The responsive module is the first opportunity we've had to work across courses and collaborate with graphic designers and illustrators. During the initial briefing of the module it was stated that the aims of this module are specifically to 'enable students to work cross-course, understand cross-disciplinary approaches, work collaboratively or respond to an external event or activity with a significant pedagogic value.' I'm quite looking forward to the way this module will work, but quite anxious nonetheless as this is again the first time we've had the opportunity to do something like this. Aside from the collaboration aspect of the module, the other half involves us responding to live briefs with deadlines and quite specific requirements. Through this module we have the chance to respond to external competitions and briefs and become involved in emerging events such as international partnerships, industrial links, cultural opportunities or professional organisations. At first glance I find the way we will be responding to live briefs quite tough. The idea of having to pick briefs from everything that's available to us seems like quite a difficult task and because of the lack of guidelines in this sense it will be quite difficult for me to gauge what kind of work will be needed to do in order to satisfy the requirements of the brief - hopefully I can do enough to achieve the level of work that I want to. However, despite this daunting aspect in terms of the vast number of briefs and opportunities there are within the module, I am looking forward to working with other people and feel like I do enjoy working in a group environment quite a lot.
To summarise, the brief is split into three sections:
INDIVIDUAL PRACTICE: This section of the brief gives us the opportunity to explore a range of individually identified practical, conceptual and creative concerns within the fields of Animation that is specific to me as an Animation student. Through individual practice I will be selecting and resolving a range of live and or competition briefs appropriate to your individual emerging practice and interests. I like the freedom of the individual practice element to the module because it gives me a change to undertake any briefs I want to rather than having to undertake specifically animation based briefs. I hope that this will allow me to broaden my skill set and understand competitions and live briefs that have a different objective than the ones I'm used to. Despite it being so early in the module I want to try some new things and hopefully get better at certain things, such as illustration. The kind of briefs I plan to undertake are things such as book covers, original art and more image making. Furthermore I think the way I'm approaching these types of briefs will hopefully mean I can look at composition, colour and idea generation in a new way than the one I'm used to. I plan to make an effort to investigate content, processes, products and techniques that will help me to understand and define your own creative ambitions within contemporary disciplines. So in that sense, finding out what I like and what I'm good at through experimentation and the freedom to explore different process and practices.
COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE: The collaborative practice aspect of the module is one that I'm unsure on how it will work out. There is a certain foreign element of working with people on different course who up to now have had different experiences and mind sets when it comes to producing work and the way they approach creative problems. Although I feel comfortable working with others, I hope that the group I end up working with has a similar attitude to me so that we can come together and produce something great rather than being detrimental to each other during the process. We will be working in groups of between 2-4 and will focus on the role of the creative team and collaborative approaches to solving creative problems. By combining your technical, practical and theoretical skills, as well as identifying new skills that need to be developed we will be expected to respond, and submit work, to one of the available national competition briefs or recognised live brief. These briefs include YCN and D&AD. Having looked over the briefs so far, I quite like the sound of a few of them, but I do feel like there is a lot more substance to the D&AD briefs whereas most of the YCN briefs seem to involve a lot of branding type briefs.
PROJECT REPORT: 'We will be expected to produce a Project Report that presents the work produce in response to the two Studio briefs in a clear, concise and professional format. The report we write should aim to introduce, summarise and evaluate your working practices and experiences throughout the module with a view to identifying areas strength, improvement and those which will lead to further investigation.' In a way I think this is similar to an evaluation except it will almost be a detailed write up of the process we went through in order to complete the module. Hopefully I have a good enough mix of briefs and I've learnt an amount where I can write in the report how well the module has gone in terms of the practices and experiences I've had during the responsive module.
