Edgar Degas is an artist I chose to study in relevance to the previous capturing of motion in paintings that we have briefly looked at. Degas was an artist I came across when conducting research on my Context Issues and Practice essay, when looking into Wassily Kandinsky and the abstract movement. Degas was a realist artist who progressed in capturing the movement of ballet as an underlying theme, his charcoal and pencil drawings along with his complex oil compositions captured the movement intended in two dimensional form due to the blurred lines and colours used. I found research into this artist interesting especially after having been given the project of 'Things to Notice' in the past. Degas' feathered, weaker lines represent past movements taken by the ballet dancers involved in the compositions, and often draw the viewer's eye around the negative space and through the movements created with the implications of the lines.
Boxtrolls is a 96 minute feature length stop motion film that explores use of customised puppets and intricate sets. I've been looking into some research into how the Boxtrolls was delicately produced with numerous character puppets and their alternate reactions. Alike to many stop motions of its time, it required an abundance of patience and delicate engineering to ensure that the stop motion ran smoothly and efficiently with the money and time given. The sets were produced in large scale designs, ensuring that movement and detail could be captured in more detail. The longest stop motion to hit the screens to date, the Boxtrolls really in my opinion from what I've seen captures an entertaining plot line with simple animation elements. Laika who's produced other animations in the past (none as successful) speak of how the intricacies take a lot of time and patience which is crucial in the overall success. They even produced an intricate water system to replicate the sewers which looks beautiful when captured on camera.
Tim Burton is one of the many people who's animation has shaped the very aspect of motion design. His stop motion puppeteering produced some beautiful and quite dark movements, and how it's made videos like this show the intricate details that are considerate for the production overall. It's interesting when you look into Burton's original drawings and sketches and see how ideas are catalogued and changed from the original ideas to conceptual animations. Looking back at some of his storyboards also develops the fact that Burton starts with a simple idea and further adapts these drawings into new storyboards. From this sort of research I've decided to begin my own sketchbook involving sketches and drawings separate to my other sketchbook, as this sketchbook will hopefully help to develop inspiration and ideas that could lead to storyboards and future animations.
Even some of the pencil sketches here are beautifully placed together to show his original idea development, starting with sketches and building up to more intricate plans. For each of his beautiful stop motion feature films there are many sketches and drawings leading up to it first. Such films as his recent film 'Frankenweenie' has the sketches that were originally constructed 20 years before the film was produced. It goes to show that simply sketching characters and drawings could develop into future work, even if it is many years afterwards Tim Burton catalogues and collects his drawings together. To ensure that the whole team of animators knows what the story entails and the overall aspects of the characters themselves, it's clear that Tim Burton would have to first off ensure that they knew what was involved via diagrams and storyboards, probably presented to the team individually dependant on their roles in the production. The quite sinister qualities of his illustrations can be captured in stop motion animation in a way that couldn't be captured in a live shot ideally with the allowance of being viewed by young audiences due to the dark nature that most of his animations include. (Such as Frankenweenie, Corpse Bride etc.) Development of the ideas could range in media that then produces prototypes for the animation, with sculptured models etc.
Pencil sketches to start with are a primary element to include and then they'll be beautifully developed into more elaborate animations. Burton was recently asked to produce a short trailer to advertise the MoMa exhibition. So here's a look into the making of the trailer, he brought in his co-workers from the 2005 film 'Corpse Bride' to help out. The storyboard and overall sketches included on the site are also rather amazing to see the development that actually took place.
Reading through the article on the 'How it's Made' section of Tim Burton's MoMa trailer, I found it interesting of how certain points were explored and why and how. (Information found on http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2009/11/13/the-making-of-tim-burton-s-moma-animation/)
“Typically a puppet character can take anywhere between twelve to eighteen weeks to produce,” says Pickersgill, “But Tim’s design lent itself to a very economical build and we put the puppet together in just ten days, probably something of a record!”
The sketches alike to those of 'Corpse Bride' etc. were extremely helpful to Burton and his team for a visual understanding of what needs to be produced and how. Sculptors needed to know how to produce the puppet and what it needed to involve etc. For example, you can see in the photographs included that the sculptors based their designs on Burton's sketches, showing that visually they relied on the sketches to give them the information and data that they needed to produce the correct idea and bring the inspiration of the idea to life.
