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Reflection

Looking back on my work I am proud for having been able to undertake such a different project. It is far out of my comfort zone and has further proven to be a skill I will and endeavor to improve on. The fi work tha6 has been submitted is not a complete version of what I had wished to create. Through experimenting and understanding the process of animation and rotoscoping I found alot of difficulties, challenges and processes which I could improve on. I was so passionate about this experiment however that I have even started outline drafts for a new type of program that will allow me to animate with ease by creating masks that can be copied onto each frame, and moved around to fit the shape of character I wish to animate.

Challenges: 

   - I have always had trouble with the eb and flow of my clips and the transitions of my work. Often transitions within my work will look jagged or sloppy, with the ‘Artist’s block’ I had a similar conflict and couldn’t figure out how to make my transitions and cuts more smooth. Ideally, if I play out my work and storyboard it better I could create a fluid peace. I attempted to further experiment with aesthetics and tried to create a different type of work through my transitions. As they are one of my weakest points, there was a beauty that I saw in creating a sort of ‘blinking’ transition. I leave a space between the clips to allow for the blackout in an attempt to create a new enticing aesthetic. I experimented with essentially ‘blink transitions’ where I left space in between each clip as I felt that the transitions were not natural from my first shoot. Realistically I think a more appropriate method of fixing this problem would be to go back and re-shoot the scenes with a more thoroughly planned storyboard. Theoretically, when working on my piece again, however, I will work and aim to create and shoot film that will have a better transition in planning.

    - TIME MANAGEMENT. Time management has really been an issue for me in all aspects of my work. I was fairly organized to arrange an actor and begin shooting the live action part of my experiment, however, I think all in all I had really underestimated the time that would be taken to complete this film. From what I perceived I believed that the animation software provided would shorten the time taken to animate certain objects and just have a more smoother workflow. However, I have learned that it was not the case. A lot of my time was spent watching tutorials to learn the basics of the programs I wanted to use, then playing around and performing trial-and-error on my work in hopes that it would not all delete itself. For the specific type of rotoscoping and animation that I wanted to create, I realized that I could at most only work frame by frame to complete each animation manually. Through this experience and experimentation as I really do believe it has enabled myself to really utilize and experiment more with how I want to complete works in the future, how to use software and programs for the aesthetics I want to create as an individual, what type of collaborations I would preferably be interested in and how I would want my work to look aesthetically. Before this subject, I personally had no direction or foresight of what I wanted to achieve as an artist. This semester has really opened my eyes to the possibilities that can be created through MAPS. As for this film, I want to continue to work on it more thoroughly. Go back into it and edit the character to make it the way I am currently envisioning. Currently, the character can be seen as sort of a brightly coloured animation through a transparent rotoscoping technique that was drawn frame by frame. I want to in future dive into a more ‘colour pop’ theme and really experiment and explore my limitations.

Improvements:

Firstly I think a more effective storyboard and timeline need to be created with more detail when beginning this work. However, understanding the intent of this work was to create and experiment with a new technique rather than creating a final piece.

A crew would have also been a bit more helpful. I found it really difficult to film, direct and storyboard/edit all by myself. When working on a bigger project such as my capstone I can see exactly why it would be more useful to have a whole crew. I am primarily a very independent person and previously felt I did not need a crew as it would be difficult to explain my vision to them. I understand now the value of communication and how it can be applied for the future.

I didn’t record sound this time as I had wanted to edit it and create a soundscape, however, I found a lot of my time became engulfed by the animation that I had little time to thoroughly complete an appropriate sound background which I regret. I am going to continue this animation in the holidays however and see how that goes.

By far the biggest regret in this work was time management. I have some spaces in between the work that are just stills of a dog image and a money bag which I had intended to cartoon animate however I did felt time pressure and was unable to complete the work fast enough. Upon further research, I did decide that a tablet with a drawing pencil would be more appropriate for my work.

My aesthetic

In terms of the aesthetic I have created through this process, While shooting I had filmed scenes with a dark backdrop and an illuminated light to almost creating an eerie atmosphere that was heightened by the introduction of the magic ‘pen’. I created a bright holographic animation that was quite similar to the Colour Pop style of Andy Warhol which I thought was quite interesting. This aesthetic only really took place because of the colours and tools that were available for the time that I had. Upon revisiting this work I an going to look into programs such as Toonz and see how that goes.

