New Blog

Our group has decided to start sharing a blog, as it will be easier to translate and distribute our ideas to one another. It can be accessed here:

http://sirhandlebar.tumblr.com/

Ideas

I found an image today when surfing the net that I thought corresponded with our theme of Video games and displaying them in urban unused areas. This selection just shows characters from the well known video game franchise Pokemon. I really like the way the artists have displayed them in settings that suit the specific characters, and place them as if walking along the ground or hovering as they would in the game. This helps add a sense of realism and interactivity- as if they are right there beside us. 

Expansion of Technology

Our group has decided to focus more on the technology & design aspect of the Wellington region-

In recent years sudden booms in technology has greatly effected society, and how we interact with one another. Major cities, for instance Wellington, has free access to WiFi. This, along with things like smart phones have given most people vastly more creative outlets and ways of sharing their creations. For example things like Vine, Gif-Boom and Instagram give people with access to smart phones and WiFi the ability to share anything with the world in a matter of seconds. 

Advances in technology have brought about more interactivity with the technology we use. Giving us the ability to use technology the way we want, creating what we want. Which is very evident in creative based software, in particular apps, that are available with portable devices. With the advances in creative based technology, traditional methods of things like animation, have been challenged and changed. Due to the accessibility to the knowledge and technology needed to make animations. 

Gaming in particular has been altered by new easily accessible and portable technology. The concept of playing games has become more of a sociable activity, that someone can do anywhere on their smartphone. As opposed to 15-20 years ago, were someone who played video games would often be seen as someone with no life.

Wellington

To kick start this project, we first decided to do a brainstorm of Wellington City-

We then conducted some research-

• Wellington is New Zealand's centre of government and the world's southernmost capital city. It is also the country's cultural capital and the third most populous urban area in New Zealand.

• The city is home to many museums, theatres and arts festivals, including Te Papa Tongarewa (the Museum of New Zealand), the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Royal New Zealand Ballet, and the biennial Festival of the Arts.

• Wellington is also a leading centre for creative industries, such as film and computer technology, and it is the home of the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX).

• The city is situated alongside Wellington Harbour and surrounded by natural beauty including Zealandia, an award-winning eco-attraction just minutes from the central business district.

• Wellington enjoys around 2,000 sunshine hours a year. By comparison, London averages 1,500, Edinburgh 1,350 and Vancouver 1,850.

• Incomes in Wellington city are well above the average for New Zealand with over 40% of households having annual incomes of over $89,000.

• There are 25,284 Wellington-based businesses and there has been a 22% growth in business units here since 2000.

• As the capital, Wellington is the home of many artistic and cultural organisations, including the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Royal New Zealand Ballet. It has a lively urban culture, with many cafés, restaurants and performance venues.

• Weta was formed in 1993 by a group of young New Zealand filmmakers including Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor and Jamie Selkirk. It later split into two specialized halves - Weta Digital (digital effects) and Weta Workshop (physical effects).

Group!

For this project our group will consist of Nathan Laird, Ryan McKone, Matt Wehner, James Crosbie, Georgia Winter and Myself.

Urban Dream Brokerage

Urban Dream Brokerage brings together property managers and the creative industries to lead creative development and urban revitalization through the temporary use of vacant space by innovative projects. Urban Dream Brokerage (UDB) is currently running as a six month pilot with support from Wellington City Council, with other funding partners being sought for the Brokerage to continue.

For this project, we will be working in conjunction with UDB creating gifs that will be displayed in one of their Wellington properties that interact with passers by and bring life back into the city. The gifs will be created in a disused urban space in Wellington, and must interact with the physical and social environment.

Here are some notes I took when Sophie from UDB gave a presentation to our class-

Experimentation

Nathan Laird and I created a couple of more developed gifs. The first depicts an optical illusion we discovered, and the second portrays me creating origami :)

PES

This stop motion 'Game over' created by PES displays a number of different video games recreated using food and inanimate objects. Its a nice rendition of the classic arcade games giving it a post modern feel. I think its very unique and creative and found it very entertaining to watch.

  

Blu

Blu is an Italian street artist well known for his stop motion mural paintings. I really enjoy his aesthetic and works hes created because they are unique and very interesting to watch. My personal favourite videos of his are-


FFWD

http://vimeo.com/427154

I love how the video starts with a still life photograph which as time progresses 2D images become part of the photograph, creating a completely new exciting surreal scene. The character style I find adorable at the start, and I enjoy how the video takes a succeeding unexpected turn part way through. His use of foreground, mid-ground and background I also found very successful and engages the audience.

Merano

I like the publicity of this videos scene, how Blu has painted his mural on a street wall. The image he's drawn gives a nice contrast of black and white and the characters integrate nicely together and has a nice figure-ground element to it. Also displaying him painting the mural over time helps give us an idea of the creation process he uses. This integrates the characters with the environment painted in nicely.

Morphing

 

The music for this animation helps bring a specific darker mood to the artists concept. The stop motion technique used helps give a morphing sense to the artwork, as reinforced by the title. Having the video looped helps reiterate to the viewer the importance of the message and make sure they don't miss it. Because the camera has stayed stationary, the loop appears continuous creating an almost story/ narrated feel.

