Todays session of Animation context was focused on showing our group the path we'd each taken to create our 360 research poster and present it to the rest of the group. Johnny assured us that there was no need for assessment as this was just for the tutors to see how we approached this task in terms of research and it was to get us used to the idea of standing up in front of the group as this was something we needed to master later in the course and to our industry piers to propose an idea for a television program. In elements like this research project we would be asked to look at animation magazines to at least get a feel of what were researching and help us develop in terms of deep research for this module. Over the next few weeks we would be looking at an element that would be used in the final major project and this was called Statement of Intent (SOI) which would be what we'd fill out for describing to the tutor what it was we would be approaching in terms of research, the method of animation and what our story would be.
This I felt was similar to the project proposal that I wrote in year 3 art and design for my FMP, I could see what it was my college tutors were preparing me for. We each began to show our projects and some of us from what we discussed before the start of the lesson had used power point presentations to show their journey throughout the research that brought them to their poster and Declan who's power point was focusing on doing the use of colour within animation work and the characters in terms of emotions in the story. He showed some examples of films that followed an example of this some of which I was familiar with like Studio Gibli's Howls moving castle which I could understand as I felt that some scenes were dark and some very heart wrenching thanks to the colours or even the time of day in the environment.
Kieran had followed a similar process of using a power point in his work of character designs and he described how the designs develop and refine into a final design submittable for the animated film or short film. I found many of these presentations interesting and I saw that like myself Aidan had taken an interest in concept art and this gave me an indication of someone I could possibly work with at a later stage on the course or for collaboration on work in the modules. In my presentation I showed the poster and referred back to my printed research into this area from both books I've looked at in the library, library seacrches and from books I had at home such as the Art of Big Hero 6 which had a good concept artist such as Ryan Lang and whilst I couldn't find any quotes from the artists themselves I did gain insightful quotes from production team members who work with the artists on animated films and some of this research came from Paul Well's Fundamentals of Animation. In my presentation I covered the aspect and idea of concept art from what I learned in my research and from my intro to the making of module.
It seemed that I was not the only one who was using knowledge learned from intro to the making of since Ollie's presentation was focused on the Multi Plane camera that Disney was using in the days before After Effects was invented and we had been learning this in the sessions themselves. I liked the presentation of Ollie's poster as it was like a blue print of the camera itself which to me seemed like a good angle to approach. Some posters in the group weren't made digitally some were hand made such as Indya's poster which when pieced together made an object. Said object had a significance one that I couldn't see until she pieced the object together, for her subject was the persistence of vision and this revolved around an object used to show movement in an animation which was a small cylinder device with holes in the walls and inside was the animation of a ball bounce and as it moved at a fast pace the animation began to take place.
I recognised this from the intro of a Disney documentary and I was also amazed to learn that it was something that we could build for ourselves and I may look into doing this over the Christmas break. I was also interested in the way that Paige had done her presentation poster using a technique of painting on acetate an old age method that the original Disney animators used in the years before computers and software, and it was focused around the nine old men in the method of cel animation. Some of these animators were Frank Thomas,Eric Carlson and Lewis Clark, I was all but fascinated as to how Paige approached her poster learning an old age method to show that though the world is moving forward the old ways of animation still exist in this world. What took my interest the most was how Paige described her process of drawing on acetate, using an ink dip pen/ fountain pen to draw over the drawings made on paper then painted on from back to front using acrylic paints. I found this inspiring and decided that this was another skill to learn over the Christmas break as it would be considered an honour to learn a method from the past and may even experiment with this in modern technology.
Holly's general focus was in animation within live action which she'd based around the old age Warner Bros film Who Framed Rodger Rabbit? I remembered that film and that it wasn't the only film to use this method of live action and animation together other films like Looney Tunes Back in Action and Space Jam had used a similar process of cartoons with live action films. It seemed that she'd looked deep into this subject such as how the animators used an element called animation paper and black and white pose drawings that block the attitudes in position, this was something that I remembered from the behind the scenes of Looney Tunes Back in Action before the artists clean them up, colour light them and before you know it their in the real world.
She even brought our attention to an element within a shot from Who Framed Rodger Rabbit? where the light was just shining through Rodgers ear something she referred to as the lamp bump which to me looked like a classic animation blooper of the time,and how the characters interacted with each other and the eye line in the character themselves I too was impressed by this many years ago when I used to watch a lot of films that focused in this element. One rule in this was apparently keeping the camera steady to make it move and change the view perspective even using raised floors and hydraulics in the set/studio.
Some members of the group thought their posters weren't any good in terms of the presentation or colours though sometimes you can't judge a book by its cover. One example of this was what Maddie had done for her poster presentation which generally focused on the character design elements of animation showing a poster of a character she had created which she dubbed Hero Cheetah Desert and she noted that her issue was in the colours and presentation of the alternate version of her hero. In my opinion however I like to think that her poster was well presented and her character art was very impressive I maybe good at some art but I've never seen a style quite like Maddie's approach it just shows how each of us in the group have their own unique styles to approaching art and animation.