The detail of the character and what it involved would have to be carefully considered to ensure that they had the right time and budget to produce the short stop motion animation. The overall trailer took a total of 3 days, but with a simple background setting didn't require the production of intricate sets etc.
"Tim wanted the robot and the balloon against a flat grey background. It was great because it further emulated the look of his original pen-and-ink drawings on a plain sheet of paper. We had three days to shoot the whole piece and my first take had to be right. I’d spent a day the previous week videoing myself performing the robot part. You feel a bit silly but Neil Sutcliffe, who edited the footage into his animatic, was very kind. He didn’t laugh too much!”" - Martin Kelly: Animator.
Recently I watched a film called 'Coraline' a feature length stop motion film produced with handmade puppets and painted sets. I knew after watching this a few times previously that their was the basic idea that I was aware of it being the puppets, but I've always wanted to research into it further, such research is on 'how it's made' videos, accessed on the DVD itself or on streaming sites such as Youtube.
Extraordinarily there were in fact 6, 300 replacement face pieces with over 207, 000 possible facial reactions. A catastrophic amount of attention to detail and expense went into the making of the puppets who made up each scene. Each animator completed 2 to 7 seconds of animation a week with over 70 cast members working on wig design, puppeteering etc for the 24fps film to take place.
With production of ideas, Coraline's characters had to be perfect. It can be seen in the videos that the character development was key to the research of Coraline with the overall sketches and drawings to start off the ideas. Coraline herself had to be carefully considered, how conceptual can the plans be? Such characteristics as her blue hair were later added to the production plans to produce a more vibrant idea.
I came across this stop motion animation and found it inspiring that not only had the animator (an engineer by trade named Chris Herridge) used the animation to entertain, but also to demonstrate the technical practices of the engine being dissected and reassembled. That when paired up with the dramatic music track produces an aspect of tension and action within such a simple sequence as taking an engine apart. An extremely time consuming task but clearly very worthwhile, it's almost as if the whole thing is a form of choreographed dance.
I recently in my own time watched a documentary (sourced on film streaming site Netflix) on Pixar's journey through evolving animation from the popular two dimensional characters (Most popularly Disney creations) into more contemporary three dimensional films we know today.
I found the documentary pretty inspiring with alternate viewpoints from John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Steve Jobs and Tom Hanks. The handwork of the animators into particular successes such as their first three dimensional success of 'Toy Story' evolved into eight more hits, it also narrated that whilst the three dimensional developments were a success, there was a gradual decline of two dimensional animations such as the workings of Disney, causing a suggestion of teamwork of Pixar and Disney together as a whole, all funded to begin with by Steve Jobs.
Pictures sourced from http://www.magicofdisneyart.co.uk
It showed the development of initial drawings and storyboards of alternate animated short films that then developed into the long films we watch today. Such beautiful animations developed such as:
Upon our visit to Man Met Library facilities, I came across a series of books in the animation section of the library. My favourite of these books were 'Mickey Mouse- by Pierre Lambert (Foreword by Roy E. Disney)' and 'Disney Animation - The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas & Ollie Johnston' I found these books particularly interesting as they included original copies of Disney's storyboards, which inspired me into my own storyboards and currently producing in the planning for the Animation Principles Kinetic Verb brief.
It was apparent that with Disney, animation wasn't something that had been really gone into much detail before, so making their own rules and regulations into the Principles of Animation I found really interesting.
"When we consider a new project, we really study it... not just the surface idea, but everything about it." - Walt Disney
I found the original principles and the overall detail of this book rather inspiring and it has made me want to research further into Disney's original ideas and set ups of his animation. The copies of his original storyboards were magical, you could clearly see his thoughts and ideas and the production of better thoughts being evolved within the drawings and sketches produced.
The book 'Disney Animation- The Illusion of Life' was particularly inspiring with the detailed application of physics into the animation, with considerations of what movements apply to alternate animations.
Such principles that we'd been introduced to were highlighted such as the jargon that Disney produced. The usual animation principles that we'd been introduced to were named in the book as just original ideas that soon developed into rules of the trade, unbeknown to the people that originally made them.
