Advanced 2D - Research

This week i have been researching different styles of animation for my final one. It is going to be based on the poem called Mighty Oak.

Mighty Oak

Stand tall oh mighty oak, for all the world to see,
your strength and undying beauty forever amazes me.
Though storm clouds hover above you,
your branches span the sky,
in search of the radiant sunlight you
count on to survive.
When the winds are high and restless and
you lose a limb or two,
it only makes you stronger, we
could learn so much from you.
Though generations have come and gone
and brought about such change,
quietly you've watched them all yet still
remained the same.
I only pray God give to me the strength he's
given you,
to face each day with hope, whether
skies are black or blue,
Life on earth is truly a gift
every moment we must treasure,
it's the simple things we take for granted
that become our ultimate pleasures.

It was written by Kathy J Parenteau and this is what she says the poem is about. "I wrote this poem many years ago when I was grieving my grandfather's death. He was a published poet and the light of my life. I saw him as that oak tree. He was always so strong and his faith never wavered. He taught me so much about life and love and family, but most of all about Christian faith. He will be forever missed but someday I will meet him in heaven and until then this will always be my tribute to Caleb Fowler, the greatest man I ever knew."

I liked this poem because i could imagine and see the animation going on in my head. I could also relate to what the poem is about, I lost my great grandfather many years ago and i connected with the poem and i feel once the animation is done many other people will be able to connect with it also. 

I next went on to look at different styles of animations to find something that would work well with this poem. 

Thought of you - Ryan Woodward

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfHjlA4iV4s 

I liked this animation because i like the sketchiness of it, how it is not perfect and is deliberately like this, which adds to the emotion of the animation. I also like the use of only three colours and how it is simple but very effective towards the audience. The background makes the piece stand out as it allows both the black and white to be seen clearly on it, which is something that could be useful in my animation. The way the woman is light compared to the man makes her stand out and almost makes her look magical. It also tends to symbolise the soul and death. I want to use a similar light/ magical style in my animation when the grandfather is with the grandchild to make it look heavenly. 

The Art of Drowning - Diego Maclean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIIcXRbwyvY&index=5&list=PL87F29739173A9FC7

I still like this animation because of the sketchiness as well. I feel like this style is what i am looking for with my animation and it portrays the emotion well. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcUPie32IMo

Although this is just a quick little animation showing something you can do on after effects, i like the style of it. They way the colour is sometimes in the line and sometimes out is nice and i think it will suit my animation in the way that i do not want it to be perfect. 

I need to research more about the people that created these animation so i can learn more about their styles.

I also looked at this website http://www.illustrationweb.com/styles/loose it has a lot of artists who style is sketchy in black and white and also with colour. This website will be helpful to look at for ideas on style.

Next i looked at trees and since my animation would be focused around a tree i wanted to look at different styles of oak trees people had drawn. I made this collage

These two trees caught my eye. I love the sketchiness of the first one and along with the animation above i think they link in well together. The bottom one i like the colour and the way it is painted, it looks real and painted at the same time.  

Innovative - Week 3 - Animation 3

 For our animation we decided to take a scene from Hedgehog in the Fog and change it slightly. We chose the scene where he is alone in the fog and he is being scared by different animals. We though we would change the animals we would use so we weren't just copying the scene. Sandra wanted us to focus more on the fog and the atmosphere of the scene rather than having too much movement, which i feel as a group we accomplished.

I found this animation my least enjoyable to make, although i liked how it looks and the painting style we used shows the detail in the animals well, painting like this just isn't what i would chose to do myself.


https://vimeo.com/143995917

The link above is the first go of our animation without any sound.


This link is for the complete animation https://vimeo.com/143995918

I feel our animation turned out well and is what we wanted it to achieve. We changed the timings and took out frames to speed up certain areas of the animation, which adds to the scary atmosphere. We did struggle with the fog, which is what Sandra wanted us to focus on. It was hard to make it look real like Yuri's, and even though we used Google, no one really knew how to make it. I think how we created the fog looks good and you know it is fog, but i feel we need to research more about it because it could look better.

To make the animation we had to layer each bit, so the background was at the bottom, then the fog, then the mouse, and on the top was the fox bat and grass. This was hard to make sure everything stayed in the right place and so we had to stick parts down and make long strips of acetate to move certain parts.

