Tuesday, 8 January 2019

Study Task 3 - Pt 2

Secondary sauce image (1)
This essay will be focusing on the production and process used to create the puppets in our animation. I started off by looking at Cantonese (Hong Kong and Macau, China) and Pekingese (Peking,China) puppets. "The Cantonese puppets were bigger and less delicate than the Pekingese." (3) The puppetry rods were attached perpendicular to the puppets in order to avoid creating a shadow. "The rods of the Pekingese puppets were able to be seen because they were attached to the puppet neck before they were bent out of the way." (2) This avoided any interference with the shadow figure. The story goes that the puppets would come alive at night, so their heads were severed from their bodies and placed in separate boxes, but this is merely superstition.

Secondary sauce image (2)
We started looking at cutout animation with the intention to create something in a similar vain to the Cantonese and Pekingese puppets. 'Cutout animation is a form of stop-motion animation using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials, such as, paper, card, stiff fabric or even photographs.' (1) I was inspired by Lotte Reiniger and her process and methods of producing puppets.She " was a German film director and the foremost pioneer of silhouette animation. She is also noted for having devised a predecessor to the first multiplane camera; she made more than 40 films, all using her invention."(4)
 
Primary sauce image of our dragon puppet
As part of our decision to go with tradigital animation, we wanted to create a digital version of these puppets. We decided to use after effects as you are able to rig characters easily and we are all most comfortable and well versed in this software. to create a more detailed puppet I made dragon scales from tiny pieces of paper on top of each other to add extra texture (fig 2) I also scanned in fur to use for the tail and her head. (fig 3)  although these ended up not being used.

Secondary sauce text links

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