Bjork

One of my favorite artists, I've just been revisiting some of her videos, I have always felt inspired by this artist and some of my earlier work is clearly influenced by bjork, I wish I could find that creativity again, sometimes I wonder if the computer has taken it away? I used to use stop motion, photography, I drew alot more- on paper with a real pen! lol and a few times I would draw on myself and create artwork on my face, I used to create clay models etc. but since starting digital media I haven't once returned to any of these things instead opting to use the computer for everything, well this is digital media after all. But I feel most of it is about making money and creating what a client wants, it is not art for arts sake and therefore I feel I can't be as creative as I would like to be, there are limits and boundaries. I cannot wait to get all these constant briefs and work out of the way so I can just return to my "roots" and do my own thing.

First contact finished movie

Here is my finished video "first contact" for maya.

To say I am not happy with it would be an understatement!

EVALUATION:

H&M website

http://www.hm.com/gb/#/spring_fashion09/

check out this website, thought it was pretty cool! has shown me that website design doesn't have to be boring! wonder how this was done?

Maya scene 2

This is the 2nd scene in which the sperms are making their way toward the egg!

This is wicked!

I wish I could produce something like this! it's awesome! 

it's the opposite to my idea, as my egg ultimately kills the 

sperm and doesn't let him in!

I like the way they turn their heads to look at him, it's brilliant! 

and the way he moves in a sophisticated swagger, excellent. 

It has made me think about the sizing, I was having my eggs 

and the sperm almost the same size and a sperm to an egg, 

but in fact the egg should be massive in comparison, with

hundreds of sperms around it. 

so that's something to think about. 

I might make it more realistic...

Tachikoma from ghost in the shell stand alone complex

As we are animating simple objects in Maya and giving them expression and emotion without the use of complex facial expressions, environmental props etc I thought I'd reference the Tachikoma from ghost in the shell.

Although they are essentially fighting machines, they convey personality through their voices and gestures, but even without the voices and no facial expression whatsoever you can still detect some form of emotion from these machines, (they do appear to have "souls" or some kind of personality in the series) simply by the way they move, despite their bulky appearance they are very adept at moving around, cat like if you will, and have pet-like mannerisms, in fact although I watch mecha, I never really "feel" anything for the machines, (except a little in eva when I realized the eva's were part biological) but in this i felt annoyed by the tachikoma, then even more annoyed and then I started to like them and even sympathies with them! 

A great achievement if you ask me for an animator to make the audience connect with his/her characters as it is, but expressionless machines? well I guess just about everything to do with GITS must just be pure awesome then.

Sword of the stranger

Excellent film I've just watched having missed it at the leeds film festival 2008, fab animation, the fight scenes are also spot on and it actually has a very good solid plotline! at times i forgot i was watching a cartoon as it plays out like an epical samurai flick. I highly recommend this to any anime or samurai movie fan, it's very good and yes i'm very tired so my vocab is also asleep, i can't think of the right words to describe the film, but I thought I'd stick it up on the good old blog as everything watch is usually where i get my inspiration from, i rarely look at the real world!

Oh I forgot to say what it's about! well i don't want to give too much away but basically it's about a little boy and his dog who have been sent away by a monk to seek refuge in a temple in another city as his home village was burnt to the ground by imperialist soldiers. It turns out the entire army is after the boy believing he is the key to immortality. the boy meets a lone samurai warrior and they team up, (well the boy hires him to get him to the temple in one piece after his dog has taken a liking to the stranger) the characters are all very solid and well-rounded out and the plot elements fall in line with the ming dynasty and the intrusion of the white man and their weapons vs the honour of the samurai. I'm too tired to say anymore i can't think straight! 

Update for 500 word animation summary

AT LAAAST!!!

My animation is finished! I managed to get into college today and got some help in getting it tweaked here and there, I got my issues fixed and now it's done! I totally re-did the scene with the girl in it cause it just didn't fit in, but I decided to make her slide into the initial background instead of just jumping into another background that didn't match.

So i'll leave off here cause I have to get on with my powerpoint presentation now!

and here is the uploaded final video, (let's hope it uploads quicker at college!)

500 word summery for Flash animation brief

For this brief we were given a choice of 3 companies to create a flash based animation for, that could be put onto a promotional website.

 of the 3 choices I chose Pylones gift shop because I wanted to do something different and figured half the class would pick marvel! besides I'm not particularly interested in marvel.

Anyway I started this project by brainstorming a few ideas in my sketchbook and then creating a storyboard for the idea I wanted to stick with. 