Thursday 28 January 2016
Tuesday 26 January 2016
OUAN505 - Designing / Cutting Assets - Test
I started looking at creating some of the designs that would be cut using the laser cutter based on what we said. At this point is is more of a test than a final idea because it may not work or there may be complication with how the paper is cut. It may even be that we aren't happy with the results of the paper cutting. Having used the laser cutter extensively last year to create assets for one of the animations I did, I'm quite aware with the limitations and results using the laser cutter can give. For example, we may find that the edges of the assets look singed or burnt because of how the process works. Furthermore, paper can easily catch on fire, especially when exposed so a high powered laser. To counter act this, I think it may be beneficial to make the designs quite big when they're cut out since if they're so small and the laser is concentrated over a small area of the paper it is more likely to catch fire and ruin the design through burning.
I spent some time collecting various imagery to draw from. The designs only had to be outlines but I think with a little more detail it can certainly up the quality of the overall animation. Through the detail of the silhouettes and cutouts we can create quite complex and interesting scenes. I was looking specifically at aspects of North American forests as they contain quite typical and generic looking trees that I think a lot of people can recognise and have seen before, however I plan to cut some tree designs from a rainforest environment when we get to developing that part of the project. After using this process last year I became of the benefits of using illustrator to create designs for cutting with a laser. Drawing with the paintbrush or paint tool on illustrator creates a path which acts as a vector, perfect for this because it can be resized accordingly without affecting the quality. It also has a nice smoothing option of the brush tool, making the lines less jagged and creating an overall nice line to be cutout of the paper. I did however turn the smoothing to its lowest setting so that the smaller details weren't lost when the smoothing was applied to the line, I found this worked a lot better and gave a better result. So I took the various reference images, also keeping in mind the original art style we wanted to achieve which was similar to that in 'Gravity Falls' where there is almost a flat aspect to the art style and started drawing the trees on illustrator. I used a mixture of pine trees with various tall thin trees I saw on other images and attempted to make them relatively detailed but also making sure they looked like trees and were easily recognisable in that sense. A technique that I discovered quite early was drawing half of a tree and then mirroring it so that it was the same on both sides. This, although not realistic looked quite nice and gave the designs quite an elegant look. I spent a day or two drawing out quite a few different designs for trees of different sizes and shapes coupled with grass and branches so as to increase the potential for different elements being brought in to the production.
When it came to the cutting of the designs, it was fairly straight forward. I purchased around seven or eight different pieces of coloured card from the library that suited the imagery which included a couple of different greens and browns, a dark washed out navy, white and a couple of others. These were about A2 sized so I knew that my designs would fit onto the paper as they were created in an A3 document. I turned my illustrator files into JPEGs and took them down to the laser cutting room. The software used to communicate the design to the laser cutter is called APS Ethos which I became quite familiar with thanks to the time I spend using it in the previous year. I loaded the card and opened my files. Problems with the laser cutter arise when the setting used to cut the specific material you need it to doesn't cut through correctly. On my first attempt, despite having it set to 'thin card' the laser didn't cut through the design all the way around and so I had to change the setting to 'thick card' for it to create a clean cut through the card with the design. The first few attempts at cutting worked really well and I was happy with how it looked. In reflection I also think that making the outlines slightly more complex really added to the visual appeal of the individual aspects. After two sessions on the laser cutter I had a reasonable amount of different assets, I think they totalled around 18 - 20 unique designs in varying colours. I scanned these in and placed the scans in the shared folder on google drive, so the whole group has access to them if they need them. Following this I decided to test a method of animation using paper. I drew out a 12 frame sequence of a bird flying and got it printed on the laser cutter, similar to the other assets I scanned them in and put them into After Effects where I created an animated sequence from the paper cut out of the bird, hopefully this can be done with other animals and aspects of the animation to create something visually complex and compelling.
The success of this approach has given me confirmation about the approach we're leaning towards and with some more thought and imagination I think this can be taken further. It is quite a reliable and cheap method. Combining this with the groups knowledge in post production and After Effects software I think we can make good progress and development within the project.
I spent some time collecting various imagery to draw from. The designs only had to be outlines but I think with a little more detail it can certainly up the quality of the overall animation. Through the detail of the silhouettes and cutouts we can create quite complex and interesting scenes. I was looking specifically at aspects of North American forests as they contain quite typical and generic looking trees that I think a lot of people can recognise and have seen before, however I plan to cut some tree designs from a rainforest environment when we get to developing that part of the project. After using this process last year I became of the benefits of using illustrator to create designs for cutting with a laser. Drawing with the paintbrush or paint tool on illustrator creates a path which acts as a vector, perfect for this because it can be resized accordingly without affecting the quality. It also has a nice smoothing option of the brush tool, making the lines less jagged and creating an overall nice line to be cutout of the paper. I did however turn the smoothing to its lowest setting so that the smaller details weren't lost when the smoothing was applied to the line, I found this worked a lot better and gave a better result. So I took the various reference images, also keeping in mind the original art style we wanted to achieve which was similar to that in 'Gravity Falls' where there is almost a flat aspect to the art style and started drawing the trees on illustrator. I used a mixture of pine trees with various tall thin trees I saw on other images and attempted to make them relatively detailed but also making sure they looked like trees and were easily recognisable in that sense. A technique that I discovered quite early was drawing half of a tree and then mirroring it so that it was the same on both sides. This, although not realistic looked quite nice and gave the designs quite an elegant look. I spent a day or two drawing out quite a few different designs for trees of different sizes and shapes coupled with grass and branches so as to increase the potential for different elements being brought in to the production.
When it came to the cutting of the designs, it was fairly straight forward. I purchased around seven or eight different pieces of coloured card from the library that suited the imagery which included a couple of different greens and browns, a dark washed out navy, white and a couple of others. These were about A2 sized so I knew that my designs would fit onto the paper as they were created in an A3 document. I turned my illustrator files into JPEGs and took them down to the laser cutting room. The software used to communicate the design to the laser cutter is called APS Ethos which I became quite familiar with thanks to the time I spend using it in the previous year. I loaded the card and opened my files. Problems with the laser cutter arise when the setting used to cut the specific material you need it to doesn't cut through correctly. On my first attempt, despite having it set to 'thin card' the laser didn't cut through the design all the way around and so I had to change the setting to 'thick card' for it to create a clean cut through the card with the design. The first few attempts at cutting worked really well and I was happy with how it looked. In reflection I also think that making the outlines slightly more complex really added to the visual appeal of the individual aspects. After two sessions on the laser cutter I had a reasonable amount of different assets, I think they totalled around 18 - 20 unique designs in varying colours. I scanned these in and placed the scans in the shared folder on google drive, so the whole group has access to them if they need them. Following this I decided to test a method of animation using paper. I drew out a 12 frame sequence of a bird flying and got it printed on the laser cutter, similar to the other assets I scanned them in and put them into After Effects where I created an animated sequence from the paper cut out of the bird, hopefully this can be done with other animals and aspects of the animation to create something visually complex and compelling.
The success of this approach has given me confirmation about the approach we're leaning towards and with some more thought and imagination I think this can be taken further. It is quite a reliable and cheap method. Combining this with the groups knowledge in post production and After Effects software I think we can make good progress and development within the project.
Monday 25 January 2016
OUAN505 - Development of Documentary Ideas
During the week off we had starting Monday the 18th of January, me and Callum met to discuss the script ideas and solidify the visual aspect in coincidence with the script and important points we wanted to include. We took the time to analyse the script that had been written and pick out the key sections we thought were appropriate for the type of documentary that we want to make, informative and engaging rather than a plea to cut down on deforestation. After we had decided which scenes we liked the sound of the most, we wrote some notes to accompany them in order to attach the visual ideas we had to the script that will be voiced over the top of the documentary. For example, the opening scene is very general in the way it's delivered, talking about broad statistics and essentially what deforestation is. To accompany this section we had he idea to have a tracking shot that lasts the duration of this part of the script. Whilst we were discussing and elaborating on our current ideas, I suggested to involve paper more in the production side of the project. From there we spoke about how we could incorporate this medium across the different scenes and how we would tackle certain scenarios and scenes that would take place within in the piece. I think that the way paper can be used and how versatile it can be when working with it in real life and in after effects made us feel that it was a good route to take. Callum and I spoke about a couple of other aspects of different scenes and how we would use the methods we're thinking of using to illustrate them. When we were presenting our ideas for this project before we were sorted into groups Gavin mentioned that he wanted to look at the changing of seasons within the environment theme. We thought that the mention of climate change could be illustrated using the changing of seasons, through the use of different coloured trees and some of the after effects functions and a range of other tool available to us. Another example of a scene we thought of using that I think I've mentioned previous was the lungs of the world. We want to create a physical 'lungs of the world' image comprised of trees wither made from polystyrene or paper and then make it look like it's rotting by burning the set or using another method if that turns out to be too difficult to achieve.
