The ole I-dent has not gone terribly well this week, I just haven’t been able to get into the swing of things, it did pick up a bit this afternoon but I still have not decided for definite on a style for the whole thing which means that I still do not have a design bible, instead I have a verity of different styles that I have tried out and animation tests, a lot of which are half complete because I decided I did not like them and stopped doing them. So far my favourite style is inspired by the German animator Koto Ezawa who uses simple blocks of colour to reconstruct film and news segments. I have messed about with this a bit to try and make it a bit more original but I am still not sure that I have done enough to set my work apart from his.
I also still need to decide how I am going to animate everything, my plan was to use Flash but I tried to do some stuff in it yesterday but it was just too complicated. Today I redid it by hand and my plan is to scan that into Photoshop so that I can neaten it up and paint over it. From their I might put it into Flash because there are still some bits that I think I can animate using puppets or just do everything by hand and render it out in After-effects.
The green-screen workshop today was interesting, I did not really do too much on it because I wanted to get on with the I-dent but I do have some ideas for stuff that I want to try out when I get the time.
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
Thursday, 21 February 2008
More on the I-dent
This week has pretty much been spent working on the I-dent project; my idea for it has completely changed from the one I had this time last week and I now have something which I think is a bit more feasible. The mood boards where a really useful way of getting my ideas down and I think had a big influence on the direction that I took this project in as well as some input from Ben who has been really good to bounce ideas off of. I’ve just got to find a style that I like for it now, my plan was to spend today doing that but I have been having a day where I have lost the ability to draw and this afternoon it was a case of taking one step forwards and two back, so I think I need to go off and do something else for a bit and come back to it fresh tomorrow.
Kathy did suggest that I animate the I-dent first and then choose the style but as far as I know I can not do this easily in Flash, which is the programme I want to use. That said I am beginning to wonder if it would be better if I animated everything on paper or acetate as I think I could get a bit more fluidity but I also like the jerky puppet effect that you can get in flash and think I could use that to the I-dents advantage. Having the extra week to work on it is a big help as I can now afford to spend a bit of time experimenting with these ideas.
The Live@5 project on Monday was good fun, I do not think that news graphics is something that I want to do in future but it was a good experience and I did get a nice smug feeling seeing my sports tables in the gallery. Unlike my previous experience doing the weather graphics, this week went fairly smoothly, mainly thanks to the various request sheets that Pete produced for the broadcasting students to put what they wanted on which caused fewer misunderstandings and false assumptions being made. I think I also went into it expecting the day to be a constant barrage of impossible requests from news people, so it was all generally a pleasant surprise.
However, despite this my weather maps where still able to rear their ugly heads and wreak havoc, firstly we discovered that instead of the maps being onscreen with the presenter and off to the left, they where in fact on there own and needed to be centred, which in the time I had left was not possible to do, leaving a big nasty space where the presenter should have been. Then for some reason the graphics would not render out of Flash, after my umpteenth attempt at doing this it finally worked (I still don’t know what was wrong). We then discovered that what ever programme the broadcasting students put all the weather in didn’t like the QuickTime files the maps where in and where painfully slow and jumpy to watch. My little rant aside, it was a good day and I think that Justin did a good job at keeping us all in check, and dealing with my argument with the computer.
Kathy did suggest that I animate the I-dent first and then choose the style but as far as I know I can not do this easily in Flash, which is the programme I want to use. That said I am beginning to wonder if it would be better if I animated everything on paper or acetate as I think I could get a bit more fluidity but I also like the jerky puppet effect that you can get in flash and think I could use that to the I-dents advantage. Having the extra week to work on it is a big help as I can now afford to spend a bit of time experimenting with these ideas.
The Live@5 project on Monday was good fun, I do not think that news graphics is something that I want to do in future but it was a good experience and I did get a nice smug feeling seeing my sports tables in the gallery. Unlike my previous experience doing the weather graphics, this week went fairly smoothly, mainly thanks to the various request sheets that Pete produced for the broadcasting students to put what they wanted on which caused fewer misunderstandings and false assumptions being made. I think I also went into it expecting the day to be a constant barrage of impossible requests from news people, so it was all generally a pleasant surprise.
However, despite this my weather maps where still able to rear their ugly heads and wreak havoc, firstly we discovered that instead of the maps being onscreen with the presenter and off to the left, they where in fact on there own and needed to be centred, which in the time I had left was not possible to do, leaving a big nasty space where the presenter should have been. Then for some reason the graphics would not render out of Flash, after my umpteenth attempt at doing this it finally worked (I still don’t know what was wrong). We then discovered that what ever programme the broadcasting students put all the weather in didn’t like the QuickTime files the maps where in and where painfully slow and jumpy to watch. My little rant aside, it was a good day and I think that Justin did a good job at keeping us all in check, and dealing with my argument with the computer.
Wednesday, 13 February 2008
I-dent project
A quick note to begin with, I forgot to mention Andy’s picks last week, Dirdy Birdy by John Dilworth, I thought was really good, I especially liked the use of music in the short and the character’s exaggerated body language. I want to try to incorporate this into my own work, although, so far I have not progressed much further than acting things out in front of the mirror.
The last couple of days have been spent trying to think up something for the OSTN I-dent, I can’t really think of anything “up-beat, electric, cool and hip” as my ideas tend to be completely the opposite. The fact that I am quite anti-American dose not help and I am fighting off the urge to start including subliminal messages. So I have decided to run with an idea for a storey that I have had floating around in my head since Christmas, quite how it will relate to the brief in anyway is a bit beyond me at the moment, plus I have done no research for it, its all just materialized and the characters have developed in my head so they have not changed much now that I have drawn them. I also have a horrible feeling that I’m going to end up with something that will offend most groups and few people apart from myself will understand. This would not be too bad but I have started to design characters, sets etc., which will make it quite hard for me to let go of it if the need arises. I’m hoping that tomorrow’s session will provide me with some inspiration to link it back to the brief, if not I will have to be firm with myself and lay it to rest.
