w21016821mi4011 - Tumblr blog

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This is the final animation I made for this project. I really wanted to focus on making the ordinary unordinary, taking something boring like a cup of tea and making a flower grow out of it. This idea of taking something ordinary and animating about it is something Cliona Noonan does a lot in her work. I also like the symbolism of growth as Noonan has grown a lot in her work since leaving university.

I did however feel rushed during this project due to having to isolate without any programs I needed to complete it to the standard I wanted, also during isolation my mental health took a hit which I definitely think has influenced my work. For the next projects I’ll be sure to keep myself happy and organised so my work doesn’t suffer again, I know I can produce better.

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here's all the post-it notes used to create my animation

I loved working with them and love the effect it gave to my work, it felt like a scrapbook

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Here’s some references I had for creating my animation, I mostly looked at tattoo designs due to wanting to use mostly line art in my final animation. I also really love the style of the flowers they are all very delicate.

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Art Brut

“ A French term meaning “raw art” or “rough art” that was coined by artist Jean Dubuffet to denote works more popularly known as Outsider Art, which he championed as exemplifying powerful originality, not stifled by education or socialization. Dubuffet began collecting, writing about, and lecturing on Art Brut in the mid 1940s after visiting Switzerland and seeing works by psychiatric patients collected in hospitals there. “ - https://www.artsy.net/gene/art-brut

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these were some rough sketches to help understand what I wanted to create with my animation

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Figure drawing studies I've done to help understand how the human body moves and looks

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We learnt how to animate simple animations in after effects, focusing on creating a bouncy ball in it. it was interesting to learn and I found it similar to animating in Maya which I’ve used before.

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Walk cycles:

I did some research into walk cycles by looking at The Animators Workbook and The Animators Survival Kit, both were very useful for understanding the basics.

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here's part of the stop motion project done in class, we used wire frames and sponges to create the base of the model. as a group we designed and came up with the character, we decided to make it in a Betty Boop style giving it exaggerated proportion. The character itself was also a form of Medusa, I think the contrast between Betty Boop and Medusa was interesting considering Betty Boop was a very sexualized character at the time and Medusa in modern day is being reclaimed by sexual assault victims.

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I really like how a lot of the artists I’ve looked up including Cliona take normal everyday objects, people, scenarios and turn them into art for us to enjoy, changing them slightly and making them feel surreal. I really want to incorporate this into my work, I’m thinking of making my animation about a cup of tea sprouting a flower and following it’s journey as it grows. I think this is great symbolism for Cliona’s work as she’s definitely grown a lot as an artuist and animator, while also adding a bit of surrealism.

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The Chicago Imagist

“The Imagists were a group of figurative artists who emerged in Chicago in the mid-1960s.” - https://www.mmoca.org/collection/chicago-imagists

This group created distorted portraits, sometimes quite gruesome. I find these portrayals very interesting, especially since despite how distorted and off putting the depictions are the pieces themselves are contrasted with bright colours.

“ Although influenced by the encyclopedic collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Imagists were equally inspired by ethnographic collections at the Field Museum, self-taught artists, comic books, storefront window displays, and advertisements in magazines. “

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Seymour Chwast

Seymour Chwast is an American Graphic Designer, Illustrator, and Type Designer, born in 1931 in NY. 

“If you dig a hole and it’s in the wrong place, digging it deeper isn’t going to help.” – Seymour Chwast 

https://areaofdesign.com/seymour-chwast/

His work is very colourful and often surreal. “ As co-founder (with Milton Glaser and Edward Sorel) of Push Pin Studios, Seymour Chwast developed a playful, expressive approach to type and layout. “. One thing I love about his work is you can tell he enjoyed making them, each piece is bright and playful and often quite humorous. 

As co-founder (with Milton Glaser and Edward Sorel) of Push Pin Studios, Seymour Chwast developed a playful, expressive approach to type and layout.

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Jonathan Hodgson

“Jonathan Hodgson is an internationally renowned, BAFTA winning animation director based in London. He studied animation at Liverpool Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art.  In 2011 he directed the animation for Wonderland: The Trouble with Love and Sex, the first full length animated documentary on British TV.” - https://www.mdx.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/staff-directory/profile/hodgson-jonathan

linked is some of Hodgson’s animation work https://hodgsonfilms.tumblr.com/.  I really liked “TRAIN OF THOUGHT” and his use of traditional media to create the animations. Due to having to isolate after getting COVID-19 it’s helped me completely rethink how I want to create my animation, originally I was going to do a short digital animation but I no longer have access to the programmes I need for it so I think I’m going to try making an animation using traditional media, maybe using post-it notes instead of paper to give it more of a scrapbook feel.

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Philip Guston

Philip Guston is was an artist who live 1913–1980, his work is often surreal, he would take normal scenes and subjects and distort them to tell a broader story.

“Philip Guston was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1913, the seventh child of Russian immigrants. Raised in Los Angeles and largely self-taught, he found inspiration for his early murals in the masters of the Italian Renaissance.” - https://www.philipguston.org/home

His work can now be found in galleries all over the world, mostly in the US and Europe. I really love how very few pieces are ever “pretty” they aren’t realism, or normal portraits, they all have meaning and emotions behind them. I’d love to be able to incorporate this into my work, not thinking of how perfect it needs to be or how pretty it does as long as it portrays feelings and emotions.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=JXidoL6n&id=E9A290E6394F8CFEDD5EFE0D586B5E770D631815&thid=OIP.JXidoL6nSXZkXO364TCdngHaHF&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fth.bing.com%2fth%2fid%2fR.25789da0bea74976645cedfae1309d9e%3frik%3dFRhjDXdea1gN%252fg%26riu%3dhttp%253a%252f%252fwww.woodshedartauctions.com%252fwp-content%252fuploads%252f2017%252f12%252fPhilip-Guston-Head-and-Bottle.jpg%26ehk%3d7unTXVHiMqpL%252fPReBkmPlIadqKLvcHFmqI65Vz%252bVnvo%253d%26risl%3d%26pid%3dImgRaw%26r%3d0&exph=1147&expw=1200&q=Philip+Guston+Art&simid=607991404517226455&FORM=IRPRST&ck=6F4FB4DAC6E959A8DC47682DE1090296&selectedIndex=0&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/philip-guston-1231

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Emailing Cliona

As part of my research I decided to reach out to Cliona to ask some questions and get some inspiration for my animation.

