Feel Good Birds Research

I've been asked twice now about whether my feelgood birds animation has been influenced by any particular person or style. My answer is that I can't really pin down a specific artist, illustrator, movement or style. I look at lots of different things which have influenced the look of the animation.

This first one, below, was just a sketch I did once I figured out the layout and colour. But actually, the construction lines worked quite well with it, in comparison to the one below this one, and decided to keep them in and work them into it. Although, I wanted the background sketches much more subtle.

One of the first things I did was changed everything to square (below, not the video), mainly because of the way the characters were drawn, it made the birds feel part of the scene and vice versa. I taught my self to use the pen tool in photoshop to create the curves. I used to think it was really complicated to use, but have now got my head round it.
I also wanted to start making my own brushes in photoshop and after watching this toutorial, I created my own which gave me the texture you see on the main branch...

I experimented with adding sketches with thinker lines, it looked really out of place and ugly to look at

Even a neater version looked bad...

After I'd hit a brick wall, i decided to look around on the websites i regularly check. One which i love called Grain Edit gave me some inspiration and also an ex student of Stockport College Chris Madden. I can't tell you what I saw as I can't remember, all i can say is that it inspired me to add the brush texture I'd made to different parts of the background, only subtly though, just to hint at the roughness of the style.

This was the almost final background, only apples need to be added...

Lastly, in terms of technique, I was inspired by an animation which was made on a small scale called 'Nosy Bear'. I find that my drawings look nicer when very small so this whole animation, like nosy Bear, fitted in one sketchbook....

Work Experience LOVE Creative

From 31st May till 24th June I was at a studio called LOVE Creative. I was there with three other people from Stockport College; Helen Porter, Dominique Byron and Jack Maguire. Me and Jack are working on a short animation so that's what we were working on whilst in the studio. As well as working on this short animation, we were also given some after effects work to do at some points.

 Me and Jack helped out Dominique bring one of her illustrations to life, this was nice for two reasons; firstly it meant it could put our after effects skills to the test and secondly it was nice to use someone elses work which looked really cool.

I started thinking more about colour, my aim was to get started on a colour script for mine and jack's animation. To give a brief out line to what the vision is, we want to get across the feelings of two characters in a relationship, by using the seasons, for example; the animation will start in spring as spring is known as the season of new life etc also, we go through eight seasons all together and as the relationship turns sour, the seasons should mimic this.

As well as this going towards a side project, its also helping me on my self initiated. 

Also use of the 'Hue and Saturation' tool in Photoshop helped out a lot, you can take the colours your happy with and make then really vibrant or really saturated in an instant. (that how i got the really vibrant orangey/red on the first autumn)

In terms of moving image stuff done at LOVE Creative, I did 2 seconds worth, here it is...

 

Also, my after effects skills also got a lot better from having some briefs of the LOVE creative team...but I can't show them on here. There on my Hand in disc for refrence.

Colour Tests for Competition Brief

One thing which I feel I've made more of an effort to do in the 3rd year is make sure the colour in my animations look reasonably good, or visually ok. I really enjoy thinking about colours for my animation, taking into consideration all the different things which will essentially make up the animation; the mood, the style, target audience etc...

The company 'Feel Good Drinks' already have a colour scheme and a style on there website, and although its good, i wanted to create something different which was my own, but still in keeping with their message.

To get inspiration for the colour i looked to my book shelf, which is ever growing. I homed in on the pixar 'art of' books and also one of the disney archive series volumes called 'Design' which showes off some fantastic works of art from the disney artists.

This was the first one I did (below), it was pretty dull, but were the colours I essentially wanted to use; Greens, Blues and Browns.

More Autumn looking...brighter colours, but its looking too realistic...

Birds n' all in this one...

I liked this one (below), but my problem with it was that it wasn't really the right colours for the brief. I imagined it more summery, I'd been rearing off into the autumn look too much.

This was looking less real and more stylized and the colours were much brighter in contrast to the first attempt. But I wasn't happy with the colour.

I got bored with the 'in a tree looking out' composition and decided to look at the tree to see if I could get any good colours out of it. I liked the green sky which was influenced by a few pieces of art i'd seen from my books of reference (which are shown below my image)

I finally settled for this....its bright enough and looks pretty spring/ summery. also I made the branches/ tree trunks a dark green and totally got rid of the browns, it seemed to work better. Now i needed to do this, but inside the tree where the animation will take place, and also consider the composition.

DandAD Talk at Preston

On Wednesday 16th November I went to Preston university with a bunch of people off the coarse for a DandAD day.

We got two talks in the morning, the first one was just really an overview of DandAD and what they do. It wasn't too interesting. Lucky it didn't last that long.

