Flower Beats:
 
This animation was a group project, but only a group project that took place within a fortnight of a module, meaning is another animation that wasn't assessment based, yet it was still good practise, this was even the biggest group project within university up to this point (until the black hole animation came along). To explain the premise, this animation was made by four people (including me) where we had to come up with a simple premise and animate a set of visuals in time with a chosen soundtrack. We thought of making an animation based on which month of the year we were born in but linking it with what flower represents the month we were born, for instance, mine was a marigold, as I was born in October, and this can be seen within the four corners of the animation.
 
Those swirly shapes around the corner is actually two sequences placed on top of one another, but the first sequence (that was made before the duplication) consisted of a pieces of card that cut out the swirly shape I want via laser printing. Then I formed a stop motion sequence based on my cut-out pieces represent the growing stage of a marigold, and this is followed by digitising that sequence and placing another sequence on top of it as you can see within the animation, to attempt to form an abstract idea of a marigold. The others in my group also performed their own stop motion methods, using laser cutting too, to form their own flowers as you can see within the rest of the animation. While I made one of those animated flowers, I did help form the sequence involving all of them, with the help of another, this adds to my experience of leadership which I would like to expand upon for the future. However, I helped apply all the animated sequences within this single composition and applied other animated aspects to add more visual depth such as looping and duplicating, while also making sure all the sequences link with the soundtrack.
 
This sequence I do like, and it does stand out compared to other work I took part in, I haven't done much material where I used laser cutting and applying digital onto stop motion sequences, animations like this have helped build up that kind of experience if I do more practicals like this in the future. While I am not the biggest fan of my marigold flowers, I do like the other two made by the others in my group, plus the way the visuals link with the beat has inspired me to make work where visuals are in time with the soundtrack, the 'Flip flop' animation is the best example.
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This project lasted for only a couple of weeks, the first week is where we used the time to plan, and the following week is where we used the laser cutter followed by other practical activities until we were able to form the final composition, we were taking our time to form our stop motion based flowers, some of us took hours before using the last couple of hours of the university day to form the final composition once we formed the sequences followed by looping them, positioning them and more. The planning week while not as tight, we did use the time well, knowing how we are going to make our flowers, and we even made a small start for instance I drew my own flower stages using the yellow carboard and some did organise what physical materials the others wanted to use. Overall, as a lesson task, the only two days we were given to complete this project, we did use our days well, despite some of the practical areas taking too long before applying everything within the composition.