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.