Monday 20 December 2010

Hunter

Ive spent a few hours making the Hunter today. I think hes come out looking better than the reader but hes really a major focus in the animation so i guess thats a good thing. I need to give both my characters teeth and i will most likely have to refer to the  "Stop staring" book for tips on how to properly do this and other facial elements.





Sunday 19 December 2010

On a slightly different note...

I found this animation but forgot to post it but its just fantastic.

Hmmm...

I now have the body of the Reader. This is the plumber. I like it so far but i think it may be worthwhile to try out the business man look and see how that looks. I have also realised that I am going to need to find a way to rig and animate these eyes so its time to do some research. I remember there was a Digital tutors rigging tutorial out a short while ago with a character with similar eyes so i'm going to have to check that out.

Reader/Plumber variation


Now...

I now need to figure out what the bodies of my characters is going to look like. I already know that the Readers body is going to be based on a business man and the hunter is likely to be a combination of Yosamite Sam and the old man from Pixars UP.

Edit: Im starting to think it may be better if the reader was based on a plumber or a builder. The steroetypically overweight people.

3D models

I took the characters into Maya and begun modelling the heads. By doing this i thought id be able to see what features will work and which wont because i am seeing it closer to the end product.

Hunter 

Reader 

More work

I've been doing some more drawings of the hunter and reader. I made the hunter look like an old man as iot establishes him as a grumpy character. This is a stereotype with old people and i have used that to establish this character. The Reader had 2 alternatives. I first tried to give him glasses but that character does not look like the sort of person thatll refuse to get off a bench so i did another character and this time i gave him a foreign looking moustach and this makes him look ignorant and arrogant.




Friday 17 December 2010

Todays work

So today ive been gettin this blog back up to date and doing some analysis on characters and character designs so ive uploaded these and annotated one of them and i hope you can read my handwriting on the other.

Hunter VS Reader

The current progress of the slapstick story


Hunter walkin along bored.
Finds map on floor
Looks for X on the map
Walks towards X, but bumps into a park bench
Looks up and sees some guy on the bench reading a paper.
Tries to get his attention
Explains that there is treasure under his bench
Asks him to move to another bench
He refuses /He asks him to wait as he’s only got a few more pages left to read
I’ve realised that it may be better to have the treasure hunter as the villain.
The hunter gets angry and storms off
CUT
The hunter pops up in a bush behind the bench and drags out a pivot based mechanism.
He lifts up the bench and places it on the pivot
He drops a cannon ball unto the other end and sends the park bench flying into the air
He quickly grabs a shovel and readies himself to start digging
He hears a sound and looks up, then looks at the screen in dismay
The park bench drops straight unto him
He is then stuck inside the gaps in the bench
Reader is not fazed by anything that just happened and continues to read
Or maybe
The pivot breaks under the weight of the bench and the broken part still attached to the pivot, flips round and squashes the hunter.
CUT
He pushes the bench into a hole, but when he comes back to where the X is, the bench is back.
He pushes the bench into the hole again but this time he covers it back up.
Possibility
When he returns to the X the bench is back.
He goes back to the hole, and jumps in.
The Hole gets covered up.
We see the guy on the bench, and the hunter comes into screen covered in dirt.
He snarls at the guy on bench and walks back off screen.
Or
He comes back to the scene where the bench was and the bench is back.
He turns around, stares at the camera un-amused then walks away.
CUT
 He plants dynamites around the bench and when he triggers them, they do not explode. So he goes round checking each one and as he picks them up, they explode in his face. He does this with each piece of dynamite. (We only see the first 2 incidents and then it fades out and fades in, as he’s about to do the last one) (The last one is actually unlit but still explodes) or (he sees the last one unlit and decides not to go to it but as he is walking away it explodes)
He’s dazed and walks off screen dizzy
CUT
Hunter goes to guy on bench and asks him how long he’s got left, and he pulls out a huge book.
We see the hunters’ expression (angry)
We see the guy on bench smile and wink?
The end
Thought
Maybe we switch the dynamite scene with the hole scene and have him come back to the bench covered in dirt and then ask the hunter how long he’s got left.


Pressing issues after tutor discussion.

The bench needs to be impossible for him to move physically.
So maybe the reader is overweight?
He needs to put a lot of effort into moving the bench to make it funnier when he fails.
Maybe he has to get a crane to move it?
If the reader was fat, then will this be offensive to fat people? And I want slapstick, not stereotype jokes.



This is the plot for the No story.

