Friday 5 November 2010

Progress so far

what i have done, established
aim to do next
advert research in bath

Wednesday 3 November 2010

David Hockney

David Hockney is an English painter, stage designer, photographer, draughtsman and printmaker. He is based in Bridlington although he also maintains a base in London. Hockney is considered an important contributor to the Pop Art movement of the 1960's and is established as one of the most influential British artists of the Twentieth Century.

I am looking at his photographic collection "joiners". These are a collection of photo-montages. Which are photographs stitched together to create one whole image. He does this by taking lots of different images of one place then working these all together to create one big image. Hockney uses small polaroid snaps or photo-lab prints of a single image.

Hockney created these photo-collage works mostly between 1970 and 1986. He reffered to them as "joiners". He used different techniques but the one i like the most is where he would take lots of polaroid images of one subject and lay them in a grid layout. The subject would usually move while being photographed so that the outcome would suggest movement and motion seen from the photographers perspective. Another method he developed would be to move the camera around the subject giving a slightly different perspective and almost producing a more 3D effect with a larger spectrum of the subject seen in the image rather than in a normal image.

Hockney's creation of the "joiners" came about by accident. He noticed a lot of images in the late 60's were created using wide angle lenses giving a distorted view. At the time he was working on a painting of a living room in LA, he decided to take polaroid shots of the room as he walked through it and glue them together not intending for them to make a composition of their own or work in any way he just wanted to see the perspective. After creating the final composition he realised that it told a story in a much better way as if the viewer were moving through the room. After he discovered this he decided to work with photography more and stopped painting for a while to divulge in this idea thoroughly.

Thursday 14 October 2010

Animations using different mediums


This animation is done using post it notes and a pen. It is one mans journey through his life which he is revisiting from looking at his old post-it notes and remaking them into an animation. The point of this is to show what big world events he didn’t take any notice of because of how involved he was with his own life. The actual drawings are very good and artistic and show movement well and I think it gets the message across very quickly of passing of time and important event s being missed. The way he draws shows imagination and creativity. I think it tells the story very well and must have used a lot of post-its! The actual animation must have taken a lot of planning and thought. It led me to look at his other animations where you can see he is very talented. The use of dates throughout the animation represents the passing of time and the way he uses post-it notes. I like how he can merge one into the next from words to an image.




This is a simple animation made using post-it notes. I like this method and should like to try it out.


This is another animation using post it notes. Instead of drawing on the and using them to animate they are used to make a picture. when each image is taken something changes on the post-it notes to create a series of images which in then make a video.





This in an animation of a structure being pushed down, it is like dominos







This is a drawn animation using a whiteboard and marker pens. I like how he alternates between being able to see him drawing and the drawings ‘drawing themselves’ it makes them look as though they are morphing on their own. He also uses a technique, which makes him look like he is drawing with his finger. This method tells a brilliant and abstract story which looks complicated and intricate. I assume a lot of planning went into this. He also uses props like pens and cloth in the actual film. He uses different colour pens, which I really like and although there doesn’t seem to be any meaning to what he is drawing the ideas flow very well from one to another There seems to be an ongoing theme of music and musical notes with creatures used throughout.

Thursday 7 October 2010

Examples of recent animations I like

Rabbit


Who I am and what I want
chris Shepherd and David Shrigley


Rotting artist




This is a stop motion animation which tells a story. The use of light is very clever as it shows the passing of time and how time is frozen. Light is also used to exaggerate areas of the film where she is supposed to be on a train they flash a light to represent passing lights. I like the way the props like the bed are used, where the pillows are used as clouds and stairs and the clothes are used to represent animals like birds and fish. I think the video goes very well with the song and it is supposed to represent dreaming. I like the way a story is told here it may be that she is dreaming of a man or sleepwalks but the clever use of props propels you into a new world. The storyboard shows how this was achieved. They took a huge amount of still photos which were then pieced together.



