Illustration Update Part 2

I have completed my 'Art' animations and decided to keep to my idea of black and white with hints of colour. I decided to use rainbow colours following her along the walls next to her which built up and up until the final scene where other imaginative things happen such as plants growing and flowers appearing etc.

Illustration Update

I have been spending most of the time since the last post working on my illustrations. I have completed all of the drawings for the 'Everyday' scenes and have now started work on the 'Art' scenes. I have begun to think about changing my initial idea to have full colour in my 'Art' scene and instead, I might use a mixture of Black and White with hints of colour as I feel the animation looks more effective in black and white but the surreal parts could be done in colour.
Some stills from my work:

Technique

I have begun to draw my frames for my animation and have followed this process:

-I filmed some video footage on my camera of all of the needed scenes

-Using a converting software called 'Pazera free MOV to AVI converter' and 'Virtual Dub' I changed the video from footage to a sequence of still images

-I load the images into photoshop and using a wacom tablet, I've traced one copy of each 5 backgrounds then I paste each new image with character movement on top and rub out the lines of the background and re-draw the character onto the background and repeat for each image.

I've found it has been a lengthy process so far but it has still been effective because I am getting results which I had hoped for.

The Backgrounds:

Search for Locations

I have taken a few photos of locations which I will use in my animation, I have used local streets which will all look similar for continuity throughout the animation and have lots of potential walls and surfaces to animate on for the surreal scenes.

Pablo Picasso

While I was researching Michel de Certeau's work on everyday life, I came across a quote from Pablo Picasso which I felt summed up the message of my work well. It was:'Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life'
I have decided to place this quote at the beginning of my work with 2 buttons underneath saying 'dust' and 'art' and the dust button will lead the viewer to the everyday clip and the art button will lead the viewer to the dream like clip. I thought this would be the most logical and neat way to lay out my work instead of just letting it play through twice with no explanation. Instead it now gives the viewer a quote to think about and once they watch the two videos it will help to suggest what Picasso and de Certeau were trying to say about the everyday.

Visualising Data

I looked at various examples of how people have visualised data in creative ways. I picked out some which I thought were the most effective and inspiring and used them to influence my own attempt at visualising a statistic.

 

Some of the examples I came across reminded me of Radiohead's music video for 'House of Cards'. On a website exploring the making of the video it says:

'No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.'
(http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/#the-making-of)

I found the technique fascinating and I really like the look and style of the results. Even though I am unable to re-create the actual technique, I can use the style the technique produced to help influence my own examples of visualising data.

I looked for random but interesting statistics online and chose to represent 'The typical person breathes 370,000 cubic metres of air in their lifetime'

For this first statistic I decided to keep it quite simple by using solid shapes and colours to represent the data. I chose a cube to represent the cubic metres and the colour blue to represent air. I also aimed to space them out in a random sort of style to represent the nature of air as a gas rather than as a lump of something solid.

Mars Advert

While making my storyboard I remembered an advert which followed a similar kind of story to my idea. It was used in 2005 to promote Mars bars and it followed a character who walked around eating a Mars Bar but as he passed things, lights switched on and things began moving. I thought this was quite relevant to my work as it seems to follow the same idea of changing your mundane routine with imagination and colour.

Michel de Certeau

This week I have been thinking about the narrative of my work and it's context and I remembered coming across Michel DeCerteau in my Culture and the Everyday module in my first year.
Michel de Certeau’s analysis of everyday life was a theory which interested me on the course and something that stuck out was when he writes ‘If it is true that the grid of ‘discipline’ is everywhere becoming clearer and more extensive, it is all the more urgent to discover how an entire society resists being reduced to it’. (De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life)
I would like to explore this idea visually in my animation and show ways in which you can escape the grind of everyday and look for poetry within routine tasks.

Rotoscoping

My research into Video and Animation has led me to a technique known as 'Rotoscoping'.


Film director Richard Linklater has produced some films using a rotoscope effect which I looked at. His 2006 film 'A Scanner Darkly' was filmed digitally then animated using interpolated rotoscope over the footage to create its original visual style. I watched the full length film and was really inspired by how it looked and just how effective the technique was.

I also looked at another of his films called Waking Life. I liked the slightly more surreal style of image in this film and the way the lines an edges are less refined and quite blurry. It creates a dream like feel to the film which definitely inspires my ides for my own work.

Another Kanye West video cropped up during my research but this one was for his song 'Heartless'. The video has a rotocoped style to it but I particularly admired the detailed backgrounds used in the video. I liked the way that even though he was formed from simple colours and lines, the backgrounds stand out and are still an important part of the visuals.

