Eszter Magyar 9B Design Context

A. Investigate: Our clay motion project focuses on working with stop motion technology. The goal is to create a short video suitable for EC children. We have to work with a camera to create our project. To make the project more interesting for our audience its a good idea to add colourful backgrounds, interesting materials which could create a nice texture in the video. A way to grab our audiences attention is to use different techniques with the camera. Ways to improve you project could include: Zooming in with the camera is a very creative and simple way to attract attention to our stop motion animation. Try to make the concept of the video as simple as possible, this way you can focus more on improving the quality of the photos By creating a colourful background and different textures your video will instantly seem better. Making letters disappear is also a good method for clay motion videos.

In this project we will have to choose a letter we would like to transform into an object. I think a good idea would be to slowly twist the letters in an unexpected form could really jazz up the whole video. B. Research: These are some stop motion characters used in movies. I really like the way both characters are out of proportion it gives an interesting look for the video. These characters are a good inspiration for the video that I will create. I think it might be too difficult to build such a complex character but I will use elements from these characters. I really like how the animators chose the backgrounds.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJk7eVrg_QY

Summary: This video is about a mouse who nibbles at a piece of cheese until the piece of cheese turns into a letter C. Pros: It was a creative idea to turn a piece of cheese into the letter cheese. This video gave me the idea to use a moon and an owl in my video. The round cheese gave me the idea of a round moon. I could either do M is for Moon or something like O is for Owl and then the owl could fly up to the moon. Also liked how an object disappeared in the video and became into something else Cons: The videos background was too plain. By improving the background the video could intantly become better. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFiH412B1_Y

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Summary: This video was about a little character have a bad day. He kept tripping over various objects in the room and at the end of his journey he fell of his desk and died Pros: The main reason I enjoyed watching this video was because of its simplicity. The plot wasnt complicated and there werent too many distractions from the character. I thought the video was overall very down to the point. Cons: There was no music to go along with this video. Music can really help make a claymation video have more emotion displayed in it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EStMrF3gzDA

Summary: This video is very difficult to describe. The creator rather experimented than coming up with a specific story line. Pros: I really liked the techniques used in this video. The visual part of this video was great. There were many creative camera techniques. I will probably use some of them in my video. One example is to make a new object grow out of the previous one. Cons: There was no story of this claymation. Everything was happening so quickly it was close to impossible to follow what was happening

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSdDElVMlpU

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Summary: Miffie and friends is a poluar American T.V. show for younger children. It is about little clay animals going on small adventures Pros: The show is very simple, but the characters and background are very well done. The music is also very nicely included within the video. Cons: It lacks creativity in my opinion.

C. Planning Characters: -Mr. Owl -Mrs. Moon Background ideas: -Tree -Night sky -Big moon and stars Materials needed: -Navy blue paper (maybe textured) -Stars (white yarn) -Moon when thin is clay material

Eszter Magyar 9B -Moon when thick made of a white balloon -Tree: maybe real bark or just drawn but leaves are made of clay -Owl is simply clay Song Ideas: -Coraline: Exploration for the beginning Story Line: 1. Mr. Owl is resting peacefully upon his tree 2. He looks up at the sky and sees the night sky with stars 3. He suddenly notices the moon and begins to hoot (he especially pronounces the O) 4. The moon is very thin and you can hardly see it 5. He gets the idea to blow up the moon this is shown by him getting a thought bubble 6. He flies up to the moon 7. Mr. takes the moon in his hands and starts blowing it up like a balloon 8. The moon becomes bigger and bigger 9. The moon becomes so big it pops (show popping with clay) or maybe the owl pops the moon with his beak

D. Design Specifications

My video needs to be educational towards EC 5 students It cant be too complicated, five year olds need to understand it It needs to be very colorful and full of textures The video should quickly paced The claymation should be entertaining