Below is an example of the script we started working on together, we're writing down the spoken part with our ideas for each scene before we start making storyboards. Due to the nature of our approach to this production I think we're trying quite hard to stay organised and make sure we're aware of what we're doing and what needs to be done, so as to not waste time and resources. The next step once this is completed is to create a solid storyboard that we can then move on and create the assets for and develop the documentary further in the production stage.
Below is an example of the script we started working on together, we're writing down the spoken part with our ideas for each scene before we start making storyboards. Due to the nature of our approach to this production I think we're trying quite hard to stay organised and make sure we're aware of what we're doing and what needs to be done, so as to not waste time and resources. The next step once this is completed is to create a solid storyboard that we can then move on and create the assets for and develop the documentary further in the production stage.
Tuesday 19 January 2016
OUAN505 - Initial Ideas, Brainstorming
The first week since getting the brief was spent establishing our roles within the project and doing any initial planning that needed to be done such as creating a schedule for us to work to. At this stage it's quite a rough idea of how things are going to run throughout the project, and I always feel like something like this can easily change if it needs to - but it's a good place to start. Callum and I discussed the timeframe we had to work through and without being to naive it does feel like quite a long time, and I feel surprisingly confident in this early stage of the project about the amount of ideas we have established and the number of things we have in the works. Gavin is talking to his friend who is interested in creating the sound and music for the animation, whereas me and Callum have a good idea about where we are going in regards to pre-production. We agreed to use some of the time to explore some different mediums and techniques. One of the things I'm eager to try is animating with paper cuts. Throughout the different techniques we discussed we wanted to try we agreed to explore several, including; the use of natural materials to create objects for the background, or incorporate them in some way; cutting trees out of paper and then animating them using after effects (this is something we need to test); and perhaps the use of oil paints as well as 2D in order to add a different flair to the piece. I think the use of these different techniques in the final documentary relies on how successful they are, also how they work together in the same piece. If they looked out of place changing between the two, then we wouldn't use the technique or medium for the sake of it. At this stage, the idea is to keep out options open and explore as much as we can before we settle on the final techniques we will be using.
Over the weekend I worked on writing an admittedly rough script to start out the process of visualising scenes within the production. I used several notable sites as a reference including the 'The World Wide Fund for Nature' (WWF) coupled with Wikipedia and a few other sources, along with the book 'Information is Beautiful' which possessed some interesting statistics on deforestation, presented in a very visual way. On Monday as a group we discussed our ideas further and made a lot of notes based on our conversation. Callum and I took the rough script I had produced and took some of the sections of it we wanted to include and noted them down, I re-read certain sections and saw several things that I think wouldn't be necessary or wouldn't fit overall. This included a segment on wildfires in Australia. The reason I removed sections such as this is because I feel like it's too specific and given the one to two minute duration we have to maintain I think we should be talking in broader and more general terms in order to be the most informative on a bigger scale. It's also more interesting to speak about the bigger picture in my opinion.
From a visual stand point there has been a lot of development in ideas that we want to portray as well as the mediums we want to use. Firstly, we want to include a lot of different scenes. I want to avoid one scene staying on screen for too long because I feel that it needs to be of a quicker pace in order to make sure the audience is engages for the full two minutes. Unfortunately we don't have the luxury of more time with this project so the pacing of the film and the quality of the imagery is important. We have an idea about certain visual aspects of the piece, such as creating lungs and damaging or eroding them as a reference to the nickname of the amazon rainforest, "the lungs of the world". Aside from this other visual aspects at this early stage are still very much up in the air.
