Steve Cutts Illustrations

I've found that after studying the aspect of Semiotics and signs (coding) in our context sessions, I have been more alert and aware of such circumstances that represent their own semiotics and mental concepts in everyday life - such pieces are especially found on social media sites, as in this generation people tend to be more impatient, and want an image that will be eye-catching and get a point across, therefore I feel like artists such as Steve Cutts who produces opinionated illustrations, needs to get their signs leading to a similar
point of view.
In order for his pieces to be effective, Cutts must know how to represent each of the symbollisations through representing them in hidden messages that with knowledge of the viewer, will become signified effectively. In addition to this, mental concepts such as the political and archaic points of view that the artist produces, must equal to a similar outcome for his images to be effective. It's obvious that the images themselves retain a purpose, and I think that there is a nice contrast between the childlike cartoon style and colour palette against the adult themes within the images.
Moreover, I feel that Cutts could represent such illustrations in Newspapers etc. without the content being signified by the wrong audience (such as young children) therefore using visual imagery it gets points across to a wide range of viewers that he may not be able to
sum up in words or it not be deemed appropriate to do so.

Pixelated Animation Tests

We have all in our groups been allocated different scenes, luckily due to our similar pixelated style, the animation storyboards could easily get split between us rather than just being allocated to one person. This has allowed us to produce more of the scenes for when we finally get to animate them.

Each scene has been allocated to each person and a close up shot:

1. Scene 1- Doughball machine scene. - Hazel - close up Hazel
2. Scene 2- Slip. Becky- close up Becky
3. Scene 3- Razor machines - Hannah- close up Hannah
4. Scene 4- Trip & Fall - Hazel- close up Hazel 
5. Scene 5- Bread Tray. Hannah- close up Hannah. 
6. Scene 6- Back Break- Becky - close up Becky.
7. Scene 7- Truck door - Hazel - close up Hazel.
8. Scene 8 - Hit by truck- Becky - close up Becky.

Producing the scenes beforehand in alternate layers had helped us to develop a better idea of what will happen in each scene as well as helping us develop the animation in collaboration.

First Exploratory Animation- Scene 6- Bread tray.

This is the first experimentation of the movement of the pixelated character, the character would be jerky in movement, so we decided the best settings would be 10fps. In addition to this, they have a 200x113 pixels in resolution.
The first test helped us develop what is the most effective speed for the character to move at etc. Whilst I have been experimenting with the scene where the character gets struck by bread (Scene 6) My fellow members of the group have been completing additional scenes that they will also animate. Despite working independently we are constantly updating each other of our progress and infiltrating the whole group's opinions. This I feel is important in the collaboration process so that everyone is confident with the outcome as well as it fulfilling the client requirements that we have been given by Allied Bakeries.

Producing a wide shot and close up animation separately allowed us to make alterations as we went, such as the appropriate speed and behaviour that we wanted the characters to reflect. One thing we did notice when producing the animations is the fact that there were some continuity errors such as the fact that the tray that squashed the character in the wide shot had then disappeared on the close up.

Andrea Minini

Andrea Minini is a designer who applies simplistic line elements to her work, with the animal collection, black bold lines and coloured backgrounds. I think this also applies to the Semiotics we're learning in Context, how denoting the image would simply equal to just thinking it's lines, but then learnt mental concepts make such things signified into knowing that they represent the outline of animals.
It also challenges the very aspect of representing animals, how far could you strip back the image but still know that it is in fact an animal?
These pieces are a good example for different concepts, with the animals only being symbolised basically in the pieces.

Semiotics, Mythologies & Disparate Truths

For this year's context, we have been introduced to the concept of Semiotics, and how to apply this in context to work and instances in the everyday. Semiotics, ultimately is the study of signs. Semiotics for which can be sectioned out into alternate things:

• Denotation- A term that refers to the common sense- the basic reading of an image, not applying learnt information into the analysis of an image.
• Connotation- A term that refers to making associations about words etc. it links to different things.
• Signs- (Can also be referred to as 'code') Is made of two parts- signifier- the form the sign takes- and the signified- the mental concept of the sign.
• Myths- Refers to the way in which culture thinks about something, a way of conceptualising and understanding it.

An effective example that Jane gave us was : 'Imagine showing something to an elderly person, and then to a young person, despite it being the same object, each person would have alternate mental concepts'

I found an effective example in the fact that in Pixar & Disney films, they have chosen to apply hidden jokes aimed towards the adults and older viewers in the audience, as they're aware that their films are for family entertainment, so want each film to appeal to any age range. The SIGNIFIER in these films are the jokes, and the knowledge that the adults have about the joke is understood and therefore becomes SIGNIFIED. However, in terms of the children watching the SIGNIFIER which is the joke, is something they may not have knowledge about therefore is not SIGNIFIED. In effect, this means that the adult is entertained at different points to the child due to the variation in mental concepts.

Jane showed us a variety of photos and asked us to denote them as effectively as possible, it allowed us to interpret the true meanings behind Semiotics and the fact that Denoting is literally saying what you see, but stripping back the use of learnt information.

Some important figures in the ideology of Semiotics are Charles Saunders Pierce (1839-1914) (USA), Ferdinand Du Saussre (1857-1913) (Switzerland) and Roland Barthes (1915-1980) (France) each shared their viewpoints on what Semiotics was and the effect it has on the viewers, this is something I'd like to look further into.

Alexandre Dubosc

I came across some amazing artists and animators from the website: thisiscolossal.com where artists blog about their work. Alexandre Dubosc for me certainly stood out with his 'Cakescopes' which are rotascopes he intricately produces with cake and sweet foods. I find is mesmerisingly intricate and beautiful the animations that come out of these Cakescopes. I also find that the artist has beautifully chosen out the Foley to accompany the animation, the music and sound effects are so bold and effective especially the crunching noises that you'd hear with food- overall many onomatopoeic sound effects used.

'Melting Pop'
Melting Pop is the first animation I watched from this artist, and I was blown away and instantly wanting to watch more. The amount of time and effort that it must've taken is mind blowing and I can

only appreciate and admire the techniques of stop motion and rotascoping used throughout. There's something really satisfying about the sound of the popcorn and the crackling of the fire, with quirky extras added in like the Pacman zooming round the Cakescope.

'The Cakescope of Burton's Team'

Similarly to the last animation's technique, this piece was a tribute to Tim Burton that the animator had produced, the animation involved quirky resemblances to Burton's style and collaborations such as the symbols of batman appearing to symbolise Burton's involvement in the batman series of films.

Matthias Brown - Animation & Rotascoping

Matthias Brown is an artist I came across on the internet, famous for his GIFs on Tumblr, Brown produces hand drawn and sculpted rotascopes and short animations. I've found his work beautifully intricate and illustrative but with a nice original style and intuitive designs.
In some of his work, the illustrations are quite simple, but the effective ways of animating them to almost morph together is pretty inspiring to me, and also appeals to the current era of the internet where people like videos, gifs etc. to be short and eye-catching, something Brown achieves within his work.

Fluxos- Diego Akel

This beautiful claymation by Brazilian Animator Diego Akel, shows a beautiful soundscape of the music with the aspect of clay. The abstract movement of the clay I find is as if the clay were dancing around and mesmerising the audience.