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