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.
Thursday, 21 February 2008
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.
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Starting to understand stuff
A good week this week in terms of getting to grips with things; messing around on Flash and After-effects for live at five has helped me gain a better understanding of the programmes, and I am now happier with my weather graphics although they still need cleaning up and I fear that this could mean having to start the whole thing again, although now I know what I am doing it hopefully will not take as long.
Anyway this all helped in yesterdays workshop as I could focus more on getting the lip syncing right instead of trying to remember how everything works. I think I got the lip sync about right on my self portrait but as Andy pointed out the animation dose not really fit the mood of the sound recording. Hopefully I can go back and re-record my characters quote or change round the animation to fix this, paying more attention to the character’s emotions.
This conveniently brings me onto today’s screening; I thought that the emotions conveyed in lot of the films were really effective and well animated, for me this especially stood out in Pencil Test which showed how much could be achieved despite having a very basic character to work with. I also thought that Geri’s Game was really good; the character’s walk and movements, I thought, where very well done, creating a feeling of frailty. I also liked the use of quick cuts between camera angles to condense time and make it seem as if there where two characters playing each other.
I mentioned last week that I was becoming interested in cinematography so this week I have got myself Hebert Zettl’s Sight Sound Motion, Applied Media Aesthetics, which looks big and complicated. I have not actually started to read it yet but that’s this afternoon’s job.
Anyway this all helped in yesterdays workshop as I could focus more on getting the lip syncing right instead of trying to remember how everything works. I think I got the lip sync about right on my self portrait but as Andy pointed out the animation dose not really fit the mood of the sound recording. Hopefully I can go back and re-record my characters quote or change round the animation to fix this, paying more attention to the character’s emotions.
This conveniently brings me onto today’s screening; I thought that the emotions conveyed in lot of the films were really effective and well animated, for me this especially stood out in Pencil Test which showed how much could be achieved despite having a very basic character to work with. I also thought that Geri’s Game was really good; the character’s walk and movements, I thought, where very well done, creating a feeling of frailty. I also liked the use of quick cuts between camera angles to condense time and make it seem as if there where two characters playing each other.
I mentioned last week that I was becoming interested in cinematography so this week I have got myself Hebert Zettl’s Sight Sound Motion, Applied Media Aesthetics, which looks big and complicated. I have not actually started to read it yet but that’s this afternoon’s job.
Saturday, 26 January 2008
After-effects and other computer based fun
Sorry that this is a bit later than usual; it has been one of those weeks. Will start by saying that I thought the After-effects session with Pete was really good, having the instructions in front of me was really helpful as it allowed me to work through it at my own pace and the Photoshop tutorial was a good re-cap and got me more familiar with the functions on this version. I would not say that I am exactly skilled in either, which was more than confirmed yesterday but its early days and I am hoping it is something that I can get my head round.
The essay was an interesting experience; I was comparing Stanley Kubrick’s films to The Iron Giant and Spirited Away. Having written this epic on Friday night, which was way over the word limit, I read it Saturday, did not like it and started again. I tried to keep this new version much more to the point and in the end I only talked about one of the ten or so points that I made in the original one. Despite all of this and making some pretty stupid mistakes, such as misplacing my notes on Dr. Strangelove and subsequently forgetting to include it in my essay and writing a page about Artificial Intelligence A.I. and then discovering it was released after Spirited Away, writing the essay has got me really interested in cinematography and I want to try and start reading up on the subject.
Getting the work done for motion studies has also got me really into character design; I took a lot of inspiration from an interview I saw with Quentin Tarantino a while ago, I can not remember if it was on Friday Night With Jonathon Ross or The Culture Show, where he talked about how he came up with characters and plots for his films, explaining how I tries to get into the mindset of the characters so that the film writes itself.
The essay was an interesting experience; I was comparing Stanley Kubrick’s films to The Iron Giant and Spirited Away. Having written this epic on Friday night, which was way over the word limit, I read it Saturday, did not like it and started again. I tried to keep this new version much more to the point and in the end I only talked about one of the ten or so points that I made in the original one. Despite all of this and making some pretty stupid mistakes, such as misplacing my notes on Dr. Strangelove and subsequently forgetting to include it in my essay and writing a page about Artificial Intelligence A.I. and then discovering it was released after Spirited Away, writing the essay has got me really interested in cinematography and I want to try and start reading up on the subject.
