Tim Burton is one of the many people who's animation has shaped the very aspect of motion design. His stop motion puppeteering produced some beautiful and quite dark movements, and how it's made videos like this show the intricate details that are considerate for the production overall. It's interesting when you look into Burton's original drawings and sketches and see how ideas are catalogued and changed from the original ideas to conceptual animations. Looking back at some of his storyboards also develops the fact that Burton starts with a simple idea and further adapts these drawings into new storyboards. From this sort of research I've decided to begin my own sketchbook involving sketches and drawings separate to my other sketchbook, as this sketchbook will hopefully help to develop inspiration and ideas that could lead to storyboards and future animations.
Even some of the pencil sketches here are beautifully placed together to show his original idea development, starting with sketches and building up to more intricate plans. For each of his beautiful stop motion feature films there are many sketches and drawings leading up to it first. Such films as his recent film 'Frankenweenie' has the sketches that were originally constructed 20 years before the film was produced. It goes to show that simply sketching characters and drawings could develop into future work, even if it is many years afterwards Tim Burton catalogues and collects his drawings together. To ensure that the whole team of animators knows what the story entails and the overall aspects of the characters themselves, it's clear that Tim Burton would have to first off ensure that they knew what was involved via diagrams and storyboards, probably presented to the team individually dependant on their roles in the production. The quite sinister qualities of his illustrations can be captured in stop motion animation in a way that couldn't be captured in a live shot ideally with the allowance of being viewed by young audiences due to the dark nature that most of his animations include. (Such as Frankenweenie, Corpse Bride etc.) Development of the ideas could range in media that then produces prototypes for the animation, with sculptured models etc.
Pencil sketches to start with are a primary element to include and then they'll be beautifully developed into more elaborate animations. Burton was recently asked to produce a short trailer to advertise the MoMa exhibition. So here's a look into the making of the trailer, he brought in his co-workers from the 2005 film 'Corpse Bride' to help out. The storyboard and overall sketches included on the site are also rather amazing to see the development that actually took place.
Reading through the article on the 'How it's Made' section of Tim Burton's MoMa trailer, I found it interesting of how certain points were explored and why and how. (Information found on http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2009/11/13/the-making-of-tim-burton-s-moma-animation/)
“Typically a puppet character can take anywhere between twelve to eighteen weeks to produce,” says Pickersgill, “But Tim’s design lent itself to a very economical build and we put the puppet together in just ten days, probably something of a record!”
The sketches alike to those of 'Corpse Bride' etc. were extremely helpful to Burton and his team for a visual understanding of what needs to be produced and how. Sculptors needed to know how to produce the puppet and what it needed to involve etc. For example, you can see in the photographs included that the sculptors based their designs on Burton's sketches, showing that visually they relied on the sketches to give them the information and data that they needed to produce the correct idea and bring the inspiration of the idea to life.
The detail of the character and what it involved would have to be carefully considered to ensure that they had the right time and budget to produce the short stop motion animation. The overall trailer took a total of 3 days, but with a simple background setting didn't require the production of intricate sets etc.
"Tim wanted the robot and the balloon against a flat grey background. It was great because it further emulated the look of his original pen-and-ink drawings on a plain sheet of paper. We had three days to shoot the whole piece and my first take had to be right. I’d spent a day the previous week videoing myself performing the robot part. You feel a bit silly but Neil Sutcliffe, who edited the footage into his animatic, was very kind. He didn’t laugh too much!”" - Martin Kelly: Animator.
Within the research produced, I had a further understanding of the behaviour and physics of the word 'Spring', it was easier to plan out how the kinetic verb would react to such behaviours. However, during the production of such a word in After Effects, it had become clear that it was a complex procedure to ensure that the word mimicked the realistic aspects of behaviour that I wanted to achieve. It was decided that although this word had been quite effective in theory, it was extremely difficult to be captured by me as I have only just been introduced to the software and the controls.
The overall animation looks alright, with adaptive uses of consideration of 'Squash & Stretch', 'Slow In Slow Out' (Easy Ease) and a massive amount of 'Anticipation' used for the build up of the spring. However, I found myself needing a lot of assistance for the complexities of the physics behind the spring and began to feel demoralised and frustrated by the task.
Therefore I have decided to use this as a learning point and move onto a more tactile word to explore further.
After having explored 'Spring' I ventured into the production of the alternate word 'Jump' a word that I found would be a simpler and more playful word to use in the introduction to After Effects.
Recently I watched a film called 'Coraline' a feature length stop motion film produced with handmade puppets and painted sets. I knew after watching this a few times previously that their was the basic idea that I was aware of it being the puppets, but I've always wanted to research into it further, such research is on 'how it's made' videos, accessed on the DVD itself or on streaming sites such as Youtube.
Extraordinarily there were in fact 6, 300 replacement face pieces with over 207, 000 possible facial reactions. A catastrophic amount of attention to detail and expense went into the making of the puppets who made up each scene. Each animator completed 2 to 7 seconds of animation a week with over 70 cast members working on wig design, puppeteering etc for the 24fps film to take place.
With production of ideas, Coraline's characters had to be perfect. It can be seen in the videos that the character development was key to the research of Coraline with the overall sketches and drawings to start off the ideas. Coraline herself had to be carefully considered, how conceptual can the plans be? Such characteristics as her blue hair were later added to the production plans to produce a more vibrant idea.
