Principles 28/3

Final project for todays assessment. Thank god that is over.I accidentally copied over my turnaround with an older file and so I had to start it all over again last night. Stressful night, but I survived! Im glad i didnt leave everything to complete last minute, otherwise it would have been a real disaster.

Drawing 26/3

Using photoshop to create an environment, following composition rules. Trying to create the clouds at first was a bit overwhelming until I got into the rhythm of it. I really like how the foreground clouds turned out, although I think I should have used a lighter purple maybe. Perhaps some smudging would have helped make a cloud texture as well?

Digital 28/3

Using lightroom to edit photos. More of the same that I learnt last year. These photos were from last week, and I had actually edited them in class last week while waiting for everyone to return.

This last image was playing around with adjustment layers and masking to tweak the colours into the crazy side.

Digital 14/3

Using popular movie posters and identifying what composition rules they have used. Definitely tricky picking out the main colours for this exercise, but practice makes perfect.

Storyboard 27/3

Looking at my poster, what stands out is compared to the chair, the rest of the background looks a little plain. It definitely provides a contrast but I'm not sure the focus is on the characters like it should be. I probably should have shrunk the perspective so that the chair is smaller, and the kitty and ghost are bigger. Alternatively, made the chair etc even bigger. The line where the back wall meets the floor is too high for the current view angle. Also maybe have the chair centered as well, so the chair arm lines both point to the same vanishing point as the picture frame and bookshelf.

RIP, no storyboard licence for my profile. Good thing I still have it at home, and have an idea of what I'm doing. At least I can get a visual refresher from the tutorials.

Storyboard Pro

General Preferences - terminology style to live action, turn on auto save (advanced tab), turn up the Undo levels.

Importing a script, with captions. Storyboard tab in palette area, click on the far right icon and import caption. Find the text file to import. Copy appropriate parts of the script in the panel tab boxes.

Make the backgrounds a lighter grey so make your characters stand out in front. Uses less computing power than changing the layer opacity. Using the light bulb will fade out all layers except for the one you are working on. There is a draw behind option to help with colouring in the character without covering the lines.

Use keyframes to adjust camera position in each shot in the timeline view. Keyframes are restricted to the shot they are created in. Adjust the playtime of a shot, adjust the right hand side or type it in manually in the Panel tab. Hold alt to adjust the timing of a shot without affecting the total time of the animatic.

Timeline workspace whenever doing anything that involves timing and movement. Make sure the running man is turned on in the layer that you want to animate.

Screen Arts 26/3

German Expressionism

World war one, Germany was defeated and the new government was known unofficially as the Weimar Republic. Wanting to fix their image, the government gave money to Universum-Film AG which enabled them to compete with other countries in the film industry. This started Germanys "golden age of cinema" from 1919 til 1933 when Adolph Hitler took power. 1919-1931 was the era of the German Expressionist film.

Context
Expressionism was the broad term for an art movement in the early 20th century. The opposite of Impressionism(surface reality), Expressionism is about human perception and emotion. German films used stylised set design and shadowy lighting.

Style
Expressionism in film used artificial set design elaborate costumes and unnatural makeup to create stylised worlds. They feature bold contrasts of bright highlights and dark shadows. Key characteristics are distorted settings, unnatural compositions, nonparallel lines, a moving camera and highly stylised acting. The protagonists often experience extreme psychological states. Key themes: madness, criminality and the fracturing of identity.

The most famous expressionist film is Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari(1920). Used lots of weird angles, no natural light although painted to look like light beams, with shadows. (how weird, why not just use real light?) The expressionist look is popular with Hollywoods dramas horrors and film noir. The first vampire movie was Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror(1922) the original dracula story. Metropolis by Fritz Lang is one of the most influential sci-fi movies of all time. It employed vast sets, thousands of extras and special effects to create its two worlds. It almost bankrupt the UFA company. Influenced  Ridley Scott's Blade Runner(1982) and Tim Burton's Batman(1989). Tim Burton is so quirky! I love Nightmare Before Christmas, the claymation, weird twisted world and twisted take on christmas appeal to my inner weirdo.

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari





Interesting mix of drawn art images, and live action - no dialogue apart from written messages on screen and an eerie backing track. Rolling kettle drum and heavy bass provides a constant drone to the background, while a mixture of electric guitar and piano create the drama. This style of movie definitely makes it feel like it is dragging on longer than it really is. There is a lot of unnatural walls, and angles used by the director, and a lot of black everywhere. The old guy(Dr Caligari) reminds me of Danny Devitos Penguin in Batman Returns.

