http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acay3S2PhSg Its a great piece of work, and a great collaboration between the musicians and the animators.
It also shows the workings of a simple stop frame animation which is very interesting indeed. I love it.
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Friday, 20 February 2009
Backgrounds
These are some backgrounds i have done using different mediums. The top one i have used pencil and then scanned it into photoshop and then used gradients, layers and various selection techniques to get the feel of a desert at sun-up. The problem i had with the printing of the background was that the colour management chain from the macine t the key drive and then on to the printer made the image a lot darker.
The middle one is a 3-d mock up of a front room. I also had trouble with the lighting on this.
The last one is made using photoshop brushes and distorted rectangles only. Hence the roughness.
More artwork to follow.
Chew. And spit.
We have been asked to come up with an ident for an on-line t.v. station called Chew tv. The station has been running for a couple of years now and is looking to re-hash its image with the target audience moving from 11-19 year olds to 17-25's. The company has given us a breif and some printed material to hint at the kind of flavour that they want.
My initial reaction of having to do an ident aimed at this age group was to go out and drink some cider and get me 'teenage head' back on. Then i began thinking that i never really took it off and this realisation has given me the confidence to come up with some great ideas (well i think so anyway).
The pitch is on Thursday and by that time we have to decide which one of the ideas that we are going to go for. I am in a small team with Gabriel who is probably the nearest to my age in the group. This project is going to rock. We can not wait.
My initial reaction of having to do an ident aimed at this age group was to go out and drink some cider and get me 'teenage head' back on. Then i began thinking that i never really took it off and this realisation has given me the confidence to come up with some great ideas (well i think so anyway).
The pitch is on Thursday and by that time we have to decide which one of the ideas that we are going to go for. I am in a small team with Gabriel who is probably the nearest to my age in the group. This project is going to rock. We can not wait.
Monday, 2 February 2009
Thoughts provoked by ideology and realism readings.
Can't help thinking that the creative boundaries of western animation were stifled some time in the 1930's by none other than Mr Walt Disney. His industrialisation of animation and mass marketing of his product inserted a broomhandle up the back of the whole of the artform in western society and formatted animation in a new way. The free flowing unreal animations that were made before with their impossible characters and form were lost for this 'staged' type format. I can't help thinking that the driving force behind this change was the capitalist ideology and the need for a product. This is backed up with the emergence of Mickey mouse clubs throughout the USA and the introduction of branding. This not only made sure that Disney was a weekend thing but made it into the family home as well. All of Disney's animations follow his hyper-real formtting except for maybe fantasia (and this you could argue is a fore-runner of the modern pop video), and i am afraid that they stopped a lot of other animations making it to the surface of popular viewing.
Tuesday, 20 January 2009
Monsters and the like.
So there seems to be some jittering from the Thespian fraternity; that they are all going to be replaced by noughts and ones!
But i think that they can relax and breathe a sigh of relief because i feel these advances in on-screen technology can enhance the cinemographic experience and inject some life into the industry. With narrative based productions seemingly going over the same old 'stability-occurrence-stability' format; the injection of some 'wow factor' can not only add strings to the script-writers bow; but enable them to re-invent the wheel- that is, take the simplest narrative form and present it as though it were the a new concept.
By this i mean that the target audience in western animation, is,mainly children. So in making the tale of sinbad the sailor for instance in a two dimensional traditional cell-type animation in the 1950's now makes it possible to bring real life actors into the production with a high degree of CGI; therefore the actors are benefiting from the work that the speculative value of the film generates. This was proved to be true in 'Sinbad and the eye of the tiger' Ray Harryhausen (1977) which exhibited a high degree of stop motion animation and made the film a success; even though its two predecessors had seemingly exhausted the subject in hand. (Releasing princesses from evil genies or magicians).
Now surely the gate is open for another Sinbad film to be made just on the basis of CGI?
This also brings in the question of shelf-life of these productions. Unless a film is either totally believable or not believable at all i feel has something to do with the shelf-life. As we discussed in our lecture there is a place that the consciousness does not want to be in believability; when a production is uncannily life-like but there is just something about it that un-nerves you. This is true in robotics as well as animation and is called the un-canny valley. Whether there is a correlation between the believability of a film and its shelf-life is open to much debate; but personally i think that there definitely is. To give you a contentious example of this i cite the second volley of star wars movies; especially Clone wars. This for me is like Industrial Light and Magic have just found a new toy water pistol and proceeded to get everyone soaked when they could have just had an occasional squirt here and there and the fascination would have lasted a lot longer. The scenes when the same space ship is flying past again and again in the background remind me of the background scenery on a Hanna-Barbara chase sequence!
Surly this will limit the longevity of this series of films. I know this is not strictly speaking the un-canny valley theory i was on about earlier; but parallels can be drawn.
All in all i believe that CGI will carry on to supply traditional actors with work through speculative developments in film; more outlandish plots and the continual need for a human element in all productions; be it voice or live acting.
These are times of fast change in visual technology; and i believe that as happened with electronic music production, a plateau will be reached where any development is so minute that the viewer will not register it and any speculative value will be lost and narrative based production will prevail; be it with Thespians or not.
