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.

Comic Books

I had a look at some of my favorite comic books to compare different types of illustration, layout and style.

Catwoman

I've always preferred the older style images of Catwoman (1940s/1950s) I think the colour and style is really appealing and has become iconic. After looking at some of the newer versions, I felt they just looked too polished and lacked in character. I love the rough sketchy style of the image above and combined with the bold use of primary colours it really stands out and looks effective.

Ghost World- Daniel Clowes

 I am a massive fan of Daniel Clowe's work. My favorite is Ghost World which the images above are from. I like his simple style of illustration and especially the way he captures facial expressions. I think the use of one single colour in the book was very effective and gave it a permanent mood throughout the story. It would definitely be something I would consider doing when planning my final project.
Below is a sketch I did of one of the images from Ghost World. I did it to try drawing in a different style from how I usually do and I think it would be a good style to try and change and adapt into an animation as its a quick and simple style but gets the message across clearly.

The Moomins- Tove Jansson

I think the Moomin drawings by Tove Jansson are fantastic. I love the simplicity of her characters and the way shes gives them such expressive eyes to compensate for a lack of other facial features. I think she really succeeds in portraying their mood and emotion by doing this and it would be something else I would consider doing in my final project as it may possibly be a challenge to animate a character's mood and expression using only one part of the face but if done well it would look effective.

Promethea- Alan Moore

Although I always admire the simplicity of the other comics' styles above, When it comes to Promethea and Alan Moore's other works, I love the huge amount of detail and colour he adds to his work. His illustrations are almost photograph-like in some pieces and the way he lays out the separate cells or scenes are really unique. I think the first two images are really eye catching and the use of colour is the key reason for this. As much as I would like to do something in a similar style to Moore, I think in terms of making an animation, this style of illustration would be to too complex and time consuming for my first attempt.

The Lion King

This weekend I went to see The Lion King in 3D at the cinema and I began to look into the animation of the film. I had read when I was younger about the stampede scene taking years to complete.
The use of computer animation was still relatively new at the time and this helped the animators present their ideas in new and innovative ways. Similar techniques had been used earlier in Beauty and the Beast ('Be our guest' teacup scene) and Aladdin. In the scene several distinct wildebeest characters were created in a 3D computer program. They were then multiplied into hundreds and 'cell shaded' to look like drawn animation. Finally they were given randomized paths to simulate the realistic movement of a herd.
CGI supervisor Scott Johnston explains:

"Since the scene called for a stampede, we had to come up with a way that our animators could control the behavior of herds of wildebeests without having them bump into each other," says Johnston. "We developed a simulation program that would allow us to designate leaders and followers within each group. We were also able to individualize and vary the movement of each animal within a group to give them a certain random quality. Effectively they could all be doing different things with the library of behavior including slow and fast gallops, various head tosses and even a few different kinds of leaps."

Five animators and technicians spent over two years creating the two-and-a-half minute stampede sequence.

(Quote and Info taken from http://www.lionking.org/text/FilmNotes.html)

Animation Companies

In class we watched early examples of animation such as Walt Disney's 'Steamboat Willie' and explored how animation has evolved over the years.

I  then began to look at other animation companies such as Studio Ghibli based in Japan.
In Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away, movement is usually represented by drawing many lines around a character which gives it a sort of comic book feel to the visuals. It seems like quite an effective way to clearly show the movement of a character and would be a technique I could consider if I was going to do hand-drawn animation of a character. The amount of visual information which is given in the surroundings and background is also effective yet the characters are built up from simple illustrations which is a look I quite like and I hope to take some of this style and use it when creating my own work.

Task 2- Walking in the City

flâ·neur/fläˈnər/

Noun:

An idler or lounger.

The second week's task was to draw a line on a map of a route I used to walk where I used to live then take the map of Brighton and beginning at the station, walk the same route on Brighton roads.
My original route was from home to the bus stop where I used to catch the bus to work every morning. After plotting the same route on the Brighton map I was surprised to see that it followed a very similar route from the station to my new home in Brighton.
I aimed to take a photo every minute and take a variety of close ups as well as wide angle shots to capture a variety of images.


French Poet Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flâneur as "a person who walks the city in order to experience it". 
The task reminded me of work I did last year which covered Michel de Certeau's 'The Practice of Everyday Life'. His argument is that there is a ‘grid of discipline’ (Highmore, 2002) everywhere which is becoming more extensive which gives a sense of urgency to discover how an entire society can resist being reduced to power and control. De Certeau’s idea of resistance however should not be understood as oppositional, but instead creative.

In the chapter "Walking in the City", Certeau explains that what we experience is created by the strategies of governments, corporations, and other institutional bodies.
Certeau writes from the 10th floor of The World Trade Center in New York. He explains that the walker at street level moves in ways that are tactical and never fully controlled by the plans of organizing bodies because of people taking shortcuts in spite of the laid out route of the streets.
This links back to Certeau's main argument that our society may be controlled and shaped by power however, we should never fully give in to this and we should find our ways to resist, escape and find poetry in our everyday lives.


The idea of taking a pre-set route from elsewhere and applying it to a different city creates a new sense of poetry to an old habit or routine. Walking this route through Brighton was so different to walking it at home in terms of landscape, atmosphere, sounds and sights. It also showed me new routes through the back roads of Brighton which can reveal very different sides to a city as I began to notice little things like graffiti or different architecture which I would have otherwise missed.

Experimental Animation

After looking at early Animation in class I began to look into different kinds of Animation and remembered a film I had seen by Jan Švankmajer which used very obscure animation techniques.Švankmajer gained a reputation for his distinctive style of
animation which included a mixture of stop-motion, exaggerated
sounds and live action footage. His work is surreal yet funny and one of his trademarks is working with clay models and puppets.

His feature length version of Alice in Wonderland named 'Alice' (1988) particularly stood out due to the mix of animation types within the film and his odd subjects such as a taxidermy rabbit and creepy dolls:

Task 1- Exploring

The first task was to be an explorer:

I chose the new house I had moved into a week before as the subject as I still hadn't fully explored it myself. I found that I was particularly drawn to both intended patterns such as wallpapers as well as natural patterns. I also focused on textures and colours which I found around the house.
I photographed, traced and sketched the things I found and have documented them below.
I found this task very interesting. In the beginning I wasn't really sure what to focus on but as I worked  I became drawn to certain things to document such as the wall paper rubbings I did.

Animation Part 1

In week 2's workshop we began by looking at Muybridge's photography and the early stages of animation. He used a series of still photos placed next to each other to represent the movement of the subject as he photographed it. It is an interesting way to document movement as it can help with hand drawn animation if you took photos of something moving first then studied each photograph to look at how each component moves. If I include hand drawn animation in my final project i will experiment first with taking still shots of a moving subject then use these to help me draw the different positions of the character.

We then used the Praxinoscope to view how still images, similar to Muybridge's, can become animated. Using a template for the Praxinoscope, I created my own sequence by drawing images of a flying bird which could be used: