David Hockney

David Hockney is another artist who produces sketches of figures and what I like about these is the use of very assertive lines. The lines appear confident and precise creating a very personal touch allowing them to be very striking and bold. This is also a technique I could try when trying to create the right mise-en-scene for the chosen song. The lines could possibly change through out the animation to fit in with the different sections of sound creating a sense of variety to allow me to keep the interest of the audience.

Egon Schiele

After creating such a successful rotoscoping piece i thought this would be a wise choice of technique for my final major project. After creating a personal map as suggested by a friend who is currently studying interactive arts at MMU i found that my greatest art based interests revolve round life drawing. From the heading of fine art life drawing has to be most fascinating to me as so many techniques are used to portray the human form. One technique in particular that i have picked up from my very first life drawing classes in college was the line drawing technique. This is when you use only one line trying not to remove your pencil from the page allowing your focus to remain on the subject. A way in which this could be used in my proposed animation is to rotoscope as i did within the 'Feel good' brief by tracing around the frames but in this particular style. I think it will give the animation fluidity and freedom much like a song.

Initial Thoughts

Looking at the Uni year so far I feel it has been the strongest most enjoyable year since the very start of uni 2 years ago! It has taken a while for me to get into the swing of things but I finally made it just in time for the most important year.

So what has worked successfully for me over this huge development?
1. A more hands on approach to my animation rather than just sitting at the computer all day struggling.
2. Creating my own briefs and short animations.
3. Making sure deadlines are met and asking my peers and tutor for help when needed.
4. A technique that worked well for we was rotoscoping as it allowed me to gain a hand drawn approached with a bit more assistance to that of traditional animation.

Things that still need to be improved on:
1. Time Management - at the start of a project jump straight into it instead of waiting till about 3 or 4 weeks into it.
2. Adding sound to the final piece.
3. More in depth research and more critical analysis to back up my actions and decisions.

After reflecting on these I have decided to choose a song/sound track as a start so that I can interpret my own narrative to it so that the animation and sound work well together as they should. I will look at a range of different genres and sounds to make sure I have made a good choice that is both interesting to listen to and create interesting visuals. In regards to the sound I am not sure at all what I am looking for however I would like it to be something with different sounds throughout and not just one continuous beat. This is so that I can have a character interacting with the variety of sounds that may create different scenarios.

Rotoscoping Evaluation

This has been my favourite project to date; I have enjoyed every second of it! I have become a lot more confident with my ideas and ideas development that I have spent the right amount of time focusing on the end result rather than sat drawing in my sketchbook until I run out of time. I have enjoyed the response from my fellow class mates, tutors and professionals from my portfolio visits about my ink rotoscoping and I think it will be used somewhere within my final major. The only think that I would take more care about is making sure the frames are the same size to avoid the jump across the screen. This time around I have edited the frames in after effects to make it appear smoother however towards the end of the animation some were to far over that they couldn’t be edited.

The only negatives about this project were the cost of acetate and trying to get the library staff to sell me the acetate. I overcame this problem by asking the rest of the class to go down in shifts to buy 20 sheets each.

Boat Evaluation

This is the first project where in which I have animated within after effects successfully. It was extremely difficult for me at first to get my head around making my objects move realistically and smoothly but as I have struggled through the project my skills have only got better. A personal trait of mine that I believe stops me from animating successfully is the fact I assume things are harder than they are going to be, therefore making me shy away from them. But within this project with some guidance from Rick I am now more confident in using after effects to animate my work.

However reflecting on the positives of this project there are still some parts that weren’t so successful, for example the sound. I always struggle with placing sound onto my work so I think as a pointer for my final major project I should start with sound and then animate to fit because my method doesn’t work for me. Another aspect I would like to have done is a making of; I didn’t film or record any footage from the beginning so I didn’t manage to create one. However for my next brief I will try it out to show my hand crafted processes.

Portfolio Visit 3 - Dave Clark

For my final visit I went to see someone that has used his creativity in a variety of ways. When I first met Dave he owned a digital advertising agency called Clark and Clark who were responsible for the touch screen navigators within the Trafford Centre. He now owns his own clothing company named ‘Stoned Monkey’ where he himself designs the clothing. As well as this he is also a talented photographer and creates his own catalogues for his company and was the wedding photographer at my Mum’s wedding. The reason for wanting to visit Dave was to gain an incite into using different skills and interests and pushing them towards career paths. Some great advice he gave me about success was to be polite, confident but not smug and persistent; if there is something you want and you try hard enough eventually you will make it (similar to what was said within the thoughtful lecture).

As my showreel goes he was very impressed but suggested adding some of the processes to add interest and excitement as to how my pieces are created. He was excited about my rotoscoping piece as again I took the acetate that I have used for the final animation so it was something physical to handle and look at. Which lead him to suggest that a physical portfolio might be a nice way to showcase the acetate as he said they looked great as stand alone pieces.

Reflecting on my portfolio visit overall I have defiantly decided to create a physical portfolio to showcase the hand crafted side of my animation. As my work goes I have had some extremely positive feedback regarding my ink rotoscoping so I think this technique should be a serious consideration to my final major project.

Animation Continuity

So after managing to perfect the movement of the waves I needed to decide how I could successfully move the boat from one side of the screen to the other to make it appear continuos throughout the scenes. Since the start of the project I had literally been moving the boat from one side of the screen to the other and as the animation progressed the continuity of the boat on the screen was inconsistent so I needed to think of a way to improve this. It took me a while but I finally came to the simple conclusion of moving the sky across the screen instead of the boat so that on each scene I created the boat will be in the same place with the surroundings moving past.

Here is one of my original tests with the boat moving along the screen:-

This is my developed test moving the sky instead of the boat:-

I can really tell the difference and as I began to add the sequences together the overall flow of the piece started to fit together more successfully.