This is a stop motion film of a woman who took a photograph of her own face for 200 days. I really like this video as it shows progression and change. The way each photograph is different but her face remains in the same place I imagine she must have used a tripod.

using animation to tell a story.


This is a stop motion using a chalkboard, chalk and a camera. I like the theme of it and how it tells a story about autumn. The way you can see where the chalk has been is really interesting and it looks very well thought out. The part with the cat shows movement very well and reminds me a bit of the artist Blublu as it flows in a similar way and the way objects morph into other things. The method of ‘painting over’ is also very similar to Blublu and the movement of objects and the use of geometric shapes when the cloud is raining is also similar to his work. The growing tree that turns into a man is the part I like the best but the way it ends with the same scene as it starts is very aesthetically pleasing. The overall story I imagine is about children and the way they communicate/interact. It also shows childlike imagination in the way one idea flows into another and you have playground games such as Chinese whispers and the clapping game.





This animation is quite simple but very effective. A chalk half-pipe is drawn on the floor then images are takes of a skateboarder while posing on the floor. This is quite effective and shows movement quite well. This is similar to a lot of skateboarding animations I have seen like the stop motion ‘human skateboard’



This is a fairly simple way of using stop motion to tell a story. I like how it seems the artist interacts with the snowman as well as just drawing him. This chalkboard method is really nice as you can see where the last drawing was.



This is an interesting way of animating. Drawing over a picture. He uses thin and think pens and also sand. What he is drawing is actually quite abstract and doesn’t make a lot of sense. He has also edit this so it flashes new images making it quite difficult to follow.



This animation uses photographs to tell a story. It shows a boy growing up and how he got to be in the anniversary photograph. It very cleverly shows different stages of his life using photographs, which were positioned around what I’m assuming is his house. Thousands of photographs were taken to produce this, it is supposed to advertise a camera and I think it serves its purpose very well. I like the way in which the photographs progress from black to white representing a change in time. And how photographs are used to map out a route in which the boy then walks along. The camera positions are also very important in helping the film flow freely. I like the use of frames in this video showing he is travelling and the use o the balloon. The way the camera follows the photographs shows we are following his life and his journey.

Wednesday 6 October 2010

Dryden Goodwin



Dryden Goodwin is an artist who sketches people. I really like these because it shows how the images are drawn rather than just the final image.





These are amazing videos made by artist Dryden Goodwin for a project in London called 'Linear'. 60 pencil portraits of Jubilee Line staff with 60 separate short films recording the making of each drawing as the staff are working - maybe driving a train, on the ticket barriers or selling ticket, loads of different situations. You can see the drawings as posters, on lightboxes and at special exhibition sites across the London Underground and also watch all 60 films at http://www.tfl.gov.uk/art - check out Dryden Goodwin's website also at http://www.drydengoodwin.com/ for more of his art work.

Flight
Dryden Goodwin


Dryden Goodwin’s Flight, is an installation of inter-related elements including a film combining live action, animated intervention and a multi-layered soundtrack, presented alongside hundreds of small-scale pen and ink drawings, which construct and constitute the animation.

Flight places the viewer at the centre of the action through the eyes of the artist fugitive embarked on an emotional and ambiguous escape journey. The film tracks the protagonist’s movement out from urban vistas, via motorway networks, through forests to the coast, onwards to the sea and sky. Evoking the fear of pursuit and a restless inability to settle and relate to people, place and self alongside the hope of liberation. The transformative quality of the animated interventions suggests a superimposed fantasy or reverie.

Goodwin is interested in viewing the film and drawings in close proximity, exploring the potential for one to influence and heighten the viewer’s experience of the other. Built into the structure of the film are rhythmic tensions between accelerated forward motion and serene stillness. This allows a context for static and moving images to interact by exploring a journey and the formation of memory. The dislocating nature of the film is complimented by intensely realised drawings that are placed within illuminated display cases. Ranging from minimal marks to elaborate structures, the drawings repeatedly revisit moments from the journey and amass captured thoughts and emotions. The multi-layered sound recording, comprising of orchestration, natural sounds and voices, accentuates and interprets the details presented in the work.

