Looking around for enlightenment

I am currently looking about the web for how others have shown enlightenment in animation. I am trying to figure out what the focus of the msuic video is going to be, whether the spiritual side of it, the journey the characters, I am not sure...

I found this animation on Buddha:



Not really that impressive. Same visual style throughout, but I am looking for something that uses the old chinese style in a new way...

Text morph

I did some scans tody at the library, btu my internet is lacking in speedage, so I'll post them when it goes a bit faster.

I want the text to come out of the character's mouth and morph from chinese to chinese roman alphabet to english. I was a-surfin' looking for this and the FIRST thing I clicked on was EXACTLY what I was looking for! Someone wanted to change something in chinese to english by morphing it on creative cow. Then someone asked to see the images, and then did it for him, and uploaded the files to show how he had done it, including the AE file! I got to go into it and see how it was contructed, so now I need to find the original chinese characters and try it out for myself.

Totally wicked cool score, stoked, baby.

Okay, before I get carried away

My thoughts are going 1000 miles per hour, so I am going to lay down what I have been thinking so that I can get back to it:

I was between doing the Edward Lear project and Monkey 'Pigsy in Space' video for D&AD, and have settled on Pigsy, for a couple of reasons:

It would all be similar style and accomplishing one narrative, which I like.

I researched it before the last project and have already laid some ground wrok for what I want which is:
Using imagery that combines east and west, which appeals to me muchos; focusing on upping my skilllls in music videos, and I love Monkey Journey to the West.

This morning was when I was making the decision and I came upon the blog of Ray Tindori of Court 13, who did the "Evident Utensil' for Chairlift. I have been thinking about doing something similar, although lacked the knowledge of how to do so, and I got super super jealous when I saw the video that I had not done it first. I saw the video a couple of weeks ago and peroused the internet in search of how it was done and today I actually applied myself to finding ohow it was done, and got the link to a blog with Ray Tintori walking us step by step how to:


http://rosa-menkman.blogspot.com/search/label/datamoshing


Anywhoos. I like the Kanye video as well, a bit more clean. For My video I want it to tell a story, by using images. I thought and thought and thought and decided that datamosh was not right for the entire video. I don't like the idea of ripping off someone's work completely, for it is a style added when there is not that much content. Datamoshing seems like a western art form, thus I think it will be a nice addition to the music video, like in concentrated pockets of the video, instead of at every transition.


Now I am pretty much caught up on this thing, back to the board.

extras

Final Movie for Degree Show

Here is the final animation for the meeting on Tuesday. Took me two days non-stop to do, I started losing touch with reality from staring and interacting with only a screen. But I am glad I did it and got it done, was worth it.

Promotional Material

This is the promotional material that would be the only thing sent out, everything else being digital. I really like this, think it catches the eye and is funny. Marky mark....what a character.

rollover final

Here is an example that I made of how the website will be navigated. I work much better visually, and over time, thus this was the clearest way to get what I saw in my head out. I think it helps create the illusion that it is a real site to viewers.

Titles and Sound

These posts are back dated, as I could not do them with my slow internet connection, or convert them properly with quicktime.

This video times the music, so that when I finished the storyboard I had a clear idea of when I should have expected the categories to come in.

The fun I am having

This is currently what I am looking at.

Rollover Example

Here is an example of how the rollovers will reveal the images of the categories. When a user clicks on a category the picture will disappear to reveal the student's work in that category.

Website roll over ideas

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Here are the rollovers for the website. Although I have done more visuals, they will be part of the motion piece. I have boiled it down to six categories that people will fall into: design for print, web design, illustration, motion, photography, and interactive. Although there are sub layers to the categories, this is how people will fall into categories on the website. Perhaps this will be a replacement for the book that normally gets lost or not achknowledged. The money normally spent on making the book can be spent on making a website, that is easily accessible and immediate. Get companies and people to see things immediately.

Website roll over ideas 2

D-Sign Illiteral Campaign and Mark

Here is the poster and calendar. The 'brand' is simple and effective, so it can work on many levels, whether that be a letterhead or on a poster it. I hope it is clear enough, it is d-sign ('dee'sign=design, like what we are studying, design, ya know?)


