Ed Benedict

Gene Deitch

Walt Peregoy

Walt Peregoy was a color and background artist for Disney. Famous for his color concepts for Disney's 101 Dalmations. I am mostly fascinated with his background designs as they are very modern looking and rely heavily on texture in combination with geometric shape and color.
His style is very effective in depicting any certain mood or ambience of a place, as well as describing the place itself for that matter.

Amanda Visell

I came across this illustrator whose work I fell in love with straight away. It is the very style that I am hoping to achieve in my final animation. Lovely texture use.

Check her out at http://www.amandavisell.com

Second Semester and My Project Statement!

Second semester has officially begun today. I feel rejuvenated and fresh and ready to go! We are to work for nine weeks on a final, self-directed major project.
I am to produce three animated spots produced for broadcast. These will be an educational series on safety and general awareness of the world around us. Aimed mostly at small children, each episode will deal with things as simple as road safety and as complex as environment awareness. The animation will be heavily character driven and will employ the modern style of cartoons from the 1950s and 1960s, inspired heavily by the studios from the likes of UPA (United Productions America) and Terrytoons.

Chris Harding

Here is an independent animator who uses Flash and After Effects to achieve a similar 50s animation aesthetic.

Learning Self Defence


Make Mine Shoebox

Disney's Turn

Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom



A Symposium of Popular Songs (1962)

Part 1



Part 2



The first animation is Disney's attempt at mimicking the UPA style. Whilst the traditional Disney style is still present, there has clearly been experimentation with the character design and backgrounds. It looks more modern and hip and has a more jazzy vibe to it.
"A Symposium of Popular Songs" is Disney's later experimentation with paper and stop motion. Again, it has bits that are traditionally drawn which I think are unnecessary but the stop motion part looks wonderful. It also looks modern and stylish. Its nice to know that Disney was capable of other things besides clinging to their trademark look.

UPA (United Productions of America)

Gerald McBoing Boing



The Unicorn in the Garden



Jot



Christopher Crumpet



Rooty, Toot, Toot



A collection of classic UPA cartoons. They were the benchmark company of the 1950s. Disney even tried to emulate their work.

Fyodor Khitruk - The Story of One Crime

Part 1

Part 2

This animation is probably from the 60's and its from one of the most famous Russian animators in Russia. He has a very unique and modern looking style which is quite recognizable, if you've seen any of his other work. It appears to me that this animation probably has been made using the paper-cut out technique. I really like the juxtaposition of solid color and photos. Creates a nice contrast.

Flebus (1957)

This film was produced by Terrytoons and was directed by Ernest Pintoff. It is considered one of the most modern looking cartoons from the studio. Everything in it is kept to the ultimate simplicity. The shapes, the characters as well as the narrative. The animation is quite limited but quite effective. Clearly, the "less is more" approach works every time.

Stop Driving Us Crazy!

This film was made by a company called Creative Arts Studio and was commissioned by the Methodist Church. It preaches that 'reckless driving is a sin'. I really like the pace, the character designs and the jazzy music of the animaton.

Working Dollars

 

I'll begin posting some of my inspiration for my final project. This is John Sutherland's "Working Dollar" a kind of educational animation teaching about economy. There is a particular charm to this, as it is so old.

Research: Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali

It is just not possible to venture into the world of dreams and other realities without mentioning Salvador Dali. Surrealist artists were generally influenced by dreams, but Dali was one of the main Surrealists and more is known about him. It is a fact, that he was interested in dreams and dream analysis, he was particularly drawn to the various theories put forward by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

Research: Jerzy Kucia

Jerzy Kucia
An interesting animator from Poland. Very hard to find on the internet.
Uses a lot of dreamy ethereal sort of images. Has a unique way handling live footage and making it look like moving poetry.

Research: Rorschach's Inkblot Test

Rorschach's Inkblot Test
Is a method of psychological evaluation. Pschologists use thistest to determine and examine personality characteristics and emotional functioning of the patients. Psychiatrists show a series of different ink blots to the patients and ask them what they associate each image with. From the patient's response they determine the outcome. The system itself appears controversial because there is not a sure way to determine a person's feelings and personality, but I am fascinated with the way the inkblots look. The smears are very symmetrical and very unique. There can be no identical ink blots. The music video for Gnarls Barkley's video "Crazy" looks to have been also influenced by these tests. I want to use this too in my video.

Research: Ferenc Cako

Stone - Ferenc Cako
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferenc_Cako
Ferenc Cako is an amazing Hungarian animator who works with sand. Animation with sand is very versatile and is very useful when showing a metamorphosis of some kind. Images can be made and distorted esily with one blow through a straw. Judging by the imagery in this animation piece, I beleive that he may have been influenced by Andre Kertesz's photography also.
He was a principal part of my research because he uses the images I want already in motion apart from Kertesz who's are just still images.