Goodwin’s pen and ink drawings and animated interventions offer the viewer diverse gestures as potential keys to psychological states, suggesting an evolving relationship between the unknown protagonist and the changing surroundings.
The film element of Flight expands on a short film commissioned by the animate! project, funded by Arts Council England and Channel 4 Television, UK.

Monday 4 October 2010

Walt Disney

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film director, producer, animator, screenwriter and entertainer. Disney is famous for his influence on the field of entertainment during the 20th Century. He was the co-founder of Walt Disney productions and he became one of the best known motion picture producers in the world. His staff and himself produced some of the worlds most well known animated characters such as Mickey mouse, who Disney himself was the original voice.
He started off his creative side by becoming the cartoonist for the school paper and decided he wanted to draw cartoons for a living after being rejected by the army because he was too young. He worked alongside cartoonists and animators until he saved enough money to enter Hollywood. It was here he found his success and went on to produce feature film's such as 'Snow White'.

Saturday 2 October 2010

Nick Park


Nick Park is an English animator. He is the film maker who created the famous stop motion animations 'Wallace and Gromit' and 'Shaun the Sheep'.

In 1985, he joined the staff of Aardman Animations in Bristol, where he worked as an animator on commercial products. He made Creature Comforts as his contribution to a series of shorts called "Lip Synch". Creature Comforts matched animated zoo animals with a soundtrack of people talking about their homes. The two films were nominated for a host of awards. A Grand Day Out beat Creature Comforts for the BAFTA award, but it was Creature Comforts that won Park his first Oscar.

In 1990 Park worked alongside advertising agency GGK to develop a series of highly acclaimed television advertisements for the "Heat Electric" campaign. The Creature Comforts advertisements are now regarded as among the best advertisements ever shown on British television, as voted independently by viewers of the UK's main commercial channels ITV and Channel 4.

Two more Wallace and Gromit shorts, The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995), followed, both winning Oscars. He then made his first feature-length film, Chicken Run (2000), co-directed with Aardman founder Peter Lord. He also supervised a new series of "Creature Comforts" films for British television in 2003.

His second theatrical feature-length film and first Wallace and Gromit feature, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, was released on 5 October 2005, and won Best Animated Feature Oscar at the 78th Academy Awards, 6 March 2006.

Thursday 30 September 2010

Windsor McCay


Windsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator whose pioneering early animated work set a standard followed by Walt Disney and others in later decades. His two best-known creations are the newspaper comic strip 'Little Nemo in Slumberland' and the animated cartoon 'Gertie the Dinosaur' which he created in 1914.

McCay created a number of animated short films, in which every single frame of each cartoon (with each film requiring thousands of frames) was hand-drawn by McCay and occasionally his assistants. McCay went on vaudeville tours with his films. He presented lectures and did drawings; then he interacted with his animated films, performing such tricks as holding his hand out to "pet" his animated creations.

The star of McCay's groundbreaking animated film Gertie the Dinosaur is classified by film and animation historians as the first cartoon character created especially for film to display a unique, realistic personality. In the film, Gertie causes trouble and cries when she is scolded, and finally she gives McCay himself a ride on her back as he steps into the movie picture.

Wednesday 29 September 2010

J. Stuart Blackton

James Stuart Blackton was an alglo-American film producer of the Silent Era, the founder of Vitagraph studios and among the first film makers to use the techniques of stop-motion and drawn animation.

Blackton was a film maker whose success drew him to experiment with stop-motion and drawn animation. The first animated film he produced was 'The Enchanted Drawing'the film includes Blackton the lightning artist sketches a face, cigars, and a bottle of wine. He appears to remove the last drawings as real objects, and the face appears to react. The "animation" here is of the stop-action variety, the camera is stopped, a single change is made, and the camera is then started again.