What was your inspiration? - I definitely have had a lot of influences. With each of my films I've been inspired by other animators as well as art from areas outside of animation. In the case of my short Tuna for example, I was really interested in the paintings of Philip Guston and the films of Jonathan Hodgson. For Wet & Soppy I was looking at a lot of 1960s illustrations from Seymour Chwast and the Chicago Imagists, as well as The Beatles Yellow Submarine film. I usually try to incorporate my interests into what I am working on, and take inspiration from a variety of subjects.

What does an average day working on a project look like? - An average day for me usually depends on the stage of production I'm at. In the early stages of a project I try to stay away from the computer, designing characters and thumbnailing storyboards on paper. Once I have a solid animatic I am mosting working digitally, using a cintiq. Animation is done in TVPaint, backgrounds usually in photoshop and then everything is composited in after effects and edited together in premiere.

How long does a typical animation take you? - Wet & Soppy took about 3 months to make in total. During the first month I worked alone to come up with the idea and get a clear picture of what I wanted the film to look like. This included writing, gathering references, designing the characters and sketching rough thumbnails. After that I had a team of 13 people to help make it, from storyboarding to backgrounds, to animation and comp.

What inspired you to get into animation? - I remember seeing the Triplets of Belleville by Sylvain Chomet a year or two before going to study animation. At the time it was like nothing I'd ever seen before, and it definitely introduced me to a whole other world outside of mainstream animated films. I think it has stuck with me to this day, and most likely influenced my work in some way.

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the links below are research into Irish Animators, there’s quite a few big names that came from Ireland. One of my favourites found while researching was wolfwalkers I really loved the sketch-y style of the animation.

In a paper I found “Overview of History of Irish Animators” they claim -“The history of animation in Ireland is comparable to the history of live action film in Ireland in that in the early years it offered the promise of much to come and stopped really before it got started; indeed in the final analysis animation has even far less to show for itself than its early live action cousin.”- however I still think there’s some very prevalent and inspiring Irish animators out there. It talks about James Horgan as he was a significant animator of his time, creating stop-motion films only a couple years since the first came out, I’d really like to include stop-motion in my work in some way to help me branch out from my comfort zone of digital animation.

The paper also talks about Quin Films which is Ireland's oldest animation studio. It developed short model animations.  Aidan Hickey was another Irish animator who created his animations using paper cut-outs. Both of these forms of animations are quite easy and quick to produce as they don’t require much material or money to make.

Covered in this paper is also how the animation business really helped with unemployment - “In 1983 the Industrial Development Authority decided that animation was a suitable business to encourage as it needed a large semi-skilled body of workers - inkers and painters mostly - to create animated films. By 1985 when Ireland still had a high unemployment problem the I.D.A. had helped establish two small animation studios and one large one employing just short on five hundred people altogether. Suddenly Ireland was the biggest animation producer in Western Europe and with Sullivan Bluth - the largest studio - challenging Disney no less as the leading producer of feature length movies! And all this when there was no Film Board or Authority of any kind in Ireland.” - This is really interesting how successful this sector became so quickly.

https://animationireland.com/https://animationireland.com/

- https://www.ifi.ie/wp-content/uploads/Overview-of-History-of-Irish-Animation-Copy.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/movies/cartoon-saloon-wolfwalkers.html

https://www.cartoonsaloon.ie/

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Cliona Noonan

“Cliona Noonan is an Irish Animator, Filmmaker and Director.She graduated  from The National Film School of Ireland with a BA in Animation andis currently working as a freelance animator and director for short films and music videos. “

https://clionanoonan.com/about

I choose to research Cliona Noonan, a young Irish Animator, she has a very unique art style which she uses in multiple of the short films she’s directed and worked on.

I found her while looking through the Dublin Animation Film Festival website and spotted her short film “wet & soppy” which in their words is about “A weather-tormented man who just wants to dry his underwear is forced to use the local laundromat each evening.” The premise is simple but the feelings behind it make it stand out, you relate to the main character who is fighting monotony of the same thing happening each day and just wanting the sun the come out, but during his trips he sees a lady each time. When the sun finally does come out the lady from the laundromat tricks the man into thinking it’s raining so he’ll have to go back to the laundromat to see her again. When he does go back to the laundromat, the lady decides to try and hold his hand which he excepts. I think it’s a very sweet tale with a lot of hidden meanings.

https://www.skwigly.co.uk/cliona-noonan/

During an interview Cliona answers a lot of questions about herself as an animator and the animation Wet & Soppy

When asked about her background and early interest in animation? She responded with;

“I’m from Dublin in Ireland, and I graduated a year ago now from a four year course in animation at the National Film School. I was always interested in animation, I saw the documentary The Pixar Story and thought I want to do that. I made a graduation film, Tuna, and since then I’ve made another film, Wet & Soppy.”

Wet & Soppy isn’t her first short film she’s made, Tuna was made for her graduation film. I love the art style used in both films and actually reminds me of the illustrations from the Jacqueline Wilson books