Research: Andre Kertesz

Andre Kertesz is a surrealist photographer whose aesthetic I like very much and wanted to incorporate the distorted psychodelic style into my work. I think it add nicely to my dream like feel of the piece. This was possibly made using bent mirrors but today it is achievable with programs like photoshop and effects in After Effects.

Storyboards

And the one that didn't fit.

Storyboards

More storyboards.

Storyboards

Here are the initial storyboards for my posthuman project. The working and the final title for my movie is "Falling Into Sleep". As you can see my method used here is photoshop manipulation and distortion of live footage.

Treatment

The film is an abstract piece that uses the one footage of a person falling throughout the movie with occasional cuts to still images. The colors are slightly desaturated.
The mood is dreamy and in some bits even hallucinogenic.
It explores what it means to be a Posthuman. The sequence examines living in an alternative existence and going through portals and the possibility of entering other realms. Examples of these can be time travel, dreams or hallucinations.
Posthuman is what I understand as ‘beyond human’ and in this case other realities.The nature of the piece is such that it is open to any personal interpretations from the viewers, thus being abstract.
The piece starts off with opening titles.
Followed by imagery that is all distorted and out of focus to portray a kind of surreal effect that is reminiscent of Andre Kertesz’s photography or Ferenc Cako’s sand animations. Then cuts to several stills of colorful abstract images. Later on the original footage undergoes a metamorphosis and the images are distorted to create a mirrored and kaleidoscopic look. 

The idea is to have the images look real and surreal at the same time for a kind of out of this world aesthetic. The concept of a person falling is significant because it symbolizes travel between the worlds.
The end of the sequence returns to the original footage, only is played backwards to show the character's return to the original world she came from. The end titles begin to play.

Project 1: The Posthuman

Now back to some actual work. I've handed in my project not so long ago and now I am going to put up the documentation up.

To me the term 'Posthuman' is better described as 'Beyond Human'. I believe that all this craze with robots in sci-fi movies is a little unrealistic although it may well be entertaining. I think as humans we tend to go too far in terms of advancing but then we get intimidated and eventually yearn for simpler times. Thats my opinion anyway.

I am therefore much more interested in exploring parallel or alternative existence. Such as our subconscious, dreams , time travel or a world that we do not yet know of. And the questions to ask are: Do we change in any way in this new world or do we look and feel the same? Is time still a part of our lives? Is it real? Is it tangible? Or is it just fabricated by our mind? 

All of these questions are worth asking, but when we ask about change, metamorphosis of  a human being automatically becomes a subtopic for our discussion and is being explored visually throughout the movie.

Originally, my theme was going to explore the afterlife of a human and had this idea of a person falling to their eventual life end, further emphasized by images like broken glass, clouds, etc.

However, I couldn't find a model to play the part and so I played it myself. After seeing the footage and putting it into the afterlife context, I became superstitious. So I changed the topic and was still able to use the same footage and the idea of mixing footage with still images. I was happy that my initial concept was flexible enough to accommodate any last minute changes.

Semi-Permanent

A big hello to people! Man, I haven't been here a long time. Well time to make amends and start posting. Anyway, before I start posting all my assignment documentation I have to write about Semi-Permanent. It is a design conference that I went over to Sydney for a couple of weeks ago and it was so worth every penny!

Here is my personal review of all the speakers:

Lifelounge  

Brilliant creative individuals with a great sense of humor. Had a lot of useful tips along the way such as "not being afraid to say no to jobs" and "Working for government is better" and also had an interesting philosophy that they showed on a triangle based diagram. Basically, it showed that there a three points that make up a finished product and no one or two points can exist on their own without the third. The three ingredients to a perfect submission were fast, cheap, and good quality. So the theory is that if the submission is fast and cheap then its not going to be very good quality and if its good quality and fast chances are that its not going to be cheap and so on. Very inspiring!

Ben Frost

I did not really like this guy. Had a very dated and cliche "sex, drugs and rock n' roll" kind of attitude. He deliberately makes art that is controversial because this way he thinks that he is addressing the important issues in society. His style is mainly collages of different examples of popular culture and arranged in a provocative composition. I feel like I've seen something like this before - a kind of punk street pop art. I could be wrong but his presentation left me feeling that he makes protest art for the sake of fame because I don't know whether he is truly protesting against anything.

 

The Directors Bureau

I really liked this presentation. I was already looking forward to this one because I found out that the Coppolas are involved with this studio. And I really love what this family produces, particularly the work of Sofia Coppola. Lost In Translation is one of my favorite movies.

My favourite video in the line of work of the Directors Bureau was also hers which was the video for the band AIR "My Playground Love" clip. What I like about the Directors Bureau is that they stick to basics and are able to turn it into a unique style. I mean, most of the videos appear to involve just basic, clean, editing and that alone seems to do the trick. 

