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

(Click on page to view in full)

Notes

(Click on page to view in full)

A Study into the Dynamics of Animation

UP : ‘Tie Sequence’

The most recent Dreamworks film to be released; ‘Up’, is abundant in its believability and realism with every movement mimicking life flawlessly. Not only is it honed down to every last detail it is also a stunning thing to witness. Watching the behind the scenes of most Dreamworks films you see that before they start to animate they film every sequence in real life with real people in order to trace the movement with CGI. For a section of the opening sequence where the main character's wife fixes a series of different neck ties, everything right down to the material is lifelike. They study the movement of fabric, the manipulation of the material's pattern as the movement is carried out, every cloth dip and shadow all so they can apply this to the animation.

I have been explained to about how, in animation, even the simplist movement needs to be carefully considered extensively in order to seem realistic. A prime example of this fact is the bouncing of a ball. An animator would have to consider the energy gained and lost with every ball's bounce, every little contraction and expansion of the ball itself as it hits and leaves the ground, the ball's material and how it would react to the movement...all thing

Air – ‘Sing Sang Sung’ Music Video'

Final Project Treatment (Entitled: 'Side Effects Include...')

A spotlighted wall canvas will be interrupted by a man rising into up, taking the spotlight. You see the man has between his finger and thumb a small black dot, which he examines for a few moments. After this examination he places the dot in his mouth, savouring the taste. After a short while he starts to look uncomfortable before descending into a full blown panic, gripping his stomach and holding his throat as if being strangled. Before long, black liquid starts pouring from his ears, nose and mouth, travelling down his body and slithering onto the floor. The black mass travels a short distance before forming into a leech like form, saying something to the camera before burrowing itself into the floor. The camera moves to a bird’s eye view shot over the spot where the shape burrowed, seeing from above another black mass ebbing up into a circular shape, before a hand takes it between its thumb and fore-finger. The film will then be free to start over; a film enabled to repeat.

A Pixilation by Alvaro Posadas

Pixilation from Alvaro Posadas on Vimeo.

Realización: Juan Flesca
Equipo Creativo: Juan Flesca, Bruno Mantoani
Producción: Marta Delgado
Post-producción: Álvaro P.Posadas
Dirección de fotografía: Sebastian Sarraute
Sonido: Juan Flesca, Bruno Mantoani
Música: Carpo Cortes
Locución: Mario Catelli, Sebastian Sarraute
Actor: Mario Catelli
Soporte técnico: Dácil Manrique de Lara Millares
Make Up y Pelos: Isa Molteni

This film is a good example for the type of thing I want to achieve with my final piece. As I’m not creating a hand drawn animation (as neither Jim nor I enjoy or feel particularly good at it) we’ve decided to make a pixilation, drawing in simple customisations on the collected camera shots in Photoshop in post production. Although this film deals with pre-production object compositions and uses live action tools, the camera angles and the pace of the piece is similar to what I envision for the final film. Although the film is short, it’s obvious that there has been a vast attention to detail with lighting, the objects involved and their positioning within the frame. As I won't be including objects in my final production this isn't a consideration, but I will have to pay some amount of attention to lighting. The face of the man included in the piece is clear and highly detailed, which I want to apply to mine; I would like both the person and the dot to be clear to the audience. The sound effects of this piece are minimal which is a consideration I'd have to make when I've uploaded and played the frames in sequence. I would like to ideally include audio, but it isn't a necessity.

Research - 'The Complete Animation Course...' by Chris Patmore

Page 130 - 131: Camera Techniques

Although the information in this book is primarily based on drawn and digital animation and now pixilation, this section helps me with establishing appropriate camera angles and effecting. It states the importance of zoom to create a 'menacing' effect, which is a similar feeling I want to express with the camera movement in my production.

Page 42 - 43: Pixilation

This section reminds me of the '24 frame per second' requirement of pixilation, but I don't think I'll be keeping to this stipulation. Usually when I film pixilation, it's a very much improvised experience with little or none pre-meditation. I point and click until some kind of movement is distinguishable and I'm happy with it. I want to make sure this pixilation is jerky, which this book states adds to a production's 'charm and uniqueness', which I agree with. The section also stipulates that the camera should be mounted on a tripod, but I'm planning on taking picture's hand held, which is what I've done previously to good effect. I have tried tripod mounted pixilations before which have come out equally as well, so I don't really distinguish the two methods. It notes that pixilation is used primarily for comedy, which I can see and identify with as I want to make my final production, although sinister in content, somehow comical in its delivery. I will only know if I can achieve this in post production, though. The warnings of changes in scenery are relatively irrelevant, as I will be filming my subject in a studio with a plain background. I suppose I would have to consider lighting changes, but I feel that lighting fluctuations will enhance my production further.

Metamorphosis by Quintin Gonzalez

Metamorphosis from Quintin Gonzalez on Vimeo.

Metamorphosis
2008

Metamorphosis is an experimental 3D short animation about the experience of an individual transformation as applied to social consciousness. The concept of metamorphosis directly addresses the idea of individual transformation brought on by societal and political realities of cultural assimilation. The changing form references a more symbolic manifestation of that reality when combined with the language of motion and sound. The experience of society's survival becomes a heightened expression that is achieved through the arrangement of reverberation and movement.


I find this piece to be representitive of a human's range of emotions and the slow drudge of their transitions into each other. The disturbing and sinister audio relays negativity making watching this an uncomfortable experience, yet at the same time I can't help but remain transfixed. I imagine that the animator created a ghosting effect by drawing different levels of ghosting in each frame. Animation allowed the maker to customise the colours and patterns of each individual ghost level, which can't be done simply with an applied default effect in a post production programme. This film also proves to me how animation is big on deceiving the audience, as in before I fully analysed this piece, I didn't think that this animation was a good example of effort as the effecting of the images look pre-programmed and click-drop applied. Now I know that every simple looking effect has been pain-stakingly applied, being drawn in frame by frame. That is the main goal in every animator's mind, I imagine; make it look like it was a simple process, so the audience won't be pre-occupied with wondering how long it must have taken to make. This can taint the audience's viewing experience.