Creative Futures Two: Influence Boards

Now that we have finished the last three briefs and have some spare time whilst the assessments are going on, we have been given another brief until we go back to having our normal contact sessions. This brief is called 'Influence Boards'. What we have to do is to choose six categories, these could be anything to do with art and design or with any other interests. We then have to make a montage of pictures for each category digitally to which should be the size of an A4 sheet of paper An example we have been given is a creative media student interested in music may choose films, music composers, actors/actresses, directors, animators and artists as their categories.

"By doing this exercise, you may discover that there is far more behind the image than you imagined. Apart from the obvious descriptive information that other people can identify with, there may also be personal stories relating to the reasons for the choices you make. These are stories that uniquely relate to you as an individual and form the person you are and your identity."

I found that pretty interesting and quite inspiring and so I got my notebook out and started coming up with possible categories that I could do.  They were 1. Animators  2. Animation Styles  3. Motion Graphics?      4. Visual FX  5.Films  6. Adverts  7.Architecture  8.Pattern  9. Illustration  10.Texture

In the end I decided on Animation Styles, Films, Adverts, Architecture, Pattern and Texture. Although when researching images for texture I decided that I would call the category 'Colour and Texture' because not on was I concentrating on finding textures when researching but I was paying a lot of attention to the colours and whether I had a nice balance of the different colours.

Here they are...

Adverts

I chose to do adverts as I love them... I understand that not many people would say this as most people find them annoying, but I do! There are some rather annoying adverts out there and some pretty dull ones but also a lot of interesting fun ones and very visually exciting ones! These adverts don't have to be animated to catch my eye, although most of them are. Whenever I see a new advert that intrigues me I love trying to guess how it was made and then research it! One thing I love about adverts is that they are all very different, there's never one the same or similar (that I have noticed), they all use different techniques, styles etc and are pretty imaginative!  One day I would love to be a part of one of the creative teams that create adverts

Films

I chose to create an influence board of films. I was very aware that the subject of 'films' was a very wide one and that I needed to narrow it down, so I decided to do it on films from throughout my life that have wowed me. After I chose these films I realised that the majority had been altered/made with the use of computers! These are the films that have been the greatest influence in my life and I feel that it is my parents that I have to thank for this, they have engrained computer generated imagery into my mind from a very early age! 

Animation Styles

I'm quite an enthusiastic person when it comes to styles of animations and so I thought I'd get together a influence board of animation styles that I have previously come across and loved. Most of these are from my last two visits to Bradford Animation Festival. One is of the 'Deathly Hallows' animation in one of the Harry Potter films and the green one in the bottom left hand corner is a animation made by Lotte Reiniger, which was used as inspiration for The Deathly Hallows. It seems that I like silhouettes, interesting lines, shapes, textures etc. I'm not too keen on the style that Pixar use, it's ok for what it is and does its job but I feel that they have used it so many times that it's not anything special anymore. This is a shame as I have been shown quite a few times just how much time, effort, work and skill is put into them. This is not to say I don't like Pixar and their films because I do, they have made some brilliant ones with excellent stories that are very entertaining. I guess I just like more 'arty' styles!

Pattern

I chose patterns because I love them, particularly geometric patterns. I love the different illusions and dimensions they create. I like how you take a simple single line and create something quite complex and visually exciting. Each line or shape in these patterns have order to them, there is nothing random about them and it's easy to know how it will carry on. This appeals to me and the way I think, when I have a project I like to know the order in which I need to do something and I like to think that nothing I do is random, but instead well thought out. 

Colour and Texture

I chose colour and texture for my fifth influence board as like pattern, I love them and I feel they play a very important part in all things visual. I also pay a lot of attention to both of these when creating a piece of work. I love to use these two elements to compliment each other being careful to balance them well. Texture and colour can give dimension and depth, I find flatly rendered images very boring. I feel that I should mention that pattern also kind of comes into this category. Throughout Secondary school (High school to those Americanised) I was lucky to have the same art teacher for the majority of my time there, a very good art teacher too. And so from the start of year seven all the way to the last year of my a levels I had seven words drummed into my head, these words were colour, tone, shape, pattern, line, texture and composition. These words are now very important to my practice as a design students and it comes naturally for me to think about them when creating something.  

Architecture

And finally, architecture! After seeing my last two boards and then seeing this one, I suppose it isn't much of a shock that I have decided to have architecture as one of my categories. As you can see, there is line...lots of line, shape, pattern, textures...not much colour but there is tone and composition! I didn't choose architecture just because of those elements, architecture also intrigues me through it's 3D-ness and structure! There are loads of interestingly shaped buildings all over the world with some very clever engineering. I love seeing the possibilities that 3D shapes can give you and various environments that can created with them. 

Overall  from doing this exercise I have found out that there are some people that have influenced my influences, these people are playing and have played a very important part of my life. I have also found out that I love to be surrounded in variety, that visuals are very important to me, I like to be in control and know exactly what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and what needs to be done next, and the seven words... colour, tone, shape, pattern, line, texture and composition play a big part in my creative practise. From looking at the animation style montages I have also decided that I like graphic styled animations too. This has left me feeling quite obsessed with everything visual! 

The Message: Walk Cycles, Perspective

I have finally finished my third walk cycle of my character walking away from us, the audience....

