Animation treatment

Muybridge

Title

The name of the project is going to be Muybridge. The reasoning for this name is to relate to the whole idea of the concept, as this will include the man himself.

Genre

Animation. I feel like creating an animation will attract more viewers as having it as an advertisement, for example, might bore the viewers. Having it as an animation could interest the viewers seeing as it’s a very short film and people generally like films.

Duration

The animation will last 30 seconds. The reason being is that I want to inform people of Muybridge’s invention to educate them a little. As a result, I don’t want it to last so long to a point where they get bored.

Target audience

This animation will be viewable for all ages. I don’t want to restrict any viewers. And this animation won’t be violent so there is no reason to give it a higher age rating.

Concept

The people of Kingston are in a museum, bored while watching a history clip on a projector. Just as they can’t stay awake for long enough, The man himself, Eadweard Muybridge, appears from out of the screen. Everyone is surprised by his arrival, but immediately, he introduces his creation to the audience and reveals, in a flashy manner, the moving horse. Everyone is in awe. Muybridge then leaves, leaving the audience in awe.

Characters

The main character in this animation will be Eadweard Muybridge. This is because of the fact that he is going to wow the audience. The audience are the background characters, as they don’t have the kind of recognition as Muybridge.

Visuals

The lighting will be dark with subtle light from the short clip they are watching, to show their boredom. It will be brighter later on as Muybridge comes along. There might not be as much camera movement as I feel it’s not as necessary. There also won’t be as many props. Maybe a row of chairs but that’s probably it. The audience in the animation will be wearing modern, normal clothing were as Muybridge will be wearing old-fashioned clothing.

Audio

The soundtrack will be a very soft and quiet tune, maybe with subtle violin tunes. As Muybridge appears, the music has a small flute melody, and then has a slightly louder tune. As for sounds, I will not include that many. Small sound effects possibly, but nothing else. Also there won’t be any dialogue.

Rationale

I decided to go with this idea because I felt like people needed to know a little more about Muybridge, for he uncovered the meaning of animation. Showcasing the moving horse will also show the audience an example of his first frame-by-frame animation. I have done a little bit of 2D animation in the past so I have some experience. But in order to make it look good, I will have to learn how to animate better as I don’t have a huge amount of experience..

Primary and secondary research

For my secondary research, I have looked at other 2d animated films like Disney films and even some non-aired 2d animations like Eddsworld. With this in mind, I saw how their style of animation came to be. I also looked at different art styles I could use for the animation too. I eventually decided on a pretty simplistic style so it could stay simple and was faster and easier to make. This style also gave it a more family-friendly look. I also had to learn a little more about Eadweard Muybridge and how he came to creating the moving horse. Also, I needed his appearance as I was to include him in my animation.

For my primary research, I conducted a survey about animation to gather different people’s opinions. Here are the results.

• The most popular genre seems to be adventure.
• 2D animation was preferred over 3D.
• Most people watch animated movies once a month.
• People like animations that are 5-10 minutes long and 30- 1 hour long.
• People like animations that are about humans and fun.

Resources

Things I am most likely going to need…

• Adobe after effects
• A4 paper
• Pencil
• Rubber
• Adobe Photoshop

Constraints and contingency

Problems I might bump into are things like the programme not working. I am decently new to after effects so in order for everything to work properly I will have to learn how to fully use it. Another thing is after production, once it has been fully animated, if there are any changes I want or need to make, it’ll be more difficult as there is more detail in the animation.

Legal and ethnical considerations

I have no intentions of offending anyone in this animation, and if I accidently do, I will make sure steps are taken to prevent this in future for it would have not been my intention.

Budget

The budget will go towards buying the applications and animating it. It will take around £1000 for animating one second. Around £30,000 will be spent on the animation process. £19.99 for After Effects and Photoshop. So the total budget will be around £30,019.99.

Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge, original name Edward James Muggeridge.

He was born on April 9, 1830, Kingston upon Thames and died May 8, 1904. He was an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion and in motion-picture projection.

In 1860, while travelling to the East Coast en route to England, Muybridge was involved in a stagecoach accident. Muybridge received serious head injuries and received serious head injuries. As a result, he suffered from double vision and confusion, and friends noticed a difference in his behaviour.

The process of his discovery

Eadweard began his experiments in photographing motion in 1872 when Leland Stanford hired him to prove that during a particular moment in a trotting horse’s gait, all four legs are off the ground at the same time. His first attempts were unsuccessful because his camera didn’t have a fast shutter. The project was then interrupted while Muybridge was being tried for the murder of his wife’s lover. He found it convenient to travel for a number of years in Mexico and Central America, making public photographs for the Union Pacific Railroad, a company owned by Stanford.

In 1877 he returned to California and resumed his experiments in motion photography, using a battery of from 12 to 24 cameras and a special shutter he created that captures images at a really fast pace, specifically, an exposure of ²/₁₀₀₀ of a second. This arrangement proved Stanford’s contention.

In 1883, Muybridge was invited to continue his research at the University of Pennsylvania and for the next few years made thousands of photographs of humans and animals in motion. Near the end of his life, he published several books featuring his motion photographs and toured Europe and North America, presenting his photographic methods using a projection device he’d developed called the Zoopraxiscope.

The zoopraxiscope is an early device for displaying motion pictures. Created by Eadweard Muybridge in 1879, it is considered to be the first movie projector.

Muybridge died of prostate cancer on May 8, 1904, at his birthplace. His contributions to art and photography inspired many other inventors, including Thomas Edison and Étienne-Jules Marey. Muybridge’s innovative camera techniques enabled people to see things otherwise too fast to comprehend, and his sequence images continue to inspire artists from other disciplines to this day.

The horse in motion

 When a horse trots or gallops, does it ever become fully airborne? This was the question photographer Eadweard Muybridge set out to answer in 1878. Railroad tycoon and former California governor Leland Stanford was convinced the answer was yes and commissioned Muybridge to provide proof. Muybridge developed a way to take photos with an exposure lasting a fraction of a second and, with reporters as witnesses, arranged 12 cameras along a track on Stanford’s estate.