With the amount of dark and dingy looking photographs and fragments taken previously at the Courtyard a couple of weeks ago, Kris mentioned the Oscar Award Winning Animator Mikey Please, who's work also resembles a dark side to animation. The short films I found particularly inspiring with the stop motion foam material used, and the intricacy that has gone into the animation is beautiful. You really get a sense of an alternate reality in his pieces, a different world accumulated by such detailed and beautiful sources of techniques.
I stumbled across this advertisement when watching TV in my spare time and found it quite fascinating, Rick had previously mentioned that in the industry they sometimes either combine stop motion and digital animation, and also imitate stop motion with digital animation. I found this point applied well to the idea of the 'Singing Toys' advert.
Credits List:
Project name: Left Behinds Client: Owen Jenkinson, Head of Marketing, Freeview Creative agency: Leo Burnett Creatives: Rob Tenconi & Mark Franklin Creative Directors: Richard Robinson/Graham Lakeland Executive Creative Director: Justin Tindall Agency TV Producer: Becky O’Sullivan Planner (creative agency): Julia Chalfen Client Service Director: Darren Thomas Board Account Director: Ben Gillibrand Senior Account Manager: Ali Wilde Media agency: MEC Planner (media agency): Michelle Radley Production company: Rogue Director: Sam Brown Editor: James Rosen @ Final Cut Post-production: Electric Theatre Collective Audio post-production: Aaron Reynolds @ Wave Exposure: TV, VOD, Online
12th November 2014 The brief was re-examined in this case for a more broad review of motion. My ideas of motion were captured mostly in Paris, a place full of distraction and beauty so a perfect place to try to see things that aren't as obvious at first. Whilst most people swooned over the beauty of the Eiffel Tower and many other attractions, I tried to examine things that aren't as obvious such things as motion of traffic, motion of the crowds around them, the motion of the hustle and bustle of the city. I produced some gifs to enhance some of the movements that I managed to capture.
Simple aspects that maybe are overlooked by most who pass through the city, such as the maintenance of the streets etc.
Giacomo Balla
Giacomo Balla was an artist that particularly stood out in the theme of capturing motion and noticing it too. The artist used his pieces to capture the essence of movement without actually allowing the piece to move. His blurred line usage and paint smudging techniques imitates the idea of movement, and the pace that the object is moving at. The blurred aspect particularly shows the speed of the motion, a technique that can be applied to animation such as on Adobe After Effects with the 'Motion Blur' tool, which applies a slight blur to the music, creating an effective technique overall. The way in which the movement happened was particularly beautiful in my opinion, the fact that instantly you can see exactly what he was trying to do especially in the featured painting of a dog running, showing the action and motion of the legs and tail. The aspect of colour is minimal in comparison to the bold forms of tone and black line, imitating the aspect of movement. I like the fact that an artist can sum up an idea of movement with not only a stationary form, but also a two dimensional aspect rather than a three dimensional form of animation.
The more geometric the line forms become, the more and more abstract the pieces appear, but still withstanding the aspect of movement, forcing the viewer's eye across the page.
Wasilly Kandinsky is an artist that I have found particularly inspiring in context lectures and I feel it could also be translated back to my past few months of experience with Motion Design.
Although these paintings that Kandinsky composes are stationary forms, I feel like metaphorically they are meant to be the opposite. To me, these pieces look extremely adventurous, lively and animated, anything but stationary paintings. The sheer aspect of line and shape itself is extremely effective with curvatures and straight lines representing alternate forms of movement, and that paired with the adventurous forms of colour is truly magnificent.
In a way, it reminds me of our project in which we had to use the shapes to represent the different words in compositions. Personally looking at Kandinsky's pieces I feel a sense of adventure and a euphoric energy about them.
Kandinsky was mythed to have a form of Synesthesia, where the senses are somewhat muddled. In Kandinsky's case, most of his pieces are supposedly composed to represent his confusion of being able to see sounds instead of hear them. After having heard this, I think it really shows the beauty of the work that Kandinsky produced, the colour and melodic shapes in a busy composition representing sound and pitch.