Experimentation

Sketching

Ripping pages

Experimentation

Saturday cricket with Christine

Mysterious cat in flat

Playing with paper

I decided to create a couple of cartoon characters, and experiment with animation using them :)

JT Yean

I found an artist who makes really nice gif's out of cut out paper. His name is J.T Yean and is a 3D animator and graphic character designer. Yean currently works for a number of clients including Defiant Magazine, Mythopoet, Nicholas Jary and Paulo Goldstein. He often spends his time making gifs of his paper crafts adding a sense of realism and a third dimension to them-

Merry Go Round Animation

A slower more precise animation of the ride

Experimenting with Vine and GifBoom!

After learning about Vine and Gifboom in class, Nathan Laird and I teamed up and made a few videos to experiment with gifs! :)

The Principles of Animation

Nathan Laird and I found a really interesting book in the Massey library that explains all the techniques and principles of animation throughout history. 

The book is titled "The Illusion of Life - Disney Animation" by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston and describes process and fascinating story behind the Disney cartoons and films. The most interesting information we gathered is about their principles of animation, which are as follows:

Squash and Stretch
This is the most important principle, the purpose of the squash and stretch is to give a sense of weight and flexibility to characters/ or drawn objects.

Anticipation
The anticipation was introduced to prepare the audience for an action displaying a more realistic build up to an event. This way the audience would never miss the gag.

Staging
Similar to theatre, staging’s purpose is to direct the audiences attention and make clear what is of greatest importance to the scene.

Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose’
These describe the different approaches to the drawing process. “Straight Ahead Action” is drawing a scene out frame by frame from beginning to end, and ‘Pose to Pose’ involves starting with drawing a few key frames, then filling the intervals later.

Follow through and Overlapping action
This action describes two closely related techniques, which help render the movement more realistically. This helps give a more realistic impression. ‘Follow through’ means the separate parts of the body will continue moving after the character has stopped.

‘Overlapping action’ is where parts of the body move at different rates.

Slow in and Slow out
The movement of the character, and the timings to create a realistic movement particularly through acceleration and deceleration.

Arcs
Natural actions tend to follow more arched/ smooth paths rather then rigid ones. Therefore Adding arc movements to a character tends to add greater realism.

Secondary Action
Secondary actions often give support to a main action performed, therefore adding more life. They often are used to emphasize, rather then take attention away from the main action.

Timing
This refers to the number of drawings used for any given action. Timing is crucial for establishing a characters mood, emotion and reaction.

Exaggeration
This is essential for cartoons and animation, as it helps give a sense of realism and believeability to the given scene. There should be a balance in how the elements are exaggerated in relation to each other.

Solid Drawing
Solid drawing means keeping in mind the forms of three dimensional space/ form, giving a character volume and weight.This requires a basic understanding of three dimensional shapes, anatomy, weight, balance, light, etc.

Appeal
This relates to what the audience wants to see, in terms of charisma in a character. The important thing is that they feel the character is real and interesting.

Traditional vs Digital

Traditional

Traditional animation is an animation technique where each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation in cinema until the invention of computer animation.  Traditionally animated productions similar to now would start with a storyboard, which allows the animation team to plan the flow of the plot and the composition of the imagery. A soundtrack is then recorded featuring music, sound effects and dialogue performed by the voice actors. Often an animatic would then be created to give the animators and directors work out any timing and script issues. Model sheets of each character were made, to gives looks from a variety of angles and a variety of facial expressions. In the traditional animation process, animators will begin by drawing sequences of animation on sheets of transparent paper often using colour pencils.  The drawings are then transfrerred to a clear cel sheet and are inked & painted. Each of these cels is then stacked in sequencial order and photographed using a special animation camera. Then lastly the photographs sent in for development and the film is created.

An example of a classical film that uses the traditonal animation method is Walt Disney's "The Aristocats" (1970)-

URL- http://www.listal.com/viewimage/4351213

Digital 

Nowadays, most films and cartoons are created using a 100% computer animation process. Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. Computer generated animations are more controllable than other more physically based processes.  To create the illusion of movement, an image is displayed on the computer monitor and repeatedly replaced by a new image that is similar to it, but advanced slightly in time. For 2D vector animations, the rendering process is the key frame illustration process, while tweened frames are rendered as needed.

An example of a typical Digital animated television series is Pendleton Ward's "Adventure Time"-

URL- http://animatedtv.about.com/od/picturegallerie1/ig/-Adventure-Time--Pictures/Princesses.htm

Applications

Vine

"Vine" is a mobile application by Twitter  that enables its users to create and post short video clips. Each video clip has a maximum time of 6 seconds, and can be shared on a variety of social networking services. Vine was founded by Dom Hofmann and Rus Yusupov in June 2012.

GifBoom

"GifBoom" is a mobile application that allows users to take a series of pictures, add effects, texts, and comments then share it on gifboom and other social networking websites.