Finalising Edits

Comparing the original box to Rach's 3D Model

Whilst Rachel continues to finalise the editing of the box clip, I am editing together the stop motion clips in order for us to know about the best timings etc for the clip. We have decided to use a stop motion sequence close up shot on each scene followed by it's own film shot of the lights that we produced.
 I am editing the colour compositions on After Effects to neutralise the RGB colours to make sure that the photographs of the stop motion captured matches up to the colours that are shown within the filming of the house. This allows the photographs and the films to flow more and seem more convincing in terms of aesthetics and matching together as one whole piece.

Sketches of Potential background angles

Original Basis of the box

The considerations of the piece were being made more and more apparent when editing our final pieces together, the fact was that the box we originally based the 3D storage box on that Rachel produced on Cinema 4D is definitely one which has worked effectively, however we are struggling to decide on what will work as a most effective background to the piece.
Currently although an effective composition of the box with the dollhouse inside of it, there is a problem that includes the fact that the box appears to be floating, and compared to the realistic looking animation of the remainder of the piece, this needs to be worked on and thought about so that it is most effective.
Discussing this problem we have thought of the idea of making the box actually be one that is laying down on a counter, perhaps a kitchen counter, or other texture from the home, and the camera is looking down at the box, this way the movements of the lid won't look false compared to that of if the box was suspended against a wall or lay on its side. Another idea is also to just have a simple looking background with inserted shadows into it to look as if the piece is lay down properly or propped on its side, whilst still looking effective enough to match
the rest of the box.
I have been testing some shadowing on Photoshop by using the 'Burn' tool to see what the box looks like on a more textured background and we like the aspect of having a purple texture behind it as the rooms themselves aren't very colourful and it would link back to the appearance of the box itself.

Music Possibilities

We'd like the
The Benny Goodman Orchestra - Sing Sing Sing

Kirsten Lepore

When looking up certain show reels and agencies I have come across the American animator Kirsten Lepore after seeing some of her work when I visited Banksy's Dismaland earlier last year. The pieces she produces are all intricate and mostly containing stop motion or physically drawn animation. She has recently been well known for the first ever stop motion film version of 'Adventuretime' and prides herself on her adaptive nature when it comes to creating props and scenes for animation.
She is very much to me an animator of inspiration with her physical elements that she looks into and constantly collects through the aspects of her work developments. Her style is pretty varied but always falls back on her physical creativity which is also a skill I base my work ethic on to begin with, with the development and creation of my ideas.
The first work I came across of the animator was her work named 'Bottle' in which was a stop motion of a character made of a variety of materials travelling around a beach etc. The piece was played on loop as a film in the Dismaland cinema that I visited when the attraction was open.


The things that I liked about the piece was the intricacies of the stop motion involved and the fact that there is a build up of emotion between the characters despite the fact that they don't possess any facial features that represent certain emotions for this. I have researched into this further and found the Making Of for this stop motion also quite quirky and interesting to see how she developed the animation as a whole.

Oscar Wilde's The Nightingale & The Rose Animation

I've come across this film produced by Aquarius Films, a film company based in Australia. This piece is a collaboration of the children's story 'The Nightingale & The Rose' by Oscar Wilde. It explores the spoken text beautiful with delicate links to the work. It reminds me of the style I wanted to capture with the RAF animation for the Connections brief. The style of the animation is something that I really like, the way in which it is colourful and withholds certain characteristics, and quite illustrative is something I really like. I watched the whole film on the plane to New York and it was so

inspirational, definitely a well thought out visual piece. Alike my RAF project, the narrative of the written story very much predicts the overall images that is shown on screen, which is a nice way of making these things synchronise together as a collaborative piece. Artist Del Kathryn Barton collaborated with animators and the producers of Aquarius to produce the piece and I really like how her style of her usual illustrations is captured in this piece. I like how our Discussion Forums on Style have been linked to this, as despite being given a brief to produce an animation for the story, the illustrator has been able to keep her original style.

Portfolio Crits

For the collection of critical feedback for my work, I have contacted various artists, designers and agencies to ask for some feedback in regards to my work. As an introduction to my work via e-mail, I have sent a link to my Vimeo page in which I currently have a couple of pieces of work to show. I have uploaded my 'Feel Good Drinks' Animation as well as my 'RAF War Story' composition as a nice variety of a couple of my pieces. These I shall get feedback for via email. However, for the face to face visit, I shall actually bring my sketchbooks and other forms of support work to show how I present my idea generation and my work ethic to the designers who view my work, therefore these will be two very different ways of having my work critiqued.
RAF Narrative Story from Hannah Langfield on Vimeo.
I think that this will be a valuable experience for me as it allows me to delve into what professionals find positive in my work, and how to develop the work to more of a professional standard in order to help my personal development as a Motion Designer.

Feel Good Drinks from Hannah Langfield on Vimeo.

