project proposal + ext bibliography

Critical Review

FMP Week 8

This week I focused entirely on my animation as it hadn’t been finished yet I thought it would be a good idea to spend the entire week working on my animation and trying to get it finished before hand in. In the end of the animation, I didn’t have enough time to draw the back grounds for my final outcome. I also didn’t get to composite my stop motion animation I had done for my film into it in time, as I had only just finished the fully coloured 2d animation. Personally, I feel like I should have managed my time a lot better throughout this project, as I don’t think 100 percent of my attention was on my finished animation. I also feel like, I should have thought about the length of the movie itself. Despite the movie being a minute and a half long I was working at 24 frames per second, which was quite a lot. I still feel however, if I had started animating at the beginning of the 8 weeks, alongside working on my sketchbook would have probably helped me create a finished product that I would be proud to showcase.

I also feel that if I had managed my time better, I would have also been able to experiment more with the mediums I wanted to explore, such as 3D animation and paintings. If I had better time management I also feel like I would have had more time to create more outcomes from my experimentation I had already conducted such as the stop motion and the collage work. I also wanted to create puppets for my animation so I feel like if I had better time management during this project I would have had a much better and much more polished final outcome.

 

FMP Week 7 – Thursday

While I was animating I realised that for certain scenes, I would have to record shots of me performing the movements of the character for the animation so I could easily understand what the character was doing. I found out this is a common practice within animation so I decided to look into different examples of video footage reference for media.

All artists need reference in animation. Everything you draw or act through poses pulled out of your head are based off of your observations from life. However, there is a difference between referencing and copying directly from reference. The point of reference is to refer to something, you pull bits from the references you’re using to make something new . Reference should be to inspire your ideas and animation. You should alter a few things when working from reference:

• adapt it to your character
• enhance/exaggerate pivotal moments
• dont use what you dont like from the reference
• cut out the things you dont need.

You should never let your pride get the best of you and refuse to use reference. Even the best artists and animators use it, or study from reference in their own time so that they have expanded their mental library so they know what do do. With your reference you should not be rotoscoping you should just be using the reference video/image to study from or understand how the movement works.

What is rotoscoping?

Rotoscoping is an animation technique where animators trace over live action footage frame by frame. A modern example of rotoscoping is in the 2006 movie, ‘A Scanner Darkly’. Even though I don’t really like rotoscoped media as I feel like it can be somewhat pointless as you could just make a live action film, A Scanner Darkly uses rotoscoping to its advantage. Rotoscoping in the movie is used stylistically as well as a way of story telling as the characters can shift in and out of different people.

Another good example of rotoscoping is in loving vincent. Loving Vincent is a movie about Vincent Van gogh, and is rotoscoped through many oil paintings in the style of vincent van gogh. I feel like it is a good example of rotoscoping as it is used for a stylistic reasons, and makes sense as it represents the Van Gogh’s story through Vincent’s eyes.

FMP Week 7 – Tuesday

As well as animating, I decided that I would look into painters, as I wanted to look into different variety of media. One artist I looked into was Edward Hopper.

Edward Hopper was a realist painter from the twentieth century. Through his art work he reflected his own temperament in empty city scapes that he had painted. He had presented through his work that realism isn’t just what we see, but what we interpret the situation as. His work illustrates depression era America, where people were uncertain of what was going to happen, and people even questioned what it was like to be American. His artwork is set in cities, which would usually be bustling, his artwork captures moments of loneliness, emptiness and contemplation. The use of colour and how his scenes are empty, convey a strong sense of lonliness. This is apparent through his classic, ‘Nighthawks’ (1942).

In this work, people are hunched over the bar, the main light of the image being from inside, which lights up the dark sidewalk outside. This piece is very cinematic, through its perspective, use of light and shadow and the figures in his painting inhabiting these urban spaces.  Hopper captures the melancholy and loneliness of city life, through the figures, use of light and facial expressions. His work represent his personal inner experiences, the scenes he creates through his paintings are imagined. A lot of his work showcases troubled romantic relationships, couples feeling distant despite being right next to one another.

FMP Week 7 – Monday

I spent the majority of the day animating but I decided to do some research on some environmental/background artists.

An artist I looked into was Allison Belliveau-Proulx.

Allison Proulx, was formerly a Walt Disney and Hanna Barbera background artist in Burbank California. She has been working full time for the last 10 years. I really enjoy the use of different media within her work. She uses a mix of collage and painting to create beautiful atmospheric backgrounds that really evoke a sense of reality. When I see her artwork, it is similar to a photograph and really takes you into the scene which Allison has made. I really love her artwork, and hope to make a background with a similar style of mixed reality.

FMP Week 6 – Thursday

As well as animating today, I decided to do some research on artists who cover the theme of hoarding. Hoarding is a disorder where people acquires an excessive amount of objects, to the point that it will clutter a room. I wanted to look into the theme of hoarding because, after looking at Maika Elan’s photography series, I saw that a hikkikomori had locked himself inside of a kitchen, and had filled it with clutter and refused to throw away anything he had touched. Since I saw the link between the two, I thought it’d be a great idea to look into hoarding, and perhaps even relate it to my own character’s behavior. In the film.

I looked into a photographer Corinna Kern’s photography series ‘ George’s place’. In this series she had spent a year with the compulsive hoarder, George Fowler. People could barely access his house from all the clutter. George called it an ‘accumulated illness’. She eventually moved into his home in an attempt to understand his condition on a much more closer level. He had experienced living in post war times, in which there would be experiences of strong shortages. His behavior is in response to society where mass production and excess consumption had become the norm. George often goes out to eat in restaurants or cafe’s as his kitchen is inaccessible with all the clutter.

