What interests you most about your selected animation, and what aspects of its content, technique, and background (history) might influence your work in the final project?
I selected Suzie Templeton's "Peter and the Wolf" for my animation. What interested me most in this animation was the stylistics: as soon as I saw the images for this animation I was pulled in and I wanted to see more. The DVD only provided commentary on a few clips, but I found the whole animation on the internet. Without dialogue, the story was told in tune with the original composition, one that identified an instrument with each character. The animation process in this case was a very long one, with several months going into puppet making alone. Via stop motion, Templeton and her crew were able to bring Peter and his comrades alive. Although I do not plan to do a photo-stop motion, I am intrigued by telling a story with music alone. In past animations I was always deterred by the lack of available voice actors, but now I can see that, like silent films, amazing stories can be told without dialogue. [Now I need to find inspiring music.] Lastly, I appreciate the fact that the story was one that I already knew as well, that made it easier to understand and compare with the artist's interpretation. (The animation also made me want to animate a wolf for my final project...)
I chose Koji Yamamura's "A Child's Metaphysics". I really enjoyed the hand-drawn look of the work. It was very sketchy, which I guess, I did in my rotoscoping project, but it struck me for some reason. As much as I like cartoons and movies that use computer generated images, I've always really enjoyed hand drawn animation and illustration. I don't have a definite idea for my final project yet, but I really would like to draw at least a good amount of it by hand. I have a comic book project that's been on the back burner for a while that I would like to incorporate in some way.
For my final project I want to take a different approach that I haven't done before. I was really inspired by two of the animations. The first animation is While Darwin Sleeps. It starts out with still images and then slowly the images speed up and an animation is created. I would like to do something similar to this but keeping with the nature theme for the animation I would photograph trees and animate the photos. My second inspiration was Pivot. I really liked how they took the same film clip and looped it, I would shoot somethings I find in nature but I want the viewer to have to guess at what the film clip really is of. Sound would also play a big part if I approached this method.
"...We are still living under the reign of logic: this, of course, is what I have been driving at. But in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest. The absolute rationalism that is still in vogue allows us to consider only facts relating directly to our experience. Logical ends, on the contrary, escape us. It is pointless to add that experience itself has found itself increasingly circumscribed. It paces back and forth in a cage from which it is more and more difficult to make it emerge. It too leans for support on what is most immediately expedient, and it is protected by the sentinels of common sense. Under the pretense of civilization and progress, we have managed to banish from the mind everything that may rightly or wrongly be termed superstition, or fancy; forbidden is any kind of search for truth which is not in conformance with accepted practices. It was, apparently, by pure chance that a part of our mental world which we pretended not to be concerned with any longer -- and, in my opinion by far the most important part -- has been brought back to light.." -Andre Breton excerpt: "The Surrealist Manifesto"
Personal definition of animation; "Inventing ways to express an idea or feeling, with visual movement, light and sound that can create an experience, provoke imagination, memories or thoughts." -Paul Fletcher (Animation- "Dreamlake").
Where films (in general) are narrative and referential, Fletcher's "Dreamlake" is a poem of imagery. There is no single defineable message or meaning to be found in his piece, for me it is more of a compiling of emotional associations meant to "provoke imagination, memories or thoughts" as he puts it. I believe that in many ways this style of imagery is the closest in style to capturing the ideals Breton spoke of in his writing. That is to say the art of the surreal. Fletcher's use of layering and 'mash up' of media, affects, and filters is the obvious choice for me, as well as the juxtaposition of disparate imagery. These elements are often core in my work as well.
I like The Blackheart Gang’s The Tale of How. What interest me is the way they layering each graphic elements and blending with Bird’s 3D animation. So basically the team start with character modeling. The illustrator draws each small individual piece (waves, birds, small island and trees, house, etc.) then collects and scans them into digital format. The main body is built in after effects by manipulating tons of layers of images. I am fascinated with the great visual effects they achieved by simply moving each small piece around. For the final project, I'd like to do a mesh up with hand drawing, rotoscoping, stop-motion, and movie cuts.Not all of them, but I don't know which and which I can mesh together. It will be very interesting to see characters in different media interact with each other.
I'd like to introduce a mix of Frank Flothmann's PingPong, and hand drawn backgrounds. Though I'm a little afraid that it might look stupid.
What interests me the most is the simplistic way he tells a story without using words. And the simple blocky nature of the illustration and color choices. Also his nature of capturing the art of storytelling is something I want to work on and capture.
