Scene 1,2, 4 and 6 complete ready for testing

This week I completed work on sc 1, 4 and 6. The scenes still need to be fine tuned once all scenes are animated and edited together.  Having an over view at the edited stage will give a better perspective on how the overall timings and movements might need to be adjusted.

Today we had another technical meeting with the house of Visual Culture and from this we decided to test projecting different coloured backgrounds. We really are also really curious to see how much detail we might loose when projecting at around 200 pixels in height. We think the silhouette style will work well in this format but have reservations about some details in the hair and the feather in the pirate hat. Tomorrow we shall find out with a 30 sec video with an alpha channel embedded so the background colours can be adjusted in on site. From this test we will have more knowledge and can proceed with confidence onto the next stage.

My view on Animation Today

I agree with what Rowena says, on that the design of animation should add something to the narrative of the animation. That is for sure, what we tried to do with our project. Creating a design that makes the connection between the old fashion zeotrope (classical images) and the artwork that we found on our subject Mary Reed. And even without pre-knowledge on the story, the people that will watch at the animation we made, will see that it is based upon old artwork and are able to follow the story (over and over..).

I think animation nowadays fits the Romantic idea that everything is possible, there are no boundaries in the realization of what once was only fantasy. At this moment there is a great market for fantasy books and films, as the opposite of this technological based knowledge society. Funny enough, that means that for a fantasy film such as The Hobbit, they do need lots of technology to take their viewers into this magical world.

Also in my opinion the other though that fits animation today, is that animation can really take the edge of. For example jokes made in Family Guy wouldn't work when acted out by real people.

Animation makes people reconsider their opinion and brings back the little kids in us. Because we still like the idea, that everything that we imagine could be possible.

Reflection on animation today and the animation reader text re-imagining animation

Animation is used as a tool to tell visual stories in films, commerce and art. It can powerfully and provocatively contrast American pornographic culture and the terrorists of 9/11 as in Saliers film 'Flesh' by imposing pornographic imagery on the twin towers and other buildings in the New York lanscape. It has provided another world for users to escape into in 'Second Life'. It has been used a tool for documentary and most well known for the imagined worlds of Pixar and Disney.  We see it everyday used for commerce as it has been widely embraced in the motion graphic world. Animation is said to be in it's barque period having passed from an experimental stage (Muybridge) and a classic stage (Disney). Every image dreamed by an artist or director can be virtually made digitally. The visual palette to choose from is wide but for me essentially as with all forms or film making I think the visual the style and language should be fitted to the story to add more layers of meaning.  In relation to Bloody Mary we have settled on a graphic style with a limited colour scheme that fits the zeotrobe look. The more I work on animating the scenes the more I am happy with our choice as I feel the silhouette graphic style embraces the use of space as Chasse Theatre, story telling wise it leaves room for the audience to freely imagine the characters from the 1700's and rhythmically the silhouette style really hones in on the movement which is suited to the violence contained in the story. We have chosen to tell her story in a loop which over and over again represents the hopeless cycle of limited choices she had as a women in the 1700's. That this women lived in Breda to me brings to life the interesting and diverse history of this town.

The Research Proposal for our Making Of

In the beginning of the assessment, we decided that we wanted to make a making of video of the research and experiments that we were planning to do for this project.

We started with the filming of reference footage at the Chasse Parking. We did this, so that we could make a nice presentation for the client and the designers we had to collaborate with.

After that we filmed at the workshop of David Wilson, on Playground Festival in Tilburg. The workshop was of great value to our project, and we really wanted to include this in our Making Of video.

The next thing that we filmed was our interview with David Wilson. We asked him his thoughts on our project. His opinion was really interesting to us, because he had a totally other view on the project.

In the mean time, we finished our storyboard and had lots of talks on the storyline before that. There will be a lot of movement in our film and because we work with silhouettes, the movement should be as realistic as possible. The next step was the filming of some reference material for the pirate fights and walk cycles.

At this point Rowena and Armando are busy animating. Raimke will do the After Effects vector shots. We will shoot some ‘animating shots’ for the Making Of.

The next step is the try-outs on the location. We will be projecting some test shots on the Chasse Parking windows. We are really curious on how that going to work out. And that will be a interesting adjustment to our Making Of video.