One other example was the Poster that Munty had created which was as he described it " a shitty poster" but the overall theme was the element of space and timing which was something we were covering in animation 101with Joe and Johnny. One element he looked at was the bouncing ball elements of the animation process and he seemed to present it well despite what he thinks of its composition and whilst it didn't possess any flashy elements or photos it did give a clear indication of an element we were learning in the modules. Other elements of animation that were discussed in these presentations and Georgia's presentation focused on the subject of What is an Expression and she showed it in the form of different facial expressions in the colour blue referencing to the blue men . She showed that she researched a man named Paul Ekman who apparently looked at the emotions behind an expression be it sadness or happiness. Expressions it seemed helped with the atmosphere and in 2D expression art that was drawn into life, whilst a basic illustration piece I was impressed with the way she delivered her presentation.
Some poster developments had help from unexpected sources, which was shown Poli's poster of character design and development. The process of her poster came from a simple character drawing she asked her little sister to draw, which she then research and developed into some development sketches and she demonstrated how the character designed was focused around characters for children television shows. The character in question was a pug wearing clothes and a hat one of the funniest elements we found was that the character wore trousers back to front as his tail needed to come through the hole at the front which was an interesting element to approach and very comedic. This all but demonstrated how characters and the design process can come from simple rough sketches and turn into amazing colourful characters with a back story and even a role in a film.
Kira followed a similar idea in character design and how the designers had a say in designing the character and what he or she will look like in the end product. In designing the character it seemed there were different elements such as the expressions, consistency in size, communicate the idea, and practice with techniques to create the characters design and outlook. One thing that I was truly touched by is that in her research she learned that we should be proud of the work that we produced which was words that we could all live by in the line of work that we do be it art or animation.
Other presentations such as the presentation given by Stephan focused on different forms of animation such Video Game animation and he describes some of the aspects of game animation, such as VR (Virtual reality) and the anticipation of what the characters are going to do in the game be it in the cutscenes or the gameplay itself. He also described how we could become the characters or even control what it is they do in the storyline or gameplay. Adam's presentation took a more interesting and political approach inspired by Brexit in animation such as how the Americans aren't getting more British made programs or vice versa which I thought seemed a pretty strange angle to approach but in its right it did have a significant meaning to the person who made it which describes all things in this world be it in art, animation, car design, fashion or even politics every thing is important to the people who create them.
In the feedback from the group and tutors we did receive some good comments and even how we looked at the base lines and attributes of a poster despite the conflicts and opinions about word counts in the title. Johnny mentioned to us that the third years had presented their final ideas to the group and he reminded us that whilst the experience of presenting our work maybe slightly nerve wrecking it does have its rewards where we have our own voice and opinion on the matters we're trying to present. Johnny also asked us do the posters communicate the subject to the audience in our absence with no way to describe it as a learning tool to the first year students. The key was to have elements that describe and show our chosen subjects that the students could understand and learn from and they can then use the theory to produce something of their own.
We were asked by the end of the day for the posters to be printed on A3 scale paper so that we could place them up in the base room to show off to the third years and anyone else who used the base room for animation. We reflected back on using the harvard referencing and how to determine a books use in research we need to use the CRAP testing process to see a books usefulness in research and to be specific about the textures.
The next step:
In the next few weeks of the module we would be taking a closer look at the Statement of intent to see how we would state our intentions of a final project and what materials or resources that we would require to make our projects a reality. One thing that we needed to remember was time and money as there were some elements we couldn't afford to build for our projects as most industry standard projects do in animation or otherwise. What I learned from things such as this was it couldn't be perfect the first time around and refinement would be needed in the structure and grammar or even the presentation. Johnny told us that we could make them look wacky in presentation and even illustrate what it is we may do. There was a basic formula to creating the statement and that we could answer the questions and have a go at typing up a first attempt at the process.
This was something to approach in our PDF magazine articles for our submission for our module work and the idea of the presentation was to get an idea of our focus for the article and that one of the tools we'd be using is Adobe Indesign and in this we had to know how we may present our ideas and articles or even later in the course for our end of year shows showing what principles we'd covered on our course, modules and in our own developments in the project. For tonights task we were asked to read a PDF file called Vignelli canon which was 45 pages long and we were told it could be of benefit in our understanding of the SOI and for what we may look at in next weeks session.
