Time to Breathe

Rather than a ridiculously wordy evaluation on here, I'll save that for the tutors and give a quick sum up on the most important pointers to me and what's to happen next...


Visual Language is slowly creeping out the way.... for me it's seemed to drag, on the most part due to the timing of the brief clashing massively with Christmas and general ups and downs of life... I'm not hopeful on the marks front as I'm not confident with my work produced is anywhere near what is expected of in relation to the brief. Maybe I need to jump awake and get over it, or maybe I'm right.. I'll see what numbers come back to me in a few weeks time?! But as mentioned in my latest rationale update, I think my understanding of myself and my work is slowly but surely coming together as I become more confident in the way I work. I'm so pleased with the idents produced for the show reel, and the feedback I had through the evening of the exhibition and the following few days has been positive as well. It's made me feel like I should be more confident and push my work to be seen by more people.

I already have a heads up on the Live Brief as I've been thinking for a while about it now. I feel it's a much more important brief in comparison to the Collections project. I feel I can now push myself much more over the next 2 months as everything's much more relaxed, but the pressure is still on to perform well - and for the first time I feel like I'm not just trying to achieve some consistent great marks, but I'm trying to be successful for myself as well.

Last week I helped out Matt Saunders out again with preparations for his new show reel, along with James in the lecture theatre.

And then....

Next on the agenda :

- Build up enough work for my own show reel to promote myself as an animator
(so... consider competition briefs - YCN?)

- Continue to work on my 'animals' animation, I have characters and audio to start working with, I now just have to start pulling the animation itself together.

- Keeping my interest in sound, I'd like to consider making a music video, whether it's just a 30 second clip, it's something to put forward to my show reel as well

- 3rd year final show in the Summer, James asked if I'd help with the show reel again.. definitely interested.. especially as I have a lot more time to play about with some ideas.

- Working with Charlotte and Steph with a school in Leeds... guiding them in the making of a film about the school becoming the largest 'Green' school in the UK. My main interest is introducing the element of animation to the film.

- Handmade 2 craft fair, I've always wanted to do crafts and make handmade goodies, but felt I could do it in my spare time.. well here's me taking my spare time and doing my crafts once and for all!! (And hopefully earning some pennies out of it too!) I think this helps me discover a sense of my 'visual language'... Looking forward to this a lot :) I'll be making some textiles pieces, selling some cards, (made in the final project for first year), make postcards out of textile pieces, make some cupcakes... consider making any best sellers for the Market Week in April/May organised by Bridget March.

Oliver Jeffers

Matt Saunders posted this on his Twitter, someone else mentioned Oliver Jeffers at uni the other day as well. I looked at his work quite a bit during research for projects back in my Foundation Course and absolutely loved his illustrations.. Here's a video of him chatting about his illustrations, where all his work has come from as well as his latest book, pretty inspirational and he's just such a lovely guy!

This also caught my eye on Youtube, the trailer for one of Jeffers' books which has been transformed into an animation. I love the fact that Studio AKA have completely held Jeffers' style of illustration, it is literally his book alive on the screen. It looks beautiful :)
It's made me consider how an artists visual language can be really important, if it's vivid and clear enough, then it works beautifully all round - so for me taking my love for crafts and handmade, I can really start to push the ideas and consider how I can work elements of these interests into my animations. 









You can buy the DVD for a miniscule £3.38 on amazon.... sold!!!! I'm excited :) :) :)

'Tea for Two' and Mr Bear

These are the submissions for the exhibition; the 'Tea for Two' would have definitely looked better in a box frame I'm thinking. I think choosing the best presentation for the work within an exhibition is just as important as the work itself; if you don't present it well then it doesn't give the work justice to stand out and shine like it should - especially within a salon style hanging if you want to be noticed!

If given more time/money to work this out I would have opted for a frame to compliment my work, so the fabrics wouldn't be squashed up to the glass in the 'Tea for Two' piece, and somehow presented my bear so he stood out a little more... maybe some patchwork on him too.
I have a stall at the 'Handmade 2' Craft Fair on the 7th of Feb at Brudnell Social Club, 1-5 (come and see pretty things and eat cake and drink tea!!!!!)... I'm thinking of producing a few more of these to then scan in and print out as postcards to sell... The textile pieces themselves take at least 2-3 hours to make, so I couldn't justify selling the real thing, but I think they'd still look pretty cute scanned and printed off... I think I've started myself rolling on the 'visual language' ideas. Maybe my love for craft handmade and cute things should show through in elements of my work after all.