Principles 25/3

More expressions done, 1 more to go and then tidy up and I can cross this off the to-do list. I think I will fill in the hair, and remove the stroke lines for animating purposes. I alsoneed to adjust some of the chin positions to match the current expressions a little better as well. I really like how the eye gradient has turned out, probably as close to metallic silver as I can get.

Screen Arts 25/3

Montages and the different approaches between film-makers.

Sergei Eisenstein

Eisenstein was highly influenced by war propaganda and the treatment of workers in the early 1900s. He used contrasting clips and alternated between them for contrast and to create thought, and confusion in his viewers.

Dziga Vertov

Vertov was a cameraman who used a range of film techniques still used today, to create a fast paced style that influenced documentary realism

Vsevolod Pudovkin

Pudovkin focused more on the context of his footage as opposed to the actors. He used his camera lens as the eye of the observer for his films.

Screen Arts 25/3

Social Animals. A documentary on the "Instagram" generation from the viewpoint of 3 different people. An urban explorer photographer, a wannabe model and a midwest country girl and their rise, fall and redemption with instagram popularity. A lot of the film just reaffirmed how fickle teenagers can be, but it also highlighted just how easy it could be to be exposed to unwanted attention. I guess the trouble is finding the line between sharing your life with people, and sharing too much. The only fool proof way to avoid it is to not share at all. The story about the country girl provided a first hand insight as to the affects of bullying and how even a throwaway comment can cause someone to make that final decision to try and end their life. The photographer got popular, went against his group of friends and lost it all. he got punished for trying to make something of his life and break the status quo. The aspiring model summed up the "perfect" life quite nicely by saying that it felt boring, because nothing ever happened. Definitely had no expectations gonig nto it, but I found this doco quite informative and actually hit home with a few points as well.

Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBc_C3sNrbo

Research Muybridge, Marey, Farocki 25/3

Brainstorming ideas for each area of focus from the article breakdown last week.

Identify and analyse the contribution of Muybridge, Marey and Farocki to the development of film, gaming and animation in Anselm Franke's 2014 article, A Critique of Animation.

Research Uncanny Valley 25/3

Brainstorming topic ideas.

Page 6 para 1 - A Critique of Animation by Anselm Franke

The solution is represented in the image of motion-capture technology. Harun spoke of how digital animation hit a limit (not unlike the “winter of artificial intelligence”) when it tried to reconstruct the human walk (again referring us back to Marey). It always looks mechanical, and never organically alive. Not only is it cheaper to use real actors in motion capture than to produce characters from scratch in digital animation, it is also the way to ensure that technology today has always-already been pushed beyond the uncanny valley, because that valley itself is now bridged by the investment of life into machines. In augmented realities, “intelligent environments,” and “self-learning systems,” the organic and the machine have formed intricate networks. Living beings now supplement the machine and provide it with that part of animate intelligence which to date it has not been able to (re)produce by itself.[BP1] 

---

 [BP1]How motion capture technology has provided a relatively cheap, quick solution to creating “live” robots – thereby crossing the threshold of the uncanny valley.  We treat the AI created using motion capture as having the same lifeforce and naturalistic movements as us – because they are based on us.  We also can allow the interaction between machine and human with ‘intelligent environments’ and ‘self-learning systems’.  Blurring between inanimate and animate intelligence. Although inanimate intelligence (AI, computer systems, etc) have still not been able re reproduce themselves.

Research Direct Quotations 25/3

Exercise one - Integrating quotes into sentences

1 - The economy is looking much brighter.
"Millions of new jobs are emerging. Things are really on the upswing." (Frank Rank, writer in an online magazine)

Solution - Writer Frank Rank believes that "Things are really on the upswing." He contends that "Millions of jobs are emerging each day" to help brighten the economy. (Rank, 2017, p8)

APA Reference:
Rank, F. (2017, March 30) The economy for dummies. The Economist. Retrieved from http://theeconomist.com

2 - It is more important than ever for Americans to forge a common identity.
"We need an identity that binds us together." (Frank Hairpiece, from a chapter in an edited book)

Solution - Forging a common identity as Americans "binds us together" claims Frank Hairpiece. It is more important than ever because "We need an identity." (Hairpiece, 1995, p. 304)

