This weeks session of creative play was the day we would go into teams and begin to plan our animations for the city project. Today wasn't about working alone it was about working in a team and form ideas and next week we would form an idea we would be in teams of three but it would also be four given the numbers in our group.We would be rotating ideas and the team we were in would be the team we stick with in the city project. The idea was to keep our ideas simple and to look in our sketchbooks for ideas and how we've approached our ideas in the city to culminate into a final animation idea. This would be made into an exhibition at a later date. We'd be considering everything that we've learned so far, from green screen to pixelation and later we would be looking into sound design, this would be a culmination of everything that we've learned on this module.
The teams out put could be animation, script based, explore elements like toon boom or make a ten second story or perhaps do a storyboard idea based around our story or even make a diorama of characters based from our sketchbooks and next week we would be doing cardboard models. We split into teams and in my team was Jolanta and Beth, and together we began sharing ideas about our animation ideas for a story and what elements to focus on or what techniques to use like Annabeth suggested scanning elements from our sketchbooks and put ourselves into it with green screen. We debriefed so far what we'd learned so far from the city project and what sketches that we'd created in our sketchbooks and I decided to jot down the ideas we discussed into a mind map so that then we could decide on which element to go for. The whole module would need to be handed in by January we would look at
In our group we discussed our approaches to the city project and I was rather impressed with Jolantas use of leaflets within her work and doing inked sketches around it of elements such as cats since one of the leaflets she had was a focus on that. Beth's sketchbook was impressive too, she'd done some good sketch work relating to the city, and for our ideas we revolved around some or our experiences on the tram which was a focus that I had approached for my view on the city project. We discussed experiences such as people kissing on the tram which did seem disturbing and even people eating on the tram, we decided to try and do a storyboard of our animation even if we didn't do an animation on screen and even use photos which thankfully that I had done. We each discussed ideas for stories such as the tram stops that we stop or get off at upon either changing trams or arriving at our destinations even revolving around the time line of getting off and on trams to reach full circle.
I suggested the experience that we have when waiting for the tram but Beth hypothesised that one of the main focuses would be the commuters and Jolanta even suggested the use of leaflets and newspapers. We even took a look at old elements on the tram such as the old animal posters showing commuters what not to do on the tram which as Beth put it "don't act like an animal" this could've been something to look at. As our discussions went on I began writing down a mind map of our ideas into my sketchbook and I was surprised when I discovered we were on the same tram when I was standing next to an angry shouting builder on the trip. We even thought about the perspective of others in the same day how people live the same day and we see their point of view as Beth suggested . We even considered the possible element of time travel or even repeating the same day over and over again but as Jolanta suggested there needed to be a way to show that and I suggested perhaps the use of time lapse and Beth even thought about approaching this of showing what each of us do when we wake up in the morning to go on the tram.
Jolanta thought it would be easier to think differently in terms of the animation such as stop motion or the green screening but Beth suggested how different Manchester looked now and how its evolved and I noticed that we could show how things are changing around us such as the mills and buildings changing into a cityscape scene of Manchester. This moved to the possible element of time travel in our animation piece but this would be hard to communicate in a visual way Beth suggested either all three at once or do a transition effect from one scene to another which was a good suggestion in the animation sense. When Beth showed me something from a past element of her research my creative cogs began turning and I suggested starting in an old point in time and as the passenger rides the tram they would soon arrive in the future which Beth envisioned would be overgrown trees.
Then we tried another focus such as the things we see in everyday life such as hoodies or even the nightlife of Manchester the idea being that we would be on a tram transitioning to different parts of the day which would lead to the night life of parties and girls in short dresses. Even working on morning elements such as waking up in the morning to go to work or Uni then go partying at night. This was a pretty good idea which then lead to a discussion about the sections of the journey or discreetly filming our journeys on our phones. Beth suggested an idea about a shop in the city like a coffee shop and how people come in for coffee at the start of the day just to work and keep awake, we would still have to do it with the city and I suggested an opening scene with the city background then coming up to a coffee shop scene.