Finito!!!

The show reel finally came together, after a lot of fiddling around and problems and sweat blood and tears...... or something like that.

Rather than a big essay of writing on here, I'll save that for my lucky tutors in my evaluation to chat about what went what didn't and what did go right and wrong..... For everyone else here's the final title sequence with sound, (MASSIVE thank you to Rob!!!!!)


And a sample of the idents used before each students' work on the reel;


HUGE thank you to James as well, thanks for all your help!

One of the main things I did learn from all of this is my lack of knowledge of technical stuff.. like formats/aspect ratios/technical lingo .... I felt completely useless at times and thought if I knew what Matt/Rob/James were talking about, then I would be completely fine on my own.. without their help there would be no show reel!
So... I need to get reading up on this techno lingo... time to get my geek on :)

Exhibition Submissions....

Slowly coming together, just trying to be considerate with the times I use the sewing machine.. which is tricky since I've got to be in early and staying at college late in the AV room to finish off this darn show reel !
I've decided that I'll be trying out a bit of patchwork with the sewing over the top.. some pretty mini-patterned fabric.. might give a splash of gingham in there too. Thinking of the 'Tea for Two' piece as a small feature in a plain A4 frame; the sewing itself no bigger than A6 so that it (hopefully) frames nicely. It would be ideal to have a deep/box frame, or even an open framed piece so that i can almost tempt people to touch it... (i always want to touch textile pieces, they just look too inviting and 'touchy feely'!! Like when you go clothes shopping, you've always got to touch the dress or the top or the jeans, see what they feel like!) 
In the real world though, I don't have the time available for making/the money available to buy a pretty frame like that.. so I'm thinking a basic frame that I still have hiding at the bottom of my bookshelf.

As for the postcard, going to stick with the simple line stitching of the animal character, which goes to lucky miss bear.. or mr bear, i think he looks too manly to be a she.. anyhoo.. that's the plan, need to get cracking.

I wish I'd come up with these ideas sooner rather than last minute, would make me feel a lot less stressed and a lot more confident with my work!! Although I'm feeling horrifically ill right now and everything is a fair bit rushed and last minute, (which is my least favourite way of working.. i HATE it! I'm definitely not a last minute work kind of person!!!).... I feel like I'm managing my time fairly well, it's a rush around here there and everywhere, but I'm keeping on my toes.

Here's to a weekend in bed very soon!

'Tea for Two'

Postcard ideas...

Basically, go for the 'cute' option and get the sewing machine back out...

Sketched out some initial ideas after looking at some images on google for some inspiration, keeping in mind the phrase 'tea for two'...

Started off with some text to practice my hand on the sewing machine again and then some simple outlines of some teacups... got into the swing of this quicker than I expected.. bonus :)

 
 Just for fun... the backs of the stitching sometimes look a little more interesting than the front... and I also like the way some of the threads are kept loose like in the text example above. Sometimes it can look a bit too tatty though and me being perfectionist me, I have to trim all the odds and end so it leaves a crisper image.. Still time for playing around though!

 Getting more time at the moment to play around with the sewing machine, (within reasonable hours of course, can't have the sewing machine running away through the night)... as I'm having a really slow response with regards to the show reel submissions, which is really really frustrating, but nothing I can do about it really - done my part, just need everyone elses now. Otherwise, there won't be a show reel!
 With three days to go till the opening, I'm keeping my fingers crossed!!

Rationale Update

Pre-exhibition update.

I now have a good sense of direction on what I'm doing and I'm really enjoying it. I'm lacking confidence in my body of work at the moment as I don't feel I have any strong work to show for the last couple of months. But I do feel that I'm much more confident in myself and my sense of direction. I've started to realise that this is much more important in the long run, and that churning out any old work that I struggle to produce does me no favours.
I work a lot better if I'm feeling comfortable and excited with the projects I'm working on, which is what I want to try to ensure for the upcoming Live Brief. I'm successfully working on the idents; which I am now submitting as my 'book', and taking my interest in crafts to submit some work for the postcard and wall mounted piece. I've always tried to push my love for crafts and hand made things aside from my usual work, as I feel this is more 'spare time' work than 'professional'. I didn't really consider, that this love for crafts may just be a great influence of my 'visual language'.
Looking back at my original rationale, I have still considered a sense of audience and narrative to my animation, and it has definitely been produced with a direction and purpose in mind. I have also taken part in the curation and organisation of two exhibitions.
Although I'm not totally happy with the way things have run, I've actually managed to achieve what I had in mind in some way or another.

