Week 1

The first task for this week was meeting with Mike to discuss the brief, our idea, aim and objectives for this project and divide job roles evenly according to our strengths and abilities.

Idea

Based on a children's story written by Mike and I, we plan to produce a Stop Motion Animation, that is both educational and entertaining. The story is entitled 'The Lonely Ant' and tells the story of an Ant that doesn't belong in the colony that is lives with and is 'different' and excluded. Eventually the Ant finds its place and is happy. This story will hopefully teach children that everyone belongs somewhere and that no one should be excluded for being 'different'. Research into the target audience shows that one of the main issues running through schools today that needs tackling is bullying. So this is the issue we will be attempting to show in this animation. 

We chose Stop Motion because it is not only our favourite form of animation but we both have a lot of previous experience with it. The inspiration for the style of our idea came from the John Lewis Christmas Advert. The advert used Hand drawn 2D images on a 3D set to create an interesting style of Stop Motion, we wish to produce a product in a similar style. The advert and the making of are shown below.

Job Rolls

Here is a list of job rolls assigned to myself and a little bit of information saying what they will entail.

Script research and writing - This will involve researching; creating and developing ideas, dialogue and story lines. Based on this research, Mike and I will produce a script that the product will follow. 

Character research and concepts - For this I will research into different species of ant and how they behave and I will try to incorporate this into the designs of my characters.  

Stop motion animator - For this I will be working closely with Mike to create dope sheets from the scripts written to maximize efficiency when it comes to filming the piece.

Footage editor - For this I will be taking the raw footage and fixing any problems with it getting it ready for Mike to composite together. 

Week 2

Storyboards:

Research Images - 

Concepts:

Week 3

All the different heads for Aaron's speech

A test of the ant running (for the scene where he is chased by the bird) on 2's

And on 1's

                                          

Week 4

This week I will mainly be focusing on the designs of  the bully ant. I will also be contacting several schools to get some feedback and input from the target audience and change the designs accordingly. 

The bully ant was fat in my minds eye but almost 100% of the feedback gathered suggested that the bully should be big and buff instead. 

Different heads for the bully's speech. 

Week 5

This week I started working on more of the animations as well as designing the last few characters.

                                         

                                          

Queen ant:

Week 6

Delivery ant final design:

Facial expressions for Aaron with tests in after effects:

                                            

                                                

                                               

                                           

The dopesheeting for Aaron and the bully have also been produced this week.

Week 7

After gathering more feedback from peers and professionals Mike and I have decided to stop animating in 2d stop motion cut out and start animating digitally instead. Partly because most of the feedback says that the animation is too rigid and a little boring but also because we are falling behind with the work and hopefully digital animation will allow us to create better work at a faster pace. 

                                                               

Most of this week has been spent preparing for next weeks presentation. Although all of the elements Mike and I have gathered have been compiled: 

                                              

I then started to redo the scenes already done in stop motion style digitally animated so the style would be the same the whole way through. To do the speech I had all the mouths set up on the left and all of the eyes on the right i then drag them in frame by frame accordingly. 
                                           
                                               

Week 8:

                                                                                

Animating on the computer has allowed me to animate the characters in After Effects they had to be separated up into layers in Photoshop so each layer could be animated separately.

Week 9

This week I have started on the walk forward from Aaron when he is depressed and 'running away'

                                           

Also dopesheeting and animating the delivery ant 'Old Ben'. I used a different technique to create the speech, the mouths were pre-composed and the opacity of each mouth just changed accordingly. the the 'mouth' composition was placed on the characters head. This saved a lot of time and stopped the mouths moving around as much. 

                                         

                                         

Week 10

This week I have been continuing with the animations of Old Ben. 

                                          

Week 11

Dopesheeting and animating the queen and the worker ant:

                                      

                                         

                                 

Week 12

This week I've spent finishing the animations and dope sheets for Aaron:

                                           

                                           

Week 13

This week, the feedback gathered from professionals and peers suggested that I go back and update a few of the animations. Mainly the ones I created with stop motion animation in mind.

I also made an intro using bright contrasting colours, I took my inspiration for this from existing popular children's cartoons: