Imagine

by Jacob N. and Anush P.
???
just a series of mini movies that is awesome!!!!!

Caroline P.
Per.2

How we made our Claymation

Our claymation was about everyone’s favorite monkey Curious George. Then Curious George encounters somebody very special called Fat Albert and jump on a very mysterious trampoline until tragedy strikes!(a.k.a Fat Albert is a little too big and sends Curious George into space with his weight.) After exloring space and its wonders Curious George gets pelted with space trash (along with the song “Space Junk” by intenet sensations Rhett and Link). After the bad experience with trash from space the force of Gravity pulls the George back to earth. Meanwhile back on earth Fat Albert Is happy bouncing on the trampoline that is a quite unusual. Fat Albert falls off the trampoline which seems to be possesed and watches in horror as the trampoline deforms into a ball and rolls away. Its quiet for a while. A little too quiet as Fat Albert looks at the sky to see His friend fall on him. Fat Albert tries to run away but it is too late. The friends make up and say goodbye.

Ana called me and my friend Drew and asked us to come over. When we got there we tried out Ana’s new trampoline. I had brought my Ipod and put the Fat Albert theme song. Drew was wearing a Curious George T-shirt. We did not really plan it out on purpose I mean yeah we knew we had a claymation but we did not think about it until the very end of the day. I guess it was sort of an accident. As we started the claymation we just took the things we did and saw and just made a movie out of it!

As we worked we got the ideas when Drew spilled chocolate ice cream onto her shirt and when my Ipod’s baterry had died just when our favorite part of the Fat Albert them song was coming. After that we had absolutely nothing to do so we just sat there and thought about what to do for our claymation. A few minutes later Ana came up with the Idea of having a claymation with Curious George in it. Drew and I thought it was a great idea but we wanted a little more action, something unusual and that is how I got the idea of what the movie was about (Curious George Meets Fat Albert On A Trampoline)!

First we created the characters and made sure we made face expressions as we filmed to show how the characters felt. Then we made a set, filmed the movie, worked on Imovie to delete any hands in the film and fix glitches. Last but not least we made the sound effects and songs on Garage Band. I really like how it turned out.

What I particularly enjoy in the making of our creation is moving the characters. I loved it, it was so much fun. I like the idea of just taking these little pieces taking them to a studio and just glue them together and Ta-Da! You have a 1 minute movie! What I found challenging was the part when the two characters were jumping. Since we could not use string we used transparent straws, but the problem was that it was too hard to make the straws fade into the background. We had to zoom in all the way until you could not see the straws since they just would not fade out. Which was also hard because a few parts of the characters faces could not be seen. So when they were jumping on the trampoline you had no clue what they were doing!

What I think went well was making the credits because I really thought the people that would see the credits would not be able to actually read them. But Ana had the idea of reading them out loud which worked like a charm.

I think I would like to improve the face expressions. Since it was our first time making a claymation the face expressions looked pretty sloppy. Like one of the characters felt sad they looked happy so it was pretty confusing.

I would like to add nothing else.

WELL THAT IS IT I HOPE I GET AN “A”!!!!

Matheus S., period 5
Technology 4th Quarter Essay
5/27/2011

During the past few weeks, my technology group and I worked on Claymation, which is a type of stop motion animation where you use clay. To make the animation, we used Apple computers. In the Apple computers, we used three different programs. One was called iStopMotion Express 2, the other one was called iMovie, and the last one was called GarageBand. I’ll talk more about these programs later.

Our Claymation movie is about a Ninja vs. a Giant. The Ninja was made using only one piece of clay and the Giant was made using lots of pieces of clay to make the Giant bigger. Our idea for the Claymation was originally a soccer match between Brazil and Argentina. We tried doing that but we needed too many characters and it was hard putting the characters in the right place everyday when we walked into class. So we decided to change the idea and just make a fight video only two characters, which would be a little bit easier. And once we decided that we were going to make a fight video, we started putting some clay together and then we just had the idea of having a Ninja and a Giant. And once we figured that out, we started taking pictures and we pretty much just come up with the ideas as we worked.

