Author Movement - The animation

So we wanted to film our animation in our costumes but after discussing it more thoroughly, we realised that this might not be the best idea. Plus our third group member hadn't made her costume yet. I'd made a stop motion animation during my foundation year at uni and remember it being really enjoyable so we decided to attempt to make little plasticine characters and film them in stop motion.

Luckily, my character was an underwater character, Rachels was on earth and Laurens was in the sky. We decided to make a set each with our characters own habitat. We went to Poundland in search of materials to make our sets with. The idea is to have Laurens character fall from the sky in to earth, then for us to end up in the underwater world where I live.

I kept mine quite simple as I didn't want too many distractions for when it came to making the animation. I structured and painted my box in underwater colours and drew little fish and jellyfish to hang. I also made some octopus tentacles with card and bubble wrap.

I made a rough cut out and shot a 10 image stop motion just to see how well the lighting, set and characters would work.

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Now that everyones set is done, we've bought our plasticine and have began making our models. I made mine looking at my costumes photos I took the other week.

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We decided to stick to the original script since our theme is 'play' but found it really difficult to follow. We started off by putting the camera on a tripod but couldn't get the perfect zooming we wanted. We then moved the camera back on to a flat surface but it kept shaking as we took the photos. Also, it was really hard to animate the plasticine models as we made a plasticine ball and couldn't record it bouncing properly.

I think overall, it worked out fine and the final piece was still quite fun to watch. We spent hours on this and only ended up with a 45 second video which was my only issue. I think I underestimated just how many photographs it'd take to make a longer animation that lasted at least a minute and a half.

THE FINAL ANIMATION

Author Movement

For the second part of this project, we have to form groups and make a piece of moving image with the theme 'play'.

Despite missing the classes for this project due to being unwell and having absolutely no idea what to do at first, it looks really interesting now that I've read the brief and done some research on animations.

IDEAS

The first thing I did was meet with Lauren to discuss our beings and its needs in order to plan and come up with a direction for our video. We decided that we would wear our costumes and take videos of each other incorporating stop-motion when necessary. We thought we'd set the location at a park since our theme is 'play' but our ideas led us to quite dark narratives with one of the beings falling off a slide and possibly dying. We listed possible ideas and thought about how each scene would work and the props we'd need for them.

RESEARCH

I then started my research by looking through the links recommended on one of Johannas emails. This is a screenshot from 'Pick up the rhythm' by Handymartian. I really like the simplicity of this animation. It has a plain coloured background, the plasticine models look like they've been made pretty fast and they're dancing/appearing on and off screen along with the music.

I feel that something like this could work really well for our theme 'play' but with models of our own beings.

I also found this animation really interesting. Its called 'Move mountain' by Kirsten Lepore. This is a stop motion video similar to the one above where the artist has used some sort of red material pouring out to look like blood. Lauren and I had a similar idea to this for when our being falls off the slide.

I also really like the idea of making a mini model from our beings and creating a stop motion using the outside world in the background as oppose to make scenes and sets. This stop motion features a knitted octopus in quite an urban area. The camera follows the octopus around until the octopus dies at the end.

Author Genesis FINAL BEING

I'm really happy with my final being! It took me hours to cut each line of fabric in to fairly equal piece and stick them on individually but payed off in the end. Ideally, I wanted to make more fabric balls for the cardboard box on my head but unfortunately ran out of fabric and time. 

I couldn't go in to uni for the photo shoot but managed to sneak in and get a friend to take photos of me later so I don't miss out on too much.

Author Genesis - Making the being...

Over the last two days I've ben contemplating on how I can make my being look less 'alive' and cliche but more of an abstract form. Instead of drawing the circular patterns on to the head and making my costume look like an octopus, I decided to try to make bulging balls of fabric instead.

Also I've been wondering if the layers of fabric would look better stuffed and hanging off the head or going around the body...

I went out to buy materials today. I tried to stick to the colours I drew and the textures I visualised would work for my being. I found a small fairly cheap shop in Camden where they sell various fabrics per metre. I also bought some teabags, wire and fluffy things from Poundland.

I think I'm going to start planning how I'm going to stuff the ball-like things for my head and also begin putting together the teabags in rows somehow...

Author Genesis - Brief tasks continued...pt2

Today I drew three of my 'purpose of life' ideas for my brief tasks.

Author Genesis - Brief tasks continued...

I've come up with 2 habitat drawings so far. The first one I made was just a cave underwater that I drew with promarkers and collage. The second cave, I drew with oil pastels. I haven't used these in years and thought they'd work perfectly on black paper. I really like the way the second one turned out with the columns and silhouette of ruins in the background. This second one works better because it captures the dark mood I'm trying to portray more than the first one.