The transition to stop-motion was apparently accidental and occurred around 1905. According to Albert Smith, one day the crew was filming a complex series of stop-action effects on the roof while steam from the building's generator was billowing in the background. On playing the film back, Smith noticed the odd effect created by the steam puffs scooting across the screen and decided to reproduce it deliberately. A few films, some lost, use this effect to represent invisible ghosts or to have toys come to life. In 1906, Blackton directed Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, which uses stop-motion as well as stick puppetry to produce a series of effects. After Blackton hand draws two faces on a chalkboard, they appear to come to life and engage in antics. Most of the film uses life action effects instead of animation, but nevertheless this film had a huge effect in stimulating the creation of animated films in America. In Europe, the same effect was had from "The Haunted Hotel" (1907), another Vitagraph short directed by Blackton. The "Haunted Hotel" was mostly live-action, about a tourist spending the night in an inn run by invisible spirits. Most of the effects are also live-action (wires and such), but one scene of a dinner making itself was done using stop-motion, and was presented in a tight close-up that allowed budding animators to study it for technique.

Tuesday 28 September 2010

Eadweard Muybridge


Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer who spent much of his life in the United States. He is well known for his work on animation locomotion which used multiple cameras and camera equipment to capture movement. He is also known for his zoopraxiscope, a device used to project motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip.

Eadweard Muybridge was asked to help the former Governor of California Leland Stanford to prove that when a horse galloped all four of the horses hooves actually left the floor at the same time. Most paintings of horses prior to this were painted with the front legs extended forwards and the rear legs extended rearwards. Muybridge used a series of large cameras that used glass plates placed in a line, each one being triggered by a thread as the horse passed. Later a clockwork device was used. The images were copied in the form of silhouettes onto a disc and viewed in a machine called a Zoöpractiscope. This, in fact became an intermediate stage towards motion pictures or cinematography. This series of photos stands as one of the earliest forms of videography.

Tuesday 21 September 2010

Short History of Animation

Animation is a graphic representation of drawings to show movement. This is done using a series of drawings linked together and usually photographed using camera equipment. The movement is created by a slight difference in each drawing which when played back in rapid succession gives the illusion of movement within the drawings.

Pioneers of animation include George Melies and Emile Cohl of France and Windsor McCay of the United States. Some consider McCay's Sinking of Lusitania from 1918 as the first animated feature film.

Early animations, which started to appear before 1910, consisted of simplistic drawings photographed one at a time, this would have been extremely time consuming as at a rate of 24 frames per second used as the average, there would need to be hundreds of drawings per minute of film. The development of celluloid around 1913 made animation easier to manage. Instead of numerous drawings, the animator now could make a complex background and/or foreground and sandwich moving characters in between several other pieces of celluloid, which is transparent except for where drawings are painted on it. This made it unnecessary to repeatedly draw the background as it remained static and only the characters moved. It also created an illusion of depth, especially if foreground elements were placed in the frames.

Walt Disney was next to take animation to a new level. He was the first animator to add sound to his movie cartoons with the premiere of Steamboat Willie in 1928. In 1937, he produced the first full length animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

With the introduction of computers, animation took on a whole new meaning. Many feature films of today had animation incorporated into them for special effects. A film like Star Wars by George Lucas would rely heavily on computer animation for many of its special effects. Toy Story, produced by Walt Disney Productions and Pixar Animation Studios, became the first full length feature film animated entirely on computers when it was released in 1995.

Monday 20 September 2010

Types of Animation

Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways. The most common method of presenting animation is as a motion picture or video program, although there are other methods.

Zeotrope
A zeotrope is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures. It wasinvented in china around 180 AD. It consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. Beneath the slits on the inner surface of the cylinder is a band which has either individual frames from a video/film or images from a set of sequenced drawings or photographs. As the cylinder spins the user looks through the slits at the pictures on the opposite side of the cylinder's interior. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together so that the user sees a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, the equivalent of a motion picture. Cylindrical zoetropes have the property of causing the images to appear thinner than their actual sizes when viewed in motion through the slits.