E. Reflection Reflecting on others work:

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Evaluation
Link to animations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGYZTcEC0HA&list=PLoUdvStTzrX8i2aK3McJ3_son4eZbMqoF

What is the educational message? Daryas Claymation movie: This short animated film is trying to teach young viewers that D is for Dolphin Ritas Claymation movie: Ritas short animation was very educational. It taught children how a butterfly is born along with some spelling. Is its message/story clear? Do you understand it? Daryas Claymation Movie: The video clearly expresses that the message is to always help a friend in need. Ritas Claymation Movie: The video was very clear. The message was to keep following your dreams. What are the animation techniques like? How could they be improved? Daryas Claymation Movie: I really liked the way Darya zoomed up to her characters face to show emotion. Ritas Claymation Movie: The animation techniques were a little bit dull. Maybe a little more zooming up or something like that could have improved the video. What are they editing techniques like? How could they be improved? Daryas Claymation Movie: Darya could add a few effects to improve the quality of her video. Also she could crop out some unnecessary parts of the frame so it becomes easier for the viewer to focus onan important part of the video. Ritas Claymation Movie: The editing techniques were very well done. The music fit very well with the video and made it very exciting for the viewer.

What are the titles, text and credits like?

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Daryas Claymation Movie: They were funny and the background colored matched well with the background of the video. Ritas Claymation Movie: I really enjoyed how Rita put text on her video. It gave her video a unique touch. Is it educational? Daryas Claymation Movie: Yes the movie was educational. Ritas Claymation Movie: It was very educational.

Is it fun?, Colourful? Would EC students like it? Daryas Claymation Movie: The video included many colors which would lead to EC students liking the video. Ritas Claymation Movie: Ritas short video included many colors and a cool background. Her character the caterpillar was very creative and fun looking for a small child. Can it be improved? Daryas Claymation: Maybe if Darya would spend more time on editing her video could be improved. Ritas Claymation: She could improve and make her video longer by making more events occur in her story.

Reflection on my own Animation The message of my claymation video was to go for your goals and be creative. I think the message was quite clear though I could have improved on it. Some parts of my animation technique were interesting and entertaining; for example, when the owl thinks of blowing up the moon. I expressed this idea by using speech bubbles. The pictures I took could be majorly improved. I should have stuck the background on the table with tape so it doesnt move. Also sometimes the flash went on

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the camera and some pictures are lighter than the others. Improving all of the above would make my video much better. I really like the font and background of my video. I think it looks great and childish which is the mood I was trying to set for my short film. The video teaches young children spelling. The video could have been more educational though. I tried adding many textures and colors into my video to make it more entertaining for a small child. I think I managed to add a fair amount of colors and textures which made my video unique. By cropping out the extra parts of my pictures I could improve my video by a lot. To make my video longer I could have added a few extra scenes. Maybe a little more detail to the part where the owl is trying to think of plan would make the video longer and better. I met most of my design specifications. I made an educational video for EC students. My video wasnt too complex so young children can understand it. There were a lot of textures included in my video. My video was quickly paced but that isnt necessarily good because the video went by too quickly. And, hopefully my video was entertaining. A good animation in my opinion should include a creative looking character, good music that fits with the video, many textures to make the video more original and a fun storyline. I enjoyed having so much freedom in this project. We got to choose which characters, story, music, backgrounds we would like to put into our claymation videos. A way to improve the project would be by giving more time to create pictures or maybe using better cameras. Other than that the project was a lot of fun and it definitely expanded my creativity!

Review on different classes work

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Hannahs video is definitely one of my favourites. She used a childish background whch really made her video unique. She used some very eclectic animation techniques in her short claymation video. I liked how she used real objects (such as her hand) with fake objects. This created a very interesting effect and the whole time I wanted to keep watching her video.

Moritzs video had a very educational message. Which was: friendship is key. I think Moritz could have worked on his characters more to make them look better. At the moment his characters are a bit dull, which ruins the quality of his video.