I decided to start drawing my characteristics and purpose of life drawings until I come up with some more ideas for my beings habitat.
I am so happy with the characteristics drawings. I feel that I've focused so much on being more loose, fast and experimental with my drawings over the last few months, I've missed spending loads of time and drawing in a more controlled way. Since I have the time, I wanted to draw and colour these in a quite babyish children's book style as I think my character would do well in a children's story book.

Tomorrow I will start the life purpose drawings and hopefully finish creating some more habitats to be fully prepared for presenting at uni on Monday. I've been drawing since 12 and now its 1.30pm and I can no longer feel my hand so I think I'll be off to bed.

Author Genesis - Brief tasks & being drawing

I spent the last couple of days completely over-thinking my costume/being then decided to just make a few drawings and think about the materials I could use.

Over the last few weeks, I've been collecting the card roll from finished toilet papers to eventually use for some sort of 3D object or sculpture so I thought of using those at first.

Then I went on to thinking about depicting my 5 words purely from fabrics and textures and not necessarily the form.

I still wanted to create a being that lived underwater but my last few being drawings were very human-formed and I wanted something more abstract with a sense of life in it.

I began thinking of what position I wanted to stand/be in under the costume. I thought of cats and how they curl up in balls or stand on all fours and decided to create a being around that.

Taking the final rough idea/sketch I decided to create a being with cat-like eyes, but with tentacles since its an underwater creature. I contemplated on a tail but decided not go with it. I coloured the tentacles in typical lipstick colours - pinks, purples and browns. I decided to keep the teabag idea and drew them on to the back of my creature. I will also be using wires inspired by the keyword 'phone'.

I'm very happy with my final being and feel that it reflects my 5 words I started off with quite well. I also think it'll work very well as a costume given the right materials, thought and preparation.

The tasks on the brief were to draw the being, then draw it in 5 different forms, draw its characteristics and behaviours, its purposes in life and its home. I began by drawing my being on A4 paper then drew it again twice with its front perspective and back perspective to get an idea of how my costume will be in 3D.

I then started to think of my beings characteristics, its behaviour, its purpose in life and where it might live. I jotted down a few ideas that came to mind, then began to research characteristics of axolotls and octopuses for inspiration. 

Even though the brief specifies that we're supposed to think of 5 things for each thing, I feel satisfied with the amount I've come up with for my being.

I decided that my beings main characteristics and behaviours would be:

1. It camouflages to its closest object when its scared or senses danger.

2. It has night vision used to hunt its prey.

3. It captures and strangles its prey with its thinner green (wire) tentacles.

4. It eats mainly smaller fish but sometimes humans too, using these same tentacles.

5. It had cat-like traits. It purrs when it senses love and meows when its hungry.

Its purposes in life are:

1. It grows tea for humans.

2. Humans can also use its coloured tentacles for various clothing items and even decor.

3. It's tentacles decontaminate the ocean and keep it clean.

As for its territory/home I was really stuck with this for a while. I knew I wanted my being to live underwater and I knew I wanted it to be on the darker, more sinister side but I wasn't sure how to draw this because I couldn't visualise it properly.

I remembered the underwater scene in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and since one of my 5 words were Harry Potter, I decided to watch that part of the film to get ideas. I screen-shotted a few scenes to reference and get ideas from when I'm drawing.

I really love the idea of my being living in an isolated area under the sea. There would be a lot of over grown corals, seaweed and vines like in the second screen shot. I also really want a deep, dark, cave-like area a few meters below the sea which is where my being would live.

I also thought it might be useful to look in to my 'Harry Potter - Film Wizardry' book and scan some pages from the underwater scene and also from the final maze scene as there were loads of visuals including moss and vines.

I want my underwater area to look isolated so I had the idea of drawing ancient ruins maybe from a ship or a temple/something Ancient from land. I went back to my British Museum photos because I remember taking a photo in the Ancient Greece section that might help me with this idea. I really want to draw ruined pillars/columns from some sort of old building using my photo below as inspiration:


A few rough sketches of these ideas:

Author Genesis - Being/Costume Ideas

I'm still struggling to come up with something make-able. I want to design something that looks like it belongs underwater. I want it to be loose, drape-like almost like liquid and I was thinking about sewing teabags or empty teabags on to drapes of fabric somehow. I might use wires or electrical tape. Basically I have no idea.

I feel like I should go and buy some bits and bobs like materials to feel more inspired. Maybe improvising might be better at this point. I'm going to try and come up with a few more ideas before Monday then I'll have a few days to begin making anyway.