This was to vectorize the "gifts" using illustrator and then bringing those images into flash I planned on having them dance around the screen after bursting from a gift box, I decided to use Christmas as a theme and have the gifts coming from a present in someones living room, dancing around the room and also adding color as they went, I was going to follow this up with a slogan along the lines of pylones adding color at christmas.

To get the color element in there I used 2 backgrounds which I edited in photoshop, a black and white and a colored version of the same background and then altering the alpha faded the black and white background where necessary so that the colored background could shine through as the gifts danced around.

To get them to dance I decided to use guidelines and motion tweens, due to time constrictions I kept the items static, it would have been nice to have some of them moving individually as well but given the time and the sheer amount of hassle and frustration I went through with using flash decided it was not possible to do.

At the end of the film I planned on having another scene depicting a person arriving from the hallway, at this point the gifts were to dive back into the box, undiscovered... however due to the time limitations and technical ability I had to leave this out and instead just brought the girl into the current scene.

I would say the influence behind my work on this brief has definitely been a range of Anime movies that I have seen over the last few years or so, If I had to name one it would be paprika, or more specifically the marching scene in paprika, which encompasses a marching army of inanimate objects, I also took the music from the Intro of this film for my animation, however I could only get a small clip for free, so I had the choice of looping it or cutting it and adding more music, which is what I did, at the end of the scene a girl comes in and the music changes.

I feel I have tried my best on this brief, although am not 100% happy with the outcome, this is because I only have basic knowledge in flash, (a few introductory sessions) and found I didn't always get the help I needed when I needed it. 

of course there was only one tutor available for the duration of this brief who had to tend to the whole class alone, so it's understandable that I couldn't get all the tutorage I needed.

I found alot of problems and frustration with using flash, however after these things were explained to me and I knew how to resolve them I can now say I feel fairly confident in using flash, although clearly at a basic level, I feel there is still more that I need to learn and am sure I will with further briefs.

I feel I have done well given the circumstances and have definitely got a basic understanding of flash, there are still things I want to know and am sure in time I will find out! 

overall I am happy with the first half of my animation, but the 2nd part needs improvement.

(note: since writing this I have improved the second half and am alot happier with it!)

one other thing was that I was nervous about using thousands of frames, (I have learning problems with math and anything to do with numbers makes me freeze up basically) so as I'm not experienced in flash and to avoid confusion I kept them shorter thinking I could add frames and expand it later, of course I then found out that If i do this it will severely slow down the entire sequence, so I had to leave it as it was, otherwise delete it and start again! and I don't think I can do 3-4 weeks work again in a couple of days so it will have to be left as it is, which is around 825 frames, making the animation about 33 seconds long.

If I could do this brief again I would spend less time on vectorizing the images, I would have made an animatic, (and I really hope I don't lose marks for that because we were told we could do an animatic or a storyboard and it was not made clear that marks would be lost for not doing an animatic?) as this may have helped with realization, after the presentation of the storyboards I decided to just get on with my Flash as I knew what I wanted to happen, however it did not work that way! I would also plan my time alot better as you don't realize how precious it is until it's gone! Although I did dedicate almost all my time to this project for the past 2 weeks, I haven't worked on anything else because of it, I haven't even given my family the time of day because of it! so It's not an issue of not putting enough time into it, it's probably more about managing that time, which i'm sure if i had been confident in flash would have been easier!

here is the finished quicktime file, hopefully it will upload in college as I tried at home and it wouldn't upload!

(can't believe it, it's been an hour now and it STILL hasn't uploaded!)

(got it to upload at last but the quality is very very bad!!)

Vectorized Images for my Flash Animation

I don't know why but some of them have changed color as they have been uploaded to here! and the outlines have gone grey on others. These are just what I have managed to get done so far, I am getting on with the animation now and hope to find the time to add some more later so that there is more variety! 

Pylones Gifts Story Boards

Here are some story boards for the flash animation I am going to be making, (god help me I still can't use flash) for Pylones gifts. I thought of a Russian Doll effect, Dancing around the screen, Items being grouped into "gangs" and then competing to be the best, eating each other, diving into a basket and then the idea of them being a christmas present that explodes and adds color to the scene before hiding in the present again before being spotted by a human.

The slogan would be something along the lines of: "Pylones- Bringing Christmas to life" as I chose to look at this more from an advertising point of view.

(this is ridiculous, I have been uploading 3 small images for 20 minutes now, and this happened last time I tried to upload, it's an absolute joke, how I am supposed to keep up with my blog if I can't even upload? arrrrrrghhhhhh!!!!!curses curses curses!!!) (this is pathetic, i thought macs were better than pc's? I had this Bull**** with my pc, now the mac too!? it's been nearly half an hour now and i want to smash everything in my sight!) ah F*** this, I can't upload my F****** images, I give up! what a F***** waste of valuable time! I could have done loads of stuff instead of wasting my time on this piece of S***. I bet if i go out and leave this on like this they still won't have flippin up-loaded! I spent over a grand on this macbook WTF!!! arggggghhhh!!!!

