Yesterday I went into the studio to film the 35mm film on the projector and I would like to say a big thank you to Andy Wyatt who helped me in a big way during the filming process. The quality of the film could have been a bit better, but me and Andy tried our best to make it come out as good as possible under the circumstances. This included holding up a black sheet over the screen to shield reflections off of the projector.
Despite that I went home anxious and nervous to see the out come and I have to Say I'm very proud of my baby. This is because I haven't done anything in post production side that I would normally do, such as colour correct it or make sure that the music would fit the animation. It seems the dope sheets I had created seemed to work like a charm. There are a few bits in the animation where the song doesn't go, like towards the end, however the whole point of this project to me was to get me away from the computer and fixing things digitally and to try something out the old fashioned way. I will defiantly try this technique again as I only had 1 day to animate to get it in for the deadline.
Here is the video, remember the quality is not the best, and it is compressed but hopefully it that won't ruin the piece.
If your wondering what I used on the film, I tryed, acrylic, oil pastal, felt pens and etching for the black and white bits.
I mentioned in the previous post that I would give the 11 second club a brake for the day and work only on the experimental project. Things are getting there slowly. I had decided to make a plan/frame by frame semi storyboard of what I will be doing with the experimental project. This is because when I came to animating onto the film I was totally stuck for ideas. I have combined the dope sheet with this pictorial plan so hopefully I have made my life in the long run easier. The only problem is actually getting round to filming it on the projector, I have not had a "camera induction" and therefor I am not allowed to borrow film equipment from the media centre. If any of the tutors who will be in on the Monday coming and could help me out with this problem please email me. I will also try and get in contact with you in the same way. I would like to say in advance that the help will be much appreciated.
Any how here is a pdf version of the visual plan for my experimental I realise the notes may not make any sense to anyone else but myself but hopefully you can get an idea of what I may be aiming for:
I know this seems a little to late, but I just wanted to post these two videos by the animator Len Lye who I have been inspired by in the planning of this project.
Big thank you to Ann Owen (one of my lectures) who mentioned him and his exhibition which is in Birmingham. I had no idea who he was until then and am grateful for the introduction to this inspirational artist.
Here is an update on the animation process focusing on the eye expressions for the characters. It is still rough but I am currently working on the mouths and then I will focus on the smoothness with the inbetweens.
The following is a recap on everything that has been going on in and out of my right brain through the last few weeks. It seems I am just not "getting" this whole blog thing. The truth is I am finding it very difficult to stay focused on producing posts as often as I should and for that I apologise. As after speaking to people in the studio I have noticed that I am receiving the benefits of their updates but not the other way around. So here is a chronological post explaining the process from pre-production of the 11 second club and where things have gone with the experimental project.
Dope Sheets.
This was a process I had done digitally in photoshop. I managed to finish the Experimental Dope sheet before the 11 second club (which was also finished in the same week which started the 8th of November)
At this point I had finalised the idea I wanted to work with for the experimental project and the medium which I had chose; 35 mm film. At this point I could not work on the experimental physically as there was no film to use, instead this led me to work on my 11 second club animation.
Character Designs
I began listening to clip over and over acting it out and thinking of characters that would suit the voices. I had a vague image of a short fat guy yelling at a skinny man. Once I had listened to the clip I began sketching in my sketch book. I then moved into working digitally. Recently I have found myself more comfortable with my tablet than my sketchbook.
Once the characters were being worked on I started working on expressions simultaneously, while listening to the clip over and over focusing on each individual words and how the characters body language could be expressed in conjunction with it. The picture of how the characters were turning out started to become more vivid in my mind and eventually through this process the characters of a "Sensei" and a "Student" were finalised.
With no material to work with for the Experimental project, I moved straight onto the storyboards and animatic. In the last seminar before the teachers went to Bradford with the 1st years Derek had talked about the previous animation process I had been using for the assignment prior to this, which was using footage for reference. Derek had advised me to challenge myself by animating the 11second club using as less reference footage as possible. For this reason I have decided not to film myself for the 11 second club project. This is because I felt that if I filmed myself I would have jumped into old habits of relying on it for pose's which could have left the characters movements dull and unexaggerated. I focused allot of attention this aspect of the animation as I thought it was the most important thing. Using my expression thumbnails as reference I created the storyboard and then moved onto the timing for the animatic.
I would just like to point out that the timing is a bit off on this version of the animatic however i will hand in an uncompressed version to be marked which will show that the timing is actually correct.
This animatic was shown to Derek in the last lecture and he expressed the importance of a third character and an object or situation to help the audience understand what exactly the sensei is talking about. Unfortunately I had spent all my time thinking of the poses rather than the concept. After the lecture I began to panic alittle as I could not think of something to add into the scene. I did come up with the idea of the Sensei's Sake (Japeniesealcholic drink) was stolen from the student however nothing else popped up, weapons scrolls just didn't fit.
However with less than a week to go with the hand in date, I have come to the conclusion that I am not going to change the idea I have. Also Derek understood I was too far in to throw it all away, but suggested that the Sensei's expression towards the end looks to much like hes talking to someone off screen. For this reason I have changed the last 3 poses of the sensei to having his back turned, looking upwards. Hopefully this will give more of an impression of the character speaking to himself.
I decided to work on the animation of the 11 second club as quick as possible so I worked rough at first getting the poses in and now I am currently adding facial expressions and the inbetweens to make it smoother.
At this point I was talking to Derek and asking him whether or not i would be able to use film as a medium (as I was running short of time because I needed to practice the medium as I had never used it before)I am very grateful to Derek Hayes, the other teachers for picking up the projector and film all the way from Bristol and the students who pulled through and helped bring the equipment into the studio in time for me to use this week. I have managed to have a quick play with it however at this point I can only work on black scratching into the film. I may bleach parts for colour, but I can not paint onto the black as I found out through trial and error as the light from the projector can not pass through the black even if I had painted on top of the black. This will change my overall idea of the experimental project. Instead of having a small narrative my sole aim will be to work to get the timing on the music right.
I hope that has clarified things for the people who are interested. I have also been doing 3d work as well as some personal projects, including some drawing that I will post up (hopefully) at another date.
Some of the footage I have shot I have manipulated it further to attain specific effects in after effects. Since I am relatively new to the after effects program I decided to take this as an opportunity to practice and get the hang of the program.
This is water shaken in a bottle. If I can not use film for my experimental animation I will attempt to try a pixilation with water and lights. Here are the type of effects and mood I would like to achieve if I develop these ideas further into a pixilation animation.
Here is another lines effect I may use if i work on Film. I mirrored the shirt footage i filmed and added blending effects to make it abit more abstract.
This is more personal as I have seen this effect floating around on the internet and always wanted to do one myself. It turns out that the effect is simple to achieve in after effects, using the CC Flow Motion effect.
At the moment I am experimenting with Line and Wave Forms for my experimental animation ideas. Over the weekend I used a camera to film things that I could find that would give me interesting reference footage such as, water, curtain, radiators, walls, carpets. Anything that had strong lines. I am planning to take this reference footage and use it for drawing onto 16/30 mm film. As I only have a small canvas to play with on 16/30mm I thought it would be best to keep things simple so using lines and wave forms seems appropriate. If I can not work on film, I will attempt to work with water and lights using pixilation animation.
This was done filming the drapes in my room. As thread them together it creates a psychadelic wave optical illusion. I am planing on brining some of the drape fabric in and experiment with it under a light box if I have time.
