The tutorial that saved my life!!!

Had a tutorial with Christian today, which went amazingly well!! Just completely reassured me on everything I'm doing.
We discussed..
Idents:
Keeping stop motion, similar style to my final piece for my comm tech 'hands' animation... I want to keep things paper based, and can take this further by taking photographs/photocopies of my hand in different positions and use this within the animation... So literally just paper will be featured on screen.
This ties in nicely with the collections brief, with the idea of a book... made of paper, a collection of shapes and a theme of a narrative.

Animals Animation: 
I had concerns about the lip syncing of my animals to the voices, (which I also have the audio for now!! Thank you to everyone who lent me their vocals :D ) but Christian suggested looking at any of the works of Oliver Postgate, (Bagpuss, Noggin the Nog, Clangers and Ivor the Engine); he has never  lip synced any of his animation works throughout his career. I don't know if I could get away with the complete lack of syncing, as this would change the way the animation would be presented - I need to distinguish the narrative and what I want the audience to focus on to work out how much the lip sync needs to be accurate or there at all.....



I love the sound effects used in Ivor the Engine, especially the sounds of the little train puffing along; obviously made by human voices, yet really effective and just fit the scene... this is what I was thinking for the idents for the show reel, this will hopefully be all sorted by tuesday once I have everyone's submissions for the show reel. I can put the full thing into Logic and put sounds over the top.. great stuff :)


We also chatted about the format of the animals animation, the difference between the set up of creature comforts; where there's a lot of distractions happening in the background, but it's usually this that makes the animation humorous; the set-up or the context the animals have been put into; sometimes what is happening in the background is more the focus than the animal talking in the foreground.
Then taking a different dynamic, the Channel 4 'Faces' idents are focused completely on the celebrity being interviewed; there's no detail of background - and sometimes the background is blurred or unrecognisable, or simply a blank wall. This makes the focal point of the narrative the answers of the people on screen, which I think is more the style that I need to aim on achieving.
For this to work the best way possible, I need to work out the best technique, keeping in mind the timing of everything to try to make the narrative work as best as I can. Maybe take some editing tips from the 'Faces' idents? Keep in mind the camera shots/angles/backgrounds/general techniques used in there...


Still lots to think about but things are slowly coming together in my head so it can start coming to life on paper :)