Title scene

Here is the title scene of my animation. The first two scenes are using the simple text effect from the After Effect. My name which is presented like using the laser gun to carve on the screen is a bit more complicated. It needs to draw the path to lead the laser to run through it. It is the first time for me to use the Null object layer and Fractal Noise effect.

Constellation

Constellation is the animation created by dimitri Kozma. It inspired me a lot on how to express the people's motion. The music it uses is the shining point I think.

The calendar

It is the opening scene of my animation. A calendar will show out and gradually zoom in to the specific day to lead the character to visit his grandma.

Technical experiment

Here is the glossy text with the reflection I made after watching the tutorial of Matt Evans. This effect may be use for the ending of my animation.

Project proposal

The love of grandma

Introduction

The animation for the project called ‘The love of grandma’. It mainly talking about a chinese grandma finds out her grandson Melo has some healthy problem on the day Melo visits her. Later Melo goes to hospital to have a check. At this point the story will head to the core scene, which is describing how nervous grandma is during the time she waits for Melo. Finally they meet up after few hours’ check and Melo got the report that he is fine. Based on the story above, this proposal will elaborate the creation process of the whole story. Major tells of the style of animation, which specific animations affects my idea, theoretical research, the culture representation and the time management about how to finish the final project in next two months.

Style of animation

The animation style of ‘The love of grandma’ is limited animation. Basically, limited animation is lacking of much detail and does not require to redrawing entire frames. Limited animation has the lower number of separate frames per second, which are around 6 to 12 frames per second (Kirkpatrick and Peaty, 2002, p. 149). One frame can be divided into separate parts such as car, tree, character and the sky. I am able to use the same frame and change specific part of it to make the whole story progress smoothly. It helps me to save time to make the whole animation and reduce the cost on in. At first, I was considering to make the stop motion animation. As Zwerman and Okun (2010) said even the stop motion animation is a kind of old technique as the hand drawn animation, but it is able to give a 3D effect because all the scenes are taken by camera.  Unfortunately, the stop motion animation needs a plenty of the sources like paper, color pen and so on to create the character and objects. A high quality camera is acquired as well to shoot the photos. Hence, I prefer to use limited animation which can give me more time on the creative design.

The particular animation’s work that inspire me

‘The love of grandma’ would be presented as a funny and touching story. For the funny part, South Park (Parker and Stone, 1997) does affect me a lot. All the characters and objects in South Park are constructed by simple geometrical shapes and primary colors (Fallows, 2002). From the sample in the memory stick and photos below can be seen that ‘ The love of grandma’ uses the simple geometrical shapes and primary colors that is similar to the South Park construct most of the characters and objects.

 Maybe all the objects construct by the simple geometrical shapes give a stiff feeling to the audience. Like Cheplic (2009) complains that in some extent the simple geometrical shapes is a shortage compare with the hand drawn characters that can progress freely. In order to create the funny scene, the gradual change of the simple geometrical shapes would play an important role on it. The sunset in the sample, the transformation of the eyes and mouth create a scene that the sun feel upset about off duty in the evening. Compare with the live-action movie, animation is easier to be understood by the audience, and simple geometry consisting of characters and objects give a more intuitive feeling to the audience. They don’t need to take times to deliberate again and again about the content.  It could be understood right at the moment we watch the scene. For my project, create my character by geometrical shapes offer the space for me to do more modification in the future.

Different from the South Park that use the coarse and poor language to establish the whole animation. The movement that are related to emotional states is the key point to run through in my story. ‘The love of grandma’ is mainly demonstrates the love, the touching part gets more credits on it. Overall, funny scene plays a supporting role to catch the attention from the audience.

The animation ‘the love of grandma’ is actually a real story from myself. Before I decided to use the story from my grandma, I was simply trying to make a humorous animation like South Park. However, after watching the animation called ‘Constellation’ from Dimitri Kozma (2009), I determine to use the story from my grandma because it comes out in my mind at the moment when I watch Constellation. In spite of the touching part, the animation called ‘Constellation’ inspires me. It is a sad story about loneliness, love, life and death. The protagonist has already lost his soul because he lost his loved one. In order to construct a sad and touching story, from the picture below, Dimitri doesn’t use a lot detail drawing to depict how lonely, sorrowful he is. Although the whole drawing style of it is still tend to be simple which is a kind of similar to the South Park.

（Dimitri, 2009)

What it different from the South Park is, the Constellation doesn’t have any dialogue. Except using the description of the character’s facial expressions to establish the touching and tragic atmosphere, more important is the use of music.

Theoretical research

Music is a part of sound, it gives life and meaning to the objects when they move, talk, bite and so on. As Furniss (2007) argues that, sound effects created an exaggerated manner and it could simply provide a deep level of meaning and greatly impact the visuals of the film. Music go throughout the entire animation, the undulating of plot fits every detail of the music. As Beauchamp (2005) defines that music can slow down or speed up an action. In ‘The love of grandma’, music would play the second role as the sound. Sound from the everyday life is the key elements that link all the plots together in this story. Owing to the major scene of the story is the time when grandma waiting for Melo, I would not use any music in this part. In order to create a nervous atmosphere, the sound of pacing around the room, sigh, buses go through in front her house and the swing of the clock will be recorded in my daily life. As Wells (2006, p. 15) defines that everyone has their own memory and feeling that is built on our five senses. It is exactly the reason I try to record the sound from my daily life for the project. In a quiet environment, the utterance of a single object can play well to construct a nervous anxiety atmosphere.