NO
Bob and Steve are good friends. Bob gets bored very quickly and thus always needs to find something to do to pass the time.
One day Bob goes to Steves house randomly and asks him to come and play football in the park.
Steve says no because he’s got a lot of work to do. He explains that he’s got work due in the following day for his workplace, but Bob does not take “No” for an answer, and soon convinces Steve that he’s going to have plenty of fun and that it wouldn’t take that long.
When they get to the park, a pretty girl walks past them, and so they stop and stare.
Bob nudges Steve with his shoulder and dares him to talk to her, but Steve instinctively says no, but after being patronised by Bob, he soon changes his mind. They both approach the girl but before Steve could get a word out, Bob quickly introduced himself and steals the spotlight and leaves Steve in the background as a spectator.

During this conversation, the girl lost interest in Bob as he babbled on about such and such, and stared at Steve who shyly stared back. As the girls attention is averted, a fly decides to fly unto her shoulder and Bob spots this and makes an attempt to scare it away, but ends up startling the girl.]
The girl shouts out daddy and sure enough, just a bit further away is the girls’ father, who is a slightly overweight clumsy policeman. Seeing his daughter in trouble, he clumsily reaches into his pocket as he approaches the 2 young boys. His aim is to use his weapon to scare away the 2 boys but as he struggled to pull it out, he accidently fires a bullet, which flies past Steves Head.

After this close encounter with death, Steve quickly made a run for it, but on his way, he steps of dog poo but keeps going and when he attempts to look behind to see where the police officer is, he runs into a tree, falls down and has a bee hive land on his chest.

At this stage, he is almost unconscious and as he goes completely unconscious, we see bees approaching him from above from Steves point of view.

Next thing we hear are door knocks and we soon see Steve get out of bed and look at the mirror where he looks on, unamused by his injured face.
Steve then goes to open the door and surely enough its Bob at the door asking steve to come and do something else again and this time Steve shakes his head and closes the door and makes his way back to bed.

There will be no dialogue, except maybe the girl saying Daddy. This is so that the animation can be understood by many different people/cultures from different counties and thus applies to a larger audience.

Steve and Bob are teenagers between the ages of 14-18 and the girl is around a similar age range.

Characters

Woo finally caught up to today. Today i have been working on character designs for these characters. I am going to pay quite a lot of attention to this because the characters and environments are things that have been critised the most in my past work. Before i could start drawing the characters i needed to take a few important steps:

1. Rough profile: Age, Height, Weight, Special features, personality and backstory.
2. Questions: What sort of audience are they aimed at?
3. Research: Look for inspiration. Try and find people or other character withfeatures that you want in your character.



Well this is the step im at right now so when i make more progress ill be sure to add it.

Another tutorial...

It was time for another tutorial with Will and i had my new story and some very rough thumbnails ready so i was feeling pretty damn confident.Will liked the story but he had some doubts. Even though it is animation and you can often cheat logic, you cannot overdo it. In the story i had an idea of the Hunter pushing the bench into a hole but by having this in there it really eliminates the point of his extraordinary efforts that he was using to move the bench. Obviously I could implant the idea of him going into all that effort when he could have just moved it, into the story, but then this will result into a happy ending for the Hunter....? or maybe hell just be very disapointed with what he finds.

The aim now is to get at LEAST an animatic completed by febuary but before i can start that i need to get the characters and story completly established, especially the end.

Will adviced me to watch "The cat that came back" which is a short animation that i found very funny and it sort of felt like de ja vu so maybe ive seen the animation before or a similar plot but the cats 9 lives joke is something ive definatly seen played upon a lot. It actually reminds me of Top cat the most.

A week later...

A week went by and I had another tutorial with Will and during the week I had seen Despicable me and i was completly in awe of the yellow minions. The way they were animated and the way they interact is something that i have not seen for a very long time. The simple slapstick humour got my full attention and even made me laugh most of the time or at least chuckle a little.The simplistic character design also grabbed my attention and its because of all these things that I watched the movie twice in 1 day.

I discussed this with Will and he recomended that I watched Pib & Pog. Pib & Pog is a stop motion animation made by aardman studios and it's based around a 2 man sketch. The two characters are very wierd/funny looking and the things that happen to them are very absurd. I really enjoyed watching this stop motion but this led me to other duos like Purple and Brown (aardman).

I soon decided to look at the old school slapstick animations, so I started with Wile-e Cayote and the Road runner then went unto Bugs Bunny and even went all the way to Foghorn Leghorn. I got plenty of ideas from watching all these animations and i decided to scrap all my old stories and make a new one from scratch. The Story did not take as long as the others took but when i finished i realised the story actually had elements of my other two stories in it. An example being the location from the first story and the rendering i made for my presentation.

