The Very Healthy Caterpillar Game

Peer review of animation assignments - Global perspective clay animation

As part of our animation assignment, we were asked to make notes on other peoples animations from our class and chose one in particular to discuss about. The decision to pick one animation from the class was especially difficult. I decided to discuss Sam and Sam's global clay animation, as this one in particular, was one of my favourite ones. It involved pieces of clay changing and forming into different things, then eventually they combined to create a globe. The message I got from this animation was that world peace is extremely important, and we should all help and support each other. The animation skills they have were most certainly shown throughout the duration of the animation, and it looked like hard work was spent on it. They also used the same application we used for our own animation, so it was good to discuss the struggles and benefits we all faced with the application. They used the form of background music and that is all it needed, as the music created effect and related to the issue at hand. It was quite amazing how the limited number of props used for their animation had such a massive effect, which shows that the use of too many props can draw attention away from the meaning of the animation. The background was so simple which worked perfectly for the animation, there was no potential distraction at all.
When watching their animation, it was good that they explained the difficulties they faced and how they overcame these difficulties. They mentioned the mistakes they made during the production of the animation and how they resolved them, and why they did not do something in a certain way. I personally thought that the animation for it was quite mesmerising and it flowed perfectly. For me, there was no criticism for this animation, it really caught my attention for the duration of it.

Our Finished Animation

Here is our animation on homelessness with the use of clay and Stop Motion Studio:

By Emily James and Sarah Evans

Here is where you can find the application:
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/stop-motion-studio/id441651297?mt=8

Evaluation of Stop Motion Animation Assignment

For this assignment, we were asked to create a stop motion animation using one of the methods we have learnt since September in our Education Futures class at university. Me and Sarah decided to work with each other on this project, as we live with each other and thought we could work well together. We decided it would be a good idea to use clay for our stop motion animation, at first I think we under-estimated the amount of time and patience necessary for this type of stop motion animation. However, when we got stuck into the project, we found ourselves quite enjoying the process of it. The clay we used for our project was very good, as it is designed to be quite moist, which meant that none of our models/characters could dry out, which could cause them to possibly break or crumble. The brand we used for the clay was called 'New Plast', the same clay used in our university, which was one of the main reasons we decided to use it.

To begin, here is a short clip of an example of clay animation to give you some idea of what it involves:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtV4veTUMUs

The best way to describe what clay animation is, is that it involves making clay characters or figures then the difficult task of taking pictures with gradual movement from the figures, so when the photos are played back it looks like the figures are moving/animating. As you can tell, this takes a lot of patience and is extremely time consuming, but if it is done correctly it can have a great effect.

For our project, we were asked to base our animation on a current contemporary issue of our choice and had to be at least 2 minutes long. The issue we chose is based around homelessness, which has been and still is a huge problem in the United Kingdom and around the world. In 2014, 27,970 homeless applications were made in England and only 50% were accepted (Homeless Link, 2014). We aim to make it clear that people in this situation are not alone and help is always available around every corner, when you may least expect it. For the animation, it is set outside and involves a character on a park bench and the seasons changing. In order to make the set, we used two place mats to create the background, these were blue and green to represent the sky and the grass. The only problem with using these were that they were slightly too small, meaning the animation space was slightly limited and meant that the background could not fit in the camera shot. Here is a picture of the set, to give you an idea on how it looked:

The amount of props used for this animation is fairly low. The tree, the character and the bench are the only props that occur for the entire duration of the animation. The picture also shows the other props that come in and out of the animation, these include clouds, the sun, rain, snow, leaves and finally the second character that comes on who helps the homeless person. This character also has an umbrella, which is important for the story and displays his kind generosity.

As mentioned before, there will only be two characters in our animation; the homeless character and the second character who has come to help. We felt that this is all we really need and did not want to draw attention away from the main two important characters. The conflict the first character is having is that he is homeless and is extremely unhappy and lonely, the second character wants to help and wants to do a good deed. The conflict is resolved by the second character helping the first character, and showing that help is always there and how any gesture can be considered as helpful to a person in need.