What initially attracted me to him was his method of working from stills then to motion that I feel I can quickly accomplish when it comes time to work on this project.
After looking through the "Animation in Process" book I have found two animations that I am drawn to, to base off of my final project. Here are some of the valid points I copied from each animator:
Grant Orchard Lovesport: Love Paintballing- Uses the simplified language of Flash merged with everyday observations on his way to work in his central London studio. Felxibility of process to the limit. Heavy on process and story boards. Generating a graphic that contained a massive landscape that he could do all the animation in.
Chel White Harrowdown Hill- Clever visual montage of animation techniques used to enable the songs lyrics to transport the audience into a dream-like state around a potentially explosive and thought-provoking subject. The resulting effect is a kind of miniaturization of the real world, in what Chel calls “small-gantics”, a possible interpretation being a visual representation of the shrinking cultural and political diversity worldwide.
Here is a link to Harrowdown Hill: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGnSRqtM52A
Overall I am leaning towards Grant Orchard's work. I am really drawn to the colors of his animations and the simplicity he starts with to create the final version. I like how he uses flash first then relies heavily on the landscape to wrap things up holistically. The colors are vivid and unique because you don't really see these swatches very often in animations. The music also adds a whole other element with which I am drawn to. I think that Chel White's animation would be too complicated for me because of the filming and the lens he uses to get the effect that he desired. I like how the video was built on the lyrics of a song and that Thom Yorke did not want the video to be obvious to what the lyrics mean.
To gain inspiration for my final project, I examined the book by Andrew Selby, Animation in Process. I found many of the films to be complex projects that required several years to complete. Some were made with equipment and software that we do not have. I began to investigate elements of the films that intrigued me. I would like to combine some of these elements into my final project:
Once Upon a Time by Jerome Dernoncourt, Corentin Laplatte & Samuel Deroubaix contains elements I find interesting, such as having figures walk across on sky and landscape in an unnatural way. Figures from other movies were roughly cut out and incorporated into the scenes, like a form of rotoscoping. Additionally, I would like to incorporate an investigation of space and time, like the stop motion film, Apnée, by Claude Chabot. I hope to achieve an elegant simplicity in my project, as Michael Dudok de Wit did in his Cel and Drawn film, Aroma of Tea.
I selected Suzie Templeton's "Peter and the Wolf" for my animation. What interested me most in this animation was the stylistics: as soon as I saw the images for this animation I was pulled in and I wanted to see more. The DVD only provided commentary on a few clips, but I found the whole animation on the internet. Without dialogue, the story was told in tune with the original composition, one that identified an instrument with each character. The animation process in this case was a very long one, with several months going into puppet making alone. Via stop motion, Templeton and her crew were able to bring Peter and his comrades alive.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I do not plan to do a photo-stop motion, I am intrigued by telling a story with music alone. In past animations I was always deterred by the lack of available voice actors, but now I can see that, like silent films, amazing stories can be told without dialogue. [Now I need to find inspiring music.] Lastly, I appreciate the fact that the story was one that I already knew as well, that made it easier to understand and compare with the artist's interpretation. (The animation also made me want to animate a wolf for my final project...)
I chose Koji Yamamura's "A Child's Metaphysics". I really enjoyed the hand-drawn look of the work. It was very sketchy, which I guess, I did in my rotoscoping project, but it struck me for some reason. As much as I like cartoons and movies that use computer generated images, I've always really enjoyed hand drawn animation and illustration. I don't have a definite idea for my final project yet, but I really would like to draw at least a good amount of it by hand. I have a comic book project that's been on the back burner for a while that I would like to incorporate in some way.
ReplyDeleteFor my final project I want to take a different approach that I haven't done before. I was really inspired by two of the animations. The first animation is While Darwin Sleeps. It starts out with still images and then slowly the images speed up and an animation is created. I would like to do something similar to this but keeping with the nature theme for the animation I would photograph trees and animate the photos. My second inspiration was Pivot. I really liked how they took the same film clip and looped it, I would shoot somethings I find in nature but I want the viewer to have to guess at what the film clip really is of. Sound would also play a big part if I approached this method.