This then lead to the possible character idea of interns or assistants going to get coffee for their boss which Beth seemed to agree on the possibilities seemed endless with this idea such as seasonal themes as suggested by Jolanta to show what the character would do every single day of her work year and this would show progression and Beth suggested that the ending could be the assistant could be quitting his or her job, which could be a possible idea to approach. The story driven element seemed consistent in our ideas such as the transition of seasons in fashion and even the start of the animation being a summer internship and ends with her quitting and starting her own company.
We then moved to discus the little time that students have in their everyday lives what with uni work and projects, and Jolanta suggested being in the same spot on the tram at different times of day having coffee getting bigger coats, bags under their eyes and ends happily with the passengers being on the tram. The tram angle seemed the easiest angle and Beth suggested an idea of a mirror effect where a student would be working hard whilst the other would be lazy and I approached this with an opening scene of one student waking up and getting ready whilst another was lazy and wouldn't get up. We didn't want to drift to far away from the city theme but as Jolanta says " you have a good idea you can do whatever you want all you have to do is somehow marry them together" which was a good motive to follow.
We consider the possibility of the green screen animation such as a photo of a tram seat then have a figure sitting in said seat looking at the window of the city going by. Beth suggested the element of the point of view of Alley Cats or foxes in alleyways of the city barely getting by especially when getting close to winter and the animals meet and work together. She figured this met the brief more personally which is something that I could agree with. Jolanta suggested that we could also focus on the little things as well just like in last weeks lesson in Psychogeography. This lead to our impact on the environment and this in turn lead to and interesting perspective of the life of a police officer this sounded like a ride along situation and possible interviews with Police men about their jobs.
We soon returned to the subject of inanimate objects around the city such as news papers, bins and bags and we began to wonder how we may incorporate this into our city theme whilst keeping mind our idea of the tram in our story. Beth suggested about filming inanimate objects and then animate faces on these objects and give the audience their point of view in everyday life in trash or carrying things. Beth began drawing face ideas on objects and Jolanta was figuring out what they would talk about and I would act it out as I'm good at character impersonations. Later in the day we began to work out what we would be doing in the process of animation such as voices, storyboarding, animation, sound/music, editing, colour wheel, photography, and the filming itself. We decided as a group that we would do the animation process together as a team which seemed to be the best course of action to follow.
We were given a sheet of paper to work on for mind mapping our positions and places on the team while Jolanta began working on a rough storyboard for our animation, during this time we were still struggling with a name for our creation and since it was based on the idea of the tram and city it needed to relate to that particular angle. We originally were going to call it Market street but Beth got thinking that using the idea of the upcoming Christmas Markets would be a viable approach to go for and that meant picking a tram stop close to the main area where the markets were being held and Beth suggested perhaps Albert Square as that seemed the closest stop to the markets which she knew given how many times she's been to Manchester and I did agree even having been to the Christmas Markets last year. We decided to go with that and we began discussing possible scene ideas. We needed to keep this consistent with the city theme so I suggested perhaps the use of a landscape city scene as an opening frame which seemed to agree with the group.
We then looked at how the objects would be presented within the story and how we may animate them such as the bin which Jolanta suggested we could do on the lid in stop motion in some cases but for bins in the city with an opening hole we considered the idea of the animated faces on the objects and even the discussion of fashion bags about how the Christmas markets were coming up and how much of a strain it was on them carrying a whole load of stuff for the holidays or on the way to the Christmas holidays. The bins we figured could also complain about getting nothing but garbage in its mouth every single day and I suggested that the the trash would also be complaining about how "its no picnic for them either" and this was a good idea but we also needed to consider how long the frames would be so we needed to take these scenes and ideas into consideration be it deleted scenes or either just back up plans. Jolanta thought of this idea where the market stall would also talk but I had a notion that it would seem a bit odd for the audience around them and could possibly be a bit of a scare for them but we discussed it more and perhaps worked on perhaps the objects on the stall could come to life putting on sparkling displays of colour and light.
We continued discussing until Annabeth brought us to attention about what we'd be doing after our two hour lunch break and that would be being introduced to a sound tutorial in how we would at some point be doing sound recordings in our animation pieces. This was something that took my interest as it could give us an insight to how soundtracks and sounds in films were created and maybe something to consider approaching at a later date in the course or even for this very project.