During the week I watched Jason Reitman's 2007 film Juno.
This film has influenced my ideas massively as I really like the visual style, the use of colour and black and white and the way she walks past different styles of background. I also thought the movement of the text worked well with the music.

After looking at such a big variety of hand drawn / rotoscoped animations, the Juno sequence really stood out for me and I've decided to use it to influence my ideas further. I think the simplicity of the backgrounds but detailed character animation could be something I could recreate in my own way. I now plan to come up with a more solid narrative and idea for my work now that I have a visual style to work with.

500 Days of Summer

Yesterday I watched 500 Days of Summer which had some short animated sequences in it.

The top image begins as video footage and slowly becomes drawn bit by bit until the finished product. I like the illustration style and I like the way it changes from film footage to a drawn image, I think its a really interesting technique and very eye catching.

The second image is only partly animated but I included it in my research as I liked the use of a minimal amount of colours and the way the buildings are drawn is a style which could be transferred to my own work.

Animation & Video

I've thinking about how I want my animation to look and what style and technique I could use. I wanted to do something hand drawn but don't feel confident enough to do it from scratch so I have been looking at different kinds of animation which use video footage and illustrations.


The first example I came across was Aha's video for Take On Me. I like the style of illustration and the use of black and white sketches with colour video. I would like to have this sort of look to my own work.

Another example is the 1964 Disney Mary Poppins film which also uses film footage as well as animations. I watched various clips on youtube and looked at how the two formats interacted which was really effective and I began thinking about how a character would fit into it's surroundings in my own work.

Initial Ideas

My idea so far is to have a parallel narrative which follows a girl walking a regular journey home however, one of the clips will be realistic and normal and the other will be dream like and colourful to suggest that she is using her imagination to alter her everyday. I am unsure at this point how to display the narrative, I could either have a split screen playing at the same tame or make a menu page which chooses which narrative you watch.
I have included my initial story board:

Telling Stories

This weeks task was to document time passing using words, drawings and textures. I documented time passing but it also fit into the other brief of a boring event too as I documented time passing in my house while I was on my own!
I first thought about what I could see and listed all the things in front of me and in my room. Then I began to list sounds such as music which was playing or noise in the road outside. I drew various things I was drawn to or could see in my room and finished with taking textures from various places such as the brickwork on my fireplace and a raised effect on a card i had stuck on my wall. I really made me think about how to document the things around me in great detail and capture as much as I can to create an accurate representation.
I was drawn to small designs on items such as images and graphics on my tea cups, book covers and cards. I also thought alot about the sounds I heard and was quite surprised how silent things were once I turned my music off as I could only hear the buzz of my speakers which were left on. I definitely need to put more thought into sound for my final project and whether there will be any and if so, how realistic/loud/abstract will it be?


My images from the task.....

     
 

Kinetic Typography

During class we began looking at Kinetic Typography. The technique uses moving text to portray ideas and emphasis using short sentences or single words at a time and stringing them together to link. I've looked into some more examples which I thought were effective and could be influential to my work.


I first came across Saul Bass's opening sequence for Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest which is possibly one of the best known examples. It uses white text and a simple background but with the music and movement it creates a really effective title sequence.

I had a look into animated typography in a range of different things such as music videos, films, opening sequences, adverts and youtube videos.
The first example I looked at was Kanye West's music video for 'The Good Life'.  The animation was done by a graphic designer called 'So Me' whose work I was familiar with from various work with Ed Banger records. I love the look of the video, I think the use of coloured graphics with black and white video looks really effective and I like the style the designer too such as the range of typography he uses and the look of the images in the video. 











This Film Is Not Yet Rated

Another example I found was the trailer for the film 'This Film Is Not Yet Rated' by Kirby Dick. It uses kinetic typography and simple animations to create a fast paced description of the film. The language used is supposed to be short and shocking which is emphasized by the kinetic type's movement. It uses key phrases from the point the narrator is saying and adds small comical character animations to illustrate the point. I love the simple style of the characters and the whole look of the piece. I think it makes an effective and funny trailer for the film and the movement and style of the text is something I will look into further for my own final work as I think it would be effective if my work was narrated or had a song with lyrics.

Mad Men Title Sequence

The Mad Men opening sequence is one of my most favorite TV show titles ever. I think the dark silhouette against a light and simple background is really effective and I like the way the background is drawn. Its a clear a simple outline with minimal colour which is a contrast to the bright red typography in the name. The overall finished product with the colour contrast and the key character is a combination and look which definitely inspires me to try something very similar.