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.