In order to film our animation, we used a stop motion animation app on my iPhone 5. It is called Stop Motion Studio and it has been incredibly helpful in putting our animation together. We found this software a lot easier than some we came across, for example, Zu3D which we have used in lessons before in university. I found Zu3D quite hard to grasp when using it previously. When presenting our animation, everthing worked correctly which was a big worry when using a different application. Stop Motion Studio, the animation we used, enables you to add any music, images or sound effects to your animation which we found very beneficial. We decided to add background music to our animation using this feature. We thought it was not appropriate to have sound effects or narration in our animation, as it could draw attention away from the emotion caused by these characters. We thought that emotion could be expressed by the sound of music only for our animation, and hope that this could make the animation more powerful and meaningful. The music we have decided to have in the background is Somewhere Only We Know - Lily Allen, however this is the instrumental version, as we felt that this had much more of an impact on the animation, rather than the original version of the song.

Here is a link to the application we used for our animation:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/stop-motion-studio/id441651297?mt=8

Things to avoid during this assignment:

• One thing that should be avoided when doing animation in this way is that characters used must be able to stand on their own, we discovered this when creating our clay. It is important for the characters' feet to be quite flat in order to be sturdy, otherwise they fall over which can affect the animation.
• When using a camera to take photos, it is most effective if the camera does not move inbetween capturing photos. We managed to think of a way to best avoid this by, first of all, using a handmade tripod to keep the phone as still as possible. The tripod was made up of DVD's to get the right height then two bits of leftover clay to help the phone stay at the appropriate angle. This actually worked surprisingly well.
• In order to avoid moving the phone by touching the screen to capture all the photos, Sarah had a great idea that we should use headphones to capture the shots, which worked perfectly. The quality of the animation could have been greatly affected if we did not use the headphones in this way.
• Frustration! This should definitely be avoided. In all honesty, there were a few moments of this during the creation of our animation, but these were easily solved by lots of little breaks now and then.
• We found it extremely beneficial to upload our video to YouTube before presenting it in class, just to ensure it worked correctly and could be accessed from any device. This can avoid any time consuming technical difficulties.

After viewing other people's animations in the class, there were a few things that could have been done to ours that did not cross our minds. For example, we thought we were restricted to clay, but could of used other different objects like paper or toys. I think next time, we would of taken that into consideration, instead of just using clay objects. The quality of backgrounds that people used for their animations were very effective, and the use of different scenic backgrounds, which could have been a possibilty to use for our animation. However, we thought that the use of just one scene could display a strong effect with the seasons changing and focusing on that one character.

So here are a few photos of the process of our animation:

References

• Statutory homelessness | Homeless Link. 2015. Statutory homelessness | Homeless Link. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.homeless.org.uk/facts/homelessness-in-numbers/statutory-homelessness. [Accessed 29 January 2015].
•  Clay Animation Short: Make a Friend (Uploaded in 2011) - YouTube. 2015. Clay Animation Short: Make a Friend - YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtV4veTUMUs. [Accessed 29 January 2015].

Sound

'Sound effects play an important role in conveying action. Music helps express emotion' Quoted by Michael Geisler.

I found this quote interesting as I find that music has a massive part when associated with film or animation. Music can have an effect on the emotion and feeling of a person when watching a film. For example, if a part of a film is shown as sad or upsetting then the music can have a massive effect on this, expressing emotions further.
It is also true that music can help you recognise a piece of film, straight away in some cases. For example, the theme music can be especially recognised.
Sound effects are also important when associated with films or animations. This can engage the viewer in many ways and it keeps them interested. For example, with a frightening/scary film, loud bangs and screams make the experience of watching the film much more exciting/thrilling. Without this, the film would not be as enjoyable. You could say also that sound effects make a film, animation, video clip much more realistic.
From looking at this quote, I can not help but think about the film Wall-E from Disney Pixar. In this film, there is very limited speaking involved. Most of the film is portrayed in the style of different pieces of music and sound effects. This film is one of my favourite films and it shows that voices are not always necessary in certain contexts. With this style of film, it could quite possibly not have the same effect if there were voices/speaking.