Most of our ideas that we came up with just came from our minds. Some ideas were triggered but things we had seen in movies. For example, there is one scene where the Giant is going to punch the Ninja, but the Ninja does a Matrix move, where he bends backwards and dodges the punch. And we made that scene in slow motion because it looked good in the movie Matrix and we thought it would also look good in our Claymation.

Our team worked pretty well as a team. Obviously there were some problems but there were also benefits of working as a team. Some benefits were that if any of us ever ran out of ideas, then there would be 4 other people that could come up with new ideas. Another benefit was that each person could do one specific thing. For example, one person could move the clay, another one could take the pictures, and another one could adjust the camera. So that was nice because then you didn’t have to do everything by yourself.

Even though there were benefits of working in a team, there were also some problems that we encountered. The main problem was that sometimes we wouldn’t agree on an idea for a specific scene or just an overall idea for the movie. For example, one person wanted the movie to have a zombie apocalypse, but the rest of the group didn’t agree. So we didn’t use that idea. Or another person wanted to have meteors fall but most of the group didn’t agree so we also didn’t use that idea. When we had problems like these, we would just take a vote and then if we had more votes for an idea than for another idea, we would just use the most popular idea.

There were different steps in making this project. The first step was to make the Claymation using iStopMotion Express 2. We would take a picture of the clay, the movie it a little bit, and then take another picture. We did that until we had at least 60 seconds of footage. After we were finished with the movie, we made the sound for the movie using GarageBand. There we put together different sounds and then we created the soundtrack for our movie. After we had the soundtrack, we imported both the Claymation and the soundtrack into iMovie and put everything together. On iMovie we also added the title and the credits. And after we were all done, we saved it and posted online on the blog.

The most fun part I had doing the project was making the animation. It was really fun having to take the pictures and move the clay and it was also the first time I had ever made a Claymation. Not only was making the animation fun but I also like using clay and that’s why I liked doing the animation the most compared to all the other things we had to do.

Even though I thought making the animation was fun, I also think it was the most challenging. The reason why is because when we were done filming on one day, we had to put the clay in the exact same spot in the next day. It was also really challenging when we wanted to make something fly or float because we couldn’t just hold the clay because then our hand would be in the shot. So we had to use an invisible string. It sounds easy but when we tied the clay to the string the clay would be moving around in the air and it would be hard to get it to be in the spot that you wanted it to be.

I honestly think that everything went well. The Claymation was smooth, the titles and credits were good, and I really like the soundtrack that we made. And after I got to see the finished product, I was really happy with what my group and I had accomplished.

If I could change anything in the project, it would be the lighting. If I had to do it again I would bring a desk lamp so that the lighting would be the same and not keep changing throughout the movie. I would also use a little bit more clay for the Ninja because sometimes it would fall apart and we had to put it back together, which was kind of annoying.

So in conclusion, making a Claymation was really fun, especially because I got to work with my friends. Working with all those different programs was also really fun and I learned a lot about them. And then when we were done it turned out to be a really good animation and I was really proud.

Isabel K.
Technology P.2
May 27, 2011

“The Great Escape” Claymation

In technology this quarter, we made our own clay animation movie. To create this, we used iStopMotion Express 2, iMovie, and GarageBand. My movie was called The Great Escape, and it was about the life cycle of animals, and the superiority of animals in the animal kingdom. We used clay animals, a cardboard background, and lots of focus to make this movie possible.

The day we got the project, my group decided to do something with horses. Once we had that idea, we started building on it. First, we thought we would make a movie on a family of horses traveling through the forest together. Then, we decided to put some more animals in it. We added some rabbits, a bird, a wolf, a fox, and a turtle to our collection of animals. We then decided to make the movie about many animals instead of just one. This is how we came up with our idea to make it about the animal’s cycle. We then started on the filming of the movie.

Our group started on iStopMotion Express 2. To film our movie, we had to take a snapshot of each movement the animals made. Instead of the animals moving in a movie, it started with pictures put together to seem like movement. One second consisted of 12 pictures, or frames. The filming process took many days, because after every picture, we had to move the animals a little bit in the direction they were moving to. After moving them just a little bit, we took a picture and moved the animals again.