Brief and some progress

Well there is actually no brief for this project. I just need to create a piece of animated work that is a reasonable lenght (2-3 mins) and with my chosen medium (3D animation).

Shortly after recieving the brief we were told that we needed to a PechaKucha themed presentation so I managed to get one prepared for the story I had. I initially thought I had a good story, conviniently named 'NO' but whilst doing the presentation and trying to explain my story, I started to have major doubts about my story. The story took ages to explain and did not even sound exciting.

I actually started having doubts when I was trying to type up the story, but they were fully confirmed during this presentation. The concept of the story got a good reception though, so I decided to work on it a little longer. The week after I had a tutorial with my tutor, Will, and after having a few discussions, we came up with a different story.

Now the story was going to be a series of sketches with 2 characters in different situaions. So in 1 sketch theyll be climbers, in another theyll be aliens and in another theyll be spacemen, but to be honest I was not completly thrilled with the idea so as i was progressing this idea I was constantly thinking about other alternatives.

 I managed to do some character designs for this idea though, with "Little Big Planet" being the biggest influence. I modelled the characters in maya and did some quick movement tests for them. These include a sketchy walk and run cycle.






Ok so....

Ok so, that last modules over and I am now starting on my FMP. I've been working on it, but I have not been posting anything on here for a while and also with this project I will be posting links to interesting things I find that are not neccecerily relevant to the project but i will try and catergorise things so navigating to what you want to see would not be too hard.

Sunday 31 October 2010

Conclusion

So its been a very long time since I started this project and started getting very "different" ideas compared to the typical narrative based ideas I usually get. This was more about finding visual styles and well, experimenting. I looked at work and artists I wouldn't usually look at and even used unconventional methods of animating and the entire thing genuinely felt like an experiment. The method I used for the final piece was very much like a scientist mixing chemicals and until the very end, it was an experiment to see what was animation.

I purposely chose to do this project in unknown territory, going back to the days of D&T in primary school and just the curiosity of a child playing with everything he/she sees. This feeling of being an alien in this unfamiliar world got me subconsciously thinking outside the box and coming up with what I believe were great ideas that I wish to pursue long after this project is over, when I can get the resources needed.

There is one thing i am slightly disappointed in though. The paint did not come out as vibrant as I would have liked, it was not my intention from the beginning to have to apply post effects to the piece in After Effects but because of the outcome of the paint, I was not left with much of a choice. The effect worked well but next time I would spend more time finding out the specifics of the paint and would have maybe just went all out and invested in the UV paint and a very powerful light source to help things along.

This success of this project was actually an outcome of a similar project I did during my 1st semester where I made a stop motion animation out of torn up newspaper articles and the unconventionality of these types of work has always amazed me. The pen and paper have been taken to a new dimension, but from that project I learnt that light was essential to pieces of work like this. The light needs to be consistent so sunlight is never a wise choice unless that is part of the work. The light changes through out the day so you get inconsistencies so that is why a room with no windows was the perfect location for this.

I've really enjoyed doing this project, the uncertainty of the outcome was a very new aspect to me. Its different from the storyboards and mood boards I would usually use. Its an effective and fun way to find and try out new techniques.

Wooo....

As I did not get a chance to talk to my tutor about my concerns about the video being animation or not, I decided to email him and ask about it. he replied saying "either is fine- make your decision based on what looks most interesting and makes for a complete film" so I've decided to pick my newer one, but I do like both so maybe I could submit them both into festivals under different contexts or maybe under the theme of colour. But for this project I will be using the 2nd experiment as the finished pieces because its closer to what I wanted to create at the beginning.

Wednesday 27 October 2010

Nooooo.....

So I was not able to to go into University today due to some family circumstances, so I did not get to show my experimental videos to the class or tutor to get some well needed feedback. So I showed it to a few people and due to the nature of the project and majority of the audience I was showing, it was quite hard to get feedback on the animation. What I got mostly was that it was nice, or it looks better than the old one. I received one useful comment though from a classmate by the name of Jason Darlow. He pointed out that for a majority of the video nothing major actually happened. The entire experiment seems to have finished within the first 10 seconds, so we were just left with 20 seconds of what could probably pass off as a still image so I decided to act upon this suggestion and made a 3rd version of my experimental. He added a positive comment though, He stated that it looks quite organic and I am glad this was taken from the experiment because I wanted it to relate to the human body in some way. maybe by the paint traveling through paths, like blood or the organic feel you get when the paint makes minimal movements.

