After rethinking my idea and story board I have done some more research..
Apologies for the rough mouse writing, this page didn't scan too well!
After doing this I decided to pick out all of the important information that I may want to use in my animatic.
I then highlighted all of the points that I am going to use in my animatic. I then split these in half, ones with a pink spot is information for the audience personally and how using the low energy bulbs will affect them, and then the blue ones are about recycling them and why they need to be recycled in the proper way.
I'm glad that I did this research as now I have a lot more facts behind me and lots of information that the public won't know about, unless of course they research it like I did, but I'm sure the majority don't bother!
Now all I need to do is put an order on all of this information and condense it down to fit into a 1 minute animatic!
Today I spoke to my tutor about my storyboard, and it turns out that it's not quite strong enough. I was going to do it with facts and quite graphically. But she suggested looking at it from a humorous point of point, may then the audience would remember it more. But I saw an animation at Bradford in the commercials screen called 'The Girl Effect' which has given me some inspiration for this project, here it is...
I loved the look, the visual language and the boldness of this, but most importantly the message is put across in a bold and simple but very powerful way! By the end of watching this I had a lump in my throat. This is what I want to make my animatic like (not so that the audience has a lump in their throat, but to make them listen and understand). I would do a humorous one but I'm not too good knowing how to make things humorous, I'm more of an abstract, visual person- this sort of thing excites me!
So from watching this animation I can see that there is a very limited colour palette, so I'm going to have to have another look at my mood board. I like the idea of having black and white with another colour so I may do black white and green. Especially as when I started to render my storyboard half of it was black, or very dark grey. Another thing with this animation is that there is no narration or voice over, however there is a lot of cleverly laid out and positioned text and it comes up with a couple of words at a time. This way it isn't boring to have to keep reading and is still very visually interesting. The images of the girls etc isn't life like but more like symbols and simple little images that are clear to read and easy to understand.
So now that I've thought about this I'm going to do a new quick storyboard with all of this in mind to hopefully make something quite visually exciting and visually powerful!
The other thing that my tutor said was that it's very well telling people to take the bulbs to their local council but how many people be bothered to have to do that when they have a bin at their feet. So I am going to do some research into where the local council for collecting low energy light bulbs is in Wrexham to see how close it is to me, and to find out how people can find out where these places really are! Then I need to find out when the old light bulbs are going to be completely stopped so that I can add that information into my animatic to prompt people that soon this will be the way of life and that they need to dispose of them properly to prevent the mercury from getting into the environment.
We made a very simple mouth out of a nurbs sphere and stretching different points. We then duplicated it twice and made three different expressions, I did one smiley one, one sad on and the last one was wide open. We then used shape blender so that when you pushed the slider up or down the original mouth would distort into one of the other mouths. This way you could make a key frame animation of the mouth opening or smiling or becoming sad. Here are some images. The model on the far left is the original mouth.
And then we imported a rigged character and had a go at making a key frame animation and making him walk on the spot so that we learnt how to move each part of a rigged character. Here are two key frames...
I'm very happy with what I have learnt in this lesson. We're really starting to get into it now, and I feel that I'm getting to grips with the basics.
I have decided to redefine the storyboard, making the images bigger and more abstract to make it more visually interesting. I did this by using Macromedia Fireworks. It's poor quality because the images have been stretched beyond what their pixels allow them! But here they are...
Storyboard One
Storyboard Two
I'm really happy with this, I feel that the visuals are a lot stronger and will capture more peoples attention. All I need to do now is clean it up and render!
"Illustrator and author Geoff Dunbar received the BAF Lifetime Achievement Award."
We were given a retrospective of Geoff's award winning work, with a short documentary giving an insight into his career.
I really enjoyed the documentary, I found it very interesting and informative. I had no idea who Geoff Dunbar was until I attended this and I'm glad I did. He is a very inspirational man.
Beyond Anime: CALF Animation
"The new CALF label aims to redifine our notions of what we understand by the terms "Japanese animation" by giving a stage to some of the country's most innovative and exciting practitioners in the field. This programme showcases the works of four such talents, balancing the hypnotic, hand drawn visual symphonics of Mirai Mizue and the dazzling light shows of the TOCHKA collective with the more orthodox let no less idiosyncratic line drawing animations of Atusushi Wada and the unique photo collages of Kei Oyama, including the unforgettable Hand Soap, which has won prizes at a number of festivals including the Yokohama International Festival for Arts and Media and the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen."
