Stocksbridge Filmmakers

In The Factory

2012-02-27T13:35:00.000-08:00

After a full day of animating the first camera sweep inside the factory is now complete and it looks fantastic! This was one of the busiest scenes so far with lots of things moving including conveyor belts, pistons, dryers, blades, spoons and robotic hands! We can't wait until tomorrow when we will start animating the second camera sweep inside the factory, plus capture close ups from today.

And here's a huge shop we made for the street scene...

The Factory Set

2012-02-15T05:48:00.000-08:00

All the artwork is now complete for the factory set and it looks fantastic! There will be lots of things moving all at the same time once we start animating including the conveyor belt, the chopping knives, rolling pins and spaghetti boxes - very exciting!

Making Machinery

2012-02-15T05:35:00.000-08:00

At the same time as animating the farming scenes we are busy making the machinery for the new set. We have made lots of cogs for the conveyor belt as well as dryers, mechanical arms, rolling pins, dough balls and lot, lots more!

And here's our title, made out of cardboard letters!

A New Set...

2012-02-15T04:58:00.000-08:00

Now that we have animated the first and last scenes we have changed the set for the farm scene. We now have animals to animate as well as tractors, wheat and windmills! Here are the pigs waiting to be animted!

And this is what our new set looks like!

On the picture below you can see the set on the laptop screen that we are using to animate with.

Animating

2012-02-06T12:24:00.000-08:00

We have had another full day of animating today. So far we have animated the first scene and the last scene...still lots to do. It's great fun!!

Music for our film

2012-02-02T10:28:00.000-08:00

Today we commissioned a musician to produce a piece of music for our film. We spoke to him over the phone, explained the storyline and described the type of music we would like him to create. We have asked him to use acoustic guitars, violins, flutes and the piano. It was very exciting to speak to him and we can't wait to hear the music he produces!

Animation begins!

2012-02-02T10:22:00.000-08:00

Today was a great day...we started animating! It was hard work as we had to move more than one thing at once between shots and it was tricky to remember what order to move things in and in which direction! It was great fun though! Today we filmed the first scene where the Spaghetti truck drives along the road passed the scarecrow, the farmer and the crows. We also animated the windmills, the rabbit and the horse!

In between animating we carried on making more characters and props for the next scenes including a mole, a pig and a cow. The mole is going to be animated peering out of the ground, so we had to cut it up into smaller pieces and then put them in the right order, ready for animating!

Testing the camera slider

2012-02-02T09:20:00.000-08:00

We have done some test sequences today with the camera slider to test the movement of the camera as well as the movement of the characters. We have to move the camera 5mm each time we take a picture along with moving lots of characters and props on set. It's so exciting!

Set complete!

2012-02-02T09:01:00.000-08:00

The animation film set is now complete! We have added the finishing touches to the background, including painting the back wall with white paint and rollers which was great fun! Just a few more replacement characters to finish and then we are ready to start animating!

Painting the background with rollers and white paint!

Adding a water wash to the fields

Finishing the replacement horses

More work on the set...

2012-01-22T09:17:00.000-08:00

On Friday we had the challenge of making all the replacement characters for the Crow, the Scarecrow, the rabbit and the farmer. It took a while to make them all look the same but we have just about finished them and they look really good. We also did more work on the set and the backgrounds, designing the fields and adding texture to the road. Here are more images of us at work...

Adding a watercolour effect to the fields

More scarecrows!

More Farmers!

Hopping rabbits!

Tractor and Spaghetti Van

The Spaghetti Van

More models have appeared on set...

2012-01-19T14:35:00.000-08:00

Our set is getting fuller and fuller and is looking fantastic! We placed some more finished models on set today to check them for size against the other models and they look great! We have lots more work to do before we can start animating but here are a few more images for you to look at...

The Spaghetti Truck in the foreground with a horse in the background

The tractor pulling a trailor

More models...

2012-01-19T14:25:00.000-08:00

We have had another busy day today and have made lots more models for our animated film. We have made lots of wheat, crows, rabbits, horses, scarecrows and farmers. We are going to use the "replacement technique" to animate some of our characters and so we have had to make lots of versions of the same character, with one part slightly different. For example, we have made lots of crows with the wings and beaks in different positions so that they can fly and talk. We have also made replacement characters for the farmer and the scarecrow so that they can move their arms and talk too. We had to concentrate when we were doing this so that we made each replacement character look the same. You can see us hard at work below...

Making the replacement scarecrows with arms in different positions

Making the farmers hand so that we can film a close up of him sowing seeds

Painting the replacement crows

Drawing the rabbits

The first replacement rabbit

More characters...wheat, trees, the Spaghetti Tree, scarecrows and crows!