The speaker also had some amusing stories on how they injured their clients on numerous occasions. 

Debaser

I was not fully tuning in. The presentation itself was a little less entertaining, but it was still worth a listen for the sake of the information. It became a little more interesting when they began to talk about creating manual and tangible images. I really admire designers that put in the extra effort into creating original art and often that means switching off the computer and picking up a paintbrush, a pair of scissors and a glue stick! The DIY is definitely a trend and i am loving it.

Sixty40

OK, now these guys are Australian and they are about character development and putting animation into live action and they are kind of a multimedia design studio.

Their showreel  was impressive but I would like it more if they used less special effects and mainstream trends in their designs. I guess I like it when less is more - I find it more effective and sleek. I liked their idents for the Comedy Channel but really disliked their 3d video ringtone designs with the crazy bear. I don't know maybe its because I see the ad for it all the time on TV and it annoys me but I think it is also the character designs. They appear a little aggressive looking to me.  

Spencer Platt

Spencer Platt was the last speaker for the first day and my, what a speaker to finish the day on!

He is a photojournalist who specializes on war photography. He is particularly famous for his photo of the September 11th Attacks. He was an excellent speaker and very inspiring. I always wanted to know how people make the decisions to devote their lives to working in potentially life threatening situations. How do they develop thick skin like that? How do they maintain their sanity while they are surrounded by death? Platt's answer was "I just knew I was meant to do it" and "This is my calling". And also, "Somebody has to do it". Truly Inspiring. He also made a point about war photography not always being about death it is also about life. It is possible to have happy photos in a war zone because people keep on living despite wars going on in the background. He is a true hero in my eyes and not because he risks his life but because of his attitude to life and the responsibility he feels to deliver the truth that he witnesses to the masses.

Second Day

Alex Trochut

Amazing Spanish guy who does magic with typography! Never before have I been interested in typography until I've seen what this guy can do. His process involves developing various typographic systems. It could involve Gothic, Romantic, and Islamic type combinations. He sometimes mocks-up type with real life objects such as a VHS tape. He has amazing attention to detail and goes through a painstaking process of getting everything perfect but this eventually yields fantastic results. At initial glance, his work looks more like a piece of elaborate graphic and then when you look closer you notice the intricate and unique forms that make up the font. Five Stars and an A+ to this guy!

Anthony Lister

Worst public speaker award! He did not really bother speaking actually. He came out on stage in a weird way with a guy dressed in a Spiderman costume whom he shot down with a toy gun. After he just stood there while letting his slideshow with his art do the talking. 

My impression: What the????? People in the auditorium began to leave in disgust in the middle of his performance. That was one sorry sight to have seen! But the thing is it was not as if he did not have anything to say. When people started to ask him questions he was able to answer. From his answers I found that he is interested in modern mythology. He equates the process of watching TV to a type of religious experience because it is a zen like situation. His style is heavily influenced by comic books, misguided models such as ex-criminals (Chopper) and contemporary heroes. If only he spoke about all that in greater detail and worked it into a proper presentation. Oh well.

Superfad

Was a nice change-up from the last speaker. This is what I call eye candy. Superfad is a motion graphics company and an awesome one too. The speaker was entertaining and took us through the process of responding to a brief. He stressed the importance of storyboards, treatments, animatics and motion tests which was good for us all aspiring designers to hear. The speaker showed an excellent showreel along the way.

Amy Sol

Amy Sol was next. I was also looking forward to her speech, as I already was a fan of her slightly surreal, romantic style. She seemed a bit nervous but it was fascinating to hear about her process. She works mainly on wood. Begins by layering forward from the vanishing point. First draws on vellum then transfers onto wood, marking out the composition first. Her wood of choice is pre-laminated, flat panels of Birch. Normally she spends 30-80 hours per painting. Very interesting.

North Kingdom

I read about this studio in one of the previous Computer Arts issues so I was aware of their work prior to the conference. It is a Swedish studio specializing in web design and interactive experiences. Unfortunately the speaker was not a very good public speaker, so the presentation was a little bit boring in some places. But again their folio was fantastic.

Pixar

Well, Pixar was for dessert. They were the highlight of the whole event and of course no disappointments here. Their public speakers are always top notch. I know because I went to AGIdeas here in Melbourne a couple of years ago where Pixar also was represented but that time it was by Ralph Eggleston the guy behind the Oscar winning short For The Birds.

Last year I also went to the Pixar exhibition at ACMI which was also very inspirational and educational. Anyway, back to Semi-Permanent. The speaker here was an animator who was  involved in films such as Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo and Pixar's latest Oscar winning gem, Ratatouille. The speaker went into a lot of detail explaining the difference between two departments the Art Department and the Technical Department. How they do color scripts for the mood and concept drawings with a sense of lighting. Along with the character design, model packets, copy tests and shot production. No words, just super cool!

