For our second assignment we were tasked to research into a chosen countries history of animation.

I chose to do British animation in the hopes my group would want to look into Stop motion animation as it is an animation style that I love and have experimented with in the past and unfortunately felt this may be the only time in the course I would get to show my love for it.

Luckily I was put into a group with just two others, Kennie and Max, who both loved the idea of looking into Stop motion.

We decided to create a timeline and look at where stop motion began in the UK and what it has become today. Due to there only being three of us we split this timeline into set timeframes for each of us to look at and research. Kennie wanted to go with 1900s-1950s, I decided to go with 1950s-1990s and Max went with 1990s-Present.

I was glad to get the time period that I did due to 80s and 90s animation being a big part of my childhood, so was excited to start looking into what happened at that time.

My Research:

In class we looked at what influences we had to work with. I used my notepad and jotted down a few rough notes, which I then put into the discord for everyone. We also looked at the first idea for the design and had a rough sketch done.

I looked at a few different timeline poster:

Used a word document to write down notes against each topic:

I prepared a script from my research and timed myself reading it so make sure I was within my time limit. I felt a had a lot of points to cover in the time allowed so tried to get as much historical reference in as I could. I used this script on the day to help prompt me as I suffer badly with my anxiety so I wanted to have a cushion there for support.

 

 

Poster Design:

In class we discussed how we wanted the poster design to look and I looked into poster reference images.

We started to design a mock-up to see how it would look:

 

For our poster design we were really limited with our resources we had at home to create an A2 poster. When we were in class we all sat together and tried to come up with a rough idea of how we wanted the poster layout to look. Kennie said he would go into campus and create the poster based off our chosen design, and Max and myself tasked ourselves with doing artwork to put onto the poster. Max designed the custom pics of us that we used against our chosen section and I drew famous stop motion characters to use.

While Kennie was in campus, a second year looked at our initial mock up design and didn’t like it so we started to look at other alternatives. I had a Disney reference image that was diagonally split that I wanted to try so Kennie started to test out the layout of that.

 

We found the new layout worked well and we liked the presentation of it so started to fill it with images and the information needed.

We all spoke in our discord group and submitted what we wanted text wise to be added to our section and Kennie added it in for us.

I went into campus early on the day of the presentation and neatened up any text and the presentation layout of my section until I was happy with it.

These are the characters I drew out below:

 

These our the personal portrait drawings Max did for us (he later changed his initial design of his own to match the style of Kennie and myself)

   

 

Poster Final Design:

 

Reflection:

I really enjoyed looking at the history of British Stop Motion Animation, however did feel a little lost at times about what I should be researching into. I think looking back we probably should have looked into a studio development i.e. Aardman, and how they changed and adapted their animation through the years. I just felt we left ourselves very wide open without a more refined topic to research into.  For what we produced though I am happy with it, I feel like we looked at how British stop motion went from being influenced by the war and was more rigid puppetry style, adapting into clay animation and then into the use of stop motion stylised CGI (Flushed Away). As a group we worked well together and supported each other through our Discord. I feel like the limitations of software to design the poster let us down slightly and I feel like we could have definitely developed this a bit more and made it more inviting. I liked having our own artwork as a personal touch and I definitely think it added to the presentation instead of just using source images from the internet. I found out a lot of information when looking at my selected topics, but knowing the time limit in the presentation I felt that a lot of that information was lost due to knowing I wouldn’t have the time to delve into it further.

 

 

References:

 

Antoons (2022). The History of British Animation. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC3zBHGx8Nc&t=1362s

A+C (2007). The History of British Animation. [Online] Available at: https://aplusc.tv/the-history-of-british-animation/#:~:text=The%20first%20British%20stop%2Dmotion,and%20perform%20a%20dance%20routine

Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Clangers. [Online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clangers

aardman.com. (n.d.). About Aardman. [Online] Available at: https://www.aardman.com/about/

Aardman Animations (2022). A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman Documentary. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcMexOinKhQ.

 

The Boy & The Robin (Dir. Hannah O’Brien and Tamika Bramwell)

Released August 15, 2020.

