Looking at the movement of the cat

As many of the scenes include the cat walking, I researched into how a cat moves. This should add a realistic twist to the animation. I found this video as it is a slowed down video of the cat moving, including text saying in which order the cats legs work. This will come in really useful when drawing out my animation.

Test opening sequence

Before I started drawing and recording for my actual short story, I carried out another test sequence of the opening scene. I think that the animation in general works really well, however the main issue is that the colour is quite faint. To solve this issue, I am going to re-colour the sequence using felt tip pens to hopefully gain a much brighter more noticeable colour. The other main issue of the sequence is the overall movement of the cat. As it is going to be a short story mainly aimed at children the movement needs to be more exaggerated and comical. To achieve this within the sequence I will try and make the cat wake up, and then really stretch out like you see in many cartoons.

Instructions for istopmotion

As at times I will be setting up the equipment etc on my own, I searched the internet for instructions on how to use istopmotion and get the document set up with the correct settings, and link up the camera. This site: Instructions for istopmotion is really useful and takes you through the process step by step including keyboard short cuts etc.

How to Use iStopMotion Animation

 I have not used the program istopmotion before by myself, and for this reason I needed to look into how to upload the images from the camera, and set up the document so that the frames are at the correct speed. Unfortunately I was also unable to get first hand advice which meant that I had to find out how to use the program using the internet. I found that this video was quite useful in showing how a short sequence is recorded.

Animatic- test sequence

Before I start to draw out and scan in my final animation, I had to test out the equipment and carry out some test footage to make sure that it works. I made a very short animatic of the cat character sitting, then standing and walking. This sequence was made using about 30 drawings. Once the images had been uploaded , I exported the file to a quicktime movie and imported it into final cut. Here I cut the animation and looped it so after the cat stands up, it carries on walking for longer. I chose to do this so that I had more to work with, as I am going to add a small soundtrack to it. The drawings in this animation appear to be moving quite slowly, however this is because of the way in which it was shot. It has been shot with    less frames per second than I had wanted which means that it moves slower.  When making my actual film, I will shoot it with more frames per second to get a faster movement.

Frames per second in an animation

For my animated short story, due to a limited amount of time, I will only be able to have around 6-8 frames per second. However for different types of animation there are different amounts of frames. For standard quality TV animation there are 15 frames per second and for high quality TV animation or low quality cinematic animation there are 24 frames per second. High quality cinematic animations include anything from 30 frames per second. The more frames that there are per second, the better the quality of the animation and the smoother the movements. Animations which have a lower frame rate, can jump around a bit more and appear not to be as smooth. An example of this would be the animation Roobarb and Custard which was completed on around 8 frames per second. In contrast to this Walt Disney films can be anything from 30 frames per second.

Case Study- Joanna Quinn

Joanna Quinn, is a professional animator from Birmingham. She has always loved drawing and went on to complete a degree in graphic design which is the course which I am interested in. Through this course she was introduced many animated shorts including commercials for Charmin toilet paper and Whiskas cat food feature her distinctive drawing style of which her drawings are always rendered using pencil or pen. Her work is very stylized which makes it really original. I like the way in which she uses lots of detail in each drawing and even though this is very time consuming, I would like to achieve this in my animation. I also like the way that she uses colour to bring the characters to life. For more information about Joanna you can read her full interview/ case study by clicking the link- Interview.