Our Set in the making...

2012-01-18T13:43:00.000-08:00

We are in the middle of turning our drawings from our storyboard of The Spaghetti Tree into 3D models. We are then going to make these models move in front of the camera as we bring our script to life through animation. We have lots more models to make but this is what we have created so far...very exciting!!!

The Spaghetti Truck

Different size trees, hills and windmill to create depth

The Windmill and Tractor

The Tractor

A close-up of the Tractor

Model making and Set Construction

2012-01-18T13:27:00.000-08:00

We are very busy making all the models and sets for our film - The Spaghetti Tree. Today we made a Spaghetti Truck, a tractor, a scarecrow, plus lots of trees, wheat and hills - all out of cardboard. We designed and decorated each model and then stuck them together with a glue gun so that they will stand up in our set. This is how we made them...

Decorating the hills with a line pattern

Creating a colour wash over the trees

Decorating the Crow's replacement heads

Drawing the fields onto the set

Painting the road onto the set with a mini roller

Gluing the tractor together

The materials we used - cardboard, pencils, felt tips, sharpies, poscas and water

Set Creation Begins!

2012-01-18T10:23:00.000-08:00

Our project room is beginning to look more and more like a studio workspace as we start to build the set for our film. Our set is going to be made of cardboard and so far we have created some hills that will appear in the background. Much more work is still to be done...but it is great to see each part taking shape.


Cardboard Hills for the background

Trees of different sizes to create depth

Our storyboard is on the wall so we can work out what props and characters we need to make.

More work on our storyboard...

2012-01-11T14:23:00.000-08:00

We had another busy day today working with Dan to finish off our huge storyboard which tells our story of The Spaghetti Tree in pictures. It looks fantastic and we can't wait to start making the models so we can bring the story to life. Also today Yvonne and Paul have built a very large table in our project room that we are going to use to film the animation, along with collecting a car full of cardboard that we are going to use to make the models and sets out of. It is very exciting...more images to follow as we begin to design and build the characters and sets...

Drawing and planning the factory scene

The Spaghetti Tree - Our Storyboard

2012-01-09T12:23:00.000-08:00

It is now the end of our first day in the making of The Spaghetti Tree - our very exciting animation film project. We have been busy discussing ideas and drawing them out on a huge piece of paper, mapping out our film from start to finish. Today we have begun designing the foreground and background, decided on the movement for each character, written pieces of dialogue and started to think about how the film will be captured through a continuous camera movement. Here are some images of us drawing, along with shots of sections from our huge storyboard. Dan is coming back tomorrow to help us finish it off. Keep checking back to find out how we are going to make the models and the set later in the week.

Working on our Storyboard

Adding detail to the background

Drawing the Town

The beginning of the film

The camera moves along the set as the story unfolds

Trucks in the foreground, hills, sheep and town in the background

The Town gets bigger as we get nearer to it

Passing the shops

More to follow...keep checking back to find out how the story continues...

The Spaghetti Tree - Script Writing

2012-01-09T11:42:00.000-08:00

Today we worked with Dan, a professional writer, who helped us develop our script and storyline for our animated film - The Spaghetti Tree. We shared our ideas through lots of drawings and worked together to create a huge drawing of the film from start to finish. We drew pictures for the foreground and background of the film and discussed how the characters would move. We worked out how the camera would move along the set and capture our story. Here are some of our practice drawings which we later drew onto the big timeline...

Sowing seeds and farming

Our Town, which will grow in the background throughout the film

Flowers in the fields

Sheep and pigs in the hills

Farm Animals

Trees in the background

Getting Started

2012-01-09T11:22:00.000-08:00

There has been lots of excitement at school today as it was the first day of our filmmaking project. We took part in some evaluation sessions with Yvonne from Big Voice Media and decorated our new Project Room with character designs and storyboards to help us plan out our ideas for the film. Here are some images of us hard at work and some shots of our designs...

Evaluations - writing, drawing and discussion

Character Designs and Storyboards

The Spaghetti Tree

2012-01-08T13:29:00.000-08:00

Here at Stocksbridge Nursery Infant School we are very excited as our application to First Light Movies has been successful. This means we are all ready to start our film project. Take a look at some of our initial designs that we created last September as we developed our film idea - "The Spaghetti Tree". Keep checking back for further updates as we begin to make our film.

Our first session - Creating Film Ideas

Our second session - Creating our Character Designs

Sonny The Scarecrow Design

Side Kick Crow Design