Sketches and Storyboards

In my animation I want it to go from day to night so this is an idea of the colour tones. Starting with the yellow tones and ending with the blue.

Here are some ideas of the balloon shape and texture. I was experimenting with textures in fabrics as can be seen in my previos post with the photographs of fabrics.

Above are some sketches and ideas for trees, these are inspired by Little Big Planet. There is image of a Little Big Planet Tree on a previous post.

These are a few different story boards and ideas. This top storyboard is a more final version, the ones below are rough and developmental work.

 

Here are a few domino designs. In the end as a group we decided to have a classic simlpe donimo design. another important thing we discussed in our group was if the domino should be black with white dots or the other way round.

Timing/ Beats per minute 

I used a programme to work out the beats per minute. We calculated  how many beats per frame were needed. As this had to be rounded, adjustments needed to be made at every 100 frames. The calculations suggested that an extra 7 frames were needed every 100.

To get a feel of the rhythm of the music I also created a square that changed size to the beat.

One Man Band, Pixar Short

I am having a look at one of Pixar's short films and looking at the animation in relation to the sound. I have chosen this piece because it is all about the music and I am interested to see how the music drives the piece.

In this piece there are two one man bands they are defined by different kinds of instruments and the sounds that they make. There is no dialogue in this piece all the story is told through the music and characterization.  As the two men try to get the attention of the little girl the tempo of the music changes. There are background sounds and the use of silence near the end of the short is very effective after the momentum created by the music.

The music was made as the animation was storyboarded so that the composers had a much greater input into the animation and characterisation.

History of Sound & Animation

Sound was not introduced into films until 1923.

The Fleischers started the Song Car-Tune in 1924 where a ball bounced along the words to be sung. This really was more like today's karaoke.

 'My Old Kentucky Home' released in 1926 was the first short animation to attempt at animated dialogue as a dog mouths some words.

Steamboat Willie (1928) by Disney was the first successful  synchronized sound and music cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse.

 In Disney's  first sound synchronised animation the scenes were timed to a tempo, animated and filmed. The sound was recorded after and then matched with the film. ( From Animation Art Editor Jerry Beek'.

In 1929 The Skeleton Dance was produced using a different technique. The sound was produced before the animation. In the Silly Symphonies the  classical music rhythms  were very  important in determining the movement of the characters and were more important than the story line.

By the early 1930's the Fleisher  Brothers introduced the character Betty Boop in animations that used  both music and dialogue.

In 1940 Disney produced Fantasia. This was a bold and very different type of sound with animation. There are brief live-action interludes, but the majority of the film is animated segments. These animations are unusual; as they have no sound effects or dialogue but are based entirely on animation to the classical music pieces.