For more Semi-Permanent info check out http://www.semipermanent.com

O Clone (Brazilian Telenovella "The Clone")

Now that I am thinking in terms of abstract motion graphic pieces, I have been collecting some sources to draw my inspiration from. My mother is really into learning different languages so we happen to have the Brazilian Portuguese channel Globo. The channel is known for its various entertainment programing but its mainly famous for its Telenovellas. A Telenovella is a form of soap opera that runs for about 100 - 200 episodes. They are very popular in South America and for some reason the Brazilian ones seem less cheesy!

Anyway, enough with the rambling but straight to the point. A few years ago, Globo shown the series called O Clone, or in English, "The Clone".  It has an interesting plot in the way that it questions various modern issues and also those of posthuman world.

Here is the synopsis: 

The series has two storylines. One, that explores the impossible love between son of a magnate, Lucas and a Muslim of Moroccan descent Jade and the other story deals with Leandro, the unknowing clone of Lucas, growing up and trying to find the truth from his surrogate mother and her husband Augusto about his origins. It begins with Lucas' twin brother crashing in a helicopter, but their godfather Albieri (who is a genetics professor) cannot cope with the death very well and so he starts to experiment with cloning after doing a biopsy on Lucas' mole. But the eggs get mixed up and get artificially inseminated by mistake. The woman who chose to become inseminated, is unaware of the fact that she, in fact, became a surrogate mother to a clone. The novela progresses to see the clone growing up in a different environment from his father/brother Lucas, which makes him a totally different individual, even though they both share the same genes and even the same thoughts and interests. They later even begin competing over the love of the same woman. 

While the plot has relation to our general project theme, I am particularly interested in the title sequence for the series, which can work as an experimental piece alone. I love the way they have represented the theme of cloning in such a simple yet beautiful way. It has a bit of performance art flavor to it and I love the way that the human form was used through out the clip.

Sorry for the abysmal quality!

Committing to a genre

I missed last week's class, due to not feeling well. So I'll need to ask around and do a little catching up. In the meantime, I have been doing some thinking in regards to my project and have managed to commit myself to a genre and begin development. I decided to go along with the abstract piece because I can allow myself more artistic experimentation and expression and it is easier to accomplish in the timeframe that has been set. The second idea with the more traditional take on animation would require more time and more skills with After Effects and I need more practice with the program before I attempt something so ambitious. I would like to try out some effects like speed variation (from slow to fast and vise versa) to add interest to my piece I would also like to experiment with camera movements. The nature of the movement within the piece is going to be organic and fluid movements are going to suggest the process of change, evolution and simply time passing by. So to sum up, the motion graphic piece is going to show the process to becoming posthuman.

Project 1 - Animating the Posthuman

Ok now, the Posthuman is the theme of our animation/video that we have to make for the first project of the semester. I am not really into sci-fi so this is a little bit out of my comfort zone, but in a way its good because it is a challenge. We were shown different videos dealing with the theme, such as Akira and the infamous Chris Cunningham's music video for Bjork. 

The technological theme and robots do not interest me, in fact, I regard it as being a type of cliche for what science fiction stands for. There is just too much of it. 

I like to interpret the term Posthuman as 'after human' or 'beyond human'. 

These are the subjects that interest me:

• Human Cloning
• Metamorphosis/Evolution
• The Afterlife

I have currently two ideas - one being an abstract piece that represents evolution and the metamorphosis of the human being using an ordinary white stretchy fabric and some footage layered over it and using various video effects for visual interest. 

Working title - Homomorphosis

The second idea is to make a collage/2d  educational animation that mimics the style of the old 1950s animation such as the old UPA educational shorts. The piece will question the ethics of human cloning and how will the world be if everybody were the same.  

Working title - Double Trouble

Ist Lecture

The start of a new academic year began with the introduction of the Multimedia and Digital Arts Unit, followed by a showcase of various motion graphics works. The lecturers Mark and Troy took turns in showing their favorites. Some of it was hard to watch because of the frequently flashing graphics and  loud and repetitive sound effects, it hurt my eyes a little bit. Others were good and I particularly liked the examples from the studio MK12, as a lot of it represented the type of thing that I aspire to achieve. While the graphics were bold and innovative, I also liked the fact that most of the pieces made a reference of some sort to the past, for example, in the Ultralove Ninja video there are obvious references to the James Bond title sequences in their use of the silhouette footage while the general colour palette of the video belongs to the early 90s era.  Have a look for yourself : www.mk12.com

And finally the other video that I really liked was a 3d piece executed more in the style of a traditional animation fairy tale - A Gentleman's Duel by Tim Miller. I felt that this one went for a little long in some places, but still an interesting story and talk about eye candy! 

 

Hi. I welcome you and myself to my new blog!