Slowly but Surely ...

This weekend has been fairly good workwise, caught up on the blog and got the general little bits and pieces done around the edges so that I can crack on with the rest of my bigger bits that need sorting!
I've finished editing all of the clips to be used for the show reel, still trying to upload to youtube, but my Internet at home is horrific at the moment.. struggling to write this out as it is!

I've been thinking about the post card/wall mounted piece situation and got a few ideas brewing..

I feel this would work better for my postcard due to the size of things.. unless I worked a couple of illustrations out and framed them, we'll see.... I've got the ball rolling all over now!!
I'll get some images up on here asap once I've got them ready :)
quite excited this is all coming together now... yaaaay :) :) :) :)

happy happy happy :) :) :) :)

Show Reel Idents

I passed a few ideas forward to a couple of other students and this came out tops.. so started to storyboard it out and it just made a lot of sense as it started coming together...

 

Had a chat with David and made a few more tweaks.... cracked on in the AV room with a couple of hours of moving bits of paper and getting quite excited cause everything was going so well. For the first time in a while, was really pleased with everything!

Then checked with David that he was all ok with how it was going too, he said yeahhh looks great! ... but .... the lighting could be a little better.. everything's looking flat, it looks good but it could look better...

So. First late night in the AV room... spent another 3 hours tracing everything back and redoing the first section of idents. In all honesty, he was right! It looked so much better, the first set of lighting made the paper in the stop motion look quite flat, and once we'd played around a bit, we got some directional lighting going where the paper looked more interesting and textured and the general feel of the animation was much better..... so here's that first 6+ hours worth of animating in 11 seconds....


I came back the next day to get some more little bits done, trying to upload the copy of the unedited stop motion sequence so it's easy to see everything I've done, or even some of the 2 second clips of the names to be featured before each students contributions... I'll update this if they ever decide to upload to Youtube!! argh!!

It's coming together so well though, despite the amount of time I've taken on this!
The way the time commitment is shaping out on this though, I've decided to submit the idents as my 'book'; it features the elements of titles and chapters and editing together everything to follow a rough narrative. This means I need to come up with something to submit as a wall mounted piece.
hhmmmm...


first clip has uploaded, but cut short... after taking nearly 4 hours to upload.... argh!
thought i'd post it anyway though so you can get a (very) brief idea of what's going on ...

The tutorial that saved my life!!!

Had a tutorial with Christian today, which went amazingly well!! Just completely reassured me on everything I'm doing.
We discussed..
Idents:
Keeping stop motion, similar style to my final piece for my comm tech 'hands' animation... I want to keep things paper based, and can take this further by taking photographs/photocopies of my hand in different positions and use this within the animation... So literally just paper will be featured on screen.
This ties in nicely with the collections brief, with the idea of a book... made of paper, a collection of shapes and a theme of a narrative.

Animals Animation: 
I had concerns about the lip syncing of my animals to the voices, (which I also have the audio for now!! Thank you to everyone who lent me their vocals :D ) but Christian suggested looking at any of the works of Oliver Postgate, (Bagpuss, Noggin the Nog, Clangers and Ivor the Engine); he has never  lip synced any of his animation works throughout his career. I don't know if I could get away with the complete lack of syncing, as this would change the way the animation would be presented - I need to distinguish the narrative and what I want the audience to focus on to work out how much the lip sync needs to be accurate or there at all.....