ReplyDelete"...We are still living under the reign of logic: this, of course, is what I have been driving at. But in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest. The absolute rationalism that is still in vogue allows us to consider only facts relating directly to our experience. Logical ends, on the contrary, escape us. It is pointless to add that experience itself has found itself increasingly circumscribed. It paces back and forth in a cage from which it is more and more difficult to make it emerge. It too leans for support on what is most immediately expedient, and it is protected by the sentinels of common sense. Under the pretense of civilization and progress, we have managed to banish from the mind everything that may rightly or wrongly be termed superstition, or fancy; forbidden is any kind of search for truth which is not in conformance with accepted practices. It was, apparently, by pure chance that a part of our mental world which we pretended not to be concerned with any longer -- and, in my opinion by far the most important part -- has been brought back to light.." -Andre Breton excerpt: "The Surrealist Manifesto"
ReplyDeletePersonal definition of animation; "Inventing ways to express an idea or feeling, with visual movement, light and sound that can create an experience, provoke imagination, memories or thoughts." -Paul Fletcher (Animation- "Dreamlake").
Where films (in general) are narrative and referential, Fletcher's "Dreamlake" is a poem of imagery. There is no single defineable message or meaning to be found in his piece, for me it is more of a compiling of emotional associations meant to "provoke imagination, memories or thoughts" as he puts it. I believe that in many ways this style of imagery is the closest in style to capturing the ideals Breton spoke of in his writing. That is to say the art of the surreal. Fletcher's use of layering and 'mash up' of media, affects, and filters is the obvious choice for me, as well as the juxtaposition of disparate imagery. These elements are often core in my work as well.
I like The Blackheart Gang’s The Tale of How. What interest me is the way they layering each graphic elements and blending with Bird’s 3D animation. So basically the team start with character modeling. The illustrator draws each small individual piece (waves, birds, small island and trees, house, etc.) then collects and scans them into digital format. The main body is built in after effects by manipulating tons of layers of images. I am fascinated with the great visual effects they achieved by simply moving each small piece around.
ReplyDeleteFor the final project, I'd like to do a mesh up with hand drawing, rotoscoping, stop-motion, and movie cuts.Not all of them, but I don't know which and which I can mesh together. It will be very interesting to see characters in different media interact with each other.
I'd like to introduce a mix of Frank Flothmann's PingPong, and hand drawn backgrounds. Though I'm a little afraid that it might look stupid.
ReplyDeleteWhat interests me the most is the simplistic way he tells a story without using words. And the simple blocky nature of the illustration and color choices. Also his nature of capturing the art of storytelling is something I want to work on and capture.
What initially attracted me to him was his method of working from stills then to motion that I feel I can quickly accomplish when it comes time to work on this project.
After looking through the "Animation in Process" book I have found two animations that I am drawn to, to base off of my final project. Here are some of the valid points I copied from each animator:
ReplyDeleteGrant Orchard
Lovesport: Love Paintballing- Uses the simplified language of Flash merged with everyday observations on his way to work in his central London studio. Felxibility of process to the limit. Heavy on process and story boards. Generating a graphic that contained a massive landscape that he could do all the animation in.
Chel White
Harrowdown Hill- Clever visual montage of animation techniques used to enable the songs lyrics to transport the audience into a dream-like state around a potentially explosive and thought-provoking subject. The resulting effect is a kind of miniaturization of the real world, in what Chel calls “small-gantics”, a possible interpretation being a visual representation of the shrinking cultural and political diversity worldwide.
Here is a link to Harrowdown Hill: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGnSRqtM52A
Overall I am leaning towards Grant Orchard's work. I am really drawn to the colors of his animations and the simplicity he starts with to create the final version. I like how he uses flash first then relies heavily on the landscape to wrap things up holistically. The colors are vivid and unique because you don't really see these swatches very often in animations. The music also adds a whole other element with which I am drawn to. I think that Chel White's animation would be too complicated for me because of the filming and the lens he uses to get the effect that he desired. I like how the video was built on the lyrics of a song and that Thom Yorke did not want the video to be obvious to what the lyrics mean.
To gain inspiration for my final project, I examined the book by Andrew Selby, Animation in Process. I found many of the films to be complex projects that required several years to complete. Some were made with equipment and software that we do not have. I began to investigate elements of the films that intrigued me. I would like to combine some of these elements into my final project:
ReplyDeleteOnce Upon a Time by Jerome Dernoncourt, Corentin Laplatte & Samuel Deroubaix contains elements I find interesting, such as having figures walk across on sky and landscape in an unnatural way. Figures from other movies were roughly cut out and incorporated into the scenes, like a form of rotoscoping. Additionally, I would like to incorporate an investigation of space and time, like the stop motion film, Apnée, by Claude Chabot. I hope to achieve an elegant simplicity in my project, as Michael Dudok de Wit did in his Cel and Drawn film, Aroma of Tea.