The music also adds to the scene as it gets louder and jumps in when the fox scares the mouse and the bat has it's own music too. We used orchestral music similar to what Yuri used in his animations. If we were to do it again i would change some parts to make it more smooth but overall i feel we worked well as a group and our animation is good.

The pictures below are of the process.

 With the mouse Emily created side views for when the mouse turned and also detached the heads so that they could moved up and down, making the movement more real.

 The fox as created by Bethany with one layer of acetate sketched with marker pens for details, then a second layer of acetate with paint, which made the fox stand out. 

Advanced 2D - Week 2

In this lesson we looked at some of the animations we had chosen and then went to look at after effects. Since most of the class had never used it before we had a quick run through of some of things we could do on it also discussing exporting and importing and what we should export videos in.

This is what we did https://vimeo.com/144003786

I feel this part of the lesson helped and it got me thinking about i was going to create my overall animation and what i could do on after effects that i cannot do on TV paint.

We then went onto research our end project. I researched poems and new i wanted to do my animation based on a poem, because i like how you can take different meaning from a poem. When I listen or read poems I can imagine a story that goes with it and what it would look like at an animation.

I looked at these websites:

http://www.poemhunter.com/

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/browse/

http://www.familyfriendpoems.com

Our Animation is only 30 seconds long so i did not want a long poem, but i wanted something that i could play with and try different things with but at the same time people would understand the poem.

The one i chose to use is called:

Mighty Oak

Stand tall oh mighty oak, for all the world to see,
your strength and undying beauty forever amazes me.
Though storm clouds hover above you,
your branches span the sky,
in search of the radiant sunlight you
count on to survive.
When the winds are high and restless and
you lose a limb or two,
it only makes you stronger, we
could learn so much from you.
Though generations have come and gone
and brought about such change,
quietly you've watched them all yet still
remained the same.
I only pray God give to me the strength he's
given you,
to face each day with hope, whether
skies are black or blue,
Life on earth is truly a gift
every moment we must treasure,
it's the simple things we take for granted
that become our ultimate pleasures.

Innovative - Week 3 - Yuri Norstein

This week we looked at Yuri Norstein (Yuriy Norshteyn) http://norsteinstudio.com/ This link is for his studios website.
Yuri started as a carpenter who painted as hobby before he studied to become an animator. When he became an animator he worked on short films that were notable for how much detail they had and using a multiplane which made the animation look 3D.

One of the animations we looked at was Seasons (1969)

This short film was created and written for the song 'The Seasons: Autumn song' by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmMREVfXEqs
 His style is similar to that of Lotte Reiniger in that he uses cuts outs to create his animations. But he is also very different in that he uses paint and more colours and well as creating sculptures for parts.


 We next watched Fox and the Rabbit (1973)

This animation was one of the first animations he directed himself. I liked this film as i felt it was like reading a fairytale in a book. Each scene of the animation is created in a different section, which you see for yourself at one part in story. It's almost like turning a page in the book.

The last animation we looked at was Hedgehog in the fog (1975)

I found this animation most entertaining out of all the others because the story was sweet and the style of it is interesting, how it is painted. I like the use of light and dark throughout the story.
After looking through Yuri's work we were put into teams (Bethany, Emily and I) and we were asked to come up with our own animation in this style. We were also asked to concentrate on the fog and try and figure out how it was created.

Character Development - Week 2

 In the lesson we presented our top 3 favourite characters, which i have written about in a seperate post. After discussing them Emily helped us see if there were any links between the characters that we had chosen or if there were specific things about them that we liked.  I fou8nd i liked characters which: were self made, confident, intelligent (which they use for good), have deep emotional back stories or personal problems, went against gender stereotypes and were mischievous. 

We then went on to discuss about our characters we are creating and that it's not all about the look that they have but on the personality and how they can draw the audience in with who they are not what they look like.

Being able to write a good character sketch will help with this. A character sketch gives a snap shot about who the character is on the inside. It helps to give the reader a mental image of the character and gives little details about them like: how they talk/walk, how they do thing, and their morals/ values (if they have any). They should not tell the persons entire history.