Looking back on the session, I would think that I saw how others approached this project and even gained inspiration from some of the techniques and influences they used in their work. I felt that I had delivered the desired effects for my presentation and whilst it was more difficult that I thought at the beginning of this two week project. One thing I learned from the experience would be to consider practicing deep research perhaps even look at it in my support sessions with my support tutor to gain insight and get a better perspective. Overall it was clear that later in the course we would need to conduct these deep research presentations but if there was one thing that I remembered from the course so far is that every time we try we get better at the process, so we persist with these challenges no matter how difficult they may be and I hope the reading task tonight will grant me some insight into some elements.
This I felt was similar to the project proposal that I wrote in year 3 art and design for my FMP, I could see what it was my college tutors were preparing me for. We each began to show our projects and some of us from what we discussed before the start of the lesson had used power point presentations to show their journey throughout the research that brought them to their poster and Declan who's power point was focusing on doing the use of colour within animation work and the characters in terms of emotions in the story. He showed some examples of films that followed an example of this some of which I was familiar with like Studio Gibli's Howls moving castle which I could understand as I felt that some scenes were dark and some very heart wrenching thanks to the colours or even the time of day in the environment.
Kieran had followed a similar process of using a power point in his work of character designs and he described how the designs develop and refine into a final design submittable for the animated film or short film. I found many of these presentations interesting and I saw that like myself Aidan had taken an interest in concept art and this gave me an indication of someone I could possibly work with at a later stage on the course or for collaboration on work in the modules. In my presentation I showed the poster and referred back to my printed research into this area from both books I've looked at in the library, library seacrches and from books I had at home such as the Art of Big Hero 6 which had a good concept artist such as Ryan Lang and whilst I couldn't find any quotes from the artists themselves I did gain insightful quotes from production team members who work with the artists on animated films and some of this research came from Paul Well's Fundamentals of Animation. In my presentation I covered the aspect and idea of concept art from what I learned in my research and from my intro to the making of module.
It seemed that I was not the only one who was using knowledge learned from intro to the making of since Ollie's presentation was focused on the Multi Plane camera that Disney was using in the days before After Effects was invented and we had been learning this in the sessions themselves. I liked the presentation of Ollie's poster as it was like a blue print of the camera itself which to me seemed like a good angle to approach. Some posters in the group weren't made digitally some were hand made such as Indya's poster which when pieced together made an object. Said object had a significance one that I couldn't see until she pieced the object together, for her subject was the persistence of vision and this revolved around an object used to show movement in an animation which was a small cylinder device with holes in the walls and inside was the animation of a ball bounce and as it moved at a fast pace the animation began to take place.
I recognised this from the intro of a Disney documentary and I was also amazed to learn that it was something that we could build for ourselves and I may look into doing this over the Christmas break. I was also interested in the way that Paige had done her presentation poster using a technique of painting on acetate an old age method that the original Disney animators used in the years before computers and software, and it was focused around the nine old men in the method of cel animation. Some of these animators were Frank Thomas,Eric Carlson and Lewis Clark, I was all but fascinated as to how Paige approached her poster learning an old age method to show that though the world is moving forward the old ways of animation still exist in this world. What took my interest the most was how Paige described her process of drawing on acetate, using an ink dip pen/ fountain pen to draw over the drawings made on paper then painted on from back to front using acrylic paints. I found this inspiring and decided that this was another skill to learn over the Christmas break as it would be considered an honour to learn a method from the past and may even experiment with this in modern technology.
Holly's general focus was in animation within live action which she'd based around the old age Warner Bros film Who Framed Rodger Rabbit? I remembered that film and that it wasn't the only film to use this method of live action and animation together other films like Looney Tunes Back in Action and Space Jam had used a similar process of cartoons with live action films. It seemed that she'd looked deep into this subject such as how the animators used an element called animation paper and black and white pose drawings that block the attitudes in position, this was something that I remembered from the behind the scenes of Looney Tunes Back in Action before the artists clean them up, colour light them and before you know it their in the real world.
She even brought our attention to an element within a shot from Who Framed Rodger Rabbit? where the light was just shining through Rodgers ear something she referred to as the lamp bump which to me looked like a classic animation blooper of the time,and how the characters interacted with each other and the eye line in the character themselves I too was impressed by this many years ago when I used to watch a lot of films that focused in this element. One rule in this was apparently keeping the camera steady to make it move and change the view perspective even using raised floors and hydraulics in the set/studio.
Some members of the group thought their posters weren't any good in terms of the presentation or colours though sometimes you can't judge a book by its cover. One example of this was what Maddie had done for her poster presentation which generally focused on the character design elements of animation showing a poster of a character she had created which she dubbed Hero Cheetah Desert and she noted that her issue was in the colours and presentation of the alternate version of her hero. In my opinion however I like to think that her poster was well presented and her character art was very impressive I maybe good at some art but I've never seen a style quite like Maddie's approach it just shows how each of us in the group have their own unique styles to approaching art and animation.