Apart from the character doing a bit of a funny limp I am very happy with the outcome of this. I was dreading this one as I've struggled with moving perspective in animation before but it wasn't as bad as what I thought it would be! 

The Message: Character Behaviour

This is my final animation for this brief...

There a few things that could be changed, for example, the farmers eye brows were going ten to a dozen at some points and so I would calm that down a bit, the lift of the rock at the beginning wasn't quite right, and I feel that for it to answer the brief better the character should have interacted with his environment more. If I was to do it again or improve it, I would have the character lifting some more stones at the end and putting them on the wall but in a way to show that he was really having to think about what he was doing, like making him scratch his head, frown etc! I'm really happy with the speech, last time I did this was for the cut out brief last year and I feel that there is much more expression in this characters face than there was in the one for the one before. Also I could have made his arms/hands move when talking to make it more interesting and natural. 

For the voice, my friend and fellow student Nate very kindly did it with the help of another friend and fellow student, George. I also added in some very quiet bird sounds to add to the effect of the setting in the countryside. 

Overall I am very happy with the outcome!

The Message: Walk Cycle, Walking Through an Environment

I have finished the animation of my character walking through an environment. I am pretty pleased with it, it jumps a little but apart from that  it's pretty smooth. I would have liked to of animated the sand moving from under her feet like it does normally but didn't get round to it. Maybe if I have another chance I may adjust it. 

Design For Society: My Final Piece?

I've managed to animate all of my text and images for the first storyboard and put it all together to create the final animatic...or at least I hope! (You never know if a good suggestion will come along) After doing so I have decided that one animatic is quite enough and the second one would be a lot of work, although  a lot of the first one is in the second one. Saying that, if I find the time I may just do it, all depending on how well I get on with the other briefs! Anyway, here is the animatic..

I created the soundtrack myself on a programme called 'Magix Music Maker', through the soundtrack I wanted to give a feeling of importance, as the message was important and I wanted to give it a decent pace to it to represent the time, and that time is running out until this is all put into play. Not being too good with music and creating anything musical at all I feel that I did well. When creating the soundtrack I wanted to keep it as simple as possible but also wanted parts to change and give off a different vibe at different parts of the animatic, for example when the low energy light bulbs were introduced I wanted it to become more upbeat as this needed to be seen and felt positively, I also wanted it to change when the bag was pulled up with the message about not throwing them away in the bin because this was a serious message so made the sound simpler. 

I am not too sure about how the text is animated, still. I feel that it may be a little too much and may be better just fading in. But then again that may just be because its not smoothly animated, as after all it is just a 'rough' animatic, and animatics are 'rough' versions of animations, to give you a feel and sense of timing, movement etc of what the finished animation should feel like. That was a bit of a battle for me, trying not to make it too much like a finished piece, which in some senses it does. I feel that may be I put in to much movement....too smoother movement. If compared to the animatics I studied and looked at earlier on in the project then I would definitely say that to be true.

However, overall I am very pleased with the outcome of my work. 

Design For Society: Text Animation

So after my first experiments I looked at some typography animation on youtube made by others to gets some ideas/inspiration. I then went back and looked at my first ones and decided that maybe they were too slow and so made them faster...

I thought this made them much better but there still wasn't enough punch, especially on the ones where the individual letters came up one at a time. The second one where the words sort of fly in has much better impact but I still didn't like it. So I decided to try two more, one where all of the words slide in together and another where each word slides in one at a time...

These were much better and give the effect that I imagined. I much prefer the last one with the individual words swiping in as it's not as hard and as plain as all of the words at once. I have decided that this is how I will animation the text. 

Design for Society: Text Animation

So I decided to look on you tube for some text animation inspiration as my attempts were pretty dull and boring. Here are some I came across...

All of these have audio to them, which means that the words don't have to be up long enough for the viewer to read them. Which ultimately means that they have that margin to be extra creative and imaginative.Seeing these has made me thing about whether I should actually use a voice over for my animatic. This is something I may try out. These typography animations also use different sized, colours and occasionally font texts. For now I think I'm going to keep my text the same size and font. Most also twist and turn their texts, again although I found this rally effective I'm still going to stick to keeping my text the same way up. 

So my next steps are going to be to record a voice over to my animatic and animate to it. Even if I don't end up using the voice over, hopefully I would have gained another dimension to my animation of text from it using the different tones in the voice and the pauses etc!..

Design For Society: Text Animation Experiments

I decided to try out some different ways of animating the text to appear on the screen. So I took the very first frame from my storyboard and had a play...

This first one was very simple, I made it so that it looked like someone was typing it onto the screen. However I don't feel that it fits in with the style or theme of the animatic.

With this one I wanted to make it look like you was zooming out from the text, this wasn't very smooth and I feel that it would be a bit much if it was to be used for all of the text throughout the animatic. It also meant that I had to start with the screen the colour of the text and I think I would therefore have to rethink the transitions between frames. 

I liked this one much better, it's very simple, the text simply pops up into view without having to move very far. However I feel that the text needs to have an impact, especially with the message it is putting across and I feel that it comes up a little too slowly and leisurely.

This one is pretty much the same as the last but going across. I think I need to do some research on text animation and see if it can jog my imagination a bit better!