I love the sound effects used in Ivor the Engine, especially the sounds of the little train puffing along; obviously made by human voices, yet really effective and just fit the scene... this is what I was thinking for the idents for the show reel, this will hopefully be all sorted by tuesday once I have everyone's submissions for the show reel. I can put the full thing into Logic and put sounds over the top.. great stuff :)


We also chatted about the format of the animals animation, the difference between the set up of creature comforts; where there's a lot of distractions happening in the background, but it's usually this that makes the animation humorous; the set-up or the context the animals have been put into; sometimes what is happening in the background is more the focus than the animal talking in the foreground.
Then taking a different dynamic, the Channel 4 'Faces' idents are focused completely on the celebrity being interviewed; there's no detail of background - and sometimes the background is blurred or unrecognisable, or simply a blank wall. This makes the focal point of the narrative the answers of the people on screen, which I think is more the style that I need to aim on achieving.
For this to work the best way possible, I need to work out the best technique, keeping in mind the timing of everything to try to make the narrative work as best as I can. Maybe take some editing tips from the 'Faces' idents? Keep in mind the camera shots/angles/backgrounds/general techniques used in there...


Still lots to think about but things are slowly coming together in my head so it can start coming to life on paper :)

Animal Collections Update

Sat down and started thinking logically what I need to organise with my 'animals' animation...

The technique... I know I'm hand drawing, but there's a few ways of getting the images into digital format to put together in final cut/after effects to build the final animation....
Do I hand cut out each animal and place on a green screen and take photos?
Do I scan/photograph each drawing and in photoshop cut out the images I need?
If I'm using a background, (which I would like to...) do I insert this into each drawing? Or once the animals are cut out, do I just have one separate layer in my composition that is created as the background, that I simply animate over the top of


The background.... do I want a busy animated background, although this creates more work, it may give me animation more depth and make it more interesting - kind of creature comforts style?
Do I create a plain background, (with a hint of colour?) which is a simple pattern, perhaps resembling a wallpaper? polka dots/stripes/checkered?
Do I just stick to no background at all, just save myself the hassle and have a hand sketched black & white animal chatting away?

Text to be featured.... titles? (I need a title?!), introduction or final credits run? Do I need an introduction, or does that not just ruin the idea in the first place... just hope that people understand by the end of the animation! Or will the title give a hint to what's going on? Or do I end with a sum up of text that explains what has just happened? ... Essentially it's a collection of interviews - and interviews don't need an intro/end point, they're fairly self explanatory... so I'm thinking just a title.

The title.... Do I play with the words 'collection', 'animals', 'interview', 'opinions'....
do I use a play on words, work with what I've got... use some of the answers I've been given, 'i like cheese!' .... make the audience wonder a little more, catch their attention instead of thinking literally and stating the obvious for them?


How to end... just fade to black? Finish with a quote/text on screen? Some kind of credits... 'Animation by Jodie Curley'/ audio by ..... names listed (would need to check and get consent from the people who lent me their voices!) This would mean I need some sounds/music to go over the credits, they can't really run in silence...  hmmmm...

think
think
think

'129' Show Reel Idents

Spoke to Matt earlier, he gave me a mini pep-talk about my animation ideas and the idents for the exhibition show reel. It was so so helpful, I started to get the ball rolling and now I'm full of ideas and with I had at least another month just to do the ident at least!!!
Alas, I have a week.

So far ideas are as follows...
I really love this style of the opening titles of this guys show reel, again found from my couple of hours sat searching through the YCN vimeo channel, I came across this Robert Wallace  -



Reel '09 from Robert Wallace on Vimeo.
Just those opening 8 seconds with the stripes and the video clips. Bonus here would be I get to use video, which would save time on animating... which means I might have to get some video folk involved as I'm not massively confident with it myself.
Each stripe could co-incide with the colours used in the posters designed by Paul and Rob, as well as the typeface used.... This could work really well and is great for the time available... just a simple stripe enhanced for each video featured on the reel, with the type animated over the top digitally.

But of course, I like to push myself and take it that step further...
Matt said what about the final piece I did for the CommTech brief, where I did the stop motion hands with a ball.... I could use that kind of idea and animate a hand pushing a button, which explodes or does something fancy to make the text appear... I could get some pretty hand-rendered type involved.. some splashes of colour... see what i can do with the time I have available.
We thought of a few other things to inspire this, (can't believe I didn't remember this when referencing in CommTech...) but the Guinness 'Hands' Campaign.... which was absolute genius... love it!!!!


Ideally I need a title sequence for 'BA Visual Communications/ 129 Winter 2010 Exhibition/ Show Reel' to be written somewhere on screen, to introduce the collection of moving images... then have a template to begin each video stating the students name, (year?) and title of piece to follow. Details of this to be discussed in the curation group meeting tomorrow lunch time.... 