One other example was the Poster that Munty had created which was as he described it " a shitty poster" but the overall theme was the element of space and timing which was something we were covering in animation 101with Joe and Johnny. One element he looked at was the bouncing ball elements of the animation process and he seemed to present it well despite what he thinks of its composition and whilst it didn't possess any flashy elements or photos it did give a clear indication of an element we were learning in the modules. Other elements of animation that were discussed in these presentations and Georgia's presentation focused on the subject of What is an Expression and she showed it in the form of different facial expressions in the colour blue referencing to the blue men . She showed that she researched a man named Paul Ekman who apparently looked at the emotions behind an expression be it sadness or happiness. Expressions it seemed helped with the atmosphere and in 2D expression art that was drawn into life, whilst a basic illustration piece I was impressed with the way she delivered her presentation.
Some poster developments had help from unexpected sources, which was shown Poli's poster of character design and development. The process of her poster came from a simple character drawing she asked her little sister to draw, which she then research and developed into some development sketches and she demonstrated how the character designed was focused around characters for children television shows. The character in question was a pug wearing clothes and a hat one of the funniest elements we found was that the character wore trousers back to front as his tail needed to come through the hole at the front which was an interesting element to approach and very comedic. This all but demonstrated how characters and the design process can come from simple rough sketches and turn into amazing colourful characters with a back story and even a role in a film.
Kira followed a similar idea in character design and how the designers had a say in designing the character and what he or she will look like in the end product. In designing the character it seemed there were different elements such as the expressions, consistency in size, communicate the idea, and practice with techniques to create the characters design and outlook. One thing that I was truly touched by is that in her research she learned that we should be proud of the work that we produced which was words that we could all live by in the line of work that we do be it art or animation.
Other presentations such as the presentation given by Stephan focused on different forms of animation such Video Game animation and he describes some of the aspects of game animation, such as VR (Virtual reality) and the anticipation of what the characters are going to do in the game be it in the cutscenes or the gameplay itself. He also described how we could become the characters or even control what it is they do in the storyline or gameplay. Adam's presentation took a more interesting and political approach inspired by Brexit in animation such as how the Americans aren't getting more British made programs or vice versa which I thought seemed a pretty strange angle to approach but in its right it did have a significant meaning to the person who made it which describes all things in this world be it in art, animation, car design, fashion or even politics every thing is important to the people who create them.
In the feedback from the group and tutors we did receive some good comments and even how we looked at the base lines and attributes of a poster despite the conflicts and opinions about word counts in the title. Johnny mentioned to us that the third years had presented their final ideas to the group and he reminded us that whilst the experience of presenting our work maybe slightly nerve wrecking it does have its rewards where we have our own voice and opinion on the matters we're trying to present. Johnny also asked us do the posters communicate the subject to the audience in our absence with no way to describe it as a learning tool to the first year students. The key was to have elements that describe and show our chosen subjects that the students could understand and learn from and they can then use the theory to produce something of their own.
We were asked by the end of the day for the posters to be printed on A3 scale paper so that we could place them up in the base room to show off to the third years and anyone else who used the base room for animation. We reflected back on using the harvard referencing and how to determine a books use in research we need to use the CRAP testing process to see a books usefulness in research and to be specific about the textures.
The next step:
In the next few weeks of the module we would be taking a closer look at the Statement of intent to see how we would state our intentions of a final project and what materials or resources that we would require to make our projects a reality. One thing that we needed to remember was time and money as there were some elements we couldn't afford to build for our projects as most industry standard projects do in animation or otherwise. What I learned from things such as this was it couldn't be perfect the first time around and refinement would be needed in the structure and grammar or even the presentation. Johnny told us that we could make them look wacky in presentation and even illustrate what it is we may do. There was a basic formula to creating the statement and that we could answer the questions and have a go at typing up a first attempt at the process.
This was something to approach in our PDF magazine articles for our submission for our module work and the idea of the presentation was to get an idea of our focus for the article and that one of the tools we'd be using is Adobe Indesign and in this we had to know how we may present our ideas and articles or even later in the course for our end of year shows showing what principles we'd covered on our course, modules and in our own developments in the project. For tonights task we were asked to read a PDF file called Vignelli canon which was 45 pages long and we were told it could be of benefit in our understanding of the SOI and for what we may look at in next weeks session.
Looking back on the session, I would think that I saw how others approached this project and even gained inspiration from some of the techniques and influences they used in their work. I felt that I had delivered the desired effects for my presentation and whilst it was more difficult that I thought at the beginning of this two week project. One thing I learned from the experience would be to consider practicing deep research perhaps even look at it in my support sessions with my support tutor to gain insight and get a better perspective. Overall it was clear that later in the course we would need to conduct these deep research presentations but if there was one thing that I remembered from the course so far is that every time we try we get better at the process, so we persist with these challenges no matter how difficult they may be and I hope the reading task tonight will grant me some insight into some elements.
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