Under is the either viral or mail sent calendar, which is Mark Wahlberg without his shirt. On the back there is a shitty calendar, which above says 'Don't forget Mark, your calendar'. Yuk yuk yuk. Metaphors help people remember whilst learning, so they should also help keep Nottingham Trent on the mind.

D-Sign Illiteral Campaign

I brainstormed what else would be an element to design, checked out a G.D.book from the library and made a neat little list. I like this idea, as it is almost making fun of ourselves, not taking it too seriously.

Here are the different categories with their pictures. These would be in the viral, as well as in the degree book. Because we are designing for designers I thought this would be a good way to get their attention. It is almost a secret code that only designers would get, think it could be quite fun.

D-Sign Illiteral Capmpaign 2

Great 50's images on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/retrorenovation/page2/

cool images from the 1950's for future use...

Design Show Promotions

Ganderin' on youtube produced these videos that students and design companies have made for their own show promotions:






This was done by stardust, a company that I really admire. This is nicely executed, but I am not a fan of the design style...




Kingston University








This has a nice concept behind it, the concept of waiting for the degree show. I like promotions with concepts so that it communicates more than the work itself.



Coventry Degree Show, nice idea, looks great, but not that much behind it.





Compilation of student work from Singapore. Meh.

Forgot to put up the graphic design phrenology...

Made this as I was brainstorming ideas about graphic design last night...

I am a big fan of medical 1970's esque design. I love phrenology images, and thought this captures of cool side of graphic design. What a graphic designer' head would look like...




This is put against a background. I saw in a design brochure this morning in tutorial that I really liked. Called 'freight' nice composition and style. Modern, but funky. It would live in a studio appartment in an up and coming neighbourhood, if I was to go as far as to anthropomorphise it.




Here are some scans that I did...









I want my style to be modern-old fashion. Want it to be mature, yet playful, sue old images in a new design kind of way. I am still trying to figure out what that would look like, but it sounds great in my head.

Eye-deas

Here are some ideas for showing the various elements of GD.

Taking the words literally, just playing around with the subjects...




This one may be too abstract. It is supposed to be mask and key frame... this one is still on the drawing board...
This works well. It's cute, very GD. This one works much better than the other one... I like the pattern background (although would be colour coordinated to match the interior of 'room'), I like the type, the composition. good tings.



Maybe they will be inside of the phrenology head in the rooms, or maybe a separate piece.


I have been thinking about the different rooms interacting together. I read 'behind the scenes' on the hbo voyeur, lots of choreography, special effects and editing to make it run smoothly. The various rooms interacting to create something may be too ambitious for a two week project. My idea was to use live footage superimposed, but I am going to brainstorm other ways of getting it done.

Brainstorm session

Mike and I are working on the project together. We brain stormed some ideas today and came up with doing an interactive phrenology type piece. It is based on the mind being an idea machine.

Here is an image with which we shall be working:
We want the various parts of the mind to become synonymous with design. A certain section for typography, a certain one for editorial. Tonight we are going to think of ideas and (wait for it) visual metaphors for the various areas of design. Then the idea is to do a kind of red house interactive approach, where we zoom into the head and the inner 'rooms' are revieled to show the 'factory' that is going on... good good times...

Some stuff I have been playing with...

Here is a test for a 'brand' of mirrors into windows. This is a composium of various images I scanned in last week. I'm not crazy about this, but I like the style, I have been playing around with the various combinations of images to find the style. I want slightly dark, I see vignette. I want to do something similar to the 'ideation', with collage elements.

I was playing scrabble on friday night, and I thought of using the letters in my piece...

I made my own, although I hate how similar they are. But I do think it would work well in the piece....

From what I take from the quote "the point of education is to make mirrors into windows' in regard to graphic design, is that we are able to not just see a reflection, like most people, but see opportunity. In this sense I am thinking of making a slightly abstract piece, it will relate to graphic design, but not obviously. Using the signs and symbols of graphic design (kerning, typefaces, layouts, rulers, ect.) that come out of everyday objects.


The other pieces are variations trying to find a 'dark' way of doing it. I am not finished in the least with the idea, but here is my beggining.



I have been trying to find a graphic style for the piece, here is some stuff that I have been making the past couple of days...