Example:

The Script lab - http://thescriptlab.com/features/the-lists/829-top-10-character-introductions-in-film#
This link has the top 10 character introductions from film characters. This was useful to look at as it helped to understand how character sketchers were written for characters i had watched.

This example is from Good Reads - http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/character-description

“Say cheese!” the exasperated photographer shouted, as she pointed her camera toward the group of squirming children. Margot displayed her broadest, most convincing fake smile as she inched ever-closer to her younger cousin. Just as the photographer’s finger twitched over the shutter button, Margot leaned into her young cousin’s side and pinched hard. The boy let out a yelp, just as the camera clicked.”

 

From the above we can see that Margot is a mean girl who is very mischievous.  

 Another helpful link was The Empire Online - http://www.empireonline.com/features/50-greatest-animated-characters/ This link has the 50 best animated movie characters and why people like them.

Homework -
After researching the links above, i will write my own character sketch, which will help me to understand more about the essence of my character rather than just focus on what she looks like.

Innovative - Week 2 - Animation 2

 Complete task

For this task we were asked to create an animation based on the style of Lotte Reiniger. Bethany, Emily and i chose to use a scene from Peter and the Wolf, a play we were given in class to help with an idea, but we chose to change the scene slightly. The scene we chose was were the wolf eats the sheep. We wanted the wolf to look menacing and for there to be a creepy/scary atmosphere with a bit of comedy when it comes to eating the sheep and the wolf being disguised in a bush.

We liked how Lotte Reiniger had a faded background and so we chose to do the same. Although we didn't know if she painted her backgrounds we decided to cut it out of paper and put tracing paper on the top so it looked more faded and lighter than the images in the foreground.

Learning from the timing problems we had last week we made sure we timed the frames out better so it would be under 10 seconds when we had done it instead of having to cut bits outs. Which meant we didn't have to lose anything from the story.   

I feel the music we used helped to make the animation more atmospheric and to get across to the audience the emotions we wanted them to have.

 

All together i feel the animation is good and we worked efficiently as a team and we managed to split all the work equally so each of us had something to do and contribute, which was a lot harder to do for the animation last week . We got across the mood of the animation we wanted. If i could do it again though i would work more on the joints and the movement of the wolf. When we first cut out the joints there were too many and we didn't know where all of them went and so we need to make sure we are better organised next time.

 

Here are some of the pictures of the proces:

 

 

Advanced 2D - Week 1

 In this lesson we looked at the brief and had an introduction to the module. By the end of the 'advanced 2D' module we have to create a 30 second animation and show how we generated the idea, how we produced it and researched it, to show the flow of our work.

We the3n went on to look at narrative and non-narrative and what they meant as well as experimental and abstract animations. This helped us look at the style of animation we want to create and got us to think about possible what style of animation we want to go into in the future.

Narrative animation - is the art of telling a story which has characters and a structure (beginning, middle and end). It involves continuity and unity of style, along with dialogue.

Non-Narrative -
Abstraction- uses shapes and colours accompanied with music, but doesn't have a structure or continuity.
Experimental - does not have a conventional narrative.


After learning about the above, it can help us to look at the style of animation we want to create and research more in depth about it so we can start the production of our animation.

 Homework -
For homework, we were asked to choose a Narrative, Non-Narrative abstraction and experimental animations that we like to show in the next class.

 These are what i chose - i looked at future shorts

Non- Narrative - Experimental - 

Benga 'Baltimore clap'

I like how simple the animation looks and the use of only three colours which differentiates between the characters. I love the use of this animation to the sound as it it quite catchy and you want to clap along, although the animation can be slightly odd in places i think it makes the animation stand out more. It doesn't have a conventional narrative but uses colour and shapes along with the animation which makes it experimental.

When i researched about this animation i couldn't find a lot about how the animation was created. I did find that it was created by a Kristofer Strom for the artist Benga as the music video. He has done many other animation similar to this one fro other commercials and music videos.

Narrative - 

The Art of Drowning - Diego Maclean

I like the sketchiness of the animation and i feel that it goes well with the topic of death the poem is about, although the animation itself explores the lighter side of death. The poets name is Billy Collins who is also the narrator and his dull sad like tone of voice adds emotion to the animation.

