My role within the group involved capturing the footage and uploading the footage to create a movie through the ZU3D program. Rhys and Aaron's roles were to bring the issue of inclusion to life through the movement of Lego figures. We all had an input to the voice overs and narration.
For this animation, we as a group decided on using Lego figures of superheroes. We chose this because we felt it would give us the ease of use when moving the figures around. We also felt that the issue of inclusion could be put in a for straight forward sense to children and they would understand this through the use of their favourite superheroes and villains.
The characters we used were:
Thor
Captain America
Iron Man
Hawk eye
The Hulk
Cat Woman
Nick Fury.
Each of the characters were official Lego figures. We designed our set by using a Cardboard cut out, a background of a meadow from ZU3D and we used a green lego baseboard which allowed us to ensure the figures would not move out of position.
The moral of the story is based on a poem by Randy Basset at the Opening Hearts and Inclusion project, Canada. The poem was called 'Including All My Friends' and was a child's view of inclusion. Each scene within our animation is based on a verse of the poem. This is narrated by myself through the animation and then the characters begin to act out each scene.
We added various sound effects to the animation. In one scene the characters are kicking a football and one of them kicks the ball at the camera and we added a sound effect of glass smashing (This is seen at 0:34). We also added a couple of music tracks to reflect inclusion within the lyrics. We used parts of the song 'Let's Stick Together' by Brian Ferry and 'We're All in This Together' from the popular children's film High School Musical.
During the planning process, we first had to seek permission from Randy Basset, the author of the poem. He kindly granted us permission and we have paid tribute to his kindness by extending our thanks to him in the end credits. I will also E-Mail him the animation so he can see the finished product.
After gaining permission we started to plan how the animation would look. As I have stated, we used superhero Lego figures because of their simplicity and that this is aimed at children so it was deemed appropriate.
We then wrote out each verse of the poem and used this as our scene. We then planned on how we were going to execute the acting. We took into account the number of figures used because if we used too many then it would complicate the animation. After creating a mini 'storyboard' of each verse, we then carried out production and filming.
We did encounter several difficulties when filming. We discovered that if the set was moved a little bit, it would hinder the production. Also any different lighting could affect the scenes. Another difficulty encountered, which was very frustrating was using the ZU3D program. We are unsure if it was the program itself or the computers but each time we recorded, we had issues with the program running slow. Also we had a problem where our video took a long time to save which meant us having to leave the computers on for the night for it to save. This could be down to a number of issues including the size of the video. However I did enjoy using the ZU3D software and feel that it is excellent for any new animators whether they be adults or children.
The finished product is above. I welcome any comments you may have upon this project.
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