Matt reminded me, also have to think about sound.... I might ask Alex in the 3rd year to help out if she has a free half hour, just need something simple a 'whoooosh' when the names come on or whatever... hopefully get that sorted.... ARHGGH why does everything have to be so last minute!!!

Collections... Animals

Taking the animal answers from my survey, (results are still coming in, thank you everybody!!)... I started to sketch out some characters, I want to try to get a style, a visual language that runs through the animation... I tried out a few animals first... these were a little more cartooney or cute, then the 'ferret' which resembles more of a sea lion/meerkat kind of creature started to get a little more like a style I feel comfortable with ...

again with the penguin and the monkey, not too sure on these, they're both reasonably cute, but the monkey looks wrong from the chin down, and the penguin looks like it wants to kill someone ...

So I started on the bear... and I think I've cracked it!
Just went for a few different positions/expressions, bearing in mind (no pun intended).. these will be animated to voice overs, I need to work out how much attention I'll give to lip syncing the animation to the sound, and of course I'll need to get the sound cracked before the animating can start.... I'm thinking of some fairly strong regional accents for these animals, I think it makes it a little more interesting and adds a bit more humour.. it gives more of a character to the character!

Rationale Update

Post-Christmas update.
Time for a rethink.
 I haven't moved at all with my work over the holiday period; I've found I'm evidently unmotivated by the flip books I had set out to work on as I've not found or made the time to do so... I need to reconsider my time available, my ideas at the moment and what do I want to get out of this project.


I want to be happy with the work I'm doing, rather than doing something that I think pleases the brief, I think an animation needs to be my focus, as that's what I enjoy.
Along with Paul I have successfully organised and opened our illustration exhibition, 'Of All Sorts And Kinds', which has had good feedback and we've seen people stop by the corridor and have a look. I am now part of the curation group for the VisCom's upcoming exhibition, with my main interest to organise the show reel and any idents as part of the reel. This is exciting being my first brief in a live context, where my work will be on show to a large number of people. I am still uncertain on my 'book', but I have interests in a YCN brief and other ideas coming about that I am keeping note of. Everything is slowly coming together and the exhibition is a week earlier than expected, so my main concern is staying focused and motivated as well as enjoying what I am doing.

Another Idea... 'Collections'

After thinking of imaginations... other people's imaginations... i started thinking of this on a wider scale, not just children... why not test the older people... try out some students?
So I thought about a few random questions to prompt people to let their imagination, their thoughts and their minds just wander and come up with some answers for me to then take away and animate.

favourite flavour soup?                         what is the meaning of life?
favourite flavour packet of crisps?                    childhood memory?
do you remember your first kiss?               what colour would you be represented as?
secret wishes?                                  who is your hero?

So I picked out three questions to ask...

If you were an animal, what would you be ?

If you could be anywhere right now where would it be and why?

What's your favourite and/or least favourite food, why?

posted them on a survey and gathered lots of feedback within the first few hours, was great! I guess people are willing to answer as it's so random, short and sweet....

I need to now brainstorm what to do with the results... I'd like to include some sort of voice overs, which answer the questions, but the question isn't revealed til towards the end of the scene... I need to decide on the style of animation, bearing in mind the minimal time left available for me, I need easily accessible/quickly made materials, something on a reasonably small scale to save time yet something sharp, witty and eye catching - so that the theme of imagination is captured as well as I can possibly make it!

Whilst thinking through all of this, it triggered off a few links in my head.....
I've posted this before, but for reference it reminded me of Julia Pott's 'My First Crush' animation, where she's animated to people's discussions about their first love. Such a cute, touching but really light hearted animation...

My First Crush from Julia Pott on Vimeo.

Also the whole responses to questions theme made me think of those 'talking heads' idents on Channel 4 featuring looooads of celebrities. They really captured me in, I don't know about anyone else?! I think it's the curiosity of what they're thinking about..





oh ... excuse the language on this one... it's pretty strong!


Also, did think about the creature comforts series from Aardman as I started to think about the animal question coming into play quite a bit... so I could create a few scenarios out of the three answers I've been given ... such as a ferret, in Australia roasting on the beach, giving some parsnips the evils because 'they're fake carrots, the gaylords' .... or maybe a Grizzly bear, in New York playing with his band at the legendary CBGB's, eating quesadillas.

