No Strings Attached

When looking on vimeo for inspirational animations, I came across this beautiful combination of hand drawn and 3D elements and was able to look more into the making of.

The Super Rope Solution - Animated Short from Auke de Vries on Vimeo.

The making of - The Super Rope Solution from Auke de Vries on Vimeo.

Puppet String Development

As part of my production process, it has come to my attention that I need to do a few tests for the string coming down part of the animation. I'd like the string to be like an individual creature, snaking down towards my character but her not really noticing it despite it viciously grabbing her. I'd like the cat however to react towards the string in a negative way, showing he sees the effect the media has on her without her even realising it herself.
I've found a few movie clips I feel link to the behaviour I'd like the strings to possess before taking the girls as puppets.

Character Development

As my story I'd like to develop the aspect of a rough looking, sketchy aesthetic. I have produced a few short testers and sample characters as an exploration of what could work out best, as well as an animatic to explore what's best for the story and get a better idea of timings for the sound effects overall.
Within my sketchbook I have sketches which develop in me trying to find an overall character outcome.

'Alike'

When looking on Vimeo, I found this short film that explores the aspect of Creativity within a child and a father. I love the contrast of the characters in that one represents the childhood liveliness of creativity and the father represents the reality of the creativity being stripped away through being an adult. I thought it not only links to the aspect of creativity in my Dissertation, but also the stylised features I'm exploring in my current project, and how the characters change colour in accordance to their mood, to show their love. Alike short film from psl on Vimeo.

Nowness Define Beauty Series

After having discovered the Am I Ugly? Video on Facebook, it lead me to the other series of videos that Nowness have produced in the theme of defining beauty and I've found each one is cleverly disturbing as it shows how strange it is that we have normalised such things in our society such as tanning and disturbing body proportions.


Nowness: Define Beauty 'Degrees of Doneness' from James Lees on Vimeo.

Aesthetic Research

I've been looking on Vimeo over the festive period, about some aesthetics that I particularly like that I feel influenced by, and  I love the graphic and illustrative style animations, 2D and 3D drawings etc. Here's a few I found particularly inspiring.


The 12 Days of Christmas - A Tale of Avian Misery from Blink on Vimeo.
Berry Sakharof - Yareach (Moon) // ברי סחרוף - ירח from Berry Sakharof on Vimeo.


Dontshare from gianluca maruotti on Vimeo.
Blue - CNN from Moth on Vimeo.

Social Media Impacts

When looking on social media itself, ironically there's a lot of posts about the powerful effects it has on society. Here's a few pieces I've found on social media that successfully link back to the underlying problems my animation will explore.

Am I Ugly? - by Nowness
A video that is going viral on Facebook is this video posted by social group Nowness. It shows the distortion and brainwashing of young girls due to media elements. It's shocking how young these girls are and the impact that media has had on them, how they speak of how fake beauty is more important than natural beauty. Although these are acted out clips, they are real life opinions of young girls who have been impacted by the beauty industry. It makes the audience feel uneasy and disturbed which I think is a successful outcome with the editing of distorted clips and sound effects together.


The Video below is a video I found on Facebook declaring how zombified the human race have become through the aspect of social media and technology. I found this linked successfully back to how I've made the characters in my animation be lead by another force and be almost zombified themselves.

Survey

After having made a mood board on the overall issues that people face with body image pressures, I decided to produce a quick survey of females from other courses as well as my own to see what their outlook was. I wrote out 6 multi choice questions with allowance of extra comments if they wanted to make some. Here are the results of the surveys and other comments that those who took part made.

Body Image & The Media.

• Which form of media do you think influences body image the most? (Options were Magazines, TV Adverts, TV Programmes, Music Videos and Social Media)

1/10 Answered Magazines

9/10 Answered Social Media 

• How often do you compare yourself to others? (Options were Never, Sometimes, Always and Most of the Time)

5/10 Answered Sometimes

4/10 Answered Most Of the Time

1/10 Answered Always

• How often do you alter or add a filter to your photos on social media? (Options were Never, Sometimes, Always and Most of the Time)

4/10 Answered Most of the Time

1/10 Answered Never (but interestingly this was only because she doesn't upload photos on her social media account) 

5/10 Answered Sometimes

• How often do you feel self conscious about your body image around other people? (Option again were Never, Sometimes, Always or Most of the Time) 

5/10 Answered Sometimes

3/10 Answered Most of the Time 

1/10 Answered Always

1/10 Answered Never

• What age range do you think is most vulnerable to body image pressures that the media produces? (Options were Below 16s, 17-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41+ or everyone) 

A lot of the people who took part ticked a few different age ranges so here is what there was in total.