Flash Animation
Flash animation is a technique of animation using the program Adobe Flash to create an animated film which has a cartoon quality. The style is quite simplistic and unpolished but is very widely liked. There are dozens of flash animated TV series, countless TV advertisements and award winning short films. On the 26th of February 1999, a major milestone for Flash animation, the popular web series WhirlGirl became the first regularly scheduled Flash animated web series when it premiered on the premium cable channel Showtime. A more recent example of Flash animation is the Family Guy series which is extremely popular.

Stop Motion
There are many different ways of using stop motion animation. You can use manipulate clay whilst taking pictures to make it look as though it is moving on its own. This technique of using models was used by the Aardman company when they created the famous Wallace and Gromit. Another famous animator was Jan Svankmajer who mixed the use of models and live actors. One of his most famous compilations was 'Alice', a strange take on the novel Alice in Wonderland. There are many children's animations created with stop motion from the clangers to the magic roundabout. Stop motion animation has a long history in film. It was often used to show objects moving as if by magic. The first example of the stop motion technique can be credited to Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton for The Humpty Dumpty Circus (1898), in which a toy circus of acrobats and animals comes to life. In 1902, the film Fun in a Bakery Shop used the stop-trick technique in the "lightning sculpting" sequence.

Monday 13 September 2010

Mind-map of Ideas



I wanted to create mind-maps of my ideas to make it easier to choose what to do as my project. I found that I could see all of my choices and decide which one to follow. the first mind-map is of my initial ideas, it consists mostly of different types of media to help me come to the decision of doing an animation

The second mind-map is of my initial ideas surrounding animation narrowed down to show all of the routes I could take. I need to do a small amount of research on each to get a better idea of each to choose which I will explore further and which I will use in my final piece. This mind-map covers the different styles of animation and my ideas relating to them, I found it easier to choose stop-motion animation by looking at my ideas and seeing what interested me more.

Friday 10 September 2010

project proposal form

For my project I have decided to try and promote my local area using stop motion photography. I will experiment with different types of stop motion animation to create a final piece which is artistic and serves the purpose of showing off Bath. I will research different techniques of animating and look at artists and animators I like the style of. I also want to look at current advertisements of Bath as from what I have noticed the current adverts are quite boring and may not appeal to all audiences.

I am going to experiment with stop motion using photography. There are a lot of photographers I like and I want to try and find a way to incorporate this into my animation. Bath is a beautiful city which is brought to life in Photographs so I will look at photographers of Bath and other city's. I think the use of photography to advertise is very effective and I want to look at the techniques photographers use, for example David Hockney's 'joiners' collection is a good example of photo-montage. I will experiment with photo-montage trying to find places in Bath which are famous but also places which might not be as well known.

I particularly like the 'white board' method of stop motion animation, where a picture being drawn is photographed at different stages to make it look as though it is drawing itself. I like the way Dryden Goodwin animates his drawings so I am going to research him further. I also like the graffiti artist Blublu and would like to experiment with graffiti but don't think it would be the most effective method of advertising Bath. I will however look at some of his work to see if I could take any aspects of the artwork to benefit my own.

My idea's for my project are to find atmospheric areas of Bath and photograph them. I will them look at these and decide what could be done in which place. I would like to create a photo-montage of some places and attempt to animate people walking around in them. I will do this by taking photos of a location I like and then taking a series of images of people walking through. I could then use Photoshop to create the animation. I also want to hand draw some of the animation so I could get print-outs of each shot of the person walking then draw them then scan them back into Photoshop or photograph them to add to the final piece.

I think this idea is interesting as I haven't seen it done before. I will need to do a lot of research and test pieces to ensure nothing goes wrong. I hope to create a final piece which is entertaining and serves it's purpose effectively. I want the final outcome to successfully show areas of Bath in an artistic way.

For this project I will need a camera, tripod, editing software and possibly actors. I will need to plan each step effectively to ensure I don't run out of time. The first stage will be research, then I will do some test pieces, then compile my final piece.