The last step in our Making Of video, will be the reaction of the audience to our project. We are planning on asking the audience at the Cultuurnacht in Breda, on their opinion.

This whole Making Of video will have audio comments of us, interviewing each other and other people and probably some music. All the short pieces of video that we shot, will be edited to a nice Making Of video, that shows our progress, experiments and interviews.

Story Boards are complete

The story boards are now complete. The story boards allowed us to analys the story and to show it to others for feed back. We made several changes to the story during this process saving us precious time while animating. It also allow us to discuss the look of the film and the colour palette. We decided to drop a few colours aiming for a more graphical look. Now having the action of the story pinned down we where able to plan the animation schedule and divide up the scenes between the 3 of us. Now the animation can begin.

Shooting some reference footage

Today we teamed up, to shoot some reference footage for the 'Bloody Mary' animation.

That meant that we had to act out all of the scenes that Armando and Rowena sketched out in the storyboard.

Digitally drawing the storyboard

We did find out some difficulties while shooting this material. We did make some adjustments to our storyboard after shooting. For example in the part where Mary Read dressed as a soldier and a male soldier shoot. We decided to let the soldier come in the frame from behind instead of the front.

After we shot the footage, we decided to make a montage, like a moving storyboard. So that we can really have a good idea of the time, that the animation shall take.

Editing the life action footage

Our interview with Mister David Wilson

So last Friday, we had an interview with Mister David Wilson, during Playgrounds Festival in Tilburg.

We had more than an hour to ask him everything that we wanted to know. Which included questions on the work he showed at Playgrounds, questions that could be of importance for our own thesis's but also some questions that had to do with this 'Bloody Mary Project':

Rowena showed him our idea and some artwork. While Armando was filming and Raimke was taking notes. We did switch these roles now and then. 

Here is a short part of the interview, in which David gives us his view on and advice for this project.

We are still considering whether or not, we can really do something with the suggestion David gave us.

Screen Break Down and Story Boards

This week we have wrote a scene breakdown and started story boarding the film. Storyboards are a good way for us to see the story on paper and to communicate visually. It also helps us knuckle down on a visual style. We have decided to use silhouettes as a simple way to tell the story that also relates to the look of the early zoetropes. It will also create a uniform style that we can all animate in and give the film a unique look. We will use some colour in some circumstances such as Mary's hair, the red pirate ship flag, the yellow money the pirates loot and Mary's red broken heart. The colour code will be a useful visual tool to high light to the audience key parts of the story.

Chasse Park Recce Behind the Scenes Film

On Monday the 12th Nov Armando, Raimke and myself went to the Chasse park to record some footage of the park at night and to brain storm our idea for making a film about Bloody Mary, a pirate who lived in Breda for the House of Visual Culture. This is a short behind the scenes film of preparing for our presentation and pitch for the House of Visual Culture. Click on the link to view the film on youtube.

Bloody Mary Recce

Preparing our Presentation!

Last Monday evening we teamed up at the Chasse parking garage, to do some research and get some reference for our presentation on Friday.Friday the 16th of November we have to present our idea to the people of House of Visual Culture in Breda and the designers that we will be collaborating with. For this presentation we want to make clear:

• what our idea is,
• what our subject is,
• what we want our style to be,
• what kind of material we will need,
• what kind of knowledge we need to collect,
• what or proposal for the collaboration with the designers is.

So what we did is made some video/photo references of the location, so that we can prepare a little test for the presentation. We also tested with some flash light, to see if we might need some white sheets on the windows. And we did record some video material for our making-of.



Also we made a interview appointment with the people from Apvis. They had one of the projects on Glow 2012 in Eindhoven. They might be able to help us with the technical aspects of our project idea.More news after the presentation!

Welcome!

This blog is about a project called 'Bloody Mary'.

We are three Master students that are studying Animation at AKV St. Joost in Breda, the Netherlands.
For this period we have an assignment from 'het Huis voor Beeldcultuur' in Breda. We will be making a project for the Culture Night in Breda, the 25th of January 2013.

This is our plan:


At the Chasse parking garage we will project on the different small windows, on the outside of the garage. These small windows are all connected on the sides, like a filmstrip.

What we want to do is give the viewer a experience of being inside a zeotrope. On the other side we want to tell the story of (Bloody) Mary Read in image.