Below 16- 3

Everyone- 4

17-20- 4

21-30- 2

• This was more of an open question so I could see what they listed as the main pressures. If you could list 3 main pressures of body image what would they be?
• To have the perfect bum & boobs
• Kylie Jenner perfect make up
• Fashion
• Having a fresh face
• Having pretty, well kept hair
• Appearing feminine 
• Body Weight
• Appearance in general
• Fashion/make up trends
• The 'perfect shape' maintaing it
• Eating the right foods
• Small waist, big bum
• To not be overweight
• Stereotypical hourglass figure
• Creating your body image to impress others not necessarily to please yourself
• Face and skincare
• What to wear and why
• Lifestyle
• White teeth

Girl Model- Documentary

As an aspect of research to my project, I watched a documentary on Netflix about modelling and the pressures of the body image involved. The documentary was following a New York based model scout, who travelled to Russia to collect girls to send to Tokyo for more modelling opportunities. I think it was interesting that the culture of modelling is so different there, and their aspects of beauty is very different from ours.
A Russian scout said in the documentary: "The ideal age to start modelling is 5 or 10 years old, if you're not sure what age to start them modelling, start them young."
In one shot of the documentary, it was interesting to see that there were hundreds of girls being rounded up in a room like cattle and people checking their skin, measurements and skin etc. The American scout explained that for Japanese success, the models she was looking for had to bypass her own aesthetic of beauty, but fit with Japanese ideals. The Japanese ideals in the beauty industry is youthful looking girls, with a cute look, they can't be too tall and have to have clear, fresh skin and big eyes. In the background you could hear some girls being dismissed for being too fat, too spotty or too tall.
Throughout the documentary it follows a 13 year old girl Nadya from Siberia, who is chosen as one of the models to be sent to Tokyo. She is described as having the 'prepubescent' look that the Japanese market favoured. However her trip to Tokyo doesn't go to plan and finds the aspect of modelling very pressuring and has to lie about her age, with Japan not legally allowed to model under 16 year olds.

Black Mirror - Nosedive (2016)

Black Mirror is a series of standalone sci-fi fantasy episodes on Netflix, created and written by Charlie Brooker. A particular episode that I felt was relevant to my project so far is the episode 'Nosedive' where in an alternate reality, society makes you rate others out of 5 for wealth and a good reputation.
I think it's a good concept as it's a fear of many that one day our entire existence will be based on our virtual expectations of one another. Especially with social media aspects like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, a lot of modern day people seem to consider many likes and retweets as more love and more popularity. Brooker has built on this fear by producing this episode where your entire existence depends on whether or not people like you and you're rated well, it shows that the characters are forced to live fake lives in which they pretend that they are happy in order to impress each other for a good rating.

Bartosz Koswoski

I found this artist who produces a range of illustrations that represent the social pressures that social media and media in general has on body image and your mental state. The illustrations include such feelings such as negative influences on weight and diet, and paranoia in relationships that the media causes.

Body Image Control

When thinking about more metaphorical ways of representing the media controlling our aspect of self, I thought of the idea of puppets. The stringed puppets metaphorically could represent that we're strung up to be controlled to think a certain way. I think this would be a nice idea to work with when producing an idea for the project.

Fashion Animations

Episode 16 “The Camellia” - Inside Ch*nel from Cyrille Smaha on Vimeo.

7 Deadly Sins

A piece I found on the internet about the 7 Deadly Sins

Culturally there used to be the belief that there are 7 Deadly Sins, things that could consume you into being a bad person. I think that this sort of theme also links into what I've been looking at regarding people constantly wanting to change their outlook of themselves. The 7 Deadly sins include:

• Gluttony
• Vanity 
• Envy
• Sloth
• Wrath 
• Greed
• Lust

In particular I feel that the sins that most apply to the themes I've been looking at is the aspects of Greed, Vanity, Envy and Gluttony. The greed of wanting something we don't have and constantly wanting new products, the vanity of constantly trying to look the best we can and impress others, the envy of wanting a body image that we don't have and the gluttony of trying to change our diet to look a certain way. 

LABEL

In September I was approached by an organisation founded by a fellow workmate from college asking me to produce some work as part of their exhibitions for Body Confidence, and as an organisation they strive to not make beauty an exclusive trait to certain people but to embrace the beauty in everyone.

Allyson Melberg Taylor

When in Berlin in a gallery, I came across the illustrator Allyson Melberg Taylor who does a lot of portrait work but with slight distortions.