Getting the work done for motion studies has also got me really into character design; I took a lot of inspiration from an interview I saw with Quentin Tarantino a while ago, I can not remember if it was on Friday Night With Jonathon Ross or The Culture Show, where he talked about how he came up with characters and plots for his films, explaining how I tries to get into the mindset of the characters so that the film writes itself.
Thursday, 17 January 2008
It's 11:32 and i'm writing an blog :P
Shot and sweet this week as it’s late, I am ill and I am half-way though this essay, which is rapidly becoming too long. Will start off by answering Andy’s comment from last week; I spent my holidays watching way to many Bond films and that rubbed off on me and I ended up creating my Bond villain chair, complete with secret-agent, incompetent henchmen and unfaithful mistress disposal buttons, plus five more for any unexpected situations. I think I scribbled this somewhere in my notes and I even ended up doing some observation sketches from the films, glorified scribbles really. Last week I referred to ‘dodgy bits’ on my chair, this is an extremely technical term and basically means that there are some bits on the chair which I could have probably done better if I had taken my time; this was mainly in areas such as the piping on the cushions, which suddenly gets a bit thick or distorted in places, I think a hole appeared somewhere at some point on the back but I hid it by bashing random buttons and swearing a lot, and if you put the model in wire frame mode there is a mysterious collection of lines on the bottom of the chair, don’t know how they got there but you can’t really see it so I did not worry about it. Somehow I don’t think I am cut out for 3D modelling.
Quick note on this week; I really like Flash, which is a relief as I have been struggling to find something I can actually do. The animation I did on it was dire even by my standards but I wasn’t trying that hard and it was the first time I have used it. I like using the graphics tablets though. The old essay is coming along ok, a bit too well, as it is a monster of a thing and nowhere near done so it will need hacking up a bit to meet the word limit. Also, spending a week being fuelled solely by coffee, pasta, Nurofen and Stanley Kubrick films has done strange things to my head so I have babbled on a bit for a couple of pages about capitalism in Spirited Away, which I am not even sure exists. Anyway, Sergi Esenstein’s The Film Sense has once again proved to be useful when talking about camera angles, montage and the like, which is just as well because it is the only book on the reading list I have finished, I am still attempting to read Richard William’s The Animator’s Survival Kit, Timing for Animation and Anatomy for the Artist all at the same time, as well as reading Brian May’s biography, no relevance to anything I know.
Oh, quick note for Andy, I but the film titles in last weeks blog in italics but when I transferred it from word the computer took it off and I forgot to put it back, just though I would mention it as its something we get marked on.
Quick note on this week; I really like Flash, which is a relief as I have been struggling to find something I can actually do. The animation I did on it was dire even by my standards but I wasn’t trying that hard and it was the first time I have used it. I like using the graphics tablets though. The old essay is coming along ok, a bit too well, as it is a monster of a thing and nowhere near done so it will need hacking up a bit to meet the word limit. Also, spending a week being fuelled solely by coffee, pasta, Nurofen and Stanley Kubrick films has done strange things to my head so I have babbled on a bit for a couple of pages about capitalism in Spirited Away, which I am not even sure exists. Anyway, Sergi Esenstein’s The Film Sense has once again proved to be useful when talking about camera angles, montage and the like, which is just as well because it is the only book on the reading list I have finished, I am still attempting to read Richard William’s The Animator’s Survival Kit, Timing for Animation and Anatomy for the Artist all at the same time, as well as reading Brian May’s biography, no relevance to anything I know.
Oh, quick note for Andy, I but the film titles in last weeks blog in italics but when I transferred it from word the computer took it off and I forgot to put it back, just though I would mention it as its something we get marked on.
Thursday, 10 January 2008
A Bit About Everything
First week back and I am finding it surprisingly easy to get back into the swing of things; got the Maya project done although I think I might have rushed it a bit as there are some bits where the piping went a bit dodgy so I will probably get marked down for neatness but all in all I am farley pleased with it. Once this essay is out of the way I hope to spend some more time on Maya trying to learn everything and just having a general play.
