Experimental Project....?

Over the Last few weeks, ive been working in tandem with the 11 second club on another project titled the 'Experimental Project'. Its aims where to create an animation to a piece of music and respond to it using methods one is not used to (leaving ones comfort zone). For instance one works on Maya Animations rigs for most of the time, this project makes that person try out cut out animation using a rostrum camera or vice-versa. For me I chose to take on a cel/stop motion animation, because I haven't done alot of that and it still seems alien to me.
Anyways here's the Animation:





And if your interested here is My Production Report of how I went about creating it

Simon Acty, Digital Animation
Production Report

note: this is a report based on my notes over the last couple of weeks and will be a referral of those notes

Week 1: I started out sketching out ideas for a visual style at first and created a few mood boards. Following that I created a storyboard of what I thought could be a interesting direction for the sound clip chosen. I decided to choose the sound clip "Ruta_Daita-A", as straight away I saw the opportunity to play off the idea of a sequence involving a chase or hunt. An overall theme came to mind of it being in undergrowth or going through thick amounts of trees.

Week 2: I began playing with what kind of mediums could fit my idea, I looked at people such as the animation studio 'Kievnauchfilm', the work of Andy Goldsworthy and shadow puppets. I felt like the animation should take a minimalists approach, with it being very black on white and using silhouettes as a way of reading the animation.

Week 3: Saw a clash of what I wanted out of the project. After getting feedback I began to realise I wasn't doing much that was either new to me or necessarily traditional in technique (using computers to do overall animation). I began thinking of other areas I could explore in relation to my idea, one of which was stop motion. It occurred to me I could play out the sequence on a location that would fit my initial mood boards and still have my previously started sequence, which was primarily cel animation. I also found that composition wise it could play off my investigation of Andy Goldsworthy

Week 4: I decided to go nearby Dartmoor to gather the footage and photographs. The purpose for going to Dartmoor and not somewhere near by to Falmouth was primarily a time issue, not during term time I live in Dartmoor and I know the locations there. It basically meant I could gather the stock I needed quickly and easily, without much lag time wise.

Week 4-5: Was really the physical creating of the animation frame by frame. I took the stop motion material and footage and spliced them into the cel animation. The tools I used to create the final animation was a piece of software called "TV PaintAnimation", with editing done on Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects.

Summing up the project I found it a good deviation from the normal CGI animation that im used to and a way to explore simply abstract ideas without concern of narrative or any conventional rules or expectations associated with animation in general. In short I felt sort of free to do as I pleased and to simply explore, the only regret I have for the project is my own personal fault of not organising my time effectively.

Thats it for now, Cheers