The Sea Project

We were set this project ages ago but I've just been lazy and not posted anything about it, until now. On this project I'm working with Eline and Olivia (check out their blogs: elinelindaasanimation.blogspot.com and oliviareaveley.blogspot.co.uk) and our group was given a sound clip from an interview with a girl who was injured while surfing. All three of us were really glad we were given this one as we felt it stood out from the rest. 

Here is the transcript:

Hello my name's Ellise. Ermm I was involved in a surfing accident. One day I was surfing at Porthmoer Beach and then while I was on a wave I fell off, and when I fell off my board wentforward and hit someone else's board, so as soon as I popped up from the water, the board came back and hitme, with a fin, in the face. And sliced my face.I thought that I'd bruised my face cuz I had this really sharp pain but then when I looked at my hands there was loads of blood and all on my wetsuit, it was horrible. And I had to have 8 stitches. I've got a, a little, like a half moon shape on my face. In 2 years the doctor said I can get it removed, but I don't think I want to, cuz I quite like it. 

One of the first things my group did was go on a little journey to check out the beautiful Porthmoer Beach for ourselves to get reference material. Below are some of the photos I took.

Final Experimental Film In All Its Glory

So yeah that was my film..... below is a lot of ramblings pinpointing my reasonings and thoughts....... read on if you're bored and you have some time to kill....... 

I decided to use the track 'Billy The Kid' as it had both fast and slow parts so that I could have calm and dramatic sections to create variety and interest. The music sounded very dramatic in places and through brainstorming sessions I decided it sounded like a war, due to the track's use of call and response. The sharpness and sinister quality of many of the sounds led me in the direction of a nightmare and the strange, flowing quality of dreams lends itself to morphing and random imagery. This brought me to the theme of someone trying to wake up from a nightmare, when there is a battle to become conscious.

I listened to the music and made notes of what I associated the different sounds with, then thought up imagery that had a slight sinister quality to it and I also included repeated imagery of wide open eyes, linking with the waking up theme. I decided that the animation would start and end with pixelation, with the middle 'dream part' being created with charcoal, paper and paint as the use of a person as the thing being animated is visually vastly different to art materials being used, emphasizing a change in state (the real world vs the dream world). I planned my animation out thoroughly, working out how long I had to make sections last in order to hit the beats, which actually ended up being fairly accurate, with only a bit of tweaking needed during editing. I then photographed the whole dream sequence in one long shot as the whole thing morphs from one thing to the next, leaving the shooting of the actress until the end.

Creating the right lighting was difficult during the first and last scenes of the person as I wanted it to look like night time. This did not work well as the photographs came out quite grainy due to the low light and the light source ended up too close to the person's face making them too bright. The face paint was also very difficult to apply and looked quite messy, again the light was far too bright and gave quite bad images. My actress had to turn away from the camera to let me apply the face paint, so the images jump around a lot. I had an issue with the morphing from the red dripping out of the actress's eyes and into the next scene. It was meant to flow but the change in background and difference between ink and face paint meant it did not flow as I had hoped and I had to have a change in shot rather than a downwards pan which is what I wanted. There were no further problems and the rest all went quite smoothly, apart from the paper curling when the winged creatures dive bombed the ground.

The sections that worked especially well were the charcoal runner which then morphs into birds which fly off and the very fast moving scribbles and stripes, as I think they fit the music very well and look good visually. I decided after I finished that I no longer liked the look of the paper winged creatures as they looked quite amateurish, although I do think their movements work well with the music. It probably would have looked better if I animated them in charcoal. The entire dream sequence may have worked better if it was all done in charcoal as charcoal's smudgy qualities do have a dreamlike, half formed feel to them and its dull black colour is very sombre (the reds I used were too bright for the sinister atmosphere I was after). Perhaps it was wrong to mix media as drastically as I did during the middle section but I do believe it was worth trying out, as I did want it to be quite chaotic.

