Evaluation of Classmates Stop-Motion Animation... 

During lesson we were required to present and watch the animations that were created and then choose one to evaluate. I chose Lucy Hill’s animation on mental health as seen on her blog. 

Example: Shadows

Within her animation there were many different scenes used to demonstrate his different mental states and thoughts. The very first scene used is a dark graveyard where the wooden man is walking down a path, to me this symbolises the dark road he is on and that his thoughts are dark in nature. The graveyard implies that this could be due to the death of a loved one or it could imply that he is thinking suicidal thoughts. The man walks as if being forced showing that he can't stop himself in walking down this path. With the building in the background being smaller in size to himself could show his belief that everyone else is so far away and so they cannot understand him. 

Example: Dark Forest

Next we are taken to a dark image with the wooden man on his own in a circle of light singling him out and putting him in the spotlight. This could be in his thoughts and in my opinion, shows that he is alone and doesn't believe that anyone is there for him. The single fireplace in this scene could be a small bit of hope that everything will work out but the smallness in size shows he may not believe it himself. The shadow in this scene demonstrates him being haunted by his dark thoughts and that they will not leave him in peace. 

Crows taking flight

After we are brought to a dark forest showing the wooden man spinning in circles unable to get away from the thoughts and feelings surrounding him. Within the forest there are a variety of sounds, the main one is the crowing of a crow. Crows tend to symbolise war and death (Murphey-Hiscock, 2012), this potentially shows that the man is a war with himself and his thoughts may be leading him to ideas on his own death. However forests are seen as mysterious places and in many stories they are a place where individuals find or lose themselves (Gaunt, 2011). This could be seen as the place where the wooden man's thoughts are at a peak in its battle as crows also symbolise change and that impossible tasks can be accomplished one small change at a time. The wooden man can either lose himself to it or he can find someone or somewhere to help. This leads onto the next scene where he is at the health clinic. 

Character like this one

The writing of the health clinic comes gradually, giving the impression that it is slowly revealing itself to the wooden man as a place which can help him overcome his problems, it can also show that healing will be a long time coming. When the words finally complete themselves, he is able to kick away the shadows that have been haunting him. By walking down the path to the clinic which had stones on either side shows that he is now on his way to being himself again and the background being light shows that his head is not filled with the dark thoughts as previous scenes depicted. 

The character used is a wooden man, this could be used could show him as unchangeable though with a lot of effort it is possible. Lucy also uses a variety of different objects for the background for Christmas decoration used as a fireplace.

The use of mental health newspaper articles and words at the beginning effectively introduced the animation and why she was doing it. It showed that the message was more awareness for mental health problems and that it is everywhere and can affect anyone. It also related it to events the audience were familiar with making them become more involved with the animation.

There were a lot of techniques used in the creation of this animation the one that stuck out for me was the ripping of the paper back to expose a sentence and then it being covered back up again showing that mental health is hidden and even after it is exposed people do not want to be made aware of the risks. Furthermore they do not want to know that there is something wrong with them mentally and would rather not seek help if they believe that to be so. The animation promotes people seeking help as it helps them to improve their quality of life as seen in the man not being in darkness anymore at the end of the animation.

Overall, I enjoyed Lucy’s animation and thought it was a powerful message she sought to create and she succeeded in raising awareness for mental health and encouraging people to seek help. 

Evaluation of Our Stop-Motion Animation...

Our stop-motion animation was about bulling and how you shouldn't let anyone make you feel small and helpless. Also, by speaking out and confronting bullies you grow as a person, shown in Timmy growing in size. This was discussed in further detail in the previous post.  

Previous characters

The first problem that came to our attention is our previous designs for the characters had to be reworked as they looked quite strange and did not have the same effect when created by myself and Cari so it was decided that Ceri would take over the designs and create all the characters needed and the tree. During this I worked out the script with input from the other two about how it sounded and tried to get a feel for the characters. When starting out in creating our animation Ceri was to take the photographs while I was to move the characters. Cari had used Audacity and was most familiar with the software so it was decided that she would work out the music and voices while we were working on the animation. 

Characters used

In the beginning before we started taking the pictures we had issues with the colour as the meadow in the background was suppose to be green however in the pictures it was a range of colours with the background being pink at one point. We eventually managed to get it to the right colour by placing a lamp to shine on the scene and changing the colour focus. Strangely it was more green after we lessened its affect. 

In my personal experience the main difficulty was remembering to move everything that needed to before the picture, with remembering to move the ball in the background as well as the other movements of the characters and there were a few occasions were retakes were needed when it was noticed the ball had stopped moving half-way through a roll when it wasn't suppose to. Another issue was the screen kept moving slightly and was extremely difficult in getting it back to its place. 

Additionally we had difficulty with the audio; the meadow sounds, sad music and the song Happy by Pharrell were kept however we took out others such as the danger music as we felt it was too mismatched and it was better to keep the music to a minimal so as not to lose the message of the animation. Furthermore, the audio would then not transfer from one computer to the other which had the animation this was eventually figured out using the internet.  

While filming the animation we noticed the lighting kept changing and could not figure out as to why so we were unable to stop it. Though we used the change to create the effect of the weather with clouds potentially passing across the sun. Another problem we found was that our script was too long and after recorded it did not match properly to the animation. Therefore the script went through some major changes though we kept the same basis just shortened parts to keep it in line with the rest of the animation.See previous post for the full planned script. 

We also found it difficult to reach the two minute mark as after we finished the animation we discovered that it was shorter than expected and without completely reworking the entire animation there wasn't much we were able to do in the time we had available. 

Below is our complete animation...

Overall I am pleased with how this animation turned out despite the problems as seen above. However, if I was to do it again I would take more time in making the animation and experimenting with more complex techniques to broaden my abilities.