Animating Day

Myself and my teammate hired out the relevant equipment we needed for the animation from the photography department this morning. We then spent some time in the studio completing things for the set. My teammate was finishing off her half of the people so I spent this time finishing the set completely by making the sides and assembling it. We went down to the AV room to set up the scene and sort out our camera and lighting and this was when I realised that my teammate had not completed her half of the props so we had no orchard pig crate which was a crucial part of the storyboard. At this point I felt a bit let down that I had spent so much time yesterday doing my bit for this to be ready on time. We also realised we hadn't got a cut out of a glass of orchard pig cider which was a fault we both did not notice until now. My teammate went away to produce these two components while I continued to arrange the props within the set. 

The technical support member of staff in the AV room helped us to set up the camera properly and explained the process of what we needed to do. We got straight into the making of our animation but we did experience a number of problems in the process...

• The set was made of grey board which had started to bend, the heat from the lighting wasn't helping this situation. We used double sided tape to stick the ground to the table so it laid flat but the heat melted the glue and it would keep coming unstuck making the floor in the animation look like it is moving. 
• The paper cut outs were quite unstable so when we were moving them around a bit to make sure the set didn't look too still, they would often fall over. We then had to use the previous photo we had taken to try and put them back in the correct place. 
• I didn't really like the fact you could see the corners of the set within the shot. I think it would have looked better if the set was less enclosed or the background was curved so there were no visible joins. 

The animation only took us a few hours which was good because we were expecting it to take us the whole day. With the help of the AV technician, we uploaded our photos onto a computer and he showed us how to import these as a sequence into after effects and how to alter the speed of the animation. We were then comfortable with cropping end editing it because we had both used after effects before. I can't help but feel like we rushed the animation today but I have so much more work to be getting on with I was quite grateful that I had the afternoon available now to work on something else. Next, we need to add music and some pig sound effects to match its movements which we hope to complete before the end of the week.