APA Reference:
Hairpiece, F. (1995) Improving american relations. In G, Homeowner (Eds.), The American People (pp. 300-312). Oxford, England: Blackwell

3 - Animal rights represent the next stage in human moral development.
"If we don't change our ways, future generations will judge us harshly. We need to achieve a higher state of consciousness and empathy." (Yoshi Om, from a This American Life podcast)

Solution - "Future generations will judge us harshly." argues Yoshi Om. The next stage in human moral development is animal rights. He asserts "We need to achieve a higher state of consciousness and empathy." (Om, 2016)

APA Reference:
Om, Y. (2016, April 1). Animals and Us [Audio Podcast]. Retrieved from: http://wwwyoshiom.com


Exercise Two - Structure sentences to integrate quotes more elegantly.

Violent movies are popular for all kinds of surprising reasons. It is well known that they appeal mostly to teenagers. Holman Jenkins writes a column for the Wall Street Journal. He states that, “ teenagers swarm to horror flicks so the boys can demonstrate their manly unflappability and girls can demonstrate their vulnerable desirability. Boys and girls who fulfil these roles are rated as more sexually desirable than their peers” (2013, para.6). So perhaps horror films do not cater to a taste for violence, but rather to the desire to show off before the opposite sex.

Sociologists argue about whether or not violent television creates more violence in society. But maybe this strict cause-and-effect misses the point. “Sex and violence-drenched entertainment can desensitize a whole society. It can drag us down to the point where nothing is morally unacceptable, where nothing makes us blush. What happens to an unblushing society? Central Park joggers get raped and beaten into comas. Sixth-graders sleep around. Los Angeles rioters burn down their neighbourhoods and murder their neighbours. The Mendez boys blow off their parents’ heads.” Jeff Jacoby wrote this in the Boston Globe (2013, p.113). The point is that by overcoming our inhibitions, we lose an important protection against some of the terrible things that people are capable of.

Solution:

Violent movies are popular for all kinds of surprising reasons. It is well known that they appeal mostly to teenagers. Writer Holman Jenkins postulates that, “teenagers swarm to horror flicks so the boys can demonstrate their manly unflappability and girls can demonstrate their vulnerable desirability.”(Jenkins, 2013, para.6). So perhaps horror films do not cater to a taste for violence, but rather to the desire to show off before the opposite sex.

Sociologists argue about whether or not violent television creates more violence in society. But maybe this strict cause-and-effect misses the point. “Sex and violence-drenched entertainment can desensitize a whole society." Jeff Jacoby asserts. "Central Park joggers get raped and beaten into comas. Sixth-graders sleep around. Los Angeles rioters burn down their neighbourhoods and murder their neighbours.” (Jacoby, 2013, p.113). The point is that by overcoming our inhibitions, we lose an important protection against some of the terrible things that people are capable of.

Principles 21/3

Working on expressions again, I have started the final headshots for my expressions now, after finally deciding on an eye type for my character. Im unsure if I will keep the same head shape or mix it up, see how I am going for time really I think. Its gonna be a busy week for me for sure.

Digital Media 21/3

All about using the camera. Same old same old. This is the third time Ive been through this training session with Chris so not much to learn, just refreshing the basics. Making me wish the weather would clear up and the Sun get busy again so I can go back out for Aurora pics at Oreti.

Drawing 19/3

Self portrait using the mirror, and drawing a classmate. I like the front on view better than the 3/4, something about the perspective i think. Maybe its just cos the front on is closer to being finished that the others. Moving subjects are definitely more difficult to draw!

Research 18/3

More in depth analysis of the anselm franke article by our tutor

Principles 18/3

Working on expressions, trying to find the right eyes for her face. I am leaning towards the eyes with the anime style(like with storyboarding) for simplicity again, although the ones in the bottom middle dont annoy me too much either. Still taking too much time deciding on things I should have come up with already.

References to help me with drawing faces, face angles and simplifying her hairstyle for animating.

Storyboarding 20/3

Final poster for my first assessment. I really love how the ghost has turned out! I think the anime style face definitely represents the style of cartoon i wanted for my ghost, and I think the range of expressions i can get with the simple style will help convey how mischievous she is. Im uncertain about the background blur, I was trying to keep the focus on the characters almost like a Bokeh but Im not sure if it works or just makes the image look too contrasty. Im happy with the final screenplay as well, and thanks to Ruby separating out the shots, I can definitely picture it in my head now. Next step, thumbnails!