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The snippet is from my hand-drawn animation that I did through Adobe After effects. After slowing the frames down to 12 per second, I then proceeded to sketch 2-3 frames. This processes proved to be time consuming however it did ensure that I was doing everything well and it did eventually look very similar to how I had originally envisioned it. At present, the animation is slightly ‘holographic’ transparent looking. I think when I go back to refine the animation I am going to attempt to create a more solid colouring similar to the work in the animated version of ‘We are your friends’.

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Writer’s block/ Artists Block The work focuses on a struggling artist attempting to complete an artwork, but he suffers from ‘Writer’s block’. Often when we become focused on the task straight in front of us we forget that we need time to step back and look around us. The very nature of art encapsulates uncertainty, experimentation and willingness to create an idea from the depths of who we are in order to produce something that contains a little bit of ourselves in the work. It’s a way of leaving an imprint of our soul on the physical entities we leave behind. Creativity is a mentally challenging cognitive expenditure to produce something original. After some initial frustration, the artist’s pencil snaps. He angrily attempts to find another pencil, scavenging through an old box he notices a pen which he absentmindedly uses. The pen has animated qualities for whenever someone draws with it, the objects that are drawn come to life for an ephemeral moment then disappear. First the artist draws a dog which is the first object he discovers with the pen. Then he moves on to draw money which also disappears. Finally, he decided to attempt to draw on himself, which in turn makes him animated. In a literal explosion of thought and emotion caused from the animation, the artists also returns to his normal form but this time with insight. He returns to the drawing board with a new idea and begins drawing. Sometimes in a moment of changed perspective enables for a new and creative idea to become clear in the mind.

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Youtube Tutorial

https://youtu.be/9vmDQo22gPM

For creating my work I have used many youtube tutorials to help guide me through the softwares used in my project. Of the tutorials this one was one of the most useful when creating my animation and opening sequence. I wanted to document it here so that I could look back on it for future use.

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TRUNK SHOT

The video above was taken during my shooting of the scenes I needed for the live action film. As scene I attempted to replicate the trunk shots that are prevalent throughout Tarantino’s film’s. Unlike Tarantino my intent was not to make the audience feel like the victim, rather to provide an array of shots that could be used to illustrate a story. 

I did find this shot quite effective however I had alot of trouble getting the angles right. The first attempt was not effective as the camera continuously fell over while being placed in the box on it’s own. The second attempt involved cutting a hole in the bottom of the box in order to  create more depth to the angle of the shot however the camera began leaning towards different angles. Similarly the third attempt was completely completely dead centre with the character looking in however it look really unrealistic and too staged, there was even a moment where the actor looked directly into the camera which was not as effective as it sounds. The fourth and final attempt was alot better as I had found a prop to lean the camera on so that it would effectively provided the angle and stability needed for the shot without looking unrealistic.

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Aesthetic

As seen in the above screenshots of my animation process so far, I have begun to understand the development of my own aesthetic. Truely, when creating your own aesthetic it really is a play around-and-develop further task. I began with an online tutorial of using after effects seen below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdSdOdlyoO0

When starting my animating I used the brush tool and selected the colour solid icon to begin drawings. That’s why initially my work is very solid and dense. I found that if I drew on with one colour. Then drew ontop again with the same colour the shade would appear lighter. That’s how i created my first stage aesthetic with the squiggly lines and details in the arm. Futher on, I then experimented with another tool known as colour dodge. This added another element to my character design as it began to show details in the image which I wasn’t able to create originally. Colour dodge effect created what had previously taken me 12-13minutes longer to draw out details in the real-life version of the character. 

I think again the main challenge was working my way through the program of after effects. I think once using it more frequently and familiarizing myself with the different tools and application should be able to in turn speed up the animation project. In terms of real-life application when it comes to jobs in the media arts industry I think it would be quite interesting to work on the graphics and effects that are created for certain tv-shows etc. Through undertaking this experiment I have discovered how to find your own ‘aesthetic’ which can be applied not only to the animative process but also to my film-making, my director skills, basically to every area of the media arts industry.