Collage in motion

Have been scanning the net for some motion collages and here is something I came across:




Out of all the ones I saw I like this one that best. It is not the images, but the way it moves through space that I like....

Tres cool motion graphics collage

Amazing! This is real real sweet. Love the idea, great execution. I am looking into how I can make collage into a motion piece and this is a great way to do it, although I can't imagine the printing and the bags of trash afterwards....

http://motionographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/trabalho_download1_file_0269_file.mov

They also made a 'making of' which is very insightful:

http://motionographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/making_of_lr_2.mov

Influence Peter Blake

I found in the 1950's book that I got from the library a collage/painting by Peter Blake. I love the style and think this could work well for a collage world that is travelled into through the mirror.

Design Video Promotions

Here is a video promoting the gd festival in breda.



Here is one in Barcelona. I like the style of drawings, but it is a weak piece of graphics, not fitting music, the styles don't match with the acid rain and the new graphis mixed with old images. Could have been done much better.




Again, part of the same campaign to promote the Offf design show in Barcelona, similar style of mixing old with new, but the colors or something about them doesnt match, and it comes off looking cheaply done.





Here is one for the Rotterdam Student Film Festival- cute ideas

morescans

I came across Sean Scully and glad of it.




Of coarse, a double-edged sword, I keep hoping that it will end, but picture after picture they are (*I lack the adjective*).

Some Scans from library

Here are some of the things that attracted me in the library. I believe I chose them for the muted colors and crisp lines, but I'm no psychoanalyst.

Library scan time

Just spent over an hour in the library looking for images and styles that I like. I came across American color photography, fifties images, sean scully's color of time, wim wenders written in the west and ernst haas all of which I am scanning in right now.

I am thinking of doing a conceptual video, like the link I put below in the last post. I came across the quote 'The point of education is to turn mirrors into windows'. I think it would make a nice subject for the degree show, as it makes people think about what it means and would stick in their minds. Also the imagery that could be used would be awe-some. Fun times, like.

Stuff I am currently looking at for the degree show promotion

just having a look at motionographer and seeing what cool new things can inspire me for the promo. I want to do a set of promotional cards as well as a viral video to send out. Looked at best viral videos online, didn't see what i was looing for, looked at footage of robin hood from the disney movie, and now I am onto motionographer...

http://www.thejuggernaut.ca/reels/ADCC_OPEN_SD_16x9_h264.mov


here is a nicely done intro for an art ting, like. I like the styleand could work well for doing a piece that looks nice but doesnt have a definitive meaning.

Final Being Piece

Here is the final piece avec music....

More shots from the first day of shooting

Some more of the videos from the first day of filming

First Person View second day of shooting

The variety of my shots prove dto be my downfall, as I got hom eon Saturday I realised there were very few elements that I had kept the same, and tried to mesh them together using 'blinks' and opacity to match them. I then vowed that I would never be an editor and crossed it off my list of possible things I would like to spend time doing.

I realised that if I wanted it the way I saw it in my head I would have to go back. Sunday it was closed, so I spent sunday doing the final of the fluid(see fluid post). Monday came and I went to Uni to print off my images for the book, and it was snowing and I was the abominable snowman. I printed them off, bought some spray mount, cut them down to the right size, and went out into the snow to glue my frozen fingers together with spray mount. (In fact if you look in the final version of the video, my thumb has spray mount residue on it.)

I then set out for Wallaton Day 2. Got there and found the the families of Saturday now chose to play outside in the snow which worked well for me. I quickly got down to business attaching the camera and walked through it, in a fluid motion, for I had decided the path before I got there, and what actions I would take and where. It went well, except I couldn't see what the camera saw, so I had to do it, and look back to see what worked and what didn't.

I ran into one problem, when I thought someone was being friendly in asking me if I was making an art video, so I tried to not notice the person in the film. She kept talking to me, which is when I realised she was being a bit too friendly, or not friendly at all just, and was an employee of the manor house and was telling me off for bringing drinks in. It turned out okay, expect that this was the only take that got the book how I wanted it, so I had a bit of editing to do.


I am uploading the best runs that I did. I also had not planned on having establishing shots, but because it was such a nice snowy day I wanted the footage anyways. I went on a walk in the par behind the manor house and got the first establishing shot.