 
  
So on the same sort of lines as Wall-E, for our university assignment, we thought it would be a good idea to have music playing in the background of our animation/story. As said before, you do not need the use of words to express an emotion; the music can do that for you. As important as sound effects are, we thought that it was not necessary for our story. We thought it would give our specific story more feeling if we used music throughout, but more on this will be to follow.

Learning and ICT environments

 (http://www.wordle.net/create)

Learning environments can be associated as a place an individual can learn. It is a place which should engage and stimulate the learner. Normally, learning environments would be considered as places like schools, colleges, universities, libraries etc but we can all agree that learning can take place absolutely anywhere, including places you would never think of! Most people feel that they learn better in different situations/environments in which they feel more comfortable and relaxed in, these preferences could be; quiet rooms rather than loud and noisy environments, seminars over lectures or small groups over large groups. Everyones preferences are different.  The learning environment needs to suit everybodies needs and has to cater everyones preferred learning style. It is important for many different reasons. The learning environment can potentially affect a person's academic achievement, so would need to facilitate the learner's own personal needs. It also needs to stimulate the learner and aim to keep them focused and engaged with what they are learning.

At this present time, ICT and learning have got a very strong connection and is used in many learning environments, e.g. schools, universities etc. It can now be considered as extremely important to have a strong engagement with ICT, as the use of it is slowly getting stronger across the world and in some cases it is vital to have some form of ICT when for example, applying for jobs, writing essays etc. However, it is important to consider whether the use of ICT is seen as beneficial for a person's own learning style. Some people may find writing things down can help with their learning of things, like remembering information for revision for example. Nevertheless, it is clear to say that the use of ICT can improve a person's learning, as information can easily be found on the internet especially. If you needed to find something out, it can easily be solved with the use of internet. So, there is no denying that it can improve learning. However, you could also say that the use of ICT could be seen as distracting to a person's learning. There are growing amounts of technology being introduced every year, for example, tablets, gaming devices etc. These could all affect a person's learning and could also have an effect on their preferable learning environment too, if a television is on loud in a person's learning environment, this could affect person and their aim to learn.

Everyday, the use of ICT is getting more and more popular, should we be equipped for the future? You could say that we're reaching an era where we have to rely on some sort of technology we use everyday. There is no denying that we cannot escape from a technological world. So in conclusion,  tt is clear to say that ICT can have positive and negative effects on a person's learning. Some may find it useful to use ICT when learning new things, while others could see it as distracting. However, it is important to have access to all different types of ICT in the technological era we now live in.

References:

• Wordle - Create. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.wordle.net/create. [Accessed 29 January 2015].

Readings on Animation.

This week we were asked to read these two journals talking about animation and the benefits and set backs of it. These were the names and the links of the two readings:

• Animation and learning: selective processing of information in dynamic graphics
• How do animations influence learning?

They were fairly difficult readings to read but the main focuses of them that I gathered were that there are good and bad things about animations and can be used for a variety of reasons, across a whole range of topics.
The first reading looked into different types of animation:

1. Chemical
2. Agent
3. Weather Map
4. Geological

The readings explained that many people believe that animations can help learners come to understand complex ideas more easily. Also that some people believe that animations can help people learn because they are especially motivating (Rieber,1991).
The look and appearance of a animation can influence learning - e.g. the colour red attracts the eye, the shape and size of an animation can influence learning also.

However, learning with animations are not all that beneficial according to the second reading. One comment that I found interesting was that there is some evidence to show that animations may produce an illusion of understanding that can actually interfere with successful learning. By this, is that we get distracted by animations which can move us away from learning.
This could link in with learning styles, which means it could depend on the learners' needs. Some people may benefit more from learning with animations, as it keeps them engaged and interested, while maybe others prefer to learn in the more standard way as it is what they know best.
However, there has been evidence that learning with animations can actually increase satisfaction and motivation.