Tuesday 16 February 2010

Animation for the nation.....

2nd January 2010

I begin this assignment with the usual dread but am facinated to walk into the world of animation and all its possibilities. Initial thoughts are restricted by lack of knowledge but I've had a look at some of the following techniques:
  • rotoscoping (very early animation)
  • puppet animation



    Drawing animation





    Cell animation






    Sand animation (done on a lightbox) absolutely amazing and mesmerising.




    Paint on glass animation




    Clay animation





    CGI (computer generated imagery)





    effects are really strong in this but we will not be using this method in college

My intial thoughts are to work on a drawing animation, using the drawn images I've used in my previous assignment - the child like drawings. I would like to advertise, through animation, the importance and provision of creative play for children, using hand drawn images on either hand drawn backgrounds or photographic backgrounds/collages etc?

Looked at as many examples of animation and films to get inspiration - and the history of animation to get a real feel for it's beginning and it's development:

The Little Chimney Sweep - Lotte Reinger - sillouette animation , 1954





beautifully created, a real sense of atmosphere and scene setting. Also informative in an imaginative, engaging way



Good Night Children -
Yuriy Norshteyn




Norshteyn spent a year and a half making this animation for the introduction/conclusion to Good Night, Children (Спокойной ночи, малыши), a popular Russian nightly show for young children to watch before they go to bed. The first part would air before each daily show, the second part after.This is a truly beautiful animation which absolutely makes a story book come to life



Kids City
- Leonie Sawides Animated and Directed by Leonie Savvides, music by Mark Bradshaw, animation in After Effects and Flash. Kids' drawings battle the drab geometry of traditional learning. Visions of Voltron, Transformers, Fat Cat, Goldilocks, Dorothy and more all squished together. 2006.






This combines film and drawn animation to put a message across and gives a real sense of reality giving way to imagination



When I Grow Up
- Justin Seau in Final Cut Pro, After Effects http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ34KTHUQlc 'When I Grow Up' is an animation that explores the family and ambition of five children. The children were interviewed then asked to draw their family and themselves. The drawings were traced, then animated in After Effects. This really appealed to me as it directly connected the children in the animation to the children's voices and any watching the animation - brings their world to real life.





Eat This Child Originally Mangez Cet Enfant. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISOr600QCm0 First of Grey Gerlings new series of weekly animated cartoons, made from index cards and ink





. and Sperm Rider - Seed of Destruction - Barf Question Films - Grey Gerling. Drawn animation, layered, Flash




Advent Of Sock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLN511gm-G8





I love all these animations and they work particularly well with the music. Colourful, engaging, modern yet reminiscent of 50s cartoon/superhero characters, they hold the attention from the beginning and have a slightly comical, yet sinister feel to them.



I Met The Walrus
- composited in After Effects - text used. In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced him to do an interview. 38 years later, Levitan, director Josh Raskin and illustrators James Braithwaite and Alex Kurina have collaborated to create an animated short film using the original interview recording as the soundtrack. A spellbinding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit and timeless message, I Met the Walrus was nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Animated Short and won the 2009 Emmy for 'New Approaches' (making it the first film to win an Emmy on behalf of the internet). Very effective way of using animation to directly mimic what's being said in visual form








Blu
- painted animation (graffiti





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuGaqLT-gO4 http://www.blublu.org/The new short film by Blu: an ambiguous animation painted on public walls.Made in Buenos Aires and in Baden (fantoche)note wall painted over, image moved along/repainted - see 'shadow' effecthttp://www.blublu.org/http://www.blublu.org/sito/video/muto... music by Andrea Martignoni



Darkness/LIght/Darkness
- Jan Svankmajer
Shortfilm by the Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer. Year: 1989. Running time: 6 min. clay animation -





gives a shock sense of scale and claustrophobia - the power of the imagination

Collecting examples of different moving imagery fuels the imaganation and gives me scope for what I may be capable of.

Use Post-It notes for Story-boarding (can interchange them and move them about) 16 x 9 format.

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