I then progressed home, after seeing a guy go down the hill on a blow up raft being pulled by the leads of his dogs face-plant into the snow. He was laughing, his friends were laughing, and I was laughing. It was a moment, I tell ya.

Monday night I sat down and edited as best I could the footage. The music I had already known I was going to use, after doing that huge search for the music to the fluid piece. It is one of my favourite songs, and fits GREAT with the theme. Billlie Holliday -You Go To My Head. It is fitting because it is the kind of music I could see being played in the house, and perfectly ironic. Loof it.

Here is the video with the woman talking to me...




Here is a good one, except for the book part....

First Person View

The last thing that I left on the blog was the camera tests with my digital in my room. Since then I rented out a camera from uni, for higher quality, but because it was more bulky the angle did not appear to be like first person view. This resulted in using my housemates camera, which worked really well, surprisingly good quality for such a small toy.

I then storyboarded more carefully and made a list of things that I would like to have in the piece for clues. The setting is an old man's affluent study/library. I used one day to scout various locations around nottingham. I went to a many different nice pubs, like the Orange tree, Pitcher and Piano, Malt Cross, walked all over the lace market, and even found myself inside the Galleries of Justice. This was a strange turn of events and freaked me out, and for the rest of the day I was really jumpy.

Anywhoo, thought that I would have to do a mashup of different locations and play with the video color. After a tutorial on thursday with Jon he gave me some good ideas for filming, which included a bookshop on mansfield, persian carpet stoor, orange tree for sitting down portion. Also on thursday I was talking about my project with someone who suggested Wollaton Hall, which made a little lightbulb come on over my head, to the amazement of people around me. I planned to go on Saturday.

Friday night I thought some props would really make it, such as a tea cup, because then the audience could see both of my hands moving, which looked sweet in my practice tests. I also needed a book that I could glue my pages in. Saturday morning in getting dressed I wanted to make it as believable as possible so I (*sigh*) cut my nails really short, and looked everywhere for my red sweater. Lester wears a red sweater in the film, and I wanted this to be one of the clues. I realised that I had brought it back home because I never wear it, so I settled ona yellow sweater that looked slightly grandfather-like.

I then went down and made tea to put in a bottle to guerrilla pour into a tea cup. Melted the first bottle, so figured it was better to leave it outside for a bit before putting it into the next bottle. Got it, and a tea spoon and set out.

I went down Mansfield, stopping in a charity sho to look for a tea cup and saucer, and low and behold there was a red sweater for the bargain price of a pound, so I was happy like a little camper.

I continued down mansfield, thinking I would get the book after, because I wanted to film in there. I figured I would get the tea cup and saucer at John Lewis, not bothering to look into Daphne's handbag or any of the other vintage shops. I went to John Lewis and thought I could do better with the prices, and set back up Mansfield (long) to look for the tea cup and saucer and book. I looked into each other shops that I had passed looking for the perfect one, but they were not what I wanted to spend, nor the right style. Soooooooo I continued up to the book store, picked out the perfect book, that looked old, was not xpensive, and had the page size closest to a4 to get the best view of in the movie. Found it, and did not have the tea cup, so couldnt film there then. I asked if I could film another day...blahblah blah they said yes.

I went BACK to John Lewis and picked one that looked delicate, like it would belong to the house in my head. Got it, and continued out to the bus stop.

Got to Wallaton Hall (which I had never been to before) and to my surprise found every family in Nottingham had decided to go there as well. I found the best room for the piece, and faffed for about 20 minutes, building up the courage to take out my tea cup and tea, attach a camera to my neck, and walk around as if I was an old man, alone in my study. I did a couple of practice runs and tired the book and motion in different places, trying to avoid people that would walk in the room, to get the shots.

Here is the first tests that I did, sans tea cup:




Here are some other tests, the best of the day , trying different locations and movements. I am uploading the best ones that I got.

Swinging progress

The swinging project was the one was the throw away one. It was not hard coming up with the idea, for I had found the images int he first couple of days of the project. I spent the time that I had animating it, with adjusting the little tweaks. Instead of having each frame a different one, I thought a nice touch was connecting each frame by using the objects rotation to see other names. It fits great with the music, haunting, yet almost childlike.