Reflecting back on this session of creative play I could see that from this point on it would be as I put it in College "all hands on deck" since we had only a few weeks left before week 8 and beyond even though the official hand in date is January it needed to be done by some time mid december and the Christmas Holidays would be a chance to get things done. I would say that I'm in a good team of people open to ideas and approaches to this animation piece and may even make an illustrative contribution to the animation idea of our team. Were also open to other students joining the group to increase our potential of positions and ideas. I felt this was a chance to get to know each other more and even recognise our passions, our weaknesses and our ideas in our common area of interest in the world of animation. This to me seemed the beginning of a beautiful partnership in this module and what ever we did we'd do it together and create something eye catching for our potential targets audience for this exhibition in the module.
The teams out put could be animation, script based, explore elements like toon boom or make a ten second story or perhaps do a storyboard idea based around our story or even make a diorama of characters based from our sketchbooks and next week we would be doing cardboard models. We split into teams and in my team was Jolanta and Beth, and together we began sharing ideas about our animation ideas for a story and what elements to focus on or what techniques to use like Annabeth suggested scanning elements from our sketchbooks and put ourselves into it with green screen. We debriefed so far what we'd learned so far from the city project and what sketches that we'd created in our sketchbooks and I decided to jot down the ideas we discussed into a mind map so that then we could decide on which element to go for. The whole module would need to be handed in by January we would look at
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| Mind map of ideas |
I suggested the experience that we have when waiting for the tram but Beth hypothesised that one of the main focuses would be the commuters and Jolanta even suggested the use of leaflets and newspapers. We even took a look at old elements on the tram such as the old animal posters showing commuters what not to do on the tram which as Beth put it "don't act like an animal" this could've been something to look at. As our discussions went on I began writing down a mind map of our ideas into my sketchbook and I was surprised when I discovered we were on the same tram when I was standing next to an angry shouting builder on the trip. We even thought about the perspective of others in the same day how people live the same day and we see their point of view as Beth suggested . We even considered the possible element of time travel or even repeating the same day over and over again but as Jolanta suggested there needed to be a way to show that and I suggested perhaps the use of time lapse and Beth even thought about approaching this of showing what each of us do when we wake up in the morning to go on the tram.
Jolanta thought it would be easier to think differently in terms of the animation such as stop motion or the green screening but Beth suggested how different Manchester looked now and how its evolved and I noticed that we could show how things are changing around us such as the mills and buildings changing into a cityscape scene of Manchester. This moved to the possible element of time travel in our animation piece but this would be hard to communicate in a visual way Beth suggested either all three at once or do a transition effect from one scene to another which was a good suggestion in the animation sense. When Beth showed me something from a past element of her research my creative cogs began turning and I suggested starting in an old point in time and as the passenger rides the tram they would soon arrive in the future which Beth envisioned would be overgrown trees.
Then we tried another focus such as the things we see in everyday life such as hoodies or even the nightlife of Manchester the idea being that we would be on a tram transitioning to different parts of the day which would lead to the night life of parties and girls in short dresses. Even working on morning elements such as waking up in the morning to go to work or Uni then go partying at night. This was a pretty good idea which then lead to a discussion about the sections of the journey or discreetly filming our journeys on our phones. Beth suggested an idea about a shop in the city like a coffee shop and how people come in for coffee at the start of the day just to work and keep awake, we would still have to do it with the city and I suggested an opening scene with the city background then coming up to a coffee shop scene.
This then lead to the possible character idea of interns or assistants going to get coffee for their boss which Beth seemed to agree on the possibilities seemed endless with this idea such as seasonal themes as suggested by Jolanta to show what the character would do every single day of her work year and this would show progression and Beth suggested that the ending could be the assistant could be quitting his or her job, which could be a possible idea to approach. The story driven element seemed consistent in our ideas such as the transition of seasons in fashion and even the start of the animation being a summer internship and ends with her quitting and starting her own company.
We then moved to discus the little time that students have in their everyday lives what with uni work and projects, and Jolanta suggested being in the same spot on the tram at different times of day having coffee getting bigger coats, bags under their eyes and ends happily with the passengers being on the tram. The tram angle seemed the easiest angle and Beth suggested an idea of a mirror effect where a student would be working hard whilst the other would be lazy and I approached this with an opening scene of one student waking up and getting ready whilst another was lazy and wouldn't get up. We didn't want to drift to far away from the city theme but as Jolanta says " you have a good idea you can do whatever you want all you have to do is somehow marry them together" which was a good motive to follow.