I didn't enjoy this screening at all, and neither did the two people sitting next to me - they were asleep! The films shown were called "In a Pigs Eye", "JAM", "Consultation Room", "PiKA PiKA 2007", "Usual Sunday", "The Mechanism of Spring", "MODERN", PiKA PiKA @ Reel Asian Film Festival", "TOCHKA", "Day of Nose", "Gentle Whistle, Bird and Stone", "METROPOLIS", "PiKA PiKA @ Media Seven" and "HAND SOAP". There were a variety of animations using different techniques. The ones that I enjoyed more were the "PiKA PiKA" films, these were animations made but using long exposure whilst people made shapes and images with lights at night. I thought it was quite clever, different and visually very interesting. You can tell that they had fun making them too. Personally I would prefer watching Anime any day compared to most of these films!
The Art and Evolution of Animation Layout
"Legendary animation layout artists Roy Naisbitt ("The Thief and the Cobbler", "Who Framed Roger Rabbit") and Scott Caple ("The Incredibles", "Mulan") join author and industry veteran, Fraser MacLean for a unique presentation to mark the publication by Chronicle Books of "Setting the Scene: The Art and Evolution of Animation Layout"."
I loved this talk, I found it very interesting as I had never heard of the 'layout artist' before! We were shown some of the tricks and subtleties in the background/layout that as an audience would never see but makes all the difference. We were shown the opening of Pinocchio and were asked to count how many different layers of background there were...I lost count! And then were asked why we think the step on the front door was rounded, which was to do with the movement of characters in the scene. I was amazed with how much the layout was thought about so that the animators could get the most out of whatever is happening in the scene. I will certainly think more about this when creating animations in the future. As for Roy Naisbitt's work in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" in the Kitchen scene where Roger Rabbit is flying about, that is just amazing and I would love to know how he did it! We were shown the scene of it flat so we could see what he had to work with to create it, it was hard to work out which bit was what! The last thing we were shown was a film called "The Last Belle"...
The Last Belle
Dir. Neil Boyle / UK / 2011
"The Last Belle is an aimated short featuring two characters journeying towards a blind date: WALLY, who suffers a nightmarishly drunken trip through London as he races against the clock to rendezvous: and ROSIE, who waits in a bar dreaming of how wonderful her date is going to be... if he ever shows up."
This was very funny and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Roy Naisbitts part where Wally is drunk and making his way through the underground is very effective and brilliant! This worked very well gave the effect of Wally been drunk and off his head very well. I felt very sorry for Rosie but also didn't want Wally to shown up as he wasn't as she was dreaming and I was very glad that she ended up with the barman. The ending of the film was excellent and it had very good execution throughout!
"An entertaining and comprehensive look at the history of animation worldwide. Animated characters, the Professor and Horace demonstrate different animation techniques, including pin screen, pixilation, rotoscope, and cutout and puppet animation. They discuss the most significant animated films of the past 110 years - everything from Emile Reynaud and Windsor McCay's early works, to Fleischer, Disney and Warner Brothers in the United States, to historically important films from every continent.
I didn't see the last 30 minutes of this as we slipped out to go and see the next one (which was well worth it). It wasn't a brilliant documentary, the 'host' characters used to explain things got on my nerves and the animations shown wasn't brilliant and very well known either, some very crude. It was quite interesting when they went through the history of animation, what techniques used to be used and what's used now etc! I would say that it would be a good thing for young animators or beginners that are thinking of taking up animation as introduction.
Mainframe
"Mainframe is a high-end animation and visual effects studio which is home to some of Europes top directors, producers, animators and vfx artists all working closely to produce a plethora of groundbreaking and visually stunning work."
This talk was brilliant, they did the vfx in Cher Lloyds music video 'Swagger Jagger' and showed us the processes and how they did it. The only negative to this was that he made us listen to the whole of her song at the end. But that nothing compared to what he had to go through when making it!
Andy Schmidt - Pixar
"Andrew L. Schmidt is a senior animator with Pixar Animation Studios.He has worked in the animation industry for twenty seven years and has a long list of credits in both traditional 2D animation and CG animated films.
He began his career in 1990 in London, UK at Amblimation Studios where he worked on Fievel Goes West, We're Back and Balto.
In 1996, Schmidt relocated to loas Angeles, California where he worked for Dreamworks Feature Animation on the Prince of Egypt, then moved to Warner Brothers Feature Animation where he animated on the Iron Giant and Osmosis Jones.
Since he joined Pixar in 2000, he has animated some of the most recognised Pixar characters to date: Mike and Sully in Monsters Inc, Marlin Dory and Bruce in Finding Nemo and Bob and Helen in the Incredibles. He has also animated on Ratatouille, Wall-e, Up, toy Story 3, Cars 2 and various Pixar short films including supervising animation on Partly Cloudy.
Schmidt is currently creative director of promotional material for the upcoming Disney Pixar feature film Brave, scheduled for release on 22 June 2012."