Ethics and culture representation                              

As we can see from the love of grandma, it is based the cartoon character of Chinese grandma. According to it, the whole story is trying to represent the traditional Chinese family care to the younger children and the geographic separation between the adult children and their older parents. Although the economic, political and cultural development of China has a huge changed in the recent decades, the traditional family values is still engraving in people’s mind. Such as the man will be seen as the family bonds of the family and have the responsibility for earing money for his family. Parents need to go out for work to make money to maintain the daily life of the family hence they seldom have time to take care of their children. Even their children are less than one year old. People may try to hire a children’s maid to look after their children, however, nowadays the wages of hiring a children’s maid is increasing rapidly. And generally we still need to offer a room for the children’s maid to live in. It is impossible for most of the family to offer the extra room for the children’s maid in China. According to the living standard in China, most of the people can’t even be satisfied with the low wages. Under the pressure of their job and the high cost of hiring a children’s maid, grandparents automatically become their first or only choice to take care their children. On the one hand, owing to this situation has last for nearly thousand years; naturally it has become a habit that when a baby is born, their grandparents should be the primary caretakers. On the other hand, grandparents spend time to take care of their grandchildren is the return of the economic support from their adult children (Powell and Cook, 2007, p. 49). With the long time spending with their grandchildren, grandparents would put them at the central position in their lives and benefits them in many ways. Especially the educated grandparents are able to establish a comprehensive cognitive environment. Grandparents also play a significant role in the social manner of their grandchildren by offering the correct model and convey the traditional social values to improve the grandchildren’s social and educated performances (Zhen and Yu, 2014).

As for the geographic separation between the adult children and their older parents, according to the storyboard, we could find out that one of the main character ‘Melo’ need to take a bus to hospital and visit his grandma. Furthermore, the day he visits his grandma needs to be marked down on the calendar. From these scenes can be seen that there is a long way between the grandparents and their adult children’s home. As a result rapid development of the economic in Chinese urban area, adults are looking forward to living in the city (Powell and Cook, 2007, p. 50). The impeccable transportation facilities, modern hospital and the short distance to work do appeal the adults more than living in the village. As the grandparents, their nostalgic feelings make them feel better to stay in the villages.

Evidence of technical experimentation

All the evidence of technical experimentation is on the file called experimentation in the disc. It includes the zoetrope, the stop-motion animation and the flappy bird.

Week-by-week schedule

During week 8 to January, there are nearly two months to prepare for the final project. Here is the plan about how I manage my timetable to finish the final project.

November 10 – November 23: Completing all the painting I need in illustrator or paper for the final editing.

November 24 – November 28: Recording all the sound I need from my daily life. Such as the sound from the bus engine, walking steps, clock, dining table, wind. The voice of people when they feel shocked, nervous and happy.

November 29 – December 3: Picking up some effective skill from the online tutorial about the Flash, After Effect and Photoshop.

December 4 – December 15: Finish all the movement in Flash and After Effect.

December 28 – January 4: Combine all the scenes together in premier and writing the 250 words description of the final project.

 References

Beauchamp, R. (2005). Sound design for animators. Oxford: Focal.

Furniss, M. (2007). Art in motion. Eastleigh, UK: John Libbey.

Kirkpatrick, G. and Peaty, K. (2002). Flash cartoon animation. pp. 149. Birmingham: Friends of ED.

Kozma, D. (2010). The Art Of Dimitri Kozma: July 2010. [online] Dimitrikozma.blogspot.co.uk. Available at: http://dimitrikozma.blogspot.co.uk/2010_07_01_archive.html [Accessed 5 Nov. 2014].

Matt, C. (2014). "As Crappy As Possible": The Method Behind the Madness of South Park. [online] Web.archive.org. Available at: http://web.archive.org/web/20090329014416/http://digitalcontentproducer.com/mag/video_crappy_possible_method/ [Accessed 5 Nov. 2014].

Okun, J. and Zwerman, S. (2010). The VES handbook of visual effects. Amsterdam: Focal Press.

Powell, J. and Cook, I. (2007). New perspectives on China and aging. pp.49-50. New York: Nova Science Publishers.

Randy, F. (2002). Television in American Popular Culture. [online] Americanpopularculture.com. Available at: http://www.americanpopularculture.com/archive/tv/theology_southpark.htm [Accessed 5 Nov. 2014].

South park. (2014). [DVD] Comedy Central television network: Trey Parker,Matt Stone.

Wells, P. (2006). The fundamentals of animation. pp.15 Lausanne: AVA.

Zeng, Z. and Xie, Y. (2014). The Effects of Grandparents on Children’s Schooling: Evidence From Rural China. Demography, 51(2), pp.599-617.