I'm on a roll here .. thanks to everyone who's answered my survey as well!!!  If you wish to answer then please do!! ....

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GT6BHB6

Collections.... ideas!!

So whilst brainstorming the collections brief and ideas about the YCN brief, I started thinking about children, their imagination - what is imagination and how to encourage children to use it. There were a few websites I stumbled across with some good pointers...

A couple of articles regarding children, the importance of animaton and ways to encourage it...

http://primaryschool.suite101.com/article.cfm/imagination_in_kids_is_important

http://primaryschool.suite101.com/article.cfm/easy_ways_to_encourage_imagination

 The Imagination Factory - an award winning art and crafts site for kids, parents and teachers

http://www.kid-at-art.com/

Yeondoo Jung - Wonderland

Her series of photographs are based on recreations of children's illustrations. Such a brilliant concept!!! And the photos are just adorable...

From this starting point I started to consider ways of tackling the brief, as suggested by Christian.. first think through the most obvious ... and then try looking at the most radical.

Most obvious ideas would be objects morphing into other objects or random things like animals or characters... imaginary friends.

Then maybe looking a little more radical, things on a bigger scale could start to become animated... buildings, complete rooms or scenery... perhaps the children themselves? ...... head's starting to tick... this is all good :) :)

Today's News

Just a quick update on today's progress...

- Short talk from Terry who curates the exhibitions at college, he told us a bit about the practical side of how to get an exhibition up... basically 3 stages of -planning -hanging -finishing touches...
It was useful to hear a couple of things like putting sticky dots on the mirror plates before you paint them white, as it makes the work stand out a lot better... so me and Paul improvised with a little bit of masking tape this morning when we did the last finishing touches to the corridor, and it actually does make a difference!
It was reassuring hearing Terry talk about the best way to go about things as well, as it was pretty much in line with the direction me and Paul took, so I was left feeling fairly confident our exhibition, although small, is looking fairly good :)

- Over at the Parkinson building, had a quick look at the gallery in there and an intro from the lady in charge of curating everything there. I thought it was really useful to see from a very professional point of view how they go about setting up an exhibition. There's a lot more to consider as everything is much much bigger... the size of the space, the status of the artist(s), the costs/budget, the audience etc.
I noticed how knowledgeable the lady was about the artists' work that was exhibited, it just goes to show how much detail you can go into, to make the exhibitions that little bit better. ie. try to capture the artist as a person, or know about the development of their work and let this reflect upon the way the exhibition is structured and then hung. This obviously differs from our illustration exhibition as a collection of illustrators rather than an individual artist, but it's something I would definitely keep in mind for the future.

- I also went along to the meeting about the 'VisCom Winter Exhibition', where we discussed the process taken in previous years, attempting to name and theme the exhibition as well as deciding what was actually taking place in the exhibition and then the roles that the groups of us would take on. I've dedicated myself to organising the showreel with another 3rd year, James... 3rd years are mad busy with their dissertations at the moment, so James said he'll help with the technical side of things when it comes to checking formats/quality/building up the show reel etc. In the mean time, I'll find out who's going to be submitting anything for the show reel and then create the idents, with James' help - and hopefully Matt Saunders again when I start panicking :)

busy busy busy ... just how i like it!

(Thanks to Paul for the photos of the Gallery & our exhibition!)

And the Ball is Rolling ... :)

Had a chat with Christian today about the work and what I'm thinking about doing...

For the Collections brief we have to submit:
- A 'Book' ... In my case, will be an animation.. I need to think quick and plan carefully what I'm going to do as time is pretty short and sweet right now. So bearing in mind the time available, I need to consider materials I will use - what is ready available for me and how can I make it easier for myself. I need to think about content - flicking through the competition briefs online at the moment and one of the YCN briefs is definitely a high possibility.. I'll come back to that shortly :)

- A Postcard - This can simply be a still from my animation. Sorted.

- Either something to be wall mounted, or something to be shown on the show reel, to last no longer than 30 seconds - As I want to push myself getting some animation experience, I suggested that I do some of the credits for the show reel itself. There's a meeting tomorrow lunch time all about the February exhibition so I'll suggest it to the team then and see what the verdict is!

