get to make it look very realistic because at the time we didn't know how to make the panda bear hold the scissors but we later on discovered we could have used cellotape which would have made it look more realistic. Blu tack would also have been very successful to keep the character to maintain the same position without making any sudden changes within a split image. Due to us not being able to change facial expression it was also hard to convey emotions and make a story out of the animation but to change this we could have used stick on eyes as we previously did when experimenting with play dough animation. 

Flick Book Experimentation

 

This is a first attempt of a flick book that I have created. Whilst learning about how flick books are created I used this technique to create a short and unrealistic story, which is what most flick books portray. It begins with a character getting blown off a trampoline by the strong wind whom later on turns into a fish, effortlessly diving into the water.

I faced some difficulties when creating this flick book. After drawing my first page I realised that to create a flick book you need to have a lot of patience and concentration when creating it as shown in the video, a 5 second clip takes up around 20 pages with the exact same drawing and background. I also found it very hard to make sure the ladder and characters are in exactly the same place for every single page, which would make the flick book seem smoother and more realistic.

It was also difficult to show all the pages in the book as I was flicking it because some were stuck together, making it hard to differentiate every page when flicking through them. From this experience I have learnt that in the future I will need to use tracing paper to improve the accuracy of the drawings and also create a bigger flick book with more pages which is easier to flick and I should have a lot more patience with creating a longer story.