This project took lots of concentration, because you had to be able to take a picture and quickly move it to not waste time. Since it was a time consuming project, it did take longer to make. After my group and I got around 62 seconds, we decided to end it. The movie was then transferred to iMovie to put a Title page and a Credits page. We decided in just putting a small title to not interfere too much with the movie. Also, it was just a couple seconds long so no one would miss any part of the movie. The credits scene was put right after the movie, on a black background. We also put a transition scene that lasted for about a second from the end of the movie to the credits scene.

After we got our movie ready, we added music to it. To do that, we uploaded the movie to GarageBand. There, we went through different country songs and listened to them until we found the right music for the events in the movie. This process took a long time because there were so many songs, and we wanted to find the appropriate one to the events that were happening in the movie. For example, my favorite sound effect was when the snake started inching closer and closer to the squirrel, until it attacked. The sound effects we used were one for the suspence of the snake getting very close to the squirrel, and another one that was a little bang for the attack.

I thought my project was well done because we were extremely careful to make everything as neat and understandable as possible. We really wanted to make this movie interesting and exciting to our viewers. The only thing I would change about our movie, is that at one point, during the wolf, fox, cardinal, and turtle’s bow, the camera wasn’t workig correctly, and for a couple seconds the scenes were almost in sepia, and then the next day when we finished that bow, the camera was working again, and there was lots of light and color. I thought this project was very fun, and unique, and I loved creating my own claymation.

Henry A.
P-4
5/27/2011

Recently our class created claymation videos. My group, which consisted of Evan, Alex, Carson, Svene, and I, produced a video about a few people who fight to gain control of a large amount of treasure. One person survives, and has to face off zombies, mutants, and other people. To come up with this my group and I brainstormed as we worked—so we just came up with the details as we shot photos. To get these ideas to work we used props, such as a box, a piece of cardboard, and some fishing wire. For example, to make the main character jump off of the platform, we used a see-through straw. To trigger this we had a huge zombie, he jumped, and threw his sword. To make the first character to go flying, we used a unraveled paperclip. It worked pretty well. Then we have the grenade. When the terrorist hurls the grenade at two characters, we used a paperclip.

All in all my group worked okay together. We sometimes had disagreements, but made acceptable compromises. For example svene wanted to do the scene with the character that forms from a blob. We used it as a scene in between the preview and the movie itself. The blob was a little weird, but it worked out fine. So I would say the biggest problems encountered are that we would not always agree, or we messed around and wasted time. This amount of time wasted was abominable, and this made my group finish on the last day we were able to work on the video.

To create the project, first we learned how to use a camera. Each time the character made the slightest motion that was one or two pictures. The pictures were transferred through the fire-wire. The fire wire connects the camera to the computer. The pictures were transferred to istopmotion express—a program to create stop motion animation. Second we made clay figures—we usually had one or two for each of us in the group. Third, we took ten pictures per second, we had over a minute. So, we took over six hundred pictures. Then we created the props, the background, the platform, and the treasure chest. Fifth, once we finished shooting pictures we needed to transfer the file to imovie. In imovie we made the title, and the black outs. While we made these we were given the option to, One: use garage band to record and supposedly “make” music. Two: I could record real music from my guitar, and Evan could record from his. This is we started to waste time. The group and I goofed off, and did not get anything done. It was the same case when we recorded the voices—which we never used anyway—and wasted more time.

What I enjoyed about the project was it’s freedom of what to do, and how fun it was. I enjoyed playing back the movie and watching our creation. To us it was a little fun just making the scenes—which to all of us–, had their own special meaning. Playing the guitar and composing a soundtrack was fun, and I will admit that messing around was a little enjoyable.

The project its self was easy, but figuring out how the program worked, and all the extra stuff was a little challenging. For example recording guitar—we took two days learning how to save it. Figuring out how to edit the preview seen to what I saw it should be took a good two, or three days of working.

What went well was the guitar, and the preview, which no other groups in my class hour even attempted to do. The preview had a good effect which was that it was imaginative (and looked better than the actual video) and funny ( the main character places c-4 on the door of a port-a-potty.

If, I were to do this again I would improve upon the choppiness. For example, we could have done better with making movement look natural.

On the soundtrack of “The Mutants,” Henry A. plays electric guitar, and Evan B. plays acoustic guitar.