Last year I also looked at the YCN briefs and there was one for Cartoon Network that stood out for me...

'Encourage kids through an on-air campaign to realise the power of their imagination and do something amazing with it.'

I mentioned this in my Send & Receive presentation as an example of how I can put my skills and interests as a visual communicator to good use, rather than just for any old design/commercial purpose. If I took this brief and managed some workshops with children in schools as research for this brief, I could essentially put the brief to practice in doing 'something amazing' with their imagination. I've had a few ideas towards this, once they're sketched out better I'll update the progress with another blog post. :) There's a chance I'll be working with Dan in the 3rd year as he's going into teaching after VisCom, so it's relevant to his work commitments within schools too. I'm looking forward to working alongside someone else again after the exhibition with Paul working out pretty well in the end too!

I feel a hell of a lot better for talking everything through and as I'm having a great start to the new year, I'm feeling a lot more positive about everything in general :)

'Of All Sorts And Kinds'

The illustration exhibition I've been organising with Paul is finally up and ready to go for tomorrow afternoon....
Here's some photos of the putting up of work today....

This has been a really good experience for me, first of all, working with someone else as it's the first time I feel I've officially 'collaborated' with a fellow student, and also the process of curating an exhibition. There have been a lot of lessons learned through the last month or so of pulling this together, but at the end of it all, I'm pretty pleased with the efforts we've both made and managed to get something to show at the end of it.

When we first took the exhibition on, there was an never ending list that continued to grow of all the things we had to do... One of the big pointers that stood out was organising a private showing for the exhibition; this in itself required a lot of commitment from others to attend as well as a lot of pressure on the two of us to deliver a successful event for the viewing. Due to the timing around Christmas, it soon came apparent it wasn't such a great idea, but I think we did ourselves a favour by in the end choosing not to go ahead with it!

I think the most difficult part of the whole process of this exhibition was actually collecting work from people. It's understandable that the timing of the exhibition wasn't great, falling just after Christmas meaning pressure on people to hand work in fairly quickly, I guess it's just a little frustrating when you want a healthy sized exhibition, but you can't get the work to fill it! So a massive massive thank you goes out to all those who produced some work for us, so very much appreciated!

We managed to mount all the work and organise the frames and mount those up on the walls within 2 days and I think it's looking pretty well finished now :)

I think the learning experience from managing this was the most important outcome and Paul and I have both agreed we'd like to arrange something a little larger outside college but give ourselves plenty of time to organise it well and ammend any slip ups from this experience.
All in all, I'd say a pretty good job, thanks Paul!

*see Paul's blog post for some more photographs...
http://paulprice.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/visual-language-viscom-exhibition/

Animation Inspirations

Animation. I love it... I just need to become completely involved in a project again and have the enthusiasm and motivation to want to do it..
I think that's been my problem here, I started off playing around with books and paper and crafts that interest me, but I've just not clicked with this brief, which has ended up in me not really completely enjoying what I'm doing.... So back to animation, and I've spent my evening scouting vimeo for some beautiful videos, here's a few to sum up where my interests are pointing...


YCN Showreel 2009 from YCN TV on Vimeo.
The names that stick out for me from this showreel are :
Nicholas Bentley
Daniel Britt
Comme de Bouchony - beautiful typography
Knox-om-Pax - love love LOVE the illustrative style
Mutanthands -
Baley Engel -

This is Konx-om-Pax, featured in the showreel above.. i absolutely love this ...

Konx-om-Pax - Jamie Lidell/Yougotmeup from YCN TV on Vimeo.

Another taken from the YCN showreel..  it's adorable and involves cake... what more could i want?
I love the style of telling a story as well, links in well with the theme of collections and storytelling suggested by the use of a book.. in this case obviously the 'book' would be the music video.. i like.. i like a lot :)

Nicholas Bentley - Sam Isaac/Sideways from YCN TV on Vimeo.

http://www.vimeo.com/5624022

I love the use of materials for this animation, it's simple yet effective and quite pretty all the same...

Flesh Rots, Pip Sown from Robert Wallace on Vimeo.

Now I've got some ticks going in the brain it's all starting to slowly feel a little more like a project can come out of this.. I just need to get pushing myself straight away cause there isn't a great deal of time left to go.... o oh!