Body Image & Materialism

Through developing ideas of themes I came across the idea of further researching how media portrays in particular the female body image, and how we are constantly told we need certain products in order to be happy. I was inspired by the fact that our complete outlook of ourselves could in fact of been brainwashed into us from an early age with the surrounding media.
Our aspect of what we find attractive and what we think looks good all depends on our upbringing and culture and I've found that quite an interesting topic.
I've been looking at a range of magazines such as Glamour, Elle etc. to look at the sort of language and imagery used in order to convince a certain audience to alter their image and to become something or someone different.
I've looked a a few supporting articles as well as existing adverts/campaigns/animations that link to my theme of body image and materialism, and the distortion of self image throughout.

The Changes in Body Image in History
As research I have been looking at a range of articles to compare the historical aspects of advertising the beauty and how this has changed over the years. In particular it has been with women where there was a certain size that had to be maintained in order to seem fashionable. I find it interesting how this has changed over the course of the centuries of fashion and how women have constantly felt like they had to change themselves in order to be accepted.
In earlier years there was the corset in order for a smaller waist to be maintained, whilst nowadays it seems like the larger ladies are recently in favour for being curvier. In the 1950's it was fashionable to gain weight rather than lose it whereas coming up in the 1990's was the aspect of becoming skinnier and losing weight.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/28/women-ideal-body-types-history-buzzfeed_n_6566254.html 

(Images taken from internet sources and articles and blogs on history of body image)

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jun/10/body-image-anxiety-eva-wiseman - Article on Body Image Anxiety

Dove Campaign
Although a huge beauty company, Dove began a campaign about body confidence in 2008, addressing the fact that the large production of products and advertising is having an impact on the younger generations. I like the overwhelming factor that this video gives and the fact that we are surrounded by media telling us what to do.

DOVE "Onslaught" from SUPERGROUP SONIC BRANDING CO on Vimeo.

 Body Dysmorphia Disorder http://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/femail/video-1190317/See-Body-Dysmorphic-Disorder-sufferers-experience.html


Effects Media has on Body Image

Anorexia & Body Dysmorphia
Since the aspects of beauty advertising began there was always

Colleen Clark I find this artist when on Tumblr, she's a young degree student who draws up modern comics about the impacts that media has on body image generally.

Articles I've looked at-
I've begun to look at some articles that will involve the theme of body image and the effects that it has on the human mind, and I found it interesting that they have discussed the idea that sad people are actually the biggest buyers. Without us being sad about how we look we wouldn't buy anything new.
(The article is found at https://mic.com/articles/111228/how-western-beauty-ideals-are-hurting-women-across-the-globe#.f4PHZuuC1)
It's also interesting that the aspect of Western culture effects people globally, with aspects such as hair relaxing to get rid of the natural curls some women have, as well as the aspect of skin whitening.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-29569473

As an exploration of the materialism side to things, I have found this hyperreality motion graphics piece particularly interesting as it explores the aspect of materialism in the modern world, and it shows how overwhelming it could soon become. I like the aspect of all the pieces being so overwhelming and in your face all the time. There's also the aspect of changing their identity which to me is important, as I feel that identity itself is an underlying theme within my work.

HYPER-REALITY from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.
HYPER-REALITY from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

Self Initiated Project Exploration

Perfect World - Katie Melua from Karni and Saul on Vimeo.
POSITIONING from Anne Beal on Vimeo.
Body painting Stop motion Blackpainter from elena tagliapietra on Vimeo.

New Project

We've been given a new project to continue till March on something that we feel will challenge our skills further as well as being something that would belong in the industry and not just something that had been done over and over again. I'd like to try something new for this project, so here's a few things I've looked at so far.

Paper World- By Mome Animation
I love the idea of making a world within a world, and I think this is a beautiful example of this, using 3D elements to replicate this aspect of origami within a world is really inspiring to me and I find it really aesthetically pleasing. Made for the WWF, the piece is a beautiful metaphorical way of describing the impacts that manmade objects have on the wildlife. I love the way it all connects and there is an attention to detail that I really like within it.

WWF Hungary - Paper World from Paper World on Vimeo.


Merit- By Nick Forshee
Personally I feel like my roots throughout the course have always been with the aspect of 2D and more illustrative aesthetics, and this is a simpler but effective way of animating that I may want to try as I've not really done it before.

Merit Animation from Jim Leszczynski on Vimeo.


UNSATISFYING from PARALLEL STUDIO on Vimeo.