Learning Report

Learning Report:

At the beginning of this brief I wanted to focus on the development of my puppets whilst referring to the brief. I also wanted to make sure that that set I built was tidy and clean and worked well with the puppets I created.

In terms of producing the Maquettes and the Puppets, I really enjoyed this process and I felt as though I had most definitely learnt the craft of building a Puppet. I decided half way through the process that I wanted to embark on this brief with a full 3D set and two 3D puppets. This meant I had to organise everything into a week-by-week format and be able to adhere to it to make sure that the production and post production was on time for the hand in for the brief. 

The pre-production for this module was relatively easy, I began researching into Stop Motion Animations and the most notable professors on this subject. I drew a lot of inspiration from King Kong and Wallace and Gromit in terms of my aesthetic design and the movement. This was also the case when I created my two characters, I wanted them to be quite dark and gave note to Tim Burton and his work in 'The Corpse Bride'. I love the aesthetic of my characters, especially the bear as he was constructed using fur and it brought the whole scene together knowing I'd added an aspect of reality to a fractured fairytale. 

The beginning of this module, I felt confident that I would be able to produce and finish my tests for this Animation, especially as the weekly tasks involved observing the movement within Armatures. However, I had encountered problems with DragonFrame during this process especially when it came to the lighting. I did lose my first set of lights which meant I had to start the key framing process again, this was a set back but I did manage to get a similar set of lights during my final tests.  Once I'd overcome that problem I was able to enjoy creating the tests with my puppets and enjoyed watching as the tests came together.

 The post production for this module didn't require much effort, I wanted to keep the tests within their original format and as I'd already explained in the treatment there would be no sound, I didn't want to overcomplicate the process in production by timing it to movement. I didn't feel confident enough with my puppet to produce more than 3 tests of each movement as towards the end of the tests she unfortunately began to fall apart. I did have to slow down some of the movements in Premiere for my tests as they flew too quickly for the naked eye to observe, this was something I should of planned for in pre-production in terms of frame by frame images to create the illusion of movement at the end.

Overall, I am really happy with the outcome of my tests and even more so with the research and design process of my Armatures, Maquettes and Puppets. I feel as though I pushed myself within this module to make sure that I could complete everything I'd set out to at the beginning, in reference to the facial replacements and the building of full 3D puppets. My only regret is that I wasn't able to complete a full production for this film but would definitely like to produce some more puppets that are a little bit more durable to movement and create a piece of work that is seamless and polished in 3D.