Over the weekend I worked on writing an admittedly rough script to start out the process of visualising scenes within the production. I used several notable sites as a reference including the 'The World Wide Fund for Nature' (WWF) coupled with Wikipedia and a few other sources, along with the book 'Information is Beautiful' which possessed some interesting statistics on deforestation, presented in a very visual way. On Monday as a group we discussed our ideas further and made a lot of notes based on our conversation. Callum and I took the rough script I had produced and took some of the sections of it we wanted to include and noted them down, I re-read certain sections and saw several things that I think wouldn't be necessary or wouldn't fit overall. This included a segment on wildfires in Australia. The reason I removed sections such as this is because I feel like it's too specific and given the one to two minute duration we have to maintain I think we should be talking in broader and more general terms in order to be the most informative on a bigger scale. It's also more interesting to speak about the bigger picture in my opinion.
From a visual stand point there has been a lot of development in ideas that we want to portray as well as the mediums we want to use. Firstly, we want to include a lot of different scenes. I want to avoid one scene staying on screen for too long because I feel that it needs to be of a quicker pace in order to make sure the audience is engages for the full two minutes. Unfortunately we don't have the luxury of more time with this project so the pacing of the film and the quality of the imagery is important. We have an idea about certain visual aspects of the piece, such as creating lungs and damaging or eroding them as a reference to the nickname of the amazon rainforest, "the lungs of the world". Aside from this other visual aspects at this early stage are still very much up in the air.
Monday 11 January 2016
OUAN505 - Introduction
After returning from christmas on Monday the 4th of January, we spent the whole day being given a length brief by Sara and Martin regarding the new module; applied animation. It was explained to us last year that the term applied animation was associated essentially with animation dedicated to a purpose outside the realms of entertainment. So, advertising, promotion, documentary animation and title sequences all fall under this umbrella term, you could however argue that these could be used for entertainment too but the general idea is that entertainment is a secondary purpose of applied animation.
During the briefing we were given a quick overview of what we would be doing. It was explained that the task was to create a one to two minute piece of documentary animation on a topic, that was of a high enough standard to be submitted to a film festival. Furthermore, the normal specification were in place such as the format for the video and the requirements for the project as a whole, including the one thousand word evaluation and expectations when it came to blogging. It was also explained that the project was a group project, similar to the previous brief and the size of the group was between two and three. Following on from this, were then given four categories to choose from that would create the topic for us to cover in our films. The categories were;
I found the next section of the briefing quite interesting. We were asked to write our names onto a slip of paper and place them onto another piece of paper each labelled with one of the briefs, so place it onto whichever theme we wanted to work with. I placed mine onto environment as I had the most ideas at first glance for this theme. Afterwards, our names we each picked out and read from the respective categories. Martin and Sara went round the class and we each said which of the themes we liked the idea of along with our initial ideas and what roles feel we wanted to pursue and which we thought we did well. This was so if there was a chance to help out another group if they needed anything doing, and you were available and willing to participate and work with them. Since I chose environment my initial ideas stemmed from a lot of different things. Firstly, I was interesting in producing a documentary based on nuclear energy. There is a lot of information about nuclear energy and it's a huge industry, so my thinking was that it would be a good opportunity to educate people on the subject of nuclear energy, whilst also educating myself a long the way. My second idea and one that would probably have been the most fun for me to do due to a good level of pre-existing interest and knowledge on was a specific area of cosmology. I was thinking of exploring the solar system, quite a simple notion that everyone knows a little about but I think the majority of people found the system that our planet is located in fascinating to learn and think about. Another area of cosmology I wanted to look at if I were to go with this idea was black holes, and the more complex aspects of deeper space, millions of light years away from where we are. This would have been more of an epic, and in many ways foreign in terms of material for people, thus being quite educational whilst maintaining a similar level of engagement as some of the more familiar aspects of cosmology to most people. Something that I liked to think could have been an opportunity with this type of documentary was the ability to explore different mediums and be a little more abstract with the different methods of animation within it, because of the abstract nature of the material. My last and final idea was looking at animals and taking a little about their habitats and the environments in which they live, this may have been difficult due to the time constraint and would have been limited to just one or two animals.