Monday 25 October 2010

Remix!!

After I had made progress on the 1st video, I showed it to some people but I got mixed responses but when I compared it to the brief and my initial idea i was also quite disappointed as I think it may have strayed too far away from the initial idea and slightly away from the brief as it didn't seem to follow a style, so i decided to experiment again and  this was the result this time.



I personally prefer this result but on Tuesday I will try and show both to the class or the tutor to get some constructive feedback.

Sunday 24 October 2010

The Process: The End...?

So I started the experiment and randomly pored the paint into the maze. I was not too bothered about the order the paint went in and wasn't bothered about my hand being visible in the either, but I did try and keep that to a minimum.

The outcome was not as I'd originally intended. The colours were not as vivid as I wanted and this was due to 2 things. the quality of my camera and the intensity of the light. My camera is not that impressive so it only did a mediocre job and the light just wasnt bright enough to make the paint as saturated as I'd have liked.

I tried to recover it in after effects but did not have much success, so I decided to continue on with it and experimented with the footage and the theme of Colour and the outcome was:




The Process: Camera

I needed a camera shot from the top of the lightbox and I could have used the camera stand the university had if I was confident that it could withstand the weight of the light-box and if I was confident it was long enough to give my camera a field of view big enough to consume the entire acrylic maze. This meant I had to make my own camera stand, so I placed my tripod on top of the lightbox but this didn’t allow me to tilt the camera downwards so I used another tripod in addition to this setup. I have a gorilla tripod which I wrapped around the main tripod to get the camera to face the right direction and then after that I was all about getting the angle and zoom right.

The Process: Protection

To protect the surface of the lightbox (as its the property of the University), and to create a texture underneath the acrylic, I bought some cling film from asda and laid it on top of the lightbox before placing down the acrylic maze. This made the paint very easy to handle and gave it a compound to travel inside of.

The acrylic was also applied for mine and other peoples health and safety. It made sure the paint did not cause some sort of malfunction inside the lightbox.

For the protection of others and my work, I left a very visible sign on top of my work before I went home to ensure no one came in contact with it.


The Process: Lights

For the light I needed underneath the acrylic, the best choice was to use the light boxes the University already had in their possession. I had also planned to use additional lights but they were not very effective. The only lights I needed were lights from underneath the acrylic, and the lightbox is the only light that could do that. I had another 500 watt light in the scene, but when i turned it on, it bounced off the walls and illuminated the entire scene and the light from the lightbox was not as visible anymore. I also noticed that the light from the lightbox was not travelling straight upwards, it was also wandering to the side, so I found something to put on the sides of the lightbox to prevent the light from escaping, and to just bounce the light back into the scene.

I also got an idea to introduce my own light rig. Because the light from the lightbox was relatively weak, I decided to bring in a 500 watt light and then reflect that off something unto my work but this did not go as planned. The light was far too bright and was not directional either. It went everywhere and bounced off the walls to completely illuminate the room and lessen the effect of the lightbox. I took the barn doors off of another light that was not working and tried applying this to the new light but this did not work out as planned either. The light leaked from the edges and the surface I was going to bounce the light off just wasn't effective enough so I stuck to the original plan.

The original plan was to use UV lights, but with UV lights, I could have placed them above the camera and the acrylic path. The problems of this are costs and also the placement of the lights. I have no previous experience with UV lights so I do not know how they were going to react with my camera or the acrylic and I didn't have the money or time to waste on a possibility so I looked into another alternative.

The Process: Paint

What I needed was paint that allowed light to travel through it, so that I could get vivid colours from the paint. So when I realised I may not be able to use the UV paint, i found the next best thing. oil paint. I liked patterns oil made and how it reacted with light, but when I got the paint, it was too thick to use. I went to consult a tutor in the printing department about possible ways to get the paint thinner and more transparent. He recommended that I use white spirit for 2 reasons. The first reason he recommended it was because it made the paint transparent but the second most important reason was because this meant the paint would "never" dry and this was perfect because it meant that I could wash my acrylic if i made a mistake or if I wanted to overlay different footage of the experiment, or do it over different days then I could have just used the same pieces of acrylic.


