Technical Limitations & Audience Classification

Creative Media Production – This Little Piggy – Technical Limitations & Audience Classification

For my animation I based my idea around the nursery rhyme of 'this little piggy'. For the animation I wanted to use plasticine models to create my characters. I thought the idea of using bright bold colours and shapes (which can be achieved by using plasticine) would be very appropriate for the animation that I am going to be doing. Because this is a child’s nursery rhyme the audience classification would be very specific to children from the ages of 6 and under. Obviously the viewing would be universal so anyone can watch it but the animation would specifically be aimed at children.

With all this in mind I started to try out my first test animation using a model piggy that I made from plasticine supplied from the school. I quickly learned that trying to replicate my initial character designs using plasticine was a lot more difficult than I first expected. Tying to form and shape the plasticine as well as attaching other parts to the body was very fiddly and frustrating to do. For my first piggy model I made a body and legs out of one separate piece of plasticine and attached the arms and head as well as the ears and other features afterwards. I smoothed down the ends and made sure they stayed together.  The second piggy model I decided to try and use a wire frame made out of paper clips tied around each other to help structure and keep the pigs limbs intact. I found this just as difficult to structure.

I then move onto creating my set designs. I used small cardboard boxes around the size of a big shoe box provided from the department. For my set designs I looked at having more than one set but replacing the background with different pieces of paper to create different environments. I found this task to be quite satisfying and simple to do with enough time. I wanted to use plasticine for some of my mise en scène like chairs, tables, windows and other objects. I’m not sure if this is practical or if I should be using other materials like cardboard or plastic scenery; this is something I need to look into and test out before my pre-production deadline.

Once I had made my pre-production characters and background scenery I started to test out animating my character (Piggy 1) on set using Dragonframe software to capture the frames. After about an hour of animating I realised the amount of time and effort required to bring life to my animations. I found that moving my piggy around damage the limbs badly after about 1 second of footage, completely falling apart and deforming my piggy. Maybe it’s because I haven’t tried using the wired frame piggy model which might be more durable but I think it’s because the plasticine is too soft when I move it around. For next time I should try and incorporate a wire frame to my piggy models hopefully solving the problem. A good aspect about using the plasticine is the amount of movement and actions that can be made from it which I explored quite a bit in my test animation.  I learnt a lot from my pre-production testing and discovered new techniques to use in my animation to make it look better.