Research Sources

Books:

• Women & Animation - A Compendium
• The Complete Animation Course by Chris Patmore
• The Focal Guide to Shooting Animation

Films:

• I Met the Walrus
• A Pixilation by Alvaro Posadas
• Metamorphosis by Quintin Gonzalez
• 'Sing Sang Sung' by Air
• Dreamworks' 'Up'

Equipment List

• Digital camera
  
• Bamboo digital drawing kit


• Adobe Photoshop


• Adobe Premier Pro

Jim and I booked out the T-319 studio from 12-5 on December 2nd 2009.

Side Effects Include...Evaluation

Animation has very really been my strong point, so this assignment didn't fill me with an awful lot of joy. I decided to go for the method I knew I could do best; Pixilation. Even though it isn't, as Andy said, 'pure animation', I am in no way good at drawing, so it seemed to make sense to take the route I did. I had just started to play with the art of rotoscoping, both in the previous music video module and in this current one. Jim drew up a storyboard of our main idea, developed from a talk with Chris about ideas to consider. Our idea was to create a film of a man picking up a black dot, eating it then emitting black liquid from various face orifices, travelling across the floor before being picked up again, for the process to repeat. The actual process of filming was quick as Jim, the subject, felt ill. So, I felt the recording process was rather rushed, as neither of us were particularly enthused about situation. After collecting a few photos resembling some kind of sequence, Jim went home and I rented out a Bamboo digital drawing kit. As I said before, I don't have much faith in my drawing abilities, but I managed to keep my drawings fairly continuous, spending 1-2 hours drawing in the desired shapes on photoshop, using the Animation bar to go from frame to frame. For the soundtrack I highly effected the introduction to Tim Heideckers 'Theatre of Magic' after accidentally playing the sequence to piano music from another computer. I felt the gooey sounds accompanied the visuals well, with the audio giving the film a paranormal element too. Overall I'm quite pleased with the finished result, considering it as 'not bad for someone who strongly dislikes animation'.

Final Production

This is the final film, fully rotoscoped and soundtracked. It took me around an hour to film and an hour to draw in the additional elements. Although on reflection I wish I would have tried rotoscoping over the original footage (see previous blog) I'm still pleased with the result of this.

Filming Result on Dec 2

This is the result of the filming. I was initially going to rotoscope over this sequence, but I zoomed into the image and rotoscoped over that instead, preferring the other version.

'Women & Animation - A Compendium' Edited by Jayne Pilling

Talking with Caroline Leaf. (Page 41)

This book includes interviews and profiles on female animation artists from as early as the 1930s. The book doesn't include any accounts of artists in the modern day, but it does provide a good insight into the development of women's reputation within the animation industry. One woman in particular, Caroline Leaf, was well known for experimenting with sand in her pieces. She created it whilst studying in a carpentry center in Harvard University (1968) and shares her experience with Talie Schenkel, who like most of the interviewers in the book is a friend of hers. (This, as a side note gives the book a warming sense of sisterhood and familiarity that I think female readers can appreciate best.) It is stated that Leaf didn't actually have any faith in her drawing abilities at first. This I can relate to, as I don't have any faith in my drawing ablities either. Yet Leaf took animation in a different direction, bringing in a method that was still fairly new...using sand to shape characters. Her peers were very impressed by this, with famous animator Norman McLaren (director of such productions as 'Neighbours' and 'Narcissus') being particular in awe of this new method. The book mentions how the sand's abilitiy to create a flowing quality created strongly metamorphic and 'dreamlike' quality. (As I am assessing this after completing my final animation, I wish I experimented with this form of animation instead of going back to pixilation. I will definitely try something with sand in the future.) She, like most artists I've read about apparently fell into the world of animation after only having two choices of undergraduate courses: documentary and animation. This seems to be a pattern, where people with real success seem to stumble into their craft. It makes me wonder whether people like me (within live action film or animation) who are trying really hard to enter into the media world will actually get anywhere.

She said that in her class (taught by Derek Lamb) it wasn't the drawing that was important, it was the movement. As long as it was moveable, the class used it within the productions. (They would use such things as keys, shaving cream, pencils and coins...every day objects.) She said using sand didn't feel like drawing so she could ease in and enjoy the process, therefore making her productions better. It took her 6 months to make her most mentioned production, 'Sand, or Peter and the Wolf', which in turn has won many awards such as coming first in the student animation category at the 5th Annual Chicago International Film Festival in 1968. Leaf isn't the first to use sand in animated films. A man from Switzerland, Ernest Ansorge has been using sand in animations for years. By the tone of Leaf's comment, she didn't seem too impressed with his work and I'd imagine she wanted to be the first to think of this method. Everyone wants the recognition that comes with being a pioneer. After the success of this animation she spent a year in Rome, learning to draw and how to speak Italian. She was eventually called back to Harvard for a fellowship where she worked on the project 'Orfeo', composed onto glass.

'Side Effects Include...' Storyboard

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