The main speaker was Jack Renwick who just recently left a company called 'The Partners' to start up her own company. In her talk she briefly gave us a bit of background to how she got into the industry then went on to shared her experience within the creative industry with us all.
Jack talked about how clients might come to you wanting to 'be different' then as time goes by and you pitch your ideas to them, they can become a bit nervous and start to think 'maybe different isn't what we want'. Jack explained that what people tend to do is do something which they'll then go away and say "i did this, its ok, but the client was always making me change stuff, so its not how I want it to look". Jack had the same issue with one client where they wanted to be different, so jack and her team re-branded them and gave them a makeover which consisted of changing there main colour to black, this would mean their business cards would be black too. They didn't like the idea of black business cards, they wanted to keep them white. In this circumstance what she did was instead of moaning about the client, she went away and thought how I can convince them that its a good idea. She went out and collected all their competitors’ business cards and put them in a frame and put in the middle what she wanted their new one to be. It was a sea of white business cards with one black one in the middle. She asked "which one stands out the most" to which they all pointed at the black on, thus convincing them it was a good idea.
So, its all about finding ways to persuade the client....not just moaning about them.


After her presentation, someone asked the question "why did you leave The Partners?" to which she answered in a round about way;
I've worked there for 13 years, what fun is it once you've achieved what you wanted to achieve. I wanted to start something new that would challenge me.

I thought that was quite nice.

Sound Collaboration

I always done sound for my animations myself, but after the 'Eden Ident' sound which, I thought, was very weak I decided next time round I’d ask my good friend Richard Gallagher, who studies sound design in London if he's interested.I had a massive creative spurt at the end of the holidays creating about three short and very basic animations; I gave one to Ric to add sound to. It was 'Watching Television', the final one is embedded below.

I thought the sounds were nice, wasn't over keen on the voice of the man, seemed a bit out of character...but I didn't actually brief him on the piece. I just gave it to him saying "do something with it”.
It was nice to let go of a piece of work and give another creative mind some input into the work and put their own stamp on it.

As the test animation was a success, I was happy to ask him if he wanted to work on the train animation. He asked me to sent over what I had so far, so he could get an idea what he was going to be getting involved with. He liked what he saw and said he'd be more than happy doing the sound.


On Monday 24th November Ric was down in Manchester (sorry, up in Manchester) and by that day I had the final Train animation, titled 'Nowhere Fast' finished. We both watched it and talked about what I wanted out of the sound. The day before I'd had a think about that I wanted so I wasn't wooly when it came to explaining to Ric. We made a list of stuff I wanted, which can be seen on my hand in disc.
Although there wasn’t much communication on the progress of the sound, from the meeting we had to the final mix, the outcome is fantastic, and I think the whole experience has helped my ability communicate my vision for animations.

Hotch Potch Manchester

I'll go through a few of the things presented which I thought were interesting... 

We arrived half an hour to an hour into it. We'd just missed the first thing, which was a documentary and someone was at the front taking questions about it.  The documentary was about micro chips in human beings. The discussion which followed the film got quite heated.

After a short film called 'happy birthday', which was very good, 'Mr. C' went to the front and introduced his rap music video, which he wrote, sang, acted in, produced and directed (if I remember correctly). I didn't care for the song or the video really, but during the question and answer afterwards he pointed out this was his first time creating a music video...
During the Q and A afterwards someone asked essentially 'why is it all you, you, you?' Mr. C's answer to this was that no one ever manages to deliver the goods, he's always dissatisfied with the end result, so this has made him do it all himself so what ever is thought 'yer, good for him. Its his music' and I still think that. But I'd also say that maybe the reason for people not giving him what he envisioned maybe it’s because he can't communicate his ideas. I'm in a situation where I'm asking someone to create sound for my animation so I’ve got to be very very concise so that how I envision the sound gets into this guys head so were both on the same wavelength.

There's so much more to say about it, but I thought I'd just point out two key ones for now. Its nice to see places in Manchester encouraging people to show there work and talk about it. I really would consider, once my animations finished, asking if I can show it at the ‘hotch potch’ event.

Dark Matters Exhibition

I'm going to talk about two pieces from the exhibition. One made me think for a second, the other made me say in my head 'ahh, interesting'. 

by Elin O'Hara Slavick

These [above] are flowers

It looked nicer in the exhibition space...the white bits looked more creamy coloured, from the light, which appealed to me. Still though, doesn't matter, once I'd found out what it was all about, the colour didn't matter anymore.
I thought it was just paint on canvas...but i was totally wrong. This is how its done...