The Process: Making Way

So I went to get some pieces of acrylic to begin the project, and was about to cut out the path I had drawn out only to be told that I was not allowed to use the tool, so I had to figure out an alternative method for my project. There were 2 options: either make a completely different type of path or make a tower of acrylic paths and drop paint from the top so it travels through the tower, mixing as they go downwards. The tools I could use didn't let me cut grooves in the acrylic, so I had to cut paths all the way through the acrylic.

I made small chunks of acrylic with paths in them and then assembled them in a tower shape, but I could not see how the paint was going to drop down or how I was going to film it if it was like that but when I laid out the pieces into a maze type path, it was easy to see a method of filming it and the way the paint was going to travel and mix.

During the assembly of the maze, I tried stacking up the acrylic and realized the gave me a refraction and this is something I felt I could use, so i decided to stack up some pieces of acrylic on certain parts of the maze, but i soon realised that this effect only worked when it was viewed from an angle, so it did not show up on my recordings.

Friday 15 October 2010

Getting ready...

Ok so some more progress with the experimental. Ive made a digital version of it in After Effects, mainly for the presentation on Tuesday, but it took a lot of experimenting. I got quite a lot of varying styles/effects whilst making it but this was the style I was satisfied with the most. Ive also attached some images unto this post which show the progress of the experiment.




1 Down!!!!

Yesterday I went for my induction at the University to enable me to use the machinery in the Design & Technology workshop. Whilst I was there I got talking to the technician and asked him about ways to get the acrylic, he mentioned an acrylics company that was situated on the A13. So on my way home I kept a look out for it and surely enough I spotted the company he was talking about.

So earlier today I went out to Barking Industrial park, in the UK near the A13 and after asking around and I managed to catch the owner of the company before he went home and begged him to give me some pieces of acrylic and luckily enough he was so kind to give them to me. I got 3 pieces of 10mm thick clear acrylic which were 26" X 9" (inches) and these are more than big enough. This will allow me to do my tests for the experiment.

Now I need to get the paint. I went to some car workshops and asked if the had UV paint but they gave me a long explanation of what UV paint is and basically said NO, so i am actually going to do some research into what UV paint is and see if i can just get the chemical cheap and then mix some colour pigments into it to give me the colour I want.....

Thursday 14 October 2010

Lets try and save some time....

So in an effort to save some time and actually do something productive for this project I've decided to draw out the path/pattern that would be drilled into the acrylic and then i cleaned it up in Photoshop. for the sake of having something to show on Tuesday I will try and animate this in after effects so the class has an idea of what my project is and if i do not have the materials to make the project then I could always just go with a digital version of the animation.
The path is interesting because it looks like an abstract drawing of a human and as i said from earlier posts, his is almost like blood travelling through the body and giving life and this adds to that thought.

Why Acrylic?

So on Tuesday morning as I was about to do my presentation i saw a clear piece of acrylic next to me and i saw that it had a groove in it. This made me think about trying to use acrylic because light will travel through it better than it would through something like wood and with more light = more colours and as my self proclaimed theme is "Colour" this was pretty much perfect. So now you know.

Busy Busy....Tired

So its been a whole but I'll summarise my progress so far; On Tuesday i was speaking to my tutor about the idea and he showed me to the workshop where I can cut the acrylic (ye...i changed the material i want to use) and also suggested that I used linseed oil with some pigments to give it the colour and the because of the pigments, the colours will still mix and change colour, so far so good. When i got home i tried to do some research into linseed oild but all i found was some youtube video, which didn't offer much. So i started thinking of possible alternatives and after asking around i came to the conclusion of using UV paint, so far so good? I did some research and spoke an advisor for paint and i found the right UV paint. Now for the problems. The university doesnt keep materials so if I want to use acrylic I'll have to buy it myself and same goes for the paint (the paint is not cheap). I will be going out to some factories tommorow on the A13 (motorway) asking for clear acrylic but for the paint, I'm still unsure about what to do. I may just get the Linseed oil and pigments and hope thats cheaper because with the UV paint, ill also have to buy UV lights but they are the preferred paint as they glow and if they were to seep into the cracks in the acrylic, this would create a wonderful effect. But ye thats all so far and if things don't start moving along very soon i may have to simplify this idea and just used water and paper instead or something to save time and money.

In this post I am going to include links to the website for the UV paint, Linseed oil youtube video and an image of the conversation i had with the UV paint advisor.

Tuesday 12 October 2010

OOPPSS!!!

It seems like I've left out a video that inspired me for my second (and now main) idea. The video is what triggered the thought of paint and the "evolution" of paint as they interact. I am going to include the link to the advert it was made for and also a link to the "making of" video of it which i found very interesting to watch so take a look and Enjoy!!

