Intro to the Making of: Week 10: Backgrounds for green screening 1 29/4/18:

Libary Background

Painting for stone age scene 29/4/18

Enhanced background for stone age timeline 29/4/18

Digital background for golden age of animation 29/4/18

Theatre stage 29/4/18

Curtain 29/4/18

Over the weekend I created more backgrounds for my video essay, these were all mixed media pieces, comprised of watercolour paints, and digital artwork. I did some research on google images for stone age caves and drawings since when I painted my stone age background the drawings were drawn on using a 2H pencil. I made sure that some of the drawings depicted motion in them such as throwing a spear or a moving tiger. I felt for my digital piece which would be the intro to the golden age of animation, to do it in basic lineless artwork as the backgrounds for cartoons such as looney Tunes were done in a similar style at the time.

This made a connection to the work of the artist behind the backgrounds for looney tunes Paul Julian and using his influence and a basic knowledge of line-less art I created a simple background of a landscape field with a path rolling through the hills. This was done entirely by computer and used Four point perspective, which was actually the first landscape piece that I did using four point perspective. I was rather impressed by my work in this piece. The theatre background would be an interesting subject. My plan was to create a rostrum animation of the theatre curtain rising to reveal the next clip which was the intro from Looney Tunes. This was inspired by one of my favourite looney Tunes episodes that told the story of Bugs Bunny's rise to fame, and given this was the subject I decided to follow a similar example.

The curtain and stage were done separately then brought together in a Photoshop file to later use in After effects. This task I felt would be rather difficult as the timing of the video and the curtain needed to be in synch in order for this to be successful and so I would need to look at the two side by side and time how long it takes for the dialogue to end and then transit to the curtain opening. Other elements of my essay would consist of film clips and historical images such as an image of the industrial revolution and a piece of Da Vinci's work that depicted motion in the human body.

Showing an animation

Industrial revolution

Leonardo Da Vinci's work.

Walt Disney.

Looking back I would think that the creation of these backgrounds was the first step into composing my video essay into reality. However I should possibly have composed more backgrounds so that I could start composing the essay together into a premier file. However I will still need a story board to show what camera angles I will need to work on for the scenes in the essay. If I had more time before moving onto other module work I would make more backgrounds and see what scenes would need to be composed together. In hindsight I should've applied the backgrounds to the green screen footage so that it made some progress in the development.

In conclusion I feel I've collected some of the necessary images needed for my essay and in the next few days I would work on composing the piece together and then bring the sections together to create the final essay. In future though I shall make sure to spend more work on my most top priority of my university work  and then work on my next module priority.