Herbert Zettl’s Sight Sound Motion, Applied Media Asthetics is still sat in my room and I think I can safely say that it’s the first text book that I can not put down, I find the whole idea of lighting and camera angles fascinating; both are playing a big part in my ideas for the I-dent as well as a section on colour theory which I am hoping to put into practice on Friday. I think at the moment Flash is my programme of choice, although it might be a bit hard to achieve some of the effects I want I think that the animation on After Effects looks a bit wooden, although I do like the range of lighting and camera tools on it, and I don’t know where to start animating stuff on Maya.
The last couple of days have been spent trying to think up something for the OSTN I-dent, I can’t really think of anything “up-beat, electric, cool and hip” as my ideas tend to be completely the opposite. The fact that I am quite anti-American dose not help and I am fighting off the urge to start including subliminal messages. So I have decided to run with an idea for a storey that I have had floating around in my head since Christmas, quite how it will relate to the brief in anyway is a bit beyond me at the moment, plus I have done no research for it, its all just materialized and the characters have developed in my head so they have not changed much now that I have drawn them. I also have a horrible feeling that I’m going to end up with something that will offend most groups and few people apart from myself will understand. This would not be too bad but I have started to design characters, sets etc., which will make it quite hard for me to let go of it if the need arises. I’m hoping that tomorrow’s session will provide me with some inspiration to link it back to the brief, if not I will have to be firm with myself and lay it to rest.
Herbert Zettl’s Sight Sound Motion, Applied Media Asthetics is still sat in my room and I think I can safely say that it’s the first text book that I can not put down, I find the whole idea of lighting and camera angles fascinating; both are playing a big part in my ideas for the I-dent as well as a section on colour theory which I am hoping to put into practice on Friday. I think at the moment Flash is my programme of choice, although it might be a bit hard to achieve some of the effects I want I think that the animation on After Effects looks a bit wooden, although I do like the range of lighting and camera tools on it, and I don’t know where to start animating stuff on Maya.
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
Shameless Self Promotion
A bit of a hectic, yet productive week; started with my baffling decision to volunteer myself to do the weather on live at five, everything seemed to be going ok until I had to work out the timings for it, which involved me having to sit in front of a monitor showing the run-through and count in my head how long it would take till the maps had to change and then adding the appropriate amount of frames in flash. This resulted in layers being all mashed up into a confusing mess which was made worse when I was presented with last minute changes to the script. Anyway, broadcasting ended up with some jpegs, but I did manage to eventually get it sorted, just not in time for the programme. At least now I know a bit more about what I’m doing and it will hopefully go a bit more smoothly when my group does it.
Despite Monday’s hiccup I am enjoying using flash and whilst the stuff I am producing on it is by no means brilliant I think I am starting to get the hang of it and want to try and start applying some of the theories that I have learnt from Herbert Zettl’s Sight Sound Motion, Applied Media Aesthetics, which I am finding really interesting and I hope will prove to be useful. I have had some experience with basic camera work and lighting in my final project from my foundation course last year and a film I did for a friend (spot the blue tack and cereal boxes), filmed in my loft. The first is a montage of a couple of shorts, edited in Photoshop, each trying out a different style; the first is Svankmajer inspired, the second is a rip-off of Frank Miller’s Sin City, the third was just an excuse to hack up some Barbies, and the final one is done with hand puppets and was inspired by a visit I had to the police station. The second film is a sort of music video but I did not pay any attention to the audio so it dose not really fit and there’s some improvised sound editing at the end because the music was not long enough (actually I think its better without sound). In both films I taught myself everything as I went along so it’s all a bit basic; the lighting in both is provided by a daylight bulb I popped in my bedside lamp.
After that bit of self promotion, back to Zettl’s book, it has shown my just how little I know but I am really looking forward to trying out what I have learned. A lot of the areas, such as lighting and camera work will be different in flash as I would have to draw everything as I wanted it, so I think it might be easier to try using a programme like Maya, where I can control lighting etc. much like you can in the real world.
Despite Monday’s hiccup I am enjoying using flash and whilst the stuff I am producing on it is by no means brilliant I think I am starting to get the hang of it and want to try and start applying some of the theories that I have learnt from Herbert Zettl’s Sight Sound Motion, Applied Media Aesthetics, which I am finding really interesting and I hope will prove to be useful. I have had some experience with basic camera work and lighting in my final project from my foundation course last year and a film I did for a friend (spot the blue tack and cereal boxes), filmed in my loft. The first is a montage of a couple of shorts, edited in Photoshop, each trying out a different style; the first is Svankmajer inspired, the second is a rip-off of Frank Miller’s Sin City, the third was just an excuse to hack up some Barbies, and the final one is done with hand puppets and was inspired by a visit I had to the police station. The second film is a sort of music video but I did not pay any attention to the audio so it dose not really fit and there’s some improvised sound editing at the end because the music was not long enough (actually I think its better without sound). In both films I taught myself everything as I went along so it’s all a bit basic; the lighting in both is provided by a daylight bulb I popped in my bedside lamp.
After that bit of self promotion, back to Zettl’s book, it has shown my just how little I know but I am really looking forward to trying out what I have learned. A lot of the areas, such as lighting and camera work will be different in flash as I would have to draw everything as I wanted it, so I think it might be easier to try using a programme like Maya, where I can control lighting etc. much like you can in the real world.
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