Rachael Hosking
- egiulianotti1
- Apr 27, 2022
- 4 min read
We studied under Rachael Hosking again during my second year of education at the University of Huddersfield. As stated in previous writings about her in my first-year work, Rachael Hosking is a Professional Illustrator, 3d Modeller, animator, and VFX Artist. She gained her skills in these fields while she worked with ‘Mackinnon and Saunders’. While working in Mackinnon and Saunders, Rachael got the opportunity to work on projects such as Tim Burtons ‘Corpse Bride’, Pingu, and Bob the Builder. In addition, Rachael specialises in many programs such as Maya, Zbrush, Photoshop, and After Effects.
Below are examples of Rachaels work from her website:
During lessons with Rachael, we attended on-campus lessons and were able to gain more access to facilities and help. these campus lessons allowed us to experiment with practical forms of animation such as stop motion and model making. In our first year, we had dabbled a little in armature making and small bits of stop motion. This year we took what we had learned last year and amplified it.
Dragonframe
During our weeks with Rachael, we focused on Dragonframe, relearning the basics and Claymation/stop motion. The relearning of the basics was all-around needed for our class as it had been almost a year since we had last used the software and a couple of students, me included, required a refresh of the basics of how to use it.
This lesson was fairly simple to follow as we went over the basic functions of Dragonframe. Understanding Dragonframe is learning a lot of technical skills. I have experience in Photography at a College level which gave me a boost in understanding all of the needed skills for the technical side of it. Using a camera and being able to adjust all of the settings came in use using Dragonframe. To understand Dragonframe, you need to either have a basic understanding of cameras or have a mobile device that works with Dragonframe. The basics which are needed to have Dragonframe with a DSLR camera are knowing the basics of Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO.
Shutter speed:
The shutter speed measures the time that the camera lens is exposed to light. During this time, the shutter on the camera is open, and objects within the frame are captured. That means that if something moves during the exposure, it will appear blurred on the image.
Aperture:
Aperture is the size of the opening through which light enters the camera. The bigger the opening, the more light captured. Wider openings, and lower numbers (which are labelled and measured in F), resulting in a shallow depth of field.
ISO:
ISO defines how sensitive the camera sensor is to the light that reaches it. This allows one to get a relatively sharper shot under lower lighting conditions. Lower ISO is usually recommended for better quality until you are proficient in changing these.
Lessons with Dragonframe were key. Relearning the essentials such as making a new scene, taking photos, creating an onion layer and working in correlations with audio.
With access to the Dragonframe keypad that came with the licence, shortcuts and key binding controls were much easier to use.
In the image above is the official Dragonframe keypad. This keypad allows for full control over the software through shortcuts. Some of these buttons are easily deciphered such as the Enter button on the bottom right is the key for taking a picture or recording visuals from the camera. The play button in the bottom left will run through what video you have already and the two buttons above the play button will cycle through images one at a time with a single click. In the box with the keypad comes a handy little card that labels and explains the function of each button in its simplest terms.
Below is the keypad map that is provided by Dragonframe:
Model making
During our campus lessons, we also spent a lot of time constructing and studying character making. The basics which we went over were as follows: mouth shapes, eye movements, lip-syncing and character design.
In our first classes in model making, Rachael introduced us to the standard mouth shapes of a stop motion puppet/model. These base shapes were all of the simple shapes that the mouth would make to produce certain noises. Your simple vowels each had a shape and required different mouth shapes. To fully understand this, I took the time to sit in front of a mirror and produce simple phenetic sounds such as "th" "Ch" "F" and more to understand the overall shape of the mouth when producing those noises. A lot of these noises could be grouped into the same mouth shape, such as "C" "D" "E" "G" for example being under the same shape. Other mouth shapes such as "L" or "Th" required a tongue to be used in the shape.
Below is an example of these mouth shapes provided by Animation Toolkit:
Next in the model making process was creating the figure that we wanted to have speak. I decided to keep the model fairly simple as to focus more of my time on the lip-syncing aspect of the animation. I modelled a simple purple creature and made holes using carving tools for some armature/puppet eyes to be inserted into. These eyes have a hole that goes all the way through it which allows for you to insert a pin to slowly rotate and change the eye positions between frames. I utilised this in my stop motion animation as it allowed for me to develop multitasking on an animation. allowing for 2 different types of movement in the character created a more lifelike feel to it.
Below is pictures of my model before colouring and the mouth shapes I produced:
After creating these characters and refining these mouth shapes, we moved onto the actual animation portion of the classes. In the next few classes we could be in a small studio space with full camera rigs, lighting and needed equipment for us to create an animation. First thing we had to do was find an audio which we wished to use. I decided to use the audio from the show "Doctor Who" in which the doctor gives a lengthy speech about morals and understanding of when will enough be enough. The overall power and strength in Peter Capaldi's voice allowed for me to gain some expressive range of speech in my animation.
Below is 2 videos of my final animations I produced using the clay models, the audio and Dragonframe:
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