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Reflection

In undergoing this project to create an animation I have had alot of trouble organizing my time to complete the digital rotoscoping of my work. So far this is a snippet of my work. I really think i have become more involved in my specific aesthetic when creating this piece, as you can see from the start of the animation it’s etchy and blotchy, then as it progressed the colours become more defined and detailed in shaping the character. I particularly think this appropriately represents my intent of the character finding himself and creativity which he clearly lacks at the beginning of the film. Through development and time the character evolves into his own ideas and thoughts which can also be seen through the animation. The main challenges in creating this task has been ‘TIME’. There is not enough of it! In the above clip I slowed the frame rate of the video down to 10 frames per second, then proceeded to animate 2-3 frames in the custom drawing tool section, however I found that I would end up spending alot of time manually drawing the sections that i wanted animated because i didn’t have a drawing digital pad. Next time when creating a project similar to this one I hope to develop some program that allows you to create a mask to copy and past onto existing frames so that you don’t have to redraw your entire work as I found this element to be the most time consuming. For now, to speed up the process rather than completing every two frames completely and changing all my different colours. I am going through and keeping the same colour for each element and completing the animation faster. For example, the hands are yellow, so I am doing all the hands and face for every frame in one go. Then I go back and begin colouring the shirt blue for every frame etc. This method has improved the speed of the animation process but still not enough. I researched the methods of other artists when they rotoscope and create animation, Hayao Miyazaki famous for his animation works such as ‘Ponyo’ and ‘ Spirited away’ he said understanding hotkeys and familiarizing yourself with shortcuts can improved time taken to animated by 200%, furthermore in his earlier works if he had worked with digital animation he said that refining character definition makes for a well designed character which becomes easier to animate. To the extent of my character design I do believe he is quite simply drawn which has made it a little bit easier to animate but there are several aspects that still need improvement for my next part of animation.

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Work-Reimagined

Writer’s block/ Artists Block

The work focuses on a struggling artist attempting to complete an artwork, but he suffers from ‘Writer’s block’. Often when we become focused on the task straight in front of us we forget that we need time to step back and look around us. The very nature of art encapsulates uncertainty, experimentation and willingness to create an idea from the depths of who we are in order to produce something that contains a little bit of ourselves in the work. It’s a way of leaving an imprint of our soul on the physical entities we leave behind. Creativity is a mentally challenging cognitive expenditure to produce something original. After some initial frustration, the artist’s pencil snaps. He angrily attempts to find another pencil, scavenging through an old box he notices a pen which he absentmindedly uses. The pen has animated qualities for whenever someone draws with it, the objects that are drawn come to life for an ephemeral moment then disappear. First the artist draws a dog which is the first object he discovers with the pen. Then he moves on to draw money which also disappears. Finally, he decided to attempt to draw on himself, which in turn makes him animated. In a literal explosion of thought and emotion caused from the animation, the artists also returns to his normal form but this time with insight. He returns to the drawing board with a new idea and begins drawing. Sometimes in a moment of changed perspective enables for a new and creative idea to become clear in the mind.

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rotoscope hand drawn animation from lindsey deschamps on Vimeo.

The aesthetic here is similar to the one I had in mind for the scene when my character becomes engulfed from all the raw emotions when he is animated. It’s basically a ‘brain explosion’ so it will be alot more dynamic, but essentially I want to encapsulate these colours. This video was taken from a tutorial of a live action rotoscope in Adobe photoshop CC which I was using to attempt my experimentation. I will be trying again tomorrow to see if I am able to experiment with colours this time.

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Through an attempt to try rotoscoping, I drew ontop of video i took to try and see how the technique would work against live action work. Through this trial I have discovered that there is going to be some major challenges I will encounter when attempting to combine live action with animation. Specifically when creating this animation I had drawn 250 frames and lowered the frame rate to 10-12 frames per second. I had creates alot more content however i had made the mistake of drawing on the video layer rather than the outline layer for this video. Everytime i would save my work and come back to it later I would continue to draw on the video layer which eventually showed no progress in my work. Understanding this now, I want to attempt to get my filming out of the way for this film in order to try and work out any further problems when animating.

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GIF from the Anime Scene from Tarantino’s Kill Bill, the specific aesthetical combination of cross-genres,Animation to Live-Action proved so impressive that this scene itself won countless awards.

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Tarantino’s Aesthetic

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Rotoscoping

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Live Action Animation ‘We Are Your Friends’ (2015) by Max Joseph

😱😌

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Live Action Animation of Jessica Rabbit from ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ (1988) by Robert Zemeckis. Also breaking of the fourth wall.