Diego Maclean‘s 2009 graduation film from Emily Carr University, has had been successful in festivals such as: Sundance, SXSW, Toronto Int’l. Film Festival, and Annecy.
I feel Diego managed to show the lighter side of death through what he drew and a long with the poem you don't think the animation is just sad the part about the fish makes you laugh, and so you feel better about the death topic.

Below is the poem the animation is of:

I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.

After falling off a steamship or being swept away
in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope
for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand
turning the pages of an album of photographs-
you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.

How about a short animated film, a slide presentation?
Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph?
Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash?
Your whole existence going off in your face
in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography-
nothing like the three large volumes you envisioned.

Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance
here, some bolt of truth forking across the water,
an ultimate Light before all the lights go out,
dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage.
But if something does flash before your eyes
as you go under, it will probably be a fish,

a quick blur of curved silver darting away,
having nothing to do with your life or your death.
The tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all
as you sink toward the weedy disarray of the bottom,
leaving behind what you have already forgotten,
the surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds.


Non- Narrative - Abstract - 

 Walter Ruttmann - Opus IV

I like this abstract animation because i like how the light and dark messes with your eyes similar to an illusion.
When researching about this abstract animation i found that Walter was a designer and creator for Lotte Reiniger and many other people in Berlin. This animation was created in 1925 and he used different shapes and colours to go along with the music.

Innovative - Week 2 - Lotte Reiniger

In today's lesson we looked at Lotte Reiniger.

Lotte Reiniger was born June 2, 1899 in Germany. She is known for creating silhouette animations. Her first ever feature film 'The Adventures of Prince Achmed ' was released in 1926 and took 3 years to make with only her and 4 other people working on it.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

The above link is a clip from the feature film.

Cinderella 1922

The above link is for Lotte's Cinderella

I like this style of animation as it is very detailed and shows how you don't need to used loads of colours and amazing sketches to create a good animations. The use of black and white and music along with different shots can be very effective and atmospheric.

The Art of Lotte Reiniger

In the above link Lotte Reiniger herself shows how she goes about creating her animations, which was very useful to watch while we were making our own creations. 

Class Work:

In the lesson we were given a play called 'Peter and the Wolf' and split into groups. Bethany, Emily and I chose to work together.

We could then use this play to help us with an idea for a 2-10 second animation based on the style of Lotte Reiniger.
We decided to take the part about the wolf eating the sheep and animate that to be scary and comedic at the same time.

Character Development - Week 1 - Top 3 Character

I found this homework very difficult as i had lots of characters i liked but i had never thought in depth about why i liked them. This really helped with designing and creating my own character as well.


My Top 3 Characters are:

Tony Stark (Avengers)

I like Tony Stark as he not like a lot of other heroes. He's not an anti hero but he's also not the perfect hero either. He is used to living a playboy lifestyle and getting everything he wants and isn't really business minded instead he likes creating and experimenting with different creations. Which is why he leaves his assistant Pepper to do everything. I think this is why he so likable as a character and so believable. We have all heard of rich kids who has rebelled and spends all their money on random over the top things and get everything they want and he is the perfect balance of all this. This combination of these traits make him less annoying and paired with his sarcastic, cocky and funny attitude and personality you can't not like him.

Best quotes of Tony Stark

Rocket Raccoon (Guardians of the galaxy)

I chose Rocket as one of my top 3 because of his personality and attitude towards things. He is a gun slinging mercenary with a very chaotic personality, which he has become because of many years of genetic mutations. I think his back story makes the audience sympathise with him especially when he is angry and sad about what he has gone through. He is also funny and will say whatever is on his mind even for a short small character where most things are bigger than him, he doesn't care who he offends, he will in his mind 'kick their ass'.
Rocket first appeared in 1976. He was created by Bill Mantlo and Keith Giffen who initially called him Rocky Raccoon after the Beatles song of the same name. This is also where some of his traits and aspects of his character came from.

Rocket is my top character because of how he takes us on an emotional journey through Guardians of the Galaxy. He comes across as a very angry character but once you find out that when people call him rodent and raccoon how hurt he is you sympathise with him and he pulls you in further. The audience knows that he puts up a mean front to protect himself because he is lonely and many people can relate to this.