Screen Arts 19/3

Soviet Montage

1917, 2 revolutions happened in Russia that set in motion political and social changes that led to the formation of the Soviet union. Civil unrest caused by government corruption, food shortage and world war one led to a revolt that forced Nikolai II out. Months later the new government was overthrown by Vladimir Lenin. The revolution meant there was huge demand for propaganda. Post revolution, film makers experimented with footage from old films. Lenin believed film could instruct the illiterate masses.

Lyle Kuleshov studied the techniques of hollywood directors, particularly D.W Griffith, and introduced cross cutting and montage into Russian cinema. He used the archives of old silent movies to cut up for his experiments, sacrificing the film in the process. Kuleshov found that ppl react differently to a shot depending on what images surrounded it.

Sergei Eisensteins innovative film style was influenced by the culture that emerged after the russian revolution. he designed propaganda posters to keep moral up whilst in the red army. He attended Kuleshovs workshop. his first film in 1925 Strike, spliced images of striking workers being attacked, with a bull getting slaughtered, suggesting the workers are being treated like cattle. This meaning only arises after the editing. Film 2 The battleship Potemkin(1925) was a government commisioned film to commemorate the civil unrest in 1905. (a year of strikes and demonstrations against the government, with the government retaliating by killing the demonstrators)

Eisensteins Methods of Montage

• Metric – Based purely on timing / number of frames
• Rhythmic – Cutting for continuity or by the content / movement within the frame
• Tonal – Includes the tone of shot (lighting / shapes / shadows). The content of the visuals influence the emotional response
• Overtonal – Combination of Metric, Rhythmic and tonal
• Intellectual – Where the above methods seek to evoke emotional responses, intellectual seeks to express ideas by creating relationships between opposing visual images

The lack of orientation conveys mental confusion and the loss of bearing of the people on the steps. The quick editing pace mirrors how our attention would jump from one perception to another in a state of panic. This shows the panic of the people. Time is extended by repetitive scenes to show how the events would feel longer to someone who was there.

Dziga Vertov worked as a cameraman. He coined the term Kino Eye. he believed the world is seen more clearly through the eye of the camera thus cinema should be real and truthful. Cut his film together using thematic connections or emotional effects. His frenetic montage style was unmatched until the era of the music video. His work influenced documentary realism in the 1960's. Man with a Movie Camera(1929) experimented with jump cuts, superimpositions, split screen, stop motion and camera angles. Soviet Toys(1924) was one of the earliest Russian animations. 

Vsevolod Pudovkin theorised that actors on screen dont really act, its their context that moves us. "The lens of the camera replaces the eye of the observer, and the changes of angle of the camera- directed now on one person, now on another, now on one detail, now on another- must be subject to the same conditions on those of the eyes of the observer"

He believed that montage operated differently from how Eisentein conceived it- that montage was a linkage of frames.

Editing Techniques according to Pudovkin

1. Contrast
2. Parallelism
3. Symbolism
4. Simultaneity (cross cut)
5. Leit Motif (recurring shot/scene associated with a person place or theme)

Screen Arts 18/3

NZ Film/Animator research

Choose a NZ film director/animator: Vincent Ward
Overview of their work: Vincent Ward is a travelling film-maker/artist who splits his time between NZ and Aussie. He has had films shown at Cannes film festival (Vigil, 1984, The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey, 1988 and Map of the Human Heart, 1993). He was also an executive producer on The Last Samurai.
How well was their work received in NZ?: He was awarded the NZ Order of Merit in 2007 for his contributions to NZ Film and number of awards he has received.
How well was their work received overseas?: He is considered one of NZ most famous film directors, with the Boston Globe naming him one of the worlds greatest image makers
Nominated for any awards?: 30 national and international awards including the 1999 Oscar for Best Visual Effects and nominated for the academy award for Best Art Direction also in 1999 (What Dreams May Come).

Retrieved: http://vincentwardfilms.com/vw/biography/

Research 11/3

APA referencing

Intext citation - used within essay/document

APA and essay handbook much better for referencing than OWLL website.
Reference must be indented correctly.

Homework Task

•         Who are Harun Farocki, Etienne-Jules Marey, Eadweard Muybridge? 

•         What are some of their well-known works of art? Describe them.

