Study Task 4 [PP1] - Let Me Entertain You!

My Life As McDull

Media: 2D Animation

Country: Hong Kong 

- Features a pig character whom is an embodiment of Hong Kong's place and people

- Appeared first on comic stripes on newspapers, later developed into series of cartoons and short stories featuring McDull and his friends from kindergarten.

- Although appears as a character dedicated to children, McDull's stories and character tackled social issues such as poverty and the harsh reality of adulthood

http://discovery.cathaypacific.com/the-rise-of-mcdull-how-a-dumb-flawed-animated-pig-captured-hong-kong-hearts/

Howl's Moving Castle

Media: 2D Animation 

Country: Japan

- Infamous Japanese Animated film which sets place in the early 20th century, where magic and technology were pandemic 

- Main influence to this film was Miyazaki's opposition to the United States' Invasion of Iraq in 2003

- Themes explored include anti-war; and the positive aspect of ageing, in particular the freedom granted 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howl%27s_Moving_Castle_(film)

GRIS

Media: 2D Animation

Country: Spain

- Recently developed game by Nomada Studio in Spain, Barcelona 

- Watercolour and Ink stylised animated game designed to give players a 'narrative' experience
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/videogames/trailer-gris-is-a-unique-2d-animated-game-from-spain-163313.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=56&v=Fv197hjEC0I

The Legend Of The Crabe Phare

Media: CG

Country: France 

- A Graduation film by The talented Crabe Phare Team produced at SUPINFOCOM Valenciennes
- Greatly embodies the theme of humanity; how we constantly ignore the dangers of our doings as mankind and continue to pollute and destroy the environment without thought only to avoid the consequences at the end

https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2018/01/02/legend-crabe-phare/

Wallace and Gromit

Media: Claymation

Country: UK 

- Infamous British comedic claymation which features the adventures of Wallace and Gromit

- The series consists of a total of 4 short length feature films and one movie

https://www.wallaceandgromit.com

Fresh Guacamole 

Media: Stopmotion 

Country: USA

- Award-winning short stop motion film by PES; which is also known for creating similar stop motion films such as Western Spaghetti and Submarine Sandwich

- PES is a stop motion artist; he is also known as Adam Pesapane 

https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/stop-motion-animation-5-award-winning-stop-motion-films/

Where's the Dragon?

Media: CG

Country: China

- Based on the legendary Zodiac characters from Chinese folk culture

- Written and directed by Sing Choong Foo, winner of the Golden Horse Award for Best Visual Effects for the film Silk, and co-directed by Betty Tang

https://www.awn.com/news/new-cg-animated-feature-wheres-dragon-launching-china

Balance

Media: Stopmotion

Country: Germany

- Surrealist stop-motion animated film directed and produced by Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein in 1989

- As the title suggest, this short film is about how these 5 cloaked men have to try to balance on a platform; the story is further developed by the action of the 5 men

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_(1989_film)

Rio

Media: CG

Country: Brazil

- Directed by Carlos Saldanha, whom also directed the Ice Age series

- The title refers to the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, where the film is set; involves Macaws and the environment in Rio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_(2011_film)

Seoul Station

Media: Mixed [2D + 3D Animation]

Country: South Korea

- Directed and written by Yeon Sang-Ho; an animated film about zombies

- About zombie virus outbreak and the effects it has on Seoul and the people 

- Has similar concept to the film "Train to Busan" 

https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3423862/review-seoul-station-worthy-companion-train-to-busan/

Task 4 - Self Development [Reflection]

Brief: -
After learning 4 principles in animation, we were tasked to create an animation that implements those principles. Moreover, we were to identify and justify as to why we chose to use the animation technique of Pose to Pose or Straight Ahead for our animation production process. This task does not have a set context, giving us the freedom to create an animation based on anything we want.
Although the context of the animation can be anything, we were given the choice to create an looped animation that were based on shoes; mainly giving us an opportunity to participate in an animation competition that requires us to create looped animations according to a set theme.

Concept(s): -Thinking about the theme of shoes I had various ideas in mind;

1. Sports; a character with broken/worn out shoes that relays memories of him at his peak at different sports.
- Starts off walking and him hearing people playing basketball at the opposite side of the fence
- Looks down at his worn out shoes and sighs > flashes back to his youth where he played sports                       
- Character runs and has a tennis attire; swings racket to hit the ball. Transitions to Basketball where he jumps up and slams the basketball into the hoop; finally transitioning to football; kicks ball into goal                                     
- Flashback finishes and he smiles as he looks down at his shoe once again; revealing that he has a prosthetic leg; continues to walk down the street (off-screen) replays in loop.

2. Dance; a character hears music down the street and starts dancing to it; music changes and along his attire
- Character starts off with a sad sigh as he walks down the street and pauses; hearing music at the near park; he walks towards it
- As he walks closer, he starts to get in groove; he taps his foot and is surprised; smiles and stares at us
- Music transitions; with each transition of the music; character dances and clothes changes
- As he gets closer to the music, he gets blasted away by the music; flies through the sky and lands at the street of where he started; gets up and sighs

3. Late; a character wakes up realising he's late, rushes to get ready only to be stopped by his indecisiveness as  to which pair of shoes to wear.
- Alarm sounds, causing the character to get up from bed; he reads the clock and in a state of shock realises he's late for school
- He gets out of bed and cuts to him brushing his teeth; transitioning to him wearing his clothes; finally transitioning to him putting his socks on and proceeds to walk out the door to get to his shoe rack
- Looks at shoes (first person perspective) and starts to rush, checking the clock once more, he realises he is over an hour late and faints and thumps onto the floor blacking out. Scene resets to the start; of him in his bed.