I came across this stop motion animation and found it inspiring that not only had the animator (an engineer by trade named Chris Herridge) used the animation to entertain, but also to demonstrate the technical practices of the engine being dissected and reassembled. That when paired up with the dramatic music track produces an aspect of tension and action within such a simple sequence as taking an engine apart. An extremely time consuming task but clearly very worthwhile, it's almost as if the whole thing is a form of choreographed dance.
I recently in my own time watched a documentary (sourced on film streaming site Netflix) on Pixar's journey through evolving animation from the popular two dimensional characters (Most popularly Disney creations) into more contemporary three dimensional films we know today.
I found the documentary pretty inspiring with alternate viewpoints from John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Steve Jobs and Tom Hanks. The handwork of the animators into particular successes such as their first three dimensional success of 'Toy Story' evolved into eight more hits, it also narrated that whilst the three dimensional developments were a success, there was a gradual decline of two dimensional animations such as the workings of Disney, causing a suggestion of teamwork of Pixar and Disney together as a whole, all funded to begin with by Steve Jobs.
Pictures sourced from http://www.magicofdisneyart.co.uk
It showed the development of initial drawings and storyboards of alternate animated short films that then developed into the long films we watch today. Such beautiful animations developed such as:
Upon our visit to Man Met Library facilities, I came across a series of books in the animation section of the library. My favourite of these books were 'Mickey Mouse- by Pierre Lambert (Foreword by Roy E. Disney)' and 'Disney Animation - The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas & Ollie Johnston' I found these books particularly interesting as they included original copies of Disney's storyboards, which inspired me into my own storyboards and currently producing in the planning for the Animation Principles Kinetic Verb brief.
It was apparent that with Disney, animation wasn't something that had been really gone into much detail before, so making their own rules and regulations into the Principles of Animation I found really interesting.
"When we consider a new project, we really study it... not just the surface idea, but everything about it." - Walt Disney
I found the original principles and the overall detail of this book rather inspiring and it has made me want to research further into Disney's original ideas and set ups of his animation. The copies of his original storyboards were magical, you could clearly see his thoughts and ideas and the production of better thoughts being evolved within the drawings and sketches produced.
The book 'Disney Animation- The Illusion of Life' was particularly inspiring with the detailed application of physics into the animation, with considerations of what movements apply to alternate animations.
Such principles that we'd been introduced to were highlighted such as the jargon that Disney produced. The usual animation principles that we'd been introduced to were named in the book as just original ideas that soon developed into rules of the trade, unbeknown to the people that originally made them.
With the amount of dark and dingy looking photographs and fragments taken previously at the Courtyard a couple of weeks ago, Kris mentioned the Oscar Award Winning Animator Mikey Please, who's work also resembles a dark side to animation. The short films I found particularly inspiring with the stop motion foam material used, and the intricacy that has gone into the animation is beautiful. You really get a sense of an alternate reality in his pieces, a different world accumulated by such detailed and beautiful sources of techniques.
Looking back at some of his storyboards also develops the fact that Burton starts with a simple idea and further adapts these drawings into new storyboards. From this sort of research I've decided to begin my own sketchbook involving sketches and drawings separate to my other sketchbook, as this sketchbook will hopefully help to develop inspiration and ideas that could lead to storyboards and future animations.
Even some of the pencil sketches here are beautifully placed together to show his original idea development, starting with sketches and building up to more intricate plans. For each of his beautiful stop motion feature films there are many sketches and drawings leading up to it first. Such films as his recent film 'Frankenweenie' has the sketches that were originally constructed 20 years before the film was produced. It goes to show that simply sketching characters and drawings could develop into future work, even if it is many years afterwards Tim Burton catalogues and collects his drawings together.
To ensure that the whole team of animators knows what the story entails and the overall aspects of the characters themselves, it's clear that Tim Burton would have to first off ensure that they knew what was involved via diagrams and storyboards, probably presented to the team individually dependant on their roles in the production. The quite sinister qualities of his illustrations can be captured in stop motion animation in a way that couldn't be captured in a live shot ideally with the allowance of being viewed by young audiences due to the dark nature that most of his animations include. (Such as Frankenweenie, Corpse Bride etc.) Development of the ideas could range in media that then produces prototypes for the animation, with sculptured models etc.
Burton was recently asked to produce a short trailer to advertise the MoMa exhibition. So here's a look into the making of the trailer, he brought in his co-workers from the 2005 film 'Corpse Bride' to help out. The storyboard and overall sketches included on the site are also rather amazing to see the development that actually took place.
“Typically a puppet character can take anywhere between twelve to eighteen weeks to produce,” says Pickersgill, “But Tim’s design lent itself to a very economical build and we put the puppet together in just ten days, probably something of a record!”
The sketches alike to those of 'Corpse Bride' etc. were extremely helpful to Burton and his team for a visual understanding of what needs to be produced and how. Sculptors needed to know how to produce the puppet and what it needed to involve etc. For example, you can see in the photographs included that the sculptors based their designs on Burton's sketches, showing that visually they relied on the sketches to give them the information and data that they needed to produce the correct idea and bring the inspiration of the idea to life.
The detail of the character and what it involved would have to be carefully considered to ensure that they had the right time and budget to produce the short stop motion animation. The overall trailer took a total of 3 days, but with a simple background setting didn't require the production of intricate sets etc. 