Harun Farocki is a german filmmaker whose work was a combination of documentary and found footage style that rode the line between art and cinema, with highly politicized messages. (Lissoni, A. 2016). He is known for Nicht löschbares Feuer (The Inextinguishable Fire) which is an aditprop film studying napalm in vietnam during the Vietnam war. This film used actual footage from a napalm manufactory. Der Ärger mit den Bildern (1973; “The Trouble with Images”) used all pre-made footage to explore the over use of images in tv news broadcasts.(Blumberg, N. Jan 2019)

Etienne-Jules Marey was a french physiologist who used multiple photographic exposures on a single plate to study movement in animals. (Editors. Mar 2019) His designs helped develop early cinema inc providing a foundation for Eadward Muybridge's studies of motion.

Eadward Muybridge was a key innovator in the 19th century using photograph series to study animals in motion. He is known for Animal Locomotion which is a book that contains 781 photographs made up from 20000 individual images, and was published in 1887. (Braun, M. 2010)

•         Find 3 more names used in this article.  (Anselm Franke must be one)

•         Who are they?  What are they known for?

Anselm Franke is the head of Visual Arts and Film at HKW in Berlin. He is known for several exhibitions between 2010 and current day. (https://dutchartinstitute.eu/page/1165/anselm-franke)

Erhard Schüttpelz is a professor at the University of Siegen in Germany. He pioneered concepts such as actor network theory, symmetrical explanations and boundary objects to media studies.(http://www.socialstudiesof.info/issi/)

Thom Andersen is a LA based teacher in Film and Video at the California Institute of the Arts. He is known for his short films in the 1960's and a 1hr documentary on Eadward Muybridge in 1974.(https://filmvideo.calarts.edu/faculty-and-staff/thom-andersen)

•         Find 10 unfamiliar words or terms from A Critique of Animation and define. 

•         You may need to use dictionaries, encyclopaedias (avoid Wikipedia!), or even guess its meaning from its use in the sentence.

1. hyperreal - (of artistic representation) extremely realistic in detail.
2. the complicated - anything whose operations can be calculated ie train timetables. (Schüttpelz)
3. the complex - ambiguous interactions  that have many layers of meaning and too many factors for a simulation.(Schüttpelz)
4. subsumption - The action of including or absorbing one thing in another.
5. dialectical - Concerned with or acting through opposing forces.
6. conflation - The merging of two or more sets of information, texts, ideas, etc. into one.
7. dialogic force - relating to or in the form of dialogue
8. Brechtian - Relating to or characteristic of the German playwright, producer, and poet Bertolt Brecht or his work.
9. reductionist - A person who analyses and describes a complex phenomenon in terms of its simple or fundamental constituents.
10. uncanny valley - The gap between artificial intelligence and actual human. this gap is what gives the "creep factor" when watching something that looks and acts human, but isn't quite human.

All definitions from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/ unless stated.

Braun, M. (2010). Eadward muybridge. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Blumberg, N. (January 5, 2019). Harun Farocki. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Harun-Farocki
Editors. (March 1, 2019). Etienne-Jules Marey. Encyclopaedia Brittanica.  Retrieved: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Etienne-Jules-Marey
Lissoni, A. (2016). Who is Farun Harocki. Retrieved: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/harun-farocki-13490

Principles of Animation 14/3

More poses, I am going to focus on walking/running now so I am ahead for the next stage.

Couple more pose ideas. I am noticing even in these few sketches, that i am feeling more comfortable with sketching a human and so i think my proportions are improving. Maybe I should do what michael suggests and draw her 1000 times! Haha a bit extreme to expect that in the next two weeks but maybe a goal for the end of semester.

Digital Media 14/3

Colour Theory

RGB = light, all colours together creates white, no colours is black.
CYMK = all three colours is black, no colours is white.

Colour wheels.


Saturation - intensity of colour, best for highlighting areas of interest
Value - brightness/darkness of a colour, use high contrast to draw attention

In a nutshell
-dont overdo it
-use them to guide the viewer
-use it to tell the story
-use it to change the mood
-draw attention to something

Colour Harmonies

1- Monochromatic - uses one colour, good for single subjects
2- Analogous - colours adjacent on the wheel, easy on the eyes, occurs in nature
3- Triadic - equally distant on the wheel, hard to pull off, best for cartoon/surreal scenes
4- Complimentary - opposing colours on the wheel, very popular, use one colour predominantly
5- Split Complimentary - similar to complimentary, only one side of the wheel is split into 2 choices
6- Tetratic(double complimentary) - two pairs of opposing colours, best used for foreground/background. never use 25% of each.