OMG they just appeared! about F***** time!

Animation- New and Old

We were asked to look at some animation as part of our animation brief, something historical and something contemporary that has perhaps inspired us for our current brief? 

The first thing that comes to mind is Satoshi Kon's 2006 Paprika, I have blogged about this before, however thought I would mention it again as it was the first thing that sprang to mind when I got this brief. I have chosen to base my flash animation on Pylones gifts, which are quirky household items and more that have been personified to the point where it is not clear what they actually are. I decided to use this to my advantage and have the items as characters in a short animation, that way I  could give them more of a "story" as such, as there is not really alot you can do with toasters and umbrellas in terms of a narrative. well you could if you have some sick animation skills, I seem to recall pixar or one of those companies actually made a short movie about a toaster, but that's them and this is me! someone who can barely use flash! Anyway back to paprika, It is Satoshi Kon's 4th movie following in the success of perfect blue, millenium actress and tokyo godfathers and Is based on an invention known as the DC mini in which a user can penetrate another's dream as a result of a revolutionary new form of psychotherapy. Paprika is the alter ego of a doctor atsuko chiba, created to provide dream therapy illegally to her patients. I can't really explain the film in any more detail as it just goes completely crazy and it takes a couple of watches to fully "get" it, but visually the film is stunning as with all his works, and has a focus on the delicacy of the human mind as with all his features including the spectacular series paranoia agent.

The music for the film is what stuck in my head above all else accompanied by the crazy dream like imagery, particularly the parade scene which although colorful and child-like in essence has an underlying horror type feel that seems to stick in your head. The scene show's inanimate objects and cultural icons along with musical instroment playing animals marching in a parade.

For a historical piece I have chosen to look at Jan Svanmajer's ALICE which scared the S***

Out of me when I saw it as a child! I'd never seen stop motion animation before and just that alone freaked

me out, the awkward and un-natural way in which the rabbit moved alongside his and other objects in the

films hideous appearance was enough to scare me half to death! well it can't have scared me that much

as I still watched the whole thing, I think it just freaked me out a bit and I watched it for curiosity more than

anything else, It was a big step from the usual disney and cuddley teddys that I had to see this grotesque

rabbit and old antique furniture and knick knacks, It was like nothing i had seen before and It made me feel

cold.

It still does, I can't stand it in truth, but I can now appreciate what he has done for the world of animation,

some of his works are amazing such as one I watched the other day called dimensions of dialogue, although

gross and not one bit visually pleasing I found it very creative and resourceful and found myself admiring

the sheer volume of thought and effort that must have to go into his works.

so here is a clip from Alice as my historical piece below:

Some of the Best!

here's a few of my favorite animes: starting with Paprika by satoshi kon, (millennium actress, paranoia agent) which is a visually stunning kaleidoscope of imaginative characters and situations all chucked into a surreal blender and served as a cocktail of mayhem and madness at it's most beautiful hour. this film is visual poetry.

second is a film called: Tekkonkinkreet, (Micheal Arias) this film is amazing, at first i found it difficult to watch because of the character style, which i initially found "cartoon-network" looking,  but the story is so engrossing that you soon forget about it. You have to see this film, anime fan or not it's a beautiful mind-numbing piece of film and will be in your head for months after watching! don't be fooled by the child-like quality of this film! it is far from being a kids film with some very depressing moments of darkness balanced out beautifully by the light, which in this case is the bond between 2 young boys living on the harsh gritty streets of treasure town! don't miss it!

lastly, (I could list hundreds but I'll just stick to 3 for now) has got to be katsushiro Otomo's 1988 film AKIRA. without it anime wouldn't be where it is today! this was the first big hit anime full length feature film to go global and bring Anime into the spotlight! has an original and innovative plot line, good use of sound, very advanced visually for it's time, if you haven't seen it you may as well go live under a rock! or you can redeem yourself now and watch it!

Oh and i have to add ghost in the shell, Mamoru oshii, (1995) another cyber-punk anime which blends vivid storytelling with some interesting theory's and alot of philosophical speech, but it's nicely balanced out with strong visuals, an engaging story and plenty of action! another must-see, influenced the matrix films and has since become a franchise consisting of music cd's, 3 movies, 2 26 episode series, clothing, toys, games, paraphernalia, etc.

(and this is just the intro)

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