'the historic technique of laying objects and natural forms onto paper impregnated with cyanide salts and exposing them to sunlight'

its more photographic and has nothing to do with paint on canvas. The technique, although serves a vital part in getting across O'Hara Slavick's point, isn't (in my opinion) the main focus. It’s the items which are the most significant. They are items which were left in the remains of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and were borrowed from the "Peace Museum' in Hiroshima.

Both the technique and the message compliment each other.


Next is the one which made me think for a second, its a moving image piece by R. Luke DuBois called 'Kiss' here's the video...

he reason why it made me think was because i didn't understand what sort of mood it provoked in me, with a name like 'Kiss' and to find out its lots of classic kiss scenes from films, I'd expect it to be quite warm and reminiscent...but instead it had high energy and had a black background and a sound track which made the whole thing really hard core. It made me think just how important sound is to a piece and how it can change the mood.

Over all, the whole exhibition didn't appeal to me, with a lot of it going over my head, yet saying this, as I've shown above, there were moments which did either appeal to me or made me think.

Where I Get Ideas and Inspration From

I was keen on coming up with an idea/story for this self initiated brief, but to pluck an idea out of thin air is hard. For me, I have to have some kind of connection with it, be it very small or huge, it helps to keep an all around focus on the subject your basing you work on and stops you from going off track. Its not just about having a connection either, its about being passionate about it, if I'm not passionate about it, why am i doing it.

To make sure I'm telling something which I feel strongly about and are interested in, I read and listen to stuff I feel strongly about and are interested in, i don't go out of my way to read a biography on a football player, because it doesn't interest me!

I enjoy listening to music (like everyone on the planet) but for some reason i've acquired about three or four books on different artists which talk about the meanings of the songs and where the inspiration for the songs come from. This, believe it or not, is what i find interesting! And reading these sort of books got me to read 'Someplace Like America'.

I like what Bruce Springsteen writes about and to find this book which gives real life examples of what he writes about was fascinating to me. It gave me a whole new view of America.

It also opened my eyes to the author and photographer of this book. Dale Maharidge has done so much work surrounding this book, not just what you find in the book, but he did these video series on youtube, which gave me more information which wasn't in the book.



So my idea stemmed from my love for music and my interest in finding out more about the songs i listen to. This is my way of getting inspired and coming up with ideas.

A Push In The Right Direction

One of the main problems with my animation is that I have signs in the shape of arrows which show the way 'forward', but once it had been pointed out to me that they feel a bit out of place I started to see it my self. Its not just the sign, its the quotes that's on the signs as well which feel out of place.

I got pointed in the direction of billboards instead of signs which I thought would be quite a nice idea, its still inkeeping with my idea and story/ statement of the piece plus there bigger and more threatening than a tiny sigh with an arrow on it.

Brazil, what a film. I got told to watch the bit with the long row of billboards, but I figured I hadn't seen it in a few months, so I watched the whole thing again for kicks.

The idea of using billboards is such a nice idea, especially when looking at the 1950s ones which are there to advertise a better life style etc...

Now I just have the problem of what should go on the billboards. Do I put pictures on them? Do I put words on it? Do I keep the quotes I had initially?
Speaking of the 'quotes I had initially', I came to a conclusion that only the short ones work in the animation. the long winded ones suck eggs. Heres the animatic, if you want to see the signs and quotes...


Here's a style-frame which could get round my problem...

Three Days at Kilogramme Animation

This was a totally different experience to the LOVE Creative visit, I went from being with people I knew to just me.

Unlike LOVE Creative which is more graphic design advertising, Kilogramme is all about animation, and I feel I benefited more from that. Its only a small group of people who make up the company but they all were very kind and gave me some good feedback on my work!

So over the three days with them I got feedback on stuff which I'd done at Love Creative and also work which I worked on whilst there (which was the stuff in preparation for Uni).
I got some really good tips off Dave Ridges about how I could make the backgrounds of the 'seasons' animation better...

he made me think more about layout within the composition and gave me some useful tips on how to draw the eye into a certain section of the frame. from looking at my initial frame above, to the one below, you can see what Dave did to the piece to try and improve the composition and give it depth.
Really like of the idea of putting some sort of bushes or grass etc at the bottom right and left hand sides though, It keeps your eye central to the screen.

This also prompted me to buy a book called 'Dream Worlds' which Dave initially gave me to read at kilogramme....but I thought it was such a good book, I went home and bought it!





As well as the 'seasons' work I also worked on an animatic for the self initiated project from uni. Heres the animatic I've ended with (for the moment)...



Here's a maya test I did a few days after my time at Kilogramme...it took a while to do as I havn't used maya in a while! gives a sense of how I want it to look.

I'm wanting to add textures to the train, but we'll see.