If you bothered to read all that then respect is due! And I need to thank Olivia for letting me scrawl all over her face and shine bright lights in her eyes, so yeh, thanks dude!

Deep Space

Here are some watercolour attempts at creating deep space. Everything gets more and more blue as it gets further and further away, until it goes very pale and grey. I'm pleased with these apart from the second one, where I accidentally made one of the mountains too bright a blue, which made it appear to much in the foreground. I think stylistically the last one is the best as I've managed to create more of a supernatural kind of atmosphere, with the reddish colours and gnarled trees, but it looks a bit flat. The first one is the best at indicating deep space, I think this is because the grass and leaves are really close to the camera and the closest trees extend off the page vertically, giving more of a contrast in size.

A Random Walk

This is a rather random walk I made. I made the legs kick fairly high behind and then raise up high before the contact position, as well as making the arms swing out away from the body. It was an experiment... It's too weird to be used again I think but it was still worth trying. The legs make the person look like they're taking huge steps.

Bat-Bird

As part of my experimental project I wanted to have a creature flying as some of the music reminds me of huge wings beating slowly, so I designed something that was a cross between a bat and a bird. I then watched some reference videos of bats flying and copied the key poses from that.

I wanted to use paper cut outs so I made creature bodies and then cut out wing shapes for each key pose so that I could just switch over the shapes while I animated.

Here's the test I did of how the creature would move.

Charcoal Run Cycle

Ok so this is a test shot for my experimental project. I did it with charcoal and chalk. The first half is on twos and the second half is on ones. I'm going to combine both so they fit the music. I'm pretty pleased with the smudgy charcoal style.

I didn't think there was enough going on so I added some spidery looking flashing things in this second attempt. I think in the actual thing I'll make the background all chalky white... or maybe black to contrast the white rubbings out of the running dude.

Walk Cycle Attempt 2

Here's another walk cycle. A slightly different angle and hey look I coloured it in! I didn't clean it up much so it's pretty messy. I was trying to really thrust the shoulders back and forth with this one and I think it makes the guy look a bit angry/sulky/aggressive/ something along those lines.

Walks

Here's my vanilla walk for motion studies class. First attempt at using Flash for drawing frame by frame, as my previous run ins with Flash have only used its tweening functions to animate, or as with my very first ever walk cycle (it's on my youtube!) creating objects on layers and then moving them about rather than doing any more drawing. It definitely looks better when you just draw each frame out though. I used my fancy new Waccom tablet and found it pretty difficult transitioning from a pencil, as I just can't get smooth lines. This walk took a ridiculous effort to clean up the lines, so much more time than if I'd used pencil and paper.
HOWEVER, despite all my whinings, Flash does have some really positive points! It is so easy to just check how your animation's looking and adjust things. So I'm going to use it more from now on.
So the walk... well I'm happy with it for now. The main thing for me to think about was opposing the shoulders to the hips as I haven't done that before. It is a bit stompy for a normal walk though.

Experimental Test Numero Tres

And so I give you my third test...
This time: paper!
But just to be awkward there's a bit of another ink test tacked on the start :)
Anyway, I really liked using paper, it's fun to animate with and gives a bit more depth/ texture to the image. I think the exploding eyes work well, so I'll most likely use them in my final film.

Experimental Test Numero Dos

This is the second of my experimental animation tests. This is using charcoal on wood. I feel this is waaaaaaay better than the ink test. I like the smudgy effect of the charcoal and it's completely controllable, but can be roughly applied and or smudged to loosen it up. White chalk can be used to rub out the black, so you can actually animate something without using morphing or something. For the last swirl I applied cooking oil to a rag and then drew into the charcoal with it, giving a stronger effect as it pushed the charcoal about more. But the problem with this is that once it dries you can't apply chalk as it doesn't show up and charcoal, once applied, can no longer be smudged. I'm definitely using some of these techniques in my animation.