We consider the possibility of the green screen animation such as a photo of a tram seat then have a figure sitting in said seat looking at the window of the city going by. Beth suggested the element of the point of view of Alley Cats or foxes in alleyways of the city barely getting by especially when getting close to winter and the animals meet and work together. She figured this met the brief more personally which is something that I could agree with. Jolanta suggested that we could also focus on the little things as well just like in last weeks lesson in Psychogeography. This lead to our impact on the environment and this in turn lead to and interesting perspective of the life of a police officer this sounded like a ride along situation and possible interviews with Police men about their jobs.
We soon returned to the subject of inanimate objects around the city such as news papers, bins and bags and we began to wonder how we may incorporate this into our city theme whilst keeping mind our idea of the tram in our story. Beth suggested about filming inanimate objects and then animate faces on these objects and give the audience their point of view in everyday life in trash or carrying things. Beth began drawing face ideas on objects and Jolanta was figuring out what they would talk about and I would act it out as I'm good at character impersonations. Later in the day we began to work out what we would be doing in the process of animation such as voices, storyboarding, animation, sound/music, editing, colour wheel, photography, and the filming itself. We decided as a group that we would do the animation process together as a team which seemed to be the best course of action to follow.
We were given a sheet of paper to work on for mind mapping our positions and places on the team while Jolanta began working on a rough storyboard for our animation, during this time we were still struggling with a name for our creation and since it was based on the idea of the tram and city it needed to relate to that particular angle. We originally were going to call it Market street but Beth got thinking that using the idea of the upcoming Christmas Markets would be a viable approach to go for and that meant picking a tram stop close to the main area where the markets were being held and Beth suggested perhaps Albert Square as that seemed the closest stop to the markets which she knew given how many times she's been to Manchester and I did agree even having been to the Christmas Markets last year. We decided to go with that and we began discussing possible scene ideas. We needed to keep this consistent with the city theme so I suggested perhaps the use of a landscape city scene as an opening frame which seemed to agree with the group.
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| Storyboard script done by Jolanta |
We then looked at how the objects would be presented within the story and how we may animate them such as the bin which Jolanta suggested we could do on the lid in stop motion in some cases but for bins in the city with an opening hole we considered the idea of the animated faces on the objects and even the discussion of fashion bags about how the Christmas markets were coming up and how much of a strain it was on them carrying a whole load of stuff for the holidays or on the way to the Christmas holidays. The bins we figured could also complain about getting nothing but garbage in its mouth every single day and I suggested that the the trash would also be complaining about how "its no picnic for them either" and this was a good idea but we also needed to consider how long the frames would be so we needed to take these scenes and ideas into consideration be it deleted scenes or either just back up plans. Jolanta thought of this idea where the market stall would also talk but I had a notion that it would seem a bit odd for the audience around them and could possibly be a bit of a scare for them but we discussed it more and perhaps worked on perhaps the objects on the stall could come to life putting on sparkling displays of colour and light.
We continued discussing until Annabeth brought us to attention about what we'd be doing after our two hour lunch break and that would be being introduced to a sound tutorial in how we would at some point be doing sound recordings in our animation pieces. This was something that took my interest as it could give us an insight to how soundtracks and sounds in films were created and maybe something to consider approaching at a later date in the course or even for this very project.
Reflecting back on this session of creative play I could see that from this point on it would be as I put it in College "all hands on deck" since we had only a few weeks left before week 8 and beyond even though the official hand in date is January it needed to be done by some time mid december and the Christmas Holidays would be a chance to get things done. I would say that I'm in a good team of people open to ideas and approaches to this animation piece and may even make an illustrative contribution to the animation idea of our team. Were also open to other students joining the group to increase our potential of positions and ideas. I felt this was a chance to get to know each other more and even recognise our passions, our weaknesses and our ideas in our common area of interest in the world of animation. This to me seemed the beginning of a beautiful partnership in this module and what ever we did we'd do it together and create something eye catching for our potential targets audience for this exhibition in the module.
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