Here is the final version. If I could change anything I would have had access to better quality images. The main puppet, which the title appears with, is great. I got it form the library and spent hours and hourse tryigt ofind images that would match it. I looked in every puppet marionette and childtoys book (literally) as well as many illustrators that might have similar style. I dont have the strong a vocabulary when it comes to illustration, which is something that I would like to further. I also redrew one of the images, and tried to match the style of the original puppet, but I am not a strong colorer in photoshop or illustrator and the style did not match, so I left it how it is, and move the really low quality images to the background so that they are not that noticed.


There are a couple of tweaks yet to do on it, but I am happy for the most part.

Fluid 2

Here is the next step that I took with the fluid piece. I wanted to make it look like the camera was zooming in on the line, but I dont like the result, it looks sloppy and very after-effectsy. It is also a very tedious process, with the line moving and the camera. I spent much of my time masking and changing the position, which was not gratifying at all. Everytime the music was not in sync I had to remask and reposition everything. The idea was there, but in practice I need more skills.




The next thing I did was to make the lines bigger. It was difficult to animate and place perfectly such a small line, and I thought it was make it more obvious and fluid if I used a larger line. I had already been trying to animate it for a couple of days, making no progress, so I decided to try and change and see if I got further. The leading into the clock is in the original storyboard. It signifies the 'cinderella effect' of getting into JOhn Malkovich's head before midnight. I tried many different approaches to making this work. I had lanned to have the line feed into the '1' of the clock, purposely making the '1' into an 'i' so that the line would go smoothly. I masked it, opacityed it, tried everything I could think of, but in the end the feeding into the black outline of the lcock worked best for the section.



Finally, it had been about 5 days since I started animating it, and I was going nowhere, fast. I decided to delete everything I had done, and see if there was another way of getting in all the key images that I had connected to the characters, in an simpler, faster way. I thought a clearing of the project and my head would be beneficial, and it was. I got this out in about 4 hours. Although I loved the idea of how it would be in my head, this works well as a title sequence. After my tutorial yesterday I got the feedback that if this was this so called 'real-life' then I would have done enough to get my ideas down, and then pull out my animation team to go through with it, so I am pleased with the final result.

In the last week...

In the last week I have been in production mode. I got feedback in the last tutorial about my projects and got some clearer vision and went with it.


FLUID


I storyboarded the fluid t.s. to get a clearer idea, and tried to animate it. The idea is to have a kind of "I met the Walrus" type animation, which flows seamlessly to the various clues of the movie.

In practice, however, I misplaced my specialised team of animators, so it proved a lot harder than I have originally thought. More tedious in masking and geting everything to flow. I tried all week, but kept getetting stuck at the same time. Here are the first couple of versions:


The t.s. is image based. I wanted images that were slightly medical looking, that were creepy in the way they were a mix of puppet and human, like John Malkovich is in the film. I got very lucky to find the perfect book in the library which had all the images, and proceeded to give them a gritty quality, by using different paper textures in the background and playing with cutting them out in photoshop and blending mode-multiply. Then I took them into aftereffects and played around with them.

The song is Sebastien Schuller, a french artist. I wanted something ironic, if that makes sense. Something that seems light, but can be seen as dark as well. This pieces music took a very long time to find, looking through nearly all the songs on my library (over 4000) and looking online at different composers and artists. I considered Black Moth Superrainbow, Waxpoetic, Explosions in the Sky, 65 Days of Static, Johnny Greenwood, Aimee Mann and Moondog. None of these had the right feel. I was looking for more I also was looking forsomething modern, half electric half classical, for an edgy feel. I settled on Sebastien Schuller which was nice to animate to, although it is a bit lighter than I wanted, it works well.



The first one is where I got in the first couple of days of animating it. I wanted to make it seem like a camera rostrum in aftereffects, with animation connecting them. I don't like the camera in aftereffects, which is an understatement. You need to make the layers 3d, but as soon as you do, they start acting like they they want to show off how 3-d they actually are and don't stay put. This first tests shows what I mean after cameron diaz section, when you can tell its in 3d, instead of a 2d surface.