Some Final Thoughts

As this brief is slowly coming to an end I've been looking around at some other animation styles I'd really love to delve into in the near future, (and possibly for the Visual Language project). Here are just a few things that I've discussed with others, come across recently or just absolutely love, but can't fit all into the Comm Tech module.


Carlos Lascano

This I stumbled across on vimeo, and fell in love with this guys work, I think the emotion he's brought to the animation is just so so beautiful, warming and adorable. His other work is really worth a look at as well!

A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

I particularly love his animated faces, Lascano goes into some detail on his website about how he achieves the look by combining the stop motion models with real human features. It's so impressive and innovative, it clearly marks his style, his trademark. Linking to the new Visual Language brief, I think this is a clear example of an 'artist' clearly developing their own visual language.

 

Juno: The opening credits

Paul was talking to me about the opening credits for Juno, and how him and Hayley were trying to work out how it was done, so as I haven't seen the film I went and took a look.. http://www.shadowplaystudio.com/juno/ 

I love the style of it, to me, I interpret it as a lovely combination of layers of video and/or photographs with an effect/adjusment layer over the top, some really simple yet effective illustrations and a bit of tweaking which could be achieved by a program like After Effects. Seeing the video-esque style blended in to the animation makes me want to play around with this at some point. I have found I don't feel confident enough in my drawing to be able to produce an animation based featuring a hand drawn character, so this idea of including live footage seems completely possible and exciting to me. 

I then took a look around the website again, to discover the whole of the sequence other than the video at the very beginning & end, was ALL done by hand.. every last bit! I now appreciate the whole thing so so much more!! There are plenty of photos that show it all off here --> http://www.flickr.com/photos/shadowplaystudio/sets/72157603777361412/ I'm just amazed, yet again, by some crazy concepts of animating.

 

On a bigger (but still small) scale

I came across this whilst looking on Youtube at different animations, and it just goes to show how much work goes into a feature length animated film, how exciting it is and how many things there are to look into doing and seeing how a team would run together. Here's a few outstanding facts about the film Coraline.

Watching this makes me want to get some contacts and take a look around a set, see the processes behind animating on a larger production scale, I think it's absolutely fascinating! I carried on watching some of the related videos, including a brief look at the set and everything handmade, the person responsible for all of the hair of the models and one about the lady that knitted all of the clothes for Coraline.... (yes... KNITTED!)

I don't know why I hadn't thought of this sooner, but I came across Aardman's channel on Youtube and lost a few hours of my evening to that. Just so addictive, I start watching animtions, then become really involved and start trying to work out how they are all achieved - try to work out the movements in each of the frames, how the facial expressions and emotions are created, other details like the sound, the background & props.... argh! so much! 

Here's a behind the scenes video that just makes me want to march down to Aardman and demand they give me a job. 

Use of Materials 

I'm all for recycling and a greener place to live in, so the use of paper and other materials in an animation really appeals to me. Also my love for handmade crafts and textiles spurs me on to do some sort of collaboration of two of my main interests. This video was another stumble on vimeo, by a 2009 graduate of Glasgow College of Art, coincidentally from another Vis Com course! It just goes to show how you can use such a range of materials in animations. Her blog also has some really interesting and beautiful work involving paper, shape making and binding, please take a look! http://eleanorstewart.blogspot.com/

Hoedown from Rodeo from Eleanor Stewart on Vimeo.

As cheesy as it sounds, I don't think this brief is really finishing for me, it's only just starting. I'll continue to analyse my relationship with communication technology, probably not so much on a conscious level as I have throughout this brief, but I feel much more aware of what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. Throughout this brief everything has felt, and still feels, really fulfilling and most importantly to me I'm finding the whole process really exciting rather than a brief that has dragged on, I'm just becoming enthusiastic about everything I'm doing.