Feedback Over Email

Design Bridge Agency, London 

John Sherwood - Graphic Designer

(www.designbridge.com)

"We combine a healthy dose of intuition with intelligence to bring brands to life through great ideas that reach out and connect with people." (quoted from their site)

I have contacted a Graphic Designer from design agency 'Design Bridge' as I felt that the aspect of branding and marketing is something that I creatively like to reach out to in my work, and something I briefly touched on in the sense of the 'Feel Good Drinks' brief in which branding and marketing was involved.

Design Bridge Work for Guinness Rebranding

Design Bridge describes itself as an independent brand design agency, who have worked with big brands such as Cadbury's Chocolate, Dulux, Walkers and Guinness.
 I like the aspect of the variety of collaborating designers in this agency in order to work together and rebrand the product in a way that the client wishes it to appear.
John Sherwood, the designer I have contacted and received feedback from, is a Graphic Designer within the agency, and despite him not being in the field of Motion Design himself, he has collaborated and worked with projects involving Motion Design and the idea generation behind it, so I still find his opinions on my work valuable.
I was able to collect valuable feedback from him on both my 'RAF War Story' and the 'Feel Good Drinks' Animations and hope this feedback can help progress my work for my future e-portfolio. Here is the feedback he has sent me via email:

'RAF War Story' Feedback:

'Good story! I thought the figure becoming the tear is lovely. Executional, but if the figure was lying down it might work better. Less sinking, more symbolic of death? Love the tear falling into the sea. I didn't notice it was the sea the first time, so this could be clearer.
A great twist at the end, I feel like there just needs to be a visual surprise to support the surprise in the story. Could you see a silhouette of the man holding the urn and when the twist is delivered, could the urn erupt making the whole screen go white? You could even put in a sound of a clatter and a whoosh!? Something a bit unexpected!' 

smile emoticon!Feel Good Drinks Feedback:

'Really lovely. “Happy and fun” is quite an open brief (and therefore potentially quite tricky), so I think to make it work harder as an advert you could make more of a link to the brand equities. They could have a bit of fun, and make the advert more ownable. Because your focus is around the circular fruit and their logo is basically just that, perhaps there is the opportunity to make a visual link here?
Is it the logo that breaks up at the start? Or do the spinning piece make the whole logo at the end?
It’s got a really nice visual style and that works well with the naïve musical style.'


Face to Face Feedback 

Holdens' 

John Hind (3D Animator) Jack Maguire (Motion Designer) 

Peter Holden (Creative Director)

(holdensagency.com)

" (on Holdens) fizzing creative culture. A primordial ideas soup. One that creates amazing brand experiences – guided by insight and strategy – that will do wonders for your business."- (quoted from their site)

As a starting point, I decided to contact Jack and John from Holdens' who pitched the Wham! brief to us, I felt like I was inspired by both the brief and the agency itself, allowing a form of contact between us. Jack had previously explained that he was into more of the 2D and stop motion animation whereas John was more into the 3D side of the animation, so it was good to get feedback from two individuals within the industry that had varied techniques. 

We were introduced to the team at Holdens' as well as given a tour of the studio, and it was interesting to see the set up that they had, with the alternate desk spaces and work set up. I visited the studio with my peer Rachel, as we felt it was best to present our work to them in a small group. We showed the pieces to both John and Jack as well as the Creative Director Peter Holden, who were impressed with our range of work and gave plenty of feedback.  Overall the feedback was good, and Peter Holden was impressed by the fact that I didn't shy away from physical elements such as ink, paint and other resources to produce my work.               

'Sketchbooks':

As another visual display other than my work on the USB, I brought 2 of my sketchbooks, one containing the Competition Brief and the Live Brief and Ident, and the other the beginning of the year work with the RAF prints in it to show them my mono printing in person. They were really thrilled with the sketchbooks, but think I should include them more in my making ofs.

'RAF War Story' Feedback:

They were really impressed with the overall medium used with the World War I collage effects and gave some great feedback. John suggested that I should insert some movement in the waves of the sea to add more movement, and intricate character as they liked the small movements in the first opening image used. Jack also noticed that the final scene with the plane needs more movement, as the plane doesn't possess much animation and he suggested it should include more of the mono printed clouds passing the plane as well as the plane bobbing up and down more. They also said I could neaten up and put more action into the character that gets shot down. Peter was very positive about the interesting image to begin the animation and liked the use of my mono-printing  Jack then mentioned that the centre piece of the first image could also possess some movements as well as maybe being stationary for a bit longer to allow the audience to notice the animated characters subtly moving.

'Feel Good Drinks':

They were really happy with the slogan that I used with the voice over 'Bring Fruit to Life' however Peter says it's such a powerful slogan that it needs to have a supporting text also showing the slogan to make it more memorable. John also analysed the drawings in the animation and mentioned that the blueberry jumps a frame slightly so may need an extra frame adding into it. Jack liked the pan out of the fruit flowers, however he said their should be more of them as you pan out and maybe more variety. 

