After Effects Animation:

After attempting to create fire with stop motion, I had a go at creating fire using After Effects...

I followed various tutorials on youtube to help me...

I think this fire looks allot more convincing than my stop motion attempt therefore I've decided I will be doing the majority of my animation using after effects... 

After Effects Workshop's:

character manipulation workshop:

Batman Workshop:

Spiderman workshop's:

Green screen workshop:

Fire animation using After effects:

(youtube tutorials)

Real Fire Research:

here are 2 videos looking at a Lighter & BBQ flames to study the fire and record it's movement, range of colours and it's general characteristics... Hopefully this will help to inspire me to create more realistic fire for my animation...

Stop motion fire development:

using a simple stop motion app on my phone, I attempted to animate fire using cut out pieces of paper... The concept is there however it looks very jumpy, and would need to be allot more fluid to look realistic... i'll try again using the stop motion equipment available at the university: hopefully this will result in a better outcome...

Next I moved into the studio to attempt stop motion at a higher quality using coloured card to create a short stop motion clip of a fire starting...

I took some pictures of the process:

 

This short 5 second clip took me about 2/3 hours to make... I found the process very slow and quite frustrating.
I can see this technique working well for other animations however fire needs to look fluid and smooth which this does not... I'm happy I attempted it however this development has almost certified my decision to use after effects for my animation... 

Second attempt at stop motion using Lego (snake)

First attempt at stop motion using Lego:

Stop motion Paper animations:

(research)

Storyboards:

I started to draw abstract shapes/patterns whilst listening to the music, this helped me to visualise the shapes & movements of the sound...

The music starts quite, and gradually builds towards the deep tribal voices... I had the idea to animate fire because:

Similar to the music a fire could start out small and build into something bigger, gradually developing...

I then started to think how I could introduce the tribal voices into the animation which gave me the idea of animating tribal masks forming out of the smoke produced from the fire...

first attempt at drawing a simple storyboard:

After coming up with a simple concept for my animation I drew up a first draft for the storyboard... 

Now I have an idea of the structure for the animation I can start to develop my ideas in more detail to produce a better final outcome...

Development:

Finished Storyboard:

Stroyboards: 

I found several examples of storyboards so that I could look for inspiration for my own storyboard designs. I found various different styles, some look messy and rushed however still show the purpose of the cartoon where as others are more detailed showing the animation in more detail... 

Tribal Masks:

(inspiration) 

Basic 3D Animation:

Cel Animation:

"Traditional animation, (or classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation) is an animation technique where each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation in cinema until the advent of computer animation."

"Generally, the characters are drawn on cels and laid over a static background drawing. This reduces the number of times an image has to be redrawn and enables studios to split up the production process to different specialised teams. Using this assembly line way to animate has made it possible to producefilms much more cost-effectively."

I like the idea of hand drawn cel animation, however after attempting it myself in the workshop before easter I soon realised how difficult & time consuming it would actually be...

This video explains how cel animation was made before the use of computers... 

Claymaytions:

"Clay animation or claymation is one of many forms of stop motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually Plasticine clay.

All traditional animation is produced in a similar fashion, whether done through cel animation or stop motion. Each frame, or still picture, is recorded on film or digital media and then played back in rapid succession. When played back at a frame rate greater than 10–12 frames per second, a fairly convincing illusion of continuous motion is achieved."

Stop motion animation:

here is a good example of stop motion animation... I really like the concept of this, and how simple yet effective it is...

This video shows various different ways in which stop motion animation can be used...

Organic:

I will need to cut this piece of music down from 7:46 to about 20-30 seconds... 
Then I can start to think about my animation as well as starting the story boards...