I feel like the research into hoarding will really push my ideas for background designs for the animation.

FMP Week 6 – Tuesday

Even though I was mainly working on the animation for my final outcome, I also did some research for my sketchbook which is relevant to my work. I decided to compare the studios Laika and Aardman, both animated stop motion studios.

Aardman is a british animation studio which is known for films made using stop motion clay animation techniques. They have also dabbled in 3D computer animation, however my main focus is their stop motion work. Their debut film was Chicken Run in 2000, which is the highest grossing stop motion film of all time. Aardman have been an established studio since 1972, with their first stop motion creation, Morph.

Studio Laika however, have only been a studio from 2005, which means they’re a fairly new studio for stop motion studio. They started in Portland Oregon and they had been creating films since. The CEO of Laika, had already been working as an animator on projects such as Eddie Murphy’s ‘The PJ’s’ years prior. Since, Laika has made 4 award winning films. Unlike Aardman, Laika puppets aren’t made of Plasticine. These puppets are made out of clay which is put in molds, and dried with an armature which goes under the puppet, so that it can be posed. The armature is made out of 10 gauge aluminium wire. Laika also used3d printing for the faces of the models, on the movie Kubo and the two strings.

Since I also needed to create some stop motion for my film, I decided I would start today. To model my character for my film, I used some colourful Plasticine I had, and went off of the sketched design I had in my sketchbook.  I had created an octopus with pink tentacles.

Since I was going to animate it, I used my phone for the camera, and ‘Stop Motion Studio’. I didn’t make an armature for him, as I tried that out and it failed as the wire was too hard to bend so I couldn’t really move the character with ease, which I can do with Plasticine. I then used a pen, to move the octopus’ limps without damaging as they were delicate. Using a pen to move the tentacles also gave me a little more accuracy in control because i wouldn’t be bending or squishing the Plasticine between my fingers. I then took a picture for each different frame.

Bcecause I also wanted to put this in my animation, I decided that it would be a good idea to rotoscope these images and cut out the octopus from the background as I didn’t have a stop motion set. To do this, I took each image into Clip Studio Paint, and I used the selection tool, as well as manually lasso’d the outside of the octopus to select the background and delete it so that I could have a transparent image.

After I had all the transparent images I had made a looping gif of the creature so I could see how his tentacles would move.

I feel like it had a pretty good outcome. To improve, I probably would have used a tripod to stablise my camera, or stablise the octopus through adjusting the images in post digitally.

FMP Week 6 – Monday

I worked on my animation but I also did some research.

The style of into the spiderverse.

Spiderverse is an inspirational movie to my project. The creators of spiderverse wanted the idea to take the real world and blend it with the comic book world. A lot of the textures they used in the film were hand painted in an impressionistic way. I feel like 2d films are all creatively starved and all follow the Disney Pixar mold, where all of the animated characters look the same. Spiderverse however challenges the popular aesthetic of these films. The interesting thing about spiderverse is that is plays into alot of 2D animation rules through the use of squash and stretch which is the principle of animation applying a constrasting change of shape, from squashed pose to a stretch pose, which evokes the feeling of flexibility and life. Spider likes to apply these rules to the animation in the film. which gives the movement a unique animated/comic book look unlike modern 3d animated features where everyone moves normally and the goal is to be as realistic as possible.

Spiderverse is also a very unique film which has inspired me as it uses both 3d and 2d within the film. This is through drawn scenes, or graphics which are drawn on the frames. It truly gives spiderverse a great comic book feel and aesthetic which is iconic.

The film also uses exagerrated movement to give it a true comic book feel. Spiderverse inspires me as it uses a mix of different mediums for a great final outcome, which is what I would like to do. Use mixed media in my film.

 

FMP Week 5 – Thursday

I was working on my animation for the majority of the day today, but I also decided that i would like to work on my sketchbook through doing some research. Since I had looked into the graphic designer Antonio Vicentini, who had experimented with animated collage in beck’s music video ‘wow’, I had decided that it would also be a good idea to look into a collage artist who focuses on collage as a main medium. Through some research of different animated collage artists, I found Joseba Elorza.

Joseba Elorza had spent his mornings as a sound technician in a radio station and he would spend his evenings working on collages. Gradually he started to make a living as an illustrator and artist. I really enjoy Joseba Elorza’s work. His work mixes images from the 50’s and natural environments, which has an underlying modern theme to his work. His collage is digitally created, and he also animates his collage work, which is one of the main reason I researched into Elorza, as I want to use animated collage in my work. Since his collage work is digital, he doesn’t use stop motion for his collage work which would be done with an animation on paper being photographed. However, he uses  tweens in his animation.

Tweens, short for inbetweening is the process of generating intermediate frames between two images to give the appearance that the first image evolves smoothly into the second image. Not only does he use animation tweens in his work yet he mixes video footage he has rotoscoped, in front of a background or in a certain scene. The video footage he uses is usually from 50s and presents the same aesthetic and style that is representative in his other work as well.

I decided that I  wanted to also try and create a collage similar to Elorza’s collage work.

For this, I took two images, one of some teenagers from the 50s dancing, and an image of a cliffy sea side with crashing waves, I took the image of the teenagers and used the lasso tool in clip studio paint to select all of the stuff outside of the teens so that I could select the outside, and remove all the background, just making a transparent image of the two. I then juxtaposed the two dancers with the wave crashing in between them.