Rocket 'oh yeah' scene

Why Rocket is a good character


Terk (Tarzan)

I chose Terk as one of my top 3 because shes always been a childhood favourite of mine. I like the fact she challenges the male and female stereotypes as i always thought she was a boy because of the way she acted and what she did, i found out later that she was actually a female. She acts like an older sister to Tarzan which shows her kindness and they get up to mischief which is typical of most siblings which people can relate too.

 

Character Development - Week 1 - Idea 1

When i started researching for ideas for my character. Using Humans of New York first i went through looking at different peoples stories, seeing if anything would jump out at me. Eventually i found this post.

“I’ve fallen in love with literature. I try to read for one or two hours every day. I only have one life to live. But in books I can live one thousand lives.”

(Rasht, Iran) 

This quote gave me inspiration for a character who is shy in demeanor, quite plain, quiet and keeps to herself, but reads a lot of books. She then keeps adsorbed into the book and becomes the character she is reading about. Taking on their personality and style, which she herself does not have. 

INSERT SKETCHES HERE 

Character Development - Week 1 - Ideas Generation

In this module we will explore the process of character development, design and movement. By the end of the module I have to design a believable animated character and document the process.

In this weeks lesson we looked at generating ideas, this can from: listening to music, watching people and listening to their conversations and reading books. We firstly listened to the song "A Well Respected Man" by the Kinks. We listened to this as it shows hows people interpret things differently. People may have similar ideas but they are not going to have the exact same one. When i heard this song i thought the man might be a tall man that always wore a suit no matter what the event/occasion and was a very confident man. Other people had other ideas like: a serial killer when he is at home or being smart outside of his house and being really messy once he was home.

When then looked at how people watching and character hunting can help you with ideas.

Just watching/listening people in the street, on the
We looked at Humans of New York a photographer named Brandon takes pictures people wouldn't normally notice of people in the street. He blogs about the photos he takes and has a quote or story from the person the picture is of. He blog is s good way to find real like characters and stories.

Human the movie is another way at finding ideas. It's videos of different people talking about different parts of their life and is again a good way to find real stories and ideas for characters.

Classwork:

For our task in class we were split into pairs, Bethany and I chose to work together. Using the photo given to use we had to come up with 3 initial character ideas and the expand more on our favorite one and develop the character and answer questions about the character.

This is the picture we were given:

 The idea we came up with are

Idea 1:

Mowgli was raised in the wild by bears and so cannot communicate with humans. She is a mute and s communicates with the bears with grunting and animal like ways. Found by scientists they put her in a room with one of the bears and watch her as part of an experiment to see what she is like with the bear. We chose this one to look at develop first but after speaking to Emily we realised she was a secondary character and wasn't exciting enough to be a main character so we chose to develop a different character.
Idea 2:

A girl is isolated from society because of her family. She becomes awkward because of this and doesn't know how to communicate with people. We decided it was in a time period where it was acceptable to lock up the mentally ill and keep them hidden so she imagines herself away and free from where she is being kept. She has her own adventures in her mind while she trapped him her room.

Idea 3 - Chosen one to develop
Joe (because he is an average Joe) is a polite accountant and is very plain looking, in a way that if you past him in the street you wouldn't look twice. He is small physically and doesn't have anything really going for him. Since he was little he has loved everything to do with bears. He even wears bear themed clothing to work like: ties, socks, underwear. One day he bought a bear costume and ever since then whenever he puts it on he has confidence and feels like he can be himself and o anything.
 Being raised by his very over protective mother is a major reason to why he has a shy demeanor. The photo we were given above is when he told his girlfriend about the bear costume and about wanting to wear it more so he is confident all the time. As you can see it is a lot to take in and she doesn't seem to be taking it well. He doesn't regret telling he and is extremely happy he did, he can be himself truly now and be free and confident.

Above were the questions we were asked to think about.
      

Above are the answers the questions on Joe. When we got feedback from the class and Emily our idea had legs, however was seen to be a mockumentary based on the people who like to dress up in animal costumes on a daily basis.

This exercise was good as it showed me how you could make up a character at any time about anything but unless they have a good personality, good background story, have enough depth and are believable to the audience they aren't developed enough and the audience wont believe them. Which as this exercise has show is very difficult to do.

For homework we have to start researching ourselves for our assignment brief. I will use the research ideas from this lesson to do so.