Cut Out

Cut out is an animating technique that uses flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or even photographs. Any type of material can be used to create a cut out animation.

The brief was to choose a poem, and record sound and dialogue to create an animation using the cut out method. This was the first time we used dope sheets to help work out the animating of the speech. To help use we did a practice.

This also helped us work out what was the best way of animating the speech, for use we found that instead of make a different head for each sound to keep the same head and just change the mouth.

We agreed before this project the poem we were going to use, Have a nice day by Spike Milligan. From the beginning we wanted to do a funny and humorous animation and to have fun with it.

For the storyboard we decided to follow the flow of the poem. When the disease man spoke the frame would be on him and when the drowning was speaking it would be on him. We wanted to add something at the end of the poem when the narrator speaks, and not just have his character talking. So we thought about what he says, “but apart from that, and a fire in my flat, it’s been a very nice day”. So we got thinking, why is his flat on fire? Did he burn something? Or is it on fire because the whole city is on fire? Why is the city on fire? An alien invasion?
So at the end of the poem we have the city getting burned down with ufos shooting lasers. But it still seemed as though we needed something at the end, so I suggested that the narrator gets squished by a ‘the end’ sign, and we did.

While the others were drawing and cutting out the props, characters and setting we needed, I was working out the dope sheet and how long each mouth piece had to be held for.

None of us want to voice the poem so a member of our group asked her friend Purple (its a nickname, he wishes to stay anonymous) to voice it.

Poem Animation: Packaging

Part of the brief was after creating your poem animation was to create a packaging as well as designs to go on them, relating to your chosen poem.

There are photos of some ideas for packaging my poem aniamtion taken from my sketchbook. The top two photos were just messing around with ideas and ideas for designs to go onto them.

The bottom two are of the type of packaging I decided to use. Rough drawings of the nets and the measurements I would need to create it.

Rough designs of what I am going to put on to my packaging and where and photos of my finished packaging.

Includes a just under A3 size poster with the full poem on, a art booklet with screenshots from the animation and some concept art, CD holder with CD, case with a belt to hold it all together.

Finished poem animation

Some way through planning my animation, I realised that my prevoius animation storyboard was a bit too complex for the time I was given. So I decided to simplify it.

Instead of using mostly imagery, I would have the words of the poem appear with only a few moving images.

My final poem animation. Voice by myself, I used Adobe After Effects to create the words of the poem and to move them. Then i use Animate Pro/Toon Boom to create and animate the imagery.

I didn’t really enjoy this project, thought I adored learning how to use the programs that we were instructed to use. I believe that the reason i didn’t enjoy it as well as others in my class may be because I not a lover of poetry so I could not get in to it.

However I am please with what I produce though I do think i could improve the imagery in the last verse.

Poem Animation: Experimental animation

While planning the storyboard we were taught to use computer programs that may be useful in the future. The first one was Adobe Flash.

This animation is a response to the word ‘greyness’ taken from the first line of the poem.

The idea I had was for the word to slowly fade it to focus with the background different shades of grey. It was suggested that I use a brush with lots of dots however this created a problem when exporting it, as the computer didn’t like animating all those small dots. So I had to export it a an image sequence that convert that in to a mov file.

While this animation is in response to actions and adjectives within the poem, without the use of words.

The words I used were ‘smooth’ and ‘telescopic’.

I tried to created a ‘smooth’ action with wavy lines the comes together to create a circle then get bigger like the screen is zooming in.

Word animations created using Adobe After Effect. In response to the suggestion that the poem animation be mostly are from words.

Poem Animation: Thought Process

As well as the line test exercises, we were also ask to choose a poem and animated it.

As I am not one for poetry I choose a poem that I remember learning and analysing during GCSE english, Vultures by Chinua Achebe. After I chose a poem I drew some imagery in response to the words and lines within the poem, and I tried not to make the images too obvious and figurative.

Later I realised that the poem I chose was too long, as the brief was that the animation could be over a minute long. So I decided to cut the first verse, as was suggested. It was still quite long however if I cut any more of the poem off it would not make sense.