My character for motion studies has been completely revamped and I can actually draw him reasonably quickly now. Here is the video i talked about last time:
I have done some Photoshop pictures of him over Christmas too and I have tried to continue doing that since I got back but the version of Photoshop that’s on the studio computers is a lot more up-to-date than the one I had at home and all the buttons are in different places, so I will have to sit down one day and figure all of that out. I am really starting to get into the storey for this character and have started to jot down some ideas for scenes and I am finding that going through ideas with Rosie, my partner for this project, is producing some good ideas, although I am a bit worried that I tend to take over on projects like this.
Ideas for the essay are coming thick and fast too; I read Ted Hughes’ The Iron Man the other day and I think I could just write the essay on its relationship with The Iron Giant. I have also watched Porco Rosso and The Incredibals which have helped me to establish some recurring themes and trends in The Iron Giant and Spirited Away, if I have the time I want to try and watch some more of Miyazaki’s films mainly because I have never really been into anime and I am finding the differences between this and western styles really interesting. I have also found some really useful stuff on the internet, including interviews with Bird and Miyazaki, below is a list of them:
http://www.onlineghibli.com/spirited_away/
http://nausicaa.net/miyazaki/sen/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayao_Miyazaki
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0594503/
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=51
http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/hayao_miyazaki.shtml
http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,1569689,00.html
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0083348/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129167/
http://www.timeout.com/film/chicago/features/show-feature/3073/cartoon-crusader.html
http://movies.nytimes.com/person/81910/Brad-Bird/filmography
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/features/film/e3i653608aa3a0ea3bba6ec63fa98301e01
http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2004-11-02-bird-secret-identity_x.htm
http://www.slate.com/id/2169280/
http://uk.dvd.ign.com/articles/594/594806p1.html
http://www.collider.com/entertainment/interviews/article.asp/aid/5920/tcid/1
http://www2.warnerbros.com/corpcomm/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Animation
http://www.animationusa.com/wbmore2.html
http://www.xsibase.com/articles.php?detail=67
So now I think I need to go through all the stuff that I have found and see what is the best angle to approach the essay from.
My character for motion studies has been completely revamped and I can actually draw him reasonably quickly now. Here is the video i talked about last time:
I have done some Photoshop pictures of him over Christmas too and I have tried to continue doing that since I got back but the version of Photoshop that’s on the studio computers is a lot more up-to-date than the one I had at home and all the buttons are in different places, so I will have to sit down one day and figure all of that out. I am really starting to get into the storey for this character and have started to jot down some ideas for scenes and I am finding that going through ideas with Rosie, my partner for this project, is producing some good ideas, although I am a bit worried that I tend to take over on projects like this.
Ideas for the essay are coming thick and fast too; I read Ted Hughes’ The Iron Man the other day and I think I could just write the essay on its relationship with The Iron Giant. I have also watched Porco Rosso and The Incredibals which have helped me to establish some recurring themes and trends in The Iron Giant and Spirited Away, if I have the time I want to try and watch some more of Miyazaki’s films mainly because I have never really been into anime and I am finding the differences between this and western styles really interesting. I have also found some really useful stuff on the internet, including interviews with Bird and Miyazaki, below is a list of them:
http://www.onlineghibli.com/spirited_away/
http://nausicaa.net/miyazaki/sen/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayao_Miyazaki
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0594503/
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=51
http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/hayao_miyazaki.shtml
http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,1569689,00.html
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0083348/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129167/
http://www.timeout.com/film/chicago/features/show-feature/3073/cartoon-crusader.html
http://movies.nytimes.com/person/81910/Brad-Bird/filmography
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/features/film/e3i653608aa3a0ea3bba6ec63fa98301e01
http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2004-11-02-bird-secret-identity_x.htm
http://www.slate.com/id/2169280/
http://uk.dvd.ign.com/articles/594/594806p1.html
http://www.collider.com/entertainment/interviews/article.asp/aid/5920/tcid/1
http://www2.warnerbros.com/corpcomm/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Animation
http://www.animationusa.com/wbmore2.html
http://www.xsibase.com/articles.php?detail=67
So now I think I need to go through all the stuff that I have found and see what is the best angle to approach the essay from.
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