Tangible animation

A trip to the national media museum reminded me of how I liked tangible animation. Moving image that can be viewed with the turn of a crank rather than electrical technology. The only limitation is that it would need to be short but I think that its a great tool for showing the simplicity of creating moving image. I was once put off making moving image as I thought it would be too complicated but this medium I feel concentrates on the construction of sequential images to create movement. This could have been my problem before, I never thought of moving image as separate images.



BBC have used this idea to create an indent, I thought it was a good demonstation of how looking in a zoetrope feels like you looking 'behind the scenes' but is rather more elegant than looking at final cut pro.

Storyboarding Seminar at BAF

I attended the storyboarding seminar at BAF which I found really useful. The panel, Ian Culbard, Ginger Gibbons and Kevin Baldwin talked about working up your images. Working first with scratchy thumbnails and builing them out with sound and backgrounds.

Some of the things I learned were about recording sound first or early on to create the movement too it (which i suppose I already knew but this just affirmed it) and creating turnarounds when creating characters. We saw their boards right up to the final piece and their ideas always seem quite consistent. The ways that each of them builds narrative were also interesting or how they communicate their idea to a team.


Some examples of boards with implicit instructions underneath of colours movements and positioning for other artists to work from


Ian Culbard creates a whole page of scratchy thumbnails sometimes only he can understand and work from.

Bradford Animation Festival

I really enjoyed the animation festival and saw it as a display for me to work out what I liked and didnt like about animation. I thought it could help me decide and define what my style is.

Overall I found the ones that communicated to me the most were ones with slight mannerisms well observed, the funny ones and of course the music videos.

Here are a few highlights of the festival for me:


Ali in the jungle by the hours
animation: Jonas Odell
Really complicated but enough to get my head round, really visually exciting with a clear theme and stylistic approach.


Pushkin by Trevor Hardy
The Power of the catchphrase, we said this for about 4 days! funnily enough its English, i don't know whether I would like to do intricate model making though, not with plasticine or clay anyway


Mermaid by Lucy Barcy Really interesting animation style that really appeals to me, a crazy narrative that I quite liked


The Tourists by Malcolm Sutherland this is a great observation and he has also created another good animation thats on you tube called Birdcall

Leftovers

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the leftovers by Igor Coric MY ABSOLUTE FAVOURITE really funny and I think well observed, love the one frame.
I've chosen to make a reference for this festival in my sketchbook to remind me of what I want to see more of in my work visually and contextually.



John and Karen by Matthew Walker, Really well observed mannerisms placed onto an unlikely couple john the polar bear and karen the penguin

My Projects: BBC Brief

I wanted to complete the BBC brief quickly and quickliy came to a solution. Make characters out of musical instruments, I developed this by just moving them around in flatbed stop animation and pitched the first outcome applied to each character. The BBC seemed to like the idea and I like the outcome I will be making 2 more characters .


The characters that I started off designing


Early animatic of first character


Final set of stings I pitched to the BBC representative.


How the animation developed after thoughts from the BBC representative.