I love the abstract element of every piece, although all representing a similar feeling of sound in a series, each composition is completely unique and inviting.
Kandinsky once said -
Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.
I wanted to take a look into how animation impacted the advertising industry, starting with the overall magical Christmas advert by John Lewis, an advert that is currently going viral for its emotive use of a very cute penguin called Monty (CGI).
According to 'The Guardian' articles, the penguin trailer cost over £1million in CGI, in order for the penguin to capture the imagination and emotion of the viewer.
Personally I found that the advert successfully captured the essence of childhood imagination and the viewer's instantly empathising with the child in the advert along with the bond he has with this imaginary figure of a friend (later represented to actually be a toy penguin) the body language and overall actions of the penguin are entirely accurate and really represent the actions of a real penguin with added features such as more human actions (helping pick up building blocks etc)
Quoting from the Guardian:
The department store’s boss, Andy Street, may have pledged to keep the launch low-key, but the £7m campaign is once again bidding to be one of the media events of the year, encompassing a slick TV ad, a specially created smartphone app, story book, soft toys and in-store events including a chance for kids to see their toys brought to life with the aid of experimental gadgetry.
Interacting the viewers more with the animation that now is well loved amongst the media and families is a launch of Monty the penguin toys and other merchandise.
The first video I was shown on Foley is by Gary Hecker, and his contribution to the film industry with his Foley art. I found the fact that he describes the art as a skill that must be practised very realising to the task we had ahead of us. I'm quite inspired of the idea of Foley and it allows our imagination to take hold of what different objects could be used to represent different things. Foley, named after Jack Foley (1891-1967) is a skill that requires a good realisation of time scales, making sure that the audio can be easily aligned with the other media forms.
Looking more into the aspect of Foley, I have researched other videos that describe the technique, I watched this video that also describes in an interview, how Foley is important in production, like the use of small sounds, the touching of skin, and kisses can't be picked up properly by the small microphones that the actors may wear, therefore it's easier both in the past and present day to insert the Foley afterwards.
I've recently noticed this beautifully intricate form of Pixilation by a Street Artist named 'Blu'. I find it admirable the way in which the thought has gone into the representation of the dinosaurs and other animals using alternatively produced forms of pixilation. Using stop motion technology, the artist has used graffiti art in a way that breaks the boundaries of realism. The abstract components of the moving characters produce a surreal world that wouldn't normally be captured on film without the Pixilation technique itself.
Whilst conveying some research into pixilation I stumbled across this Tomas Mankovsky short film 'Sorry I'm Late' which I found particularly inspiring due to the elements of using simple objects to represent alternate forms (parasol for hot air balloon, cushions for ground etc.) Another element I found particularly inspiring is the whole implication of using objects in close up settings to represent larger forms (bonsai tree placed closer to camera to represent a full sized tree) as it was well composed and had a successful outcome overall.
Using gravity as a simple advantage for the impossible such as riding a bike to such lengths and flying etc, is a key element for Mankovsky to have included. The manipulation of the objects produces a successful outcome as it produces an abstract setting for the piece.
This pixilation for me is extremely effective, breaking the boundaries of what we consider to be 'normal' cooking ingredients and producing an abstract representation of this through alternate objects, such as Rubik cubes and knitting wool to represent the format of spaghetti. PES uses significant objects such as dice in a few of his pieces, all altering the purpose of what the object is originally created for.
I personally like the fact that PES applied the characteristics of original ingredients of spaghetti and applied them to potential objects. It's made clear that a considerable amount of thought has been put into the choice of objects, with the pin cushions resembling tomatoes etc. The way the objects interacted with the organic objects that he kept the same through cooking (pans and spoons that would normally be used) was part of the overall success in my opinion, such as having the sticky notes melt like butter, and the Rubik cubes sliced into smaller pieces.
Edgar Degas is an artist I chose to study in relevance to the previous capturing of motion in paintings that we have briefly looked at. Degas was an artist I came across when conducting research on my Context Issues and Practice essay, when looking into Wassily Kandinsky and the abstract movement.
Degas' feathered, weaker lines represent past movements taken by the ballet dancers involved in the compositions, and often draw the viewer's eye around the negative space and through the movements created with the implications of the lines.