But i think that they can relax and breathe a sigh of relief because i feel these advances in on-screen technology can enhance the cinemographic experience and inject some life into the industry. With narrative based productions seemingly going over the same old 'stability-occurrence-stability' format; the injection of some 'wow factor' can not only add strings to the script-writers bow; but enable them to re-invent the wheel- that is, take the simplest narrative form and present it as though it were the a new concept.
By this i mean that the target audience in western animation, is,mainly children. So in making the tale of sinbad the sailor for instance in a two dimensional traditional cell-type animation in the 1950's now makes it possible to bring real life actors into the production with a high degree of CGI; therefore the actors are benefiting from the work that the speculative value of the film generates. This was proved to be true in 'Sinbad and the eye of the tiger' Ray Harryhausen (1977) which exhibited a high degree of stop motion animation and made the film a success; even though its two predecessors had seemingly exhausted the subject in hand. (Releasing princesses from evil genies or magicians).
Now surely the gate is open for another Sinbad film to be made just on the basis of CGI?
This also brings in the question of shelf-life of these productions. Unless a film is either totally believable or not believable at all i feel has something to do with the shelf-life. As we discussed in our lecture there is a place that the consciousness does not want to be in believability; when a production is uncannily life-like but there is just something about it that un-nerves you. This is true in robotics as well as animation and is called the un-canny valley. Whether there is a correlation between the believability of a film and its shelf-life is open to much debate; but personally i think that there definitely is. To give you a contentious example of this i cite the second volley of star wars movies; especially Clone wars. This for me is like Industrial Light and Magic have just found a new toy water pistol and proceeded to get everyone soaked when they could have just had an occasional squirt here and there and the fascination would have lasted a lot longer. The scenes when the same space ship is flying past again and again in the background remind me of the background scenery on a Hanna-Barbara chase sequence!
Surly this will limit the longevity of this series of films. I know this is not strictly speaking the un-canny valley theory i was on about earlier; but parallels can be drawn.
All in all i believe that CGI will carry on to supply traditional actors with work through speculative developments in film; more outlandish plots and the continual need for a human element in all productions; be it voice or live acting.
These are times of fast change in visual technology; and i believe that as happened with electronic music production, a plateau will be reached where any development is so minute that the viewer will not register it and any speculative value will be lost and narrative based production will prevail; be it with Thespians or not.
Thursday, 18 December 2008
I think the problem is..
I was not very happy with the way my 3d walk went. I failed to relay my own gait. The main problem is the lenght of the stride. And the way that i carry a bit of weight. This just did not come off. The balance of the figure was too far back on the model. I am going to post the walk playbast and then you will see what i mean.
On the other hand i was quite happy with the 2d version. For me to get any likeness was quite a result. Ha. I got the arms a bit snappier and the stride right. I also got more of a feeling of weight, and the balance right. You could almost tell it was me; which was cool! With the confidence i am gaining from my life (and general) drawing and the use of a more affirmative line, plus addressing the volume issues, i am sure i can do better next time. The video below is the final attempt at the walk.
And this one is an earlier attempt.
Monday, 1 December 2008
The day we talked about Nemo...
It has been a long time coming; but eventually the day of our visual assignment arrived. I teamed up with Adam; a guy from Wolverhampton, (gods own city, and, probably have the best football team in Europe right now). We decided to speak about Finding nemo. We thought that this would be a great choice as it is full of stereotypes and, as we found out had a lot more to offer in the narrative.
Basically we found that the film very skillfully deals with social issues such as alcholism, schizophrenia, short-term memory loss and also berieavment.
The first scene was a very hard hitting; because it deals with the loss of a whole family and the anguish that this may cause. This i feel may be the Director (Andrew Stanton) admitting that we do not live in a perfect world and that he is at the helm of a global company who's films are viewed in war torn countries and by people who are a lot less fortunate.To portray the perpetual American dream is what a lot of Pixar and Disney's work has done in the past; but in the Nemo film the only characters that seems half normal are the stereotypical pelicans (portrayed as old male Aussies) and the dentist; and any normality and western values such as a stable family life are snached away in the first scene.
This film is set half in the ocean with Nemos dad and his journey to find his son and half in an aquarium in a dentists surgery. Here we are introduced to various characters, all of whom have different afflictions. One thing which we failed to do when we delivered our talk was to appologise to the group for ruining the film. As a couple of our group said they did not see the fish and the disability aspect of the film. I think this is a good thing because it shows that Pixar did not let this issue take over the narrative.
Basically we found that the film very skillfully deals with social issues such as alcholism, schizophrenia, short-term memory loss and also berieavment.
The first scene was a very hard hitting; because it deals with the loss of a whole family and the anguish that this may cause. This i feel may be the Director (Andrew Stanton) admitting that we do not live in a perfect world and that he is at the helm of a global company who's films are viewed in war torn countries and by people who are a lot less fortunate.To portray the perpetual American dream is what a lot of Pixar and Disney's work has done in the past; but in the Nemo film the only characters that seems half normal are the stereotypical pelicans (portrayed as old male Aussies) and the dentist; and any normality and western values such as a stable family life are snached away in the first scene.
This film is set half in the ocean with Nemos dad and his journey to find his son and half in an aquarium in a dentists surgery. Here we are introduced to various characters, all of whom have different afflictions. One thing which we failed to do when we delivered our talk was to appologise to the group for ruining the film. As a couple of our group said they did not see the fish and the disability aspect of the film. I think this is a good thing because it shows that Pixar did not let this issue take over the narrative.
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