Edit: I've tried asking what type of paint they used for this so that i could look into the paint and see if its suitable for my idea so fingers crossed that they reply.


Canon Pixma Sound Sculptures from Dentsu London on Vimeo.



And the Making Of


Canon Pixma: Bringing colour to life from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

Thursday 7 October 2010

The "One piece" that is The Internet...

So through out my searches i found a wonderful site which as the name implies, has "Everything Visual" on there and i very much agree with this. There is a large amount of very interesting videos and images on this website. On this site I found a video that relates to my earlier idea about making projections unto the human body, but this made me realise that on top of needing the correct lighting conditions. I will also need a powerful projector, which is a resource i am not sure UEL has, but everything will be cleared up next Tuesday. But for now, heres the amazing Video by Marc Czerwiec & Vivien testard.
Enjoy!!


Light Rhapsody from MARC CZERWIEC on Vimeo.
We are two young french directors that decided to create a real time installation and make a video from it.

"Light Rhapsody" is a real time human lighting sculpture. A 3D model has been projected in real time over the real model through a projecting device. It creates a radiant dissemination emanating from her skin.That projection was animated and progress over her entire body until it has reached and invaded her face.

2 days shooting with the model (thanks to Julia for her patience!) and another one for the wild shot of NYC.

We shot with two cameras, a D90 and a 1Dmk4 cause the budget was super tight.

We would like to make some special thanks to our model, Julia Swell and our talented make up artist Cindy Leroux. Thanks to Hsiao-han Lan 筱涵 our magic set photographer !!!

Marc & Vivien

Oh my...More Lightbulbs!!

I just saw the “Bringing Colour to life” for Canon Advert by Dentsu London and I was blown away and also very inspired at the same time. I had a brainstorm of doing something with paint. I could engrave a path on a piece of wood and then pour paint into the path and film it as it travels and watch as the different coloured paint interact with each other and then to take the abstractness to another level I could later do Time-warps in after effects. The main problems I can foresee at the moment is that the paint may just get completely absorbed by the wood but this interaction might actually be a good thing. The infection of the wood is a very interesting concept and the paint can also be seen as blood giving life to wood. The piece can very well be interpreted as the wonders of life.

But 1 concern i have at the moment is whether this would be classified as animation. If that idea enough doesn't classify as animation which it most likely wouldn't then ill just try another method of executing it, which i am currently conjuring up on top of my squeaky chair, but this is something I will have to talk to my tutor on Tuesday.

OOH Lightbulbs everywhere...

So I had a lightbulb appear above my head and i kept it on long enough to plug it onto this post so here it is.


Have an object,(specifics unknown), and shape it into a Torus shape and in the middle of the torus is the camera and the projector. The projector is projecting the experimental video that’s been pre made unto the object, whilst the Taurus rotates and the camera is recording the outcome which is going to be experimental piece. This is also a good presentation method for the piece when it is being shown in festivals or exhibitions as it gives the piece a dimension that’s beyond its 2dimensional existence. But what makes this piece exceptionally interesting is the fact that it has gone from 2d, to 3d and has then ended up back as 2D, or maybe both dimensions depending on how it’s been exhibited.
Paper seems like a good choice for this as its very much associated with the 2nd dimension, because of drawing s and writings which are done on it but then this could also be said about the pencil or paintbrush. The main difference between these things is that the pencil and paintbrush have a very thick, compared to paper, 3 dimensional existence but paper is very thin object with an almost 2dimentional existence. I don’t really want to use paper as it’s linked too much to the exhibition method that Robert Seidel used for Chiral but then again my method is slightly different as the interpretation is slightly different and he is being credited as the inspiration of this piece.
If I was to use paper, I would most likely scrunch up the paper like he did and then use that as the torus. An interesting idea would also be to paint/draw unto the torus as it rotates around the projector. As this is a mixture of live action and stop motion animation, it may appear difficult to do, but I’ve seen this method accomplished before and what was done in that scenario is that 1 frame of the footage was played on the projector and then 1 frame of animation was done. This could very well result in some timing issues unless I do proper measurements but another method that is coming into my head is t fake he illusion. So I do the animation and then overlay the footage unto it in after effects to give the illusion that it’s been projected as that is what the overlay blend mode aims to achieve.

Robert Siedel...At last!!