The roles I mentioned that I was interested in fulfilling for this project were the pre-production and post-production ends of the process, although I am happy doing any role necessary I do feel like they are my strongest. I was also interesting in the writing and directing side of the project as I feel like I have a good level of organisation and experience working on different aspects and roles when it comes to the production process.
We were sorted into groups based on our choice of theme and the roles we work best in, Callum approached me and suggested we work together because we had the same theme and Gavin joined us to form our group of three. We had a short amount of time to discuss our ideas before the end of the day and I felt like despite only spending a very short amount of time in the afternoon talking over our ideas I feel like we laid a good foundation for the project. I'm looking forward to what we produce during this module, and as a fan of documentary animation and documentaries as a whole, I feel ready to create something hopefully worthy for an animation festival.
During the briefing we were given a quick overview of what we would be doing. It was explained that the task was to create a one to two minute piece of documentary animation on a topic, that was of a high enough standard to be submitted to a film festival. Furthermore, the normal specification were in place such as the format for the video and the requirements for the project as a whole, including the one thousand word evaluation and expectations when it came to blogging. It was also explained that the project was a group project, similar to the previous brief and the size of the group was between two and three. Following on from this, were then given four categories to choose from that would create the topic for us to cover in our films. The categories were;
- Mental Health
- The Environment
- Sport
- Family
I found the next section of the briefing quite interesting. We were asked to write our names onto a slip of paper and place them onto another piece of paper each labelled with one of the briefs, so place it onto whichever theme we wanted to work with. I placed mine onto environment as I had the most ideas at first glance for this theme. Afterwards, our names we each picked out and read from the respective categories. Martin and Sara went round the class and we each said which of the themes we liked the idea of along with our initial ideas and what roles feel we wanted to pursue and which we thought we did well. This was so if there was a chance to help out another group if they needed anything doing, and you were available and willing to participate and work with them. Since I chose environment my initial ideas stemmed from a lot of different things. Firstly, I was interesting in producing a documentary based on nuclear energy. There is a lot of information about nuclear energy and it's a huge industry, so my thinking was that it would be a good opportunity to educate people on the subject of nuclear energy, whilst also educating myself a long the way. My second idea and one that would probably have been the most fun for me to do due to a good level of pre-existing interest and knowledge on was a specific area of cosmology. I was thinking of exploring the solar system, quite a simple notion that everyone knows a little about but I think the majority of people found the system that our planet is located in fascinating to learn and think about. Another area of cosmology I wanted to look at if I were to go with this idea was black holes, and the more complex aspects of deeper space, millions of light years away from where we are. This would have been more of an epic, and in many ways foreign in terms of material for people, thus being quite educational whilst maintaining a similar level of engagement as some of the more familiar aspects of cosmology to most people. Something that I liked to think could have been an opportunity with this type of documentary was the ability to explore different mediums and be a little more abstract with the different methods of animation within it, because of the abstract nature of the material. My last and final idea was looking at animals and taking a little about their habitats and the environments in which they live, this may have been difficult due to the time constraint and would have been limited to just one or two animals.
The roles I mentioned that I was interested in fulfilling for this project were the pre-production and post-production ends of the process, although I am happy doing any role necessary I do feel like they are my strongest. I was also interesting in the writing and directing side of the project as I feel like I have a good level of organisation and experience working on different aspects and roles when it comes to the production process.
We were sorted into groups based on our choice of theme and the roles we work best in, Callum approached me and suggested we work together because we had the same theme and Gavin joined us to form our group of three. We had a short amount of time to discuss our ideas before the end of the day and I felt like despite only spending a very short amount of time in the afternoon talking over our ideas I feel like we laid a good foundation for the project. I'm looking forward to what we produce during this module, and as a fan of documentary animation and documentaries as a whole, I feel ready to create something hopefully worthy for an animation festival.
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