My First Animation

As part of the project brief I was required to produce an animation as well as a 3-D model, so I naturally put two and two together and came up with, well this. This project has been a lot of hard work, with the production of the Golem and the filming itself, because of this certain things had to be put on hold. I had initially underestimated the time needed to produce a wooden figure capable of stop-motion filming, and so rather than produce a set for filming I settled for filming on a green screen. 

The project on a whole, as I had planned it has had a rather steep learning curve, I have had to solve many problems to get the animation to work, many of which required knowledge that I simply did not have when I started the project. It is through experimentation and lateral thinking that I have completed what is merely a Prototype for future animations.

I have over the last six weeks, because of the difficulties in getting this all to work, developed the skills necessary to build a much more extravagant world to film in the future. This project has always been for me a way to build a foundation for later projects. I was worried maybe the time spent on building the Golem was unrealistic or unnecessary however looking at it now I see that those four weeks of work has produced a model that with a little touching up could be filmed countless times in future, four weeks for a lifetime, not bad eh.

This has been very enjoyable for me to do, and i am glad that I have produced so much and learned so much. I am disappointed that the bestiary, could not be filled to the amount that I had wanted, however over the year, separate to my other work I will add more entries to the bestiary as I hope to have it completed by the end of this year.

The music is from the soundtrack of Dark Souls I just thought it was quite ambient, I find peaceful and that was the feel i wanted for this animation.

Animating and such

Once I got in to college to film I was incredibly excited to start filming, it was just how things like the set came together. Seeing the figure all set up ready to film, I was just ecstatic. 
Until of course I had to start filming and that was a slog and a half, the model kept falling over when trying to animate him standing up, and then someone suggested rigging up a line to hold the weight of the model and manoeuvre him whilst he semi hangs, which I must say sped things up alot, I will have the animation done and uploaded tommorrow and then a proper evaluation can be written.

Set Pieces

This is a photo of the smaller bits of set, the second model is in the background. The second model is based off my work on the carbuncle, it is made up of a wire armature with fur sewn around to give it shape, it's a little disproportioned however it does look almost red panda-y and I like Red Pandas.

Golem

The Figure is based off of a Golem, the Golem originated within old jewish folktales about beings created from inanimate matter. However since then the Golem has found it's place within almost every fantasy game that I have played, all of which uses the similar definition of an inanimate humanoid object that has been animated via magical means.
Apparently in modern hebrew Golem means 'dumb' or 'helpless', which ties in nicely as my golem will not speak, he is going to function sort of like a conduit for the viewer, like a guide so to speak. A guide through a world of wonder and magic.

Stick Figures

This is the completed figure, that I will film in stop-motion it took me more than a month to complete however much of that time was spent learning and experimenting as the process did have quite a steep learning curve however if I was asked to make another model I would probably have it built much much quicker as I have a better understanding of how the joints work. In retrospect Spiderman's knees were a bit of a mistake as they lock in place and make it difficult to bend at the knee however I do not have the time currently to rectify this mistake.
I did feel a bit like Sid when cutting up Spiderman so maybe, Karma?