Pre-visualization

Animation Pre-visualisation

Wikipedia’s explanation:

“Pre-visualization (also known as pre-rendering, preview or wireframe windows) is a function to visualise complex scenes in movie before filming. It is also a concept in still photography. Pre-visualization is applied to techniques such as storyboarding, either in the form of charcoal drawn sketches or in digital technology in the planning and conceptual of movie scenery make up.”

I decided that a pre-visualization would be a great idea as I would be able to predict what would happen in my short animation and with Rick’s help was able to make this a reality by manipulating After Effects. I have saved my pre-visualization to my submitted CD with my PDF portfolio and actual animation for marking. In my pre-viz (cool dude’s terms), I have zoomed in to the dove collage I have already crafted which needed to be saved as a TIFF through Photoshop and saved to the desktop and navigated around the sewn outline. The idea of this animation is to keep the subject (dove) anonymous until the act of sewing is complete. So I will film the sewing at a zoom where you can see the whole picture but on After Effects I will zoom in so that all the audience can read is the individual stitches, then after the stitching is complete I will zoom out to reveal what the subject is, a bit like Rolph Harris ‘Can you tall what it is yet?’. I will create my animation using Stop Motion animation and under the camera stand I will sew each individual stitch of the dove and photograph it creating 2 slides per time. After the dove has been stitched I will then replace it consecutively with a further 5 doves that have already been crafted. These other doves are in different positions of flight, which means that by using the process of replacement I will be able to show my dove then flying off the page/animation. In summary, the audience will see the dove being created using stitch and then the animation will zoom out to reveal what has been created, the dove will then fly away towards the right of the screen. This will be reversed on After Effects and put onto a loop to create a short animation. I will overlay some soothing Japanese style music but nothing too rigid as I cannot time the stitching etc to anything too strict. The background will be a pure white, the stitches will be a pale blue and the wings will have a negative space. The body however will be a solid piece of blue magazine paper which will be added as the stitches are completed and the dove is revealed.

After my first attempt at stop motion animation, I decided that this process was fairly easy if I knew beforehand what I was doing and going to create and was generally organised about going to film it. I did produce a rough outline of my first animation but the storyboard wasn’t very in depth and I didn’t rely on it whilst I was filming. Additionally, I did no research into how I was going to produce my animation or give any real thought to how my Prince would look aesthetically; instead I quickly cut out male features and hoped that they would fit together. It was an outcome of pure ifs and buts. Hopefully with my pre-viz in tow, this time around I will have a much better and far superior outcome. Basically, I view my first attempt now as a trial run, I don’t see it as my final version because the replacement method was so crudely done. I have submitted this along with my final version on my CD however to show my development and the critical analysis I have made of my own work. Although I knew roughly how I would animate my first piece not a lot of thought went into it and thus I will be producing another much better (hopefully!) animation to show how I have mastered the basic technique of stop frame.