Last year we had Paul Mendoza from Pixar do a talk at BAF which was brilliant and so I was automatically excited when I found out that there was another guy from Pixar coming again this year! And he didn't fail to please! He spoke about, again, the processes that are undertaken to create the films, the different teams involved and how he got to work at Pixar (who knew that you didn't need to already know how to animate on the computer with programmes like Maya to get a job there!)
It Lives! It Lives - The Re-animation of Frankenstein's Cat
"The development of a successful cartoon series, from book to script to screen with Curtis Jobling and later development to show running with Alan Gilbey."
This one was good too, it gave a bit of variety, especially as it was bout a children's series and how Alan Gibley was employed to reinvent it. I found it interesting as the two gentlemen took us through the whole story, from the beginning when Curtis Jobling was on a train to an important meeting and doodled the main character all the way to the end where it was screened on TV. And what a journey they went on to get there! It made me realise that in order to make a children's series possible you need to keep it loose enough with some good interesting characters that have a lot of opposite characteristics and strong clear relationships with each other (not always good relationships) to be able to come up with tons of stories for lots of different programmes, otherwise you have no chance of getting your series on the screen.
Barry Purves: Frame by Frame, Note by Note
"Stop motion animator Barry Purves has won over sixty major international awards, including Grand Prix, Best Director, Best Film, and OSCAR and BAFTA nominations. Barry's films are known for their innovation, passion, elegance, lush visuals and fresh interpretations.
In addition Barry has directed and animated some 70 commercials, title sequences and animation inserts for films and pop promos"
One word to describe this man is passionate! He spoke about two of his most recent films - Tchaikovsky and Plume, Tchaikovsky being my favourite! His films are beautiful, stunning and a piece of art. Tchaikovsky was one of Studio MIR's Tales of the Old Pianos programmes, and was a massive improvement compared to the others that I saw. It was beautifully made and worth seeing if you haven't already. Plume wasn't so good, I didn't understand it the first time I saw it. Unlike Tchaikovsky, Plume had no background and consisted of mainly the four characters and feathers!
"Three frogs have a discussion about the contents of a mysterious box."
This film didn't do anything for me, in fact it bored and frustrated me! And then the end wasn't even worth waiting for. CGI was used to create this animation, the style went well with the mood of what was happening but thats about all of it's good points.
The Renter
Dir. Jason Carpenter / USA / 2011
"A young boy is dropped off at an elderly woman's home for the day. A lone man adds to the unsettling atmosphere. The savage slaughter of a chicken makes this daycare a harsh and confusing world for the boy, who learns caring can be shown in unexpected ways."
I wasn't too keen on this animation, it was certainly unsettling but I didn't really get what the boy character was feeling about the man and how we as an audience was meant to feel about the man. The description also threw me as I didn't feel quite like it was talking about the same film that I was watching. I certainly didn't feel that the boy learnt that caring can be shown in unexpected ways. this just didn't work for me.
Discarded (Hors-jeu)
Dir. Elodie D'Ambrosio / France / 2011
"Following a printing error, a 53rd figure, without symbol or value, slipped into a pack of playing cards.
I didn't like this animation either, it was a good idea but the chase bit went on far too long and I lost interest. When I first saw an image from the film in the BAF programme I got quite excited as I quite liked the style and thought that it would be a good film but I was pretty disappointed. It just shows that something can look pretty but if the story isn't good then there's no point.
Laszlo
Dir. Nicolas Lemee / France / 2010
"Laszlo is a man with no past who just wants to live in peace- anywhere will do."
Again, unfortunately I didn't enjoy this one either. I just could keep up with the story and didn't understand a lot of things. However, I loved the style, with cut out and ripped round photos etc this made an interesting effect and would love to try this sometime.
Strings (Lyannaj')
Dir. Guillaume Lorin / France / 2010
"After the abolition of slavery, a former female slave and a land-owner who has lost everything are forced to learn to live side by side."
I thought the concept and message behind this animation was good but I don't feel that it was put across very well and was described in the BAF programme too clearly either. This was a very short film and I feel it ended a bit abruptly and part of the story was missing in the middle. The sytle was ok, nothing too outstanding.
The Backwater Gospel
Dir. Bo Mathorne / Denmark / 2011
"As long as anyone can remember, the coming of the Undertaker has meant the coming of death. Until one day the grim promise fails and tension builds as the God fearing townsfolk of Blackwater wait for someone to die."
I loved the style of this, it was really different and the story was brilliant too. It keep me on the edge on my seat, there was a lot of anticipation in it and the ending wasn't expected either!
A Life Well Seasoned
Dir. Daniel Rieley / UK / 2011
"A man loses the most important person in his life, but as the story unfolds we see how he overcomes his loss. Through a series of extraordinary events, the man deals with his grief in a way that may seem absurd to others."