So I fianlly ended up on his Vimeo page where he has 13 videos.I watched them all because I was completly fascinated. The mystery of the technique he used to achieve this and the explosion of colour just consumed me, it reminded me of an artist I researched during my time in Barking (I'll remember his name soonish).This gave my mind a new dimension of sight unto the project at hand. I had already stated I wanted to avoid doing computer generated effects for this so trying to figure out a way to achieve this kept my attention on his videos for a long time.

The main pieces of work that won my heart were Channel FIVE: Human paint, Futures- Zero 7 feat Jose Gonzalez, _grau, Appearing Disappearance and both Chiral Videos.

Each video had a different effect on effect on me, for example the Channel FIVE one matches what the brief states and showed me that 30 secs was enough time to create something thats visually beautiful and give the audience enough time to absorb what was going on.

Chiral however is the piece that left a mark and the appearance of this mark shall be revealed soon. I've always believed knowledge was just a bunch of questions and answers/ keys and locks and also the attempt to use keys that don't fit in some locks. But in this instance i thought to myself "What if I made something based on the Channel 5/grau/appearing disappearance and then projected it unto an object?"

I made a document of the thought process I was going through so here you go:
 
A very good example that’s just come into mind would be the human body, but it wouldn’t just be that, I will start off with the “digital” piece from the main project and then when it gets to a certain frame, it is going to transition into the projection. The main problem is going to be about how I will get the projector and also the correct environment to give me the desired result. I will need a dark room and I plan to just have the projection define the human figure but I feel like I may need a fill light to help it along a bit.

This project will be like a huge homage to the Futures film also made by Robert Siedel, it is a main combination of futures and chiral but it’s been made to target the aspects of a human, especially life, death, beauty and ugliness.

I came across Flux , a film by Candas Sisman and it was such an amazing abstract piece of art to admire and it completely hypnotized me for the entire duration but although it is very impressive, I do not want to do a similar project. The reason for this is because it is entirely 3d and has most likely been made in C4D but my aim for this project was to try some new techniques and even though C4D counts as new software, it doesn’t come under the category for new techniques for me but the video has defiantly been an inspiration. It’s shown how the use of shapes and familiar objects.

I’ve just reread the brief and it seems like the animation only need to last 30 seconds and it’s classified as an animation in the title and recording a person projected upon does not really classify as animation. I can still do the original idea but I’m not completely sure of the amount of impact it would have in 30 seconds. I plan to make an enquiry into the length but it might very well end up that the length would be beneficial depending on the complexity of the technique I am going to have to use to achieve the effects I want.
A lot of the things that have inspired me so far have been digitally created or digitally edited but i do not particularly mind editing the footage but finding a suitable technique for what I’ve planned might take some time.

chiral | documentation projection & paper sculpture | MOCA Taipei 2010 from Robert Seidel on Vimeo.
Chiral | Projection & Paper sculpture | Taiwan/Germany 2010

Please check here for the Projection Artwork:
http://vimeo.com/14641476

Projection & Paper Sculpture: Robert Seidel
Soundtrack: Richard Eigner

Chirality is a scientific term describing a structure that is not identical to its mirror image. “Chiral” collects cinematic etudes, which develop various conceptual approaches in order to expand the two-dimensional image into space. They are projected onto a sculpture (510 x 260 x 370 cm) and a screen (250 x 200 cm) made from handmade Taiwanese paper and develop very different lives on these configurations of the same material.

The amalgamation of volumetric lights sets ideas from Chinese calligraphy into motion and melts them with influences from European Art Informel as well as impasto painting to an abstract-organic sculpture. The installation is completed by a soundtrack by Austrian composer Richard Eigner (www.ritornell.at). With the premiere in MOCA Taipei the first iteration of the long-term project was presented…

Premiered at Tripolar Exhibition - 3 Positions of German Video Art
Museum of Contemporary Art (Taipei, Taiwan)
Date June 15th 2010 - July 18th 2010

Supported by Council of Culture Affairs Taiwan, Taipei Culture Foundation, Goethe-Institute Taipei, Eden Book Store
Sponsored by Optoma, Transcend, Asus

More info
http://2minds.de/chiral.174.0.html

Images
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53551826@N06/sets/72157624731787591/