Things You Notice Film:

They liked the intricate shots of this film and the way in which the camera focused, however Jack recommended using a warp stabiliser on After Effects to even out the wobbles on some of the footage which is a tool I haven't come across yet. He also mentioned that colour changes could be made in order to make the film match up together more, maybe include text for more context behind the wind.

'Void, Life, Void':

Although I wasn't able to show the animation to them, I explained this piece of the installation and John mentioned that he had actually seen my Void, Life, Void in the end of year show and it had caught his eye, he recommended that I document this in a Making Of and put it in my portfolio so the audience can experience the Installation without actually being there.


I've found the studio visits and feedback of my work really helpful and helps build my confidence of speaking about my work to the client.

Tweak Week Feedback

After having worked on a few potential compositions and being stuck between the real life footage and the aspect of stop motion, we were glad to have met up with our peers in order to give feedback on our work that we had produced so far.
We showed a few stills of what we reckoned the full composition would look like as well as a few of the stop motion and real life clips and 3D compositions. In these clips I'd inserted the Foley of one of the boxes clicking, and the stop motion of the objects moving to tidy themselves up. However some of the feedback revealed that when watching the piece, that it was not always visible as to what objects were moving and what had tidied itself up, something we need to work on to be more obvious as this was the whole aspect of the movement and the purpose of it.

The general feedback we got was very positive, but pointed out that the aspect of the sound Foley for this piece is really important, the fact is that if there was no sound with the still rooms, it would start to possess a horror sort of theme.

Feedback received on sticky notes:

"Great set, dollhouse idea looks really well. Think the click idea will work well as will the transition into the box - sometimes it's tough to tell which objects have been tidied up" I'm glad that the composition of the piece works well overall as the intricacies of the set that we used were picked up on so I feel we have succeeded in this area, however the feedback that the movements aren't very obvious is something we'd have to work on so the audience know what is going on.

"Spend Longer in rooms, less on the logo, maybe fast cut to the graphic logo with a second click sound" We found that this was interesting feedback, as it allowed us to interpret the fact that the logo is important, however having it on the lid isn't necessarily important. We could manipulate the fast nature of the clicking and closing of lids in the piece effectively. The idea of the graphic logo clicking onto screen was a positive idea that we agreed with the feedback to use on our piece.

"It has a clean look, lighting and authenticity of the filming, however needs consideration of sound" Again, we agree with the effectiveness of the set, however we know how important the foley will be to the composition of the piece, so need to seriously look into the production of this.

"Beautiful Illustrations, nice lighting in the rooms, good story development, nice ending" Overall this is positive feedback, and we went into further detail into why it was an important part to have the big reveal at the ending and the graphics afterwards, as it was important as it's the build up of the whole house to be in the box. 

Overall, we have found the feedback interesting and helpful for the production of the piece and know that there is plenty more work that we could produce on the side as well. In addition to this we also had to use the feedback in order to produce more work and plan what we actually need to do as a pair in order for the piece to get finished on time and it has helped us to plan what needs to be put on our timetable more for the next few days so it reaches the deadline well.

Further Box Progression

Whilst Rachel continued to produce more of the box and edit it together, I have been experimenting with different aspects of Foley of the clicking of the boxes, as well as testing different outcomes of using stop motion vs the aspect of using the live filmed light pieces.
I have edited a few of the compositions of the room together to see what they will look like when in the zoomed in shots, whilst seeing what Foley would also work well with the featured clips.
We have made sure that we looked into what we agreed on as a collaborative piece, and we have decided to use both techniques but one in a much longer composition that will be edited together as well as the final bumper that will be used as our presenting work to the client. I have also started to experiment with the end shots of the box fully zoomed out, as this is important to ensure that the wide shot looks as aesthetically pleasing.
Rachel has been editing the rooms of the Dollhouse properly into the 3D box itself, allowing more time for me to experiment with the potential background for the end shot.
We are collecting our work together to show it to the class and Rick for some feedback, which hopefully will let us have more of an idea as to what we can improve for the pieces to fulfil the clients brief more.

I have found with testing with the stills that Rachel is producing on Cinema 4D, that the box at the end shot does look like it's floating so we need to think of a solution to ensure that the piece looks well suited with the rest of the video.
There is the problem that we have had feedback on that the box does look like it is floating in thin air, so may need a drop shadow for a bit more effect.

Heather Benning - The Dollhouse Project

Heather Benning is an artist who underwent an 8 year project to convert an abandoned 1960's Farmhouse into an open sided Dollhouse design. As an installation piece, the house was left open to the public in 2007 and remained open for 6 years until unsafe to keep and burnt down.
I think this piece relates to the aspect of our dollhouse project as alike we are doing with the storage box for Wham, the artist has converted a desolate object into a homelike environment again, with the piece once being an abandoned home, to being a home that is now still not lived in but very much a homely and recognisable dollhouse design.