This animation was made using stop motion. The style was beautiful and it had lots of different textures, and the story was very touching. The story of the man is told in a sensitively lovely way.
Journey to the Sunflowers Field (Voyage au Champ de Tournesols)
Dir. Alexandre Siqueira / France / 2010
"Nicolas, a five year old boy, has an accident while playing with his kite."
I didn't full understand what was happening in the story until I read the description in the BAF programme, after that it made perfect sense! I wasn't so keen on the style though.
Heldenkanzler
Dir. Benjamin Swiczinsky / Germany / 2010
"Heldenkanzler is based on the true story of Engelbert Dollfuss, who wants to keep up with european fashions of the 1930's by enforcing his own facist dictatorship in Austria."
I didn't like this one, I found the story very crude and the style emphasized this.
John & Betty
Dirs.Luke George, Alex Hancocks / UK / 2011
"Elderly couple John and Betty are happily married until John's unhealthy obsession with solving crimes leads him to grow dangerously suspicious of his wife."
This was quite a nice little story with a bit of fatal ending! Not too sure on the style, they used stop motion puppets but I found these quite average, it was nothing special visually!
"14 year-old girl Sho discovers Arrietty, a tiny 'borrower' who lives in a tiny house beneath the floorboards and who borrows things from the adult world. A magical adaptation of Mary Norton's children's classic The Borrowers by Studio Ghibli, the much-loved animation studio behind Spirited Away, Ponyo and Howl's Moving Castle."
I thoroughly enjoyed this feature film, it had a lovely little storyline to it, both touching and fun. The style had plenty of detail to it and went with the story really nicely. I would definitely watch this film again given the chance.
Studio M.I.R. - Irina Margolina
Studio M.I.R. was founded in 1991 by film director Mark Lyakhovetski and script writer Irina Margolina.
"The Studio initially focused in producing documentaries, but since 2005 the Studio has been producing animated films and series, and has recieved numerous international awards at international animation festivals. Award winning scriptwriter, director and producer Irina Margolina, Head of Studio M.I.R. joins us to introduce a retrospective of their stunning films."
A number of Studio MIR's films were screened including 'Tales of the Old Piano: Beethoven', 'Tales of the Old Piano: Rossini', 'Tales of the Old Piano: Prokofiev', 'Contemporary Fairytales of the World: Three Little Pigs', 'Contemporary Fairytales of the World: Art' and 'Contemporary Fairytales of the World: La Si Do-Sharp'. These are made for the purpose of being educational for children, I felt that the Tales of the Old Piano ones were slightly old for children and felt that they would easily be bored from the very start. The Tales of the Old Piano animations would not just be boring to children because of the content but because they are also very dreary and the colour palette is very dull, something that you would least expect a child to watch! Another thing that bothered me was that although all three were made for the same 'series' they all had different styles because each one had someone make them. This may just be me but I found this very strange, it gave no continuity.
The Contemporary Fairytales were a definite improvement as far as its targeted audience is concerned! I thought that The Three Little Pigs story was very creative and expressed a brilliant message - that you should find out both sides of a story before coming to any conclusions. Art was also very good, but I wasn't so keen on La Si Do-Sharp.
Richard MacGuire in Conversation with Paul Gravett
"Richard McGuire designed and directed the animated film 'Micro Loup', which is the first part of omnibus feature film, 'Loulou et autres Loups' (Loulou and other Wolves, 2003). He also created the closing film of another omnibus feature, 'Peurs du Noir' (Fears of the Dark, 2007). He is a regular art contributor to the New Yorker Magazine. He has written and illustrated both children's books and experimental comics. his comics have appeared in Art Spiegelman's RAW magazine, The New York Times, McSweeney's, Le Monde, and Liberation. And he is the founder and bass player of the punk-funk band Liquid Liquid. He is currently working on a graphic novel expanding his comic entitled 'HERE'."
This man has many skills and talent - animator, illustrator, graphic novelist and musician! His animations, and work in general have a very graphic style. My favourite piece was 'Fears of the Dark', I felt that style was thought out really well to suit the story and the mood and was animated really well. You couldn't see every object because of the style and the lighting but you still felt their presence. It was just a brilliant piece.
My second favourite was 'Mirco Loup', this had a very simple style to it but was very effective and visually exciting. This had also been thought out very cleverly and the story was brilliant! If you haven't watch either of these then do! In fact I'm going to link a video to make it even easier for you..
This man has definitely been an inspiration to me and proves that the more skills you have and the more you can do the more work you will have. It's also lesson on how collaboration with other designers is good. This was a great end to the day.