 

For this class we were split into groups and asked to analyse an assigned short animated film. My group consisted of John, Rebecca, Ciaran, Dylan and myself. At the beginning we hadn’t planned much into how we would analyse the presentation. I initially had started to look into the lighting used, then later in discord we decided to split the presentation down and assign a topic to each individual. I chose lighting as I had already started to research into this.

Our group was given the animated short of “The Boy & The Robin”. It follows the protagonist, a young boy, and how he idolises a character from a western cartoon we see him watching in the opening scenes of the short. It constantly transitions between the real world and his imagination, and after finding a real gun that replaces that of his toy gun he initially uses, he fires it and takes the life of a little bird.

 

Research and Initial Analysis:

 

When I began analysing the animated short I watched it quite a few times and then began screenshotting each scene change and looking at how the lighting changes in each shot. This was only a quick analysis of immediate lighting changes and how it made me feel in each scene, I then used this as a reference when working on my presentation pitch to pick the key changes with the most impact.

   

I then began looking at more in-depth analysis and wording. I read a few articles on websites, watched a couple of YouTube videos about film analysis and read both Lighting for Animation: The art of visual storytelling and Aesthetic 3d Lighting which I found extremely helpful in my analysis and also gave me the knowledge to apply to future animations I will be creating.

 

My Lighting Analysis for “The Boy & The Robin”

The start of the animation starts with natural lighting with our light source coming from the sun outside and creating that slightly dim interior lighting, this creates a sense of realism and sets us into the world. When we get transitioned into the boy’s imagination, there is symbolic lighting used which is a very bright unnatural light that shifts us into a different world. In the imaginary world the lighting tone shifts from that soft natural lighting of the real world to a sepia tone which is traditionally used in western style films. This would not be a tone of lighting typically associated with the real world, and therefore when used, it gives the viewer a clear indication of the transition between worlds. We continue to see the transition of the soft natural lighting and the sepia tone lighting right until the point in which the young boy retrieves the real gun, then we are fully immersed into the sepia tone western world using the bright symbolic lighting once again.  

There is a match cut scene when the gun is fired, and this also shifts the lighting suddenly from a sepia tone to a very dark contrasted scene. Scenes lit with dark shadows rarely appear happy [Landau 2014]. This sharp scene change has a massive impact on the viewer and consumes us into the reality of what has just happened. Artists and cinematographers use high-key lighting (with light shadows) to create a hopeful mood or low-key lighting (with dark shadows) to add a sense of gloom [Pramaggiore and Wallis 2005]. The contrast and shadows used in these scenes show that the protagonist’s innocence is gone, and the scene is now filled with a very cold and empty feeling which impacts the mood onto the viewer – the young boy has just taken a life. 

We get a sudden transition back from this dark contrast scene to a very softly lit grave, this creates a sense of sorrow. 

When the boy finds the chick in the nest and holds it in his hands, the lighting warms in saturation. We see this scene as a mixture of a soft haze natural light and a red hue, like the western scenes in the imagination. This shows a mixture between worlds, the boy no longer fantasising a western world but now consumed into a world of love and responsibility for this chick that is left hopeless due to his actions killing its mother.  

 

Conclusion:

I love lighting and its impact on animation and film. However, I found it quite hard analysing this animated short. It has three major lighting shifts between the imaginary world – the sorrowful death – the hopeful future, but bar that I struggled to find impactful changes.

I enjoyed researching into different articles and reading a few new books!  Rebecca in my group helped me source PDF files of two books which I have gained so much knowledge from.

I feel like our presentation went really well, we focused on not adding too much text to our slides and verbally scripted ourselves with the information. I do feel like I let my group down slightly as I suffer with social anxiety and on the day the nerves got the better of me and I didn’t get to say everything I wanted to. I’m very glad I got put into the group I did, they were very supportive and helpful with everything and we spent a few nights prior to the presentation on discord calls working out our pitches, which was super helpful, and we timed them so that we were not rambling and everyone got enough time to say what they needed to within the 10 minute cap!

 

References:

 

Lanier, L. (2018) Aesthetic 3d Lighting. England: Routledge.

Tanzillo, M. (2016) Lighting for Animation: The Art of Visual Storytelling. England: Routledge.

Ultimate Guide to Cinematic Lighting – Types of Lighting & Gear Explained [Shot List Ep. 12]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2nD_knsNrc&t=194s