F L U X from candas sisman on Vimeo. Watch in Full screen HD.
by the courtesy of Plato Art Space (Plato College of higher education)

ilhan koman hulda festival, a journey into art and science exhibition
Ayvansaray Caddesi No:33 Balat - İstanbul
22 September - 31 october

video and sound design by Candas Sisman

commissioned by Plato Art Space

csismn.com
PlatoSanat.com
huldafestival.org


A Short Animation Inspired by the Works of İlhan Koman

Plato Art Space is proud to present Candaş Şişman’s video dedicated to famous sculptor İlhan Koman produced for the exhibition İlhan Koman: Hulda Festival, a Journey into Art and Science opening on the 22nd September, 2010.
İlhan Koman’s unique design approach in his form studies also inspires contemporary art works. The video installation Flux by young artist Candaş Şişman can be defined as a digital animation which is inspired from the structural features of some of İlhan Koman’s works like Pi, 3D Moebius, Whirlpool and To Infinity... A red circle, which is colored in reference to the red radiators of Ogre, is traced in a morphological transformation which re-interprets the formal approach of Koman’s works. The continuous movement sometimes connotes the formal characteristics of Pi, 3D Moebius, Whirlpool and To Infinity..., as well as the original formal interpretations of the design principles of the works . In Flux, Koman’s design process in the making of the Pi series has been treated as the emerging of a sphere from a two-dimensional circle by the principle of increasing the surface; and that simple direction is re-interpreted in digital medium. Thanks to this, in the digital animation an entirely different form serial that does not resemble Pi yet remaining its design principle can be followed through the flow of a circle to the sphere. As a conscious attitude of the artist, this work is not designed in a direct visual analogy with Koman’s works. During the animation, none of the moments of the transforming form look like Pi or 3D Moebius, however the subjective reading of Koman’s approach can be observed.

With the integration of the sounds of various materials – which Koman used in his sculptures – Flux turns into an impressive spatial experience. Flux, also exemplifies that Koman’s work can be re-interpreted by the analysis and manipulation of form in the digital medium.

At the end of a rainbow, you can find....

Colour. Thats what I found on my journey through the Internet (rainbow in this instance). It all started with Max Hattler, a Google search of his name led me to his Vimeo channel and from previous experience on Vimeo, I was sure to prepare myself for a roller coaster of inspiration. I looked through a lot of his work including striper v0.1 and his latest piece "Your Highness". maybe if I didn't read the video description for Your Highness I would have appreciated his work more but what I read just seemed stupid. to sum it up, he made the video with a meaning which i am unsure of but it was made without football in his mind-frame but when the film was interpreted as "an offbeat short film depicting masculinity, particularly on the soccer field" the artist seems to take full credit of this interpretation and as I stated in an earlier post, that really ticks me off so thumbs down to Max Hattler. You'll understand what I mean if you read the video description. Read the last one 1st and then read the top one last....Confused? read it again, S.l.o.w.e.r....

Anyways about this colour I found, it was actually through one of Maxs videos which he did with Robert Siedel. The video is titled "UIT VISUAL: Max Hattler + Robert Seidel" and ill be providing a link to it but inside this video I saw Drift by Max Hattler and _Grau by Robert Seidel. To build up the suspension about _grau, I'll waste your time a bit by telling you what I thought about Drift. The simplicity of this is what captured my interest and the analysis of the body with this simplicity just captured my attention. I feel like its showing the neutrality of the skin or maybe even the human form. Its innocence, a confession of the skin. Hope all that makes sense, I've started putting words together like these wacky artists, might have to go back to secondary school to learn some grammar.

Now for _grau (yes it seems like the underscore is part of the name....wierd) but this is the piece that changed my day and my outlook on the project. Robert says in the UIT visual Video, that this is based on the flashbacks you get before you encounter death. Kind of how people say your entire life flashes before you before you die, but what hes done is shown how we actually see memory. We can remember a lot of things in a very short amount of time and in the video you see how memory is fragmented and moves by slowly and also constantly breaks apart and turns into something else and i think this is an excellent visualization of how we perceive memory.

Wow i still haven't gotten to the colour part....my bad, I'll do it now.

I became interested in Robert Seidel and decided to visit his Vimeo page which is where i found.......COLOUR. See? Didn't have to wait that long....but sad to say, this has gone on a bit so I am going to dedicate the next post to Robert Seidel.



Drift (by Max Hattler) from Max Hattler on Vimeo.
"Drift considers the body as landscape through close-up images of skin. The music likewise takes a close-up view of a series of harp chords and viola harmonics. Using real photography in extreme close-up creates a foreign yet familiar world, removed from reality, yet sometimes almost too close. In the music, this tension is mirrored. Original samples are exploded into a multitude of tiny elements before being reconstructed into a tight arrangement based on the Fibonacci series." Specialten

Music by Mark Bowden
http://www.markbowden.net
Directed by Max Hattler
maxhattler.com
maxhattler.com/drift
© 2007