After having a total of three concepts thought out, I decided to work on the first concept. However as I started to sketch out the key frames and scenes for the animation, I had a feeling of overwhelmingness; although I have a clear image of the animation in mind, I couldn't figure out nor sketch out each frame for each scene. This resulted me to abandon all of the concepts about shoes and branch off into creating an animation that would reflect on my process of struggling of this task. 

Branching off: -
Starting fresh, I decided to create something more abstract that allows me to illustrate my struggle towards this task as I wasn't able to sketch out or figure out my fully fleshed concepts that I had thought out. The animation technique that I used was Pose to Pose as I was able to work easier by just making minor changes to the previous frame. Animation principles that I used were timing; to try and make sense of the timing of the movement mainly to depict acceleration and deceleration and I also implemented a small section of squash.

Designing: -

Heavily inspired by my character created during induction week, I used that as a representation of my inner self. However for the animation, I decided to just use the head as I believe that is able to illustrate the idea of 'that head is my inner self' strongly. In terms of the choice of colours, I mainly used the indigo - purple range, as I believe that is able to give off the impression of it being a subconscious character.
Separating the animation in to 3 different stages of my struggle, each stage illustrates some change in the character, each being more dramatic than the previous.


Insanity
- Subconscious starting to awake; alerted by something that would eventually be a difficult barrier to overcome
- Eye starts to move frantically, illustrating the concept of insanity

Agony

- Subconscious feels overwhelming struggle, it tries to get rid of it's vision, to be 'blinded'/lose sense of sight so it won't have to deal with the struggle
- Mouth opens and it tries to 'eat' it's eye representing the sense of overwhelming struggle and that it is trying to get rid of it


Crisis

- In last ditch effort for trying to get rid of the sense of struggle, a hard reset occurs, allowing it to start over again
- It gets overwhelmed by the sense of struggle and it gives out; in the state of where it is trying to get rid of the struggle and where the pain and stress is overwhelming, both forces create a hard reset
- Goes black and white to illustrate the overwhelming force of both it trying to get rid of the sense of struggle and the overpowering sense of pain and stress of struggling

As it resets, the loop of these three stages creates a cycle, illustrating the endless conflict between how my subconscious will try to avoid hardships instead of facing it; however if I face any hardships that I can't overcome, the overwhelming sense of struggle surfaces resulting in an eternal cycle of conflict.


Eternal

Through this task, I wasn't able to create something ideal that I had in mind due to lack of direction and physical planning I had. Instead this animation illustrates the struggle I had with the concept of not being able to create something I had so clear in mind, in the end having to abandon it. However, this enabled me to create something that was more personal; allowing myself to develop and create an animation without having being constructed by any requirement in context.

Task 4: Pose-to-Pose vs. Straight Ahead, Squash and Stretch, Easing and Arcs

Pose-Pose - Key frames are produced first before the in-between frames 

Straight Ahead - Linear production of each frame, (1-2-3-4...)
Stretch - A form of exaggeration when an object stretches, without breaking or tearing, when it reaches high velocity
Squash - A form of exaggeration when an object impacts with a surface, deforming from force|
Ease - Illustrating an object's speed; acceleration/deceleration 

In this task, I had to produce a stop-motion animation of a straight ball bouncing. The goal of this task is to illustrate the stretch and squash elements of a ball; when the ball is falling/bouncing back up, the ball would stretch and when the ball contacts the ground/surface, then the ball would squash. Both essential to illustrate the energy of the ball.

For reference, my partner dropped a ball from chest height to see how high the ball will bounce from it's initial height. We discovered that it bounces to either 3/4 or around half of it's initial height. Using that as a reference, we created our straight ball bouncing animation using the Dragonframe software. 

 

The unedited version of the animation had two copies of each frame for good measures. The issue of this was that the speed of the ball falling was not as fast as it should be, therefore it was edited to make the ball fall faster, more realistic. 

 

After editing it, the easing of the ball falling is more clear, introducing weight and gravity to the animation.

After illustrating ease through the straight ball bouncing animation, we explored the concept of relief; the concept of illustrating the decreasing bounces of the ball. Using the same software, my partner and I created another bouncing ball animation through stop-motion.

Reference

From the straight ball bouncing animation, to this more dynamic approach, the exaggeration of how the ball stretches and squashes effects the animation significantly as it makes the motion of the ball more dynamic. Moreover incorporating easing also creates a sense of realism as the speed of the ball falling and it bouncing back up at 3/4 of the fall speed does make the ball seem more weighted and more believable.

Diving into the topic of arcs, arcs describes an trajectory of a natural motion; motion that does not more linearly rather in curves. In this task, we used rotoscope technique to animate a pendulum done in Photoshop.

Reference

After creating the pendulum through using the rotoscope technique on Photoshop, we then had to use stop-motion animation create an animation illustrating arc using a pencil.



After gaining feedback of this animation from a class critique, I learnt that there were some mistakes in my animation. Some common ones were that the vertical frame of the pencil could be removed so that the easing of the pencil would be smoother. Furthermore one of the starting frame; of the pencil's starting position can also be removed so that it would be loop-able. After gaining feedback, I made changes accordingly.



To conclude utilising the rotoscope technique to animate can allow me to easily illustrate ease as the motion of the object has already been captured, and all there's left to do is trace the object. Whilst by using stop-motion animation, the movement of the object is in your control and each frame is decided by yourself; therefore the outcome would not be as natural as the rotoscope. However, by using stop-motion, I am able to control the placement and the easing of the object more easily as every placement and frame is controlled.