Project 3 – Surface

I had major problems with sound on this project, so in the end, unfortunately,there is none. This project was the first time I rotoscoped anything. It was very time consuming, but enjoyable.
I had some trouble figuring out how to export movies as images. once that was figured out, however, it was smooth sailing! (except sound)

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Project 3 Progress

Initially, I intended to follow this storyline quite closely. It was more of a narrative, where someone cuts their finger on a plant, then from the cut comes more flowers. I really like the idea of injury and healing: how something can happen to you, and mark you for the rest of your life. I think it relates very much to animation- how every action is marked.

I found it difficult to find a camera, and a location, so my narrative had to change.

Now, it is still focusing on an injury: a cut finger. blood spurts out and the victim, a little boy, is shown. He is only an outline. his tough act is accentuated with images of the boy and his father. blood runs down the image, but the boy doesnt cry. more images of him express his relationships to his friends and siblings. they are not overt, but it is not a big cut. In the end, the blood returns to the wound, and life continues as normal.

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Project 3 – Fixations

1. Anatomy & sketches

I am very interested in trying to replicate images of the human body. I am inspired by others’ renditions and artistic interpretations of it. there is something very satisfying about getting perspective and proportions correct.

2. Nature

The beauty that can be found in nature has been an inspiration to me. because this is such a vast example, I am focusing it on elements of natural lighting, and the weather.

Morning light can make any scene beautiful, and I find fog interesting in the way that is is something that you can never quite experience – no matter how close you try to come, it will never thicken.

3. Injury & Healing

The body’s ability to heal is very interesting to me. As a child I was always getting cuts and bruises and am glad that they have faded. I like the idea that a persons body can tell a story through its scars and imperfections obtained through the events and actions of their life. It is vaguely related to animation in the way that it tracks actions.

The imagery online is not what I would chose to represent in my video. again, I am less interested in looking at injuries than I am in the healing process. Because of that, I will not incorporate an image for this example.

4. Ghosts

Thinking back on my childhood, I cant help but remember the countless books I owned and read about ghosts. Maybe I just enjoyed being scared. I also enjoyed stories of the steps that people took to rid themselves of ghosts haunting them.

5. Foxes

Foxes have always been my favorite animal. at first they were the characters in stories that I secretly cheered for (even though they were often the villain) because of their intelligence and trickery. I love their curiosity, their wildness, and their mischievous demeanor.

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Notes on the Photocopier

These are some things I learned while using the photocopiers at york.

Figure out your frame rate (and everything else) before you start. You will save money, and have goals with each copy. Some animations can be achieved within the desired frame rate, but others will require more copies ex. darkening.

Copies are expensive. Load up your card and be conscious of your copies – this could get ugly.

Lightening only goes so far. Don’t waste time and money trying to go lighter if the shade hasn’t changed within 5 copies.

Have individual folders on hand for each series. As soon as you can, write a number corresponding to their position in the sequence on them somewhere. If you drop them, everything is ruined.

Making marks to help with alignment is useless. They warp with everything else, and no copy ever comes out the same.

Alignment will take a lot of time.

People will be mad at you (especially if they see you photocopying black pages repeatedly)

Enlarging the image, but maintaining the current page size is trouble.

You will kill a lot of trees, apologize in your own way, and try to recycle everything after.

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Project 2 – Count Down

I was thinking of playing with water in different states. (boiling, ice, melting, mist/steam, liquid…) I had the opportunity to play with melting ice in the last project, and think I learned enough tricks to help this go smoothly.

I would like to focus mostly on melting ice, since it is hands on and interesting to me. I am hoping to use food colouring, and make molds of numbers. some will stand alone and melt, others will be full of objects-released as the number melts, I hope to make one coloured ice number encapsulated within a larger block of ice.

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My initial idea to create my countdown with water and ice was exchanged for the opportunity to play with a photocopier.

I thought the idea of working with  a photocopy was very similar to animation. every change that is made can only be small, and is documented along the way. With roughly 20 images for each number, my initial plan was to project the copies onto the wall.

This became an issue for several reasons:

• once projected, the surface didnt look enough like a wall
• It was very hard to find locations where I could control the light and distance from the wall
• alignment was nearly impossible
• in all the frustration, the fun was lost and the message achieved by the wall projection was not worth the hassle

My next plan was to photograph the images on a cork bored. This backfired because the photocopier warps images more than i had planned, and my alignment markings were  completely unreliable.

I finally settled on scanning the images in. It ended up being the simplest way, and I am happy with the results. alignment is much simpler without a background to worry about, and the image is clear.

as for sound, I am recording sounds, playing them back and rerecording them to suit the theme of reproduction. as the sound is reproduced, it degrades in quality, much like the images.

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An incorporated older post (that I forgot to post) explaining the photocopying thought process:

The trouble so far has been to align everything, and to find a good wall in a place that I can control the lighting.

I tried different effects with the photocopier:

• darkening the image until the page is black
• crumpling up paper and slowly revealing the number
• moving the image as it is photocopied
• enlarging
• lightening (doesn’t work so well)
• copying, then overlaying another copy that has been moved

The rest will incorporate effects with the projector itself.

this is the result so far… though it is being re-shot tomorrow on a different wall with better alignment.

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Notes on working with Ice

Tips we discovered from working with ice!

Do not freeze anything in your favorite glass, it will expand and crack, no matter how much you wish for it not to.

Use a blow dryer, but either hold the ice as you heat it on a low setting, or aim at something else, and redirect the hot air. if you use a high heat, the ice will shift and be impossible to align later.

Melt ice on a grate, or surface that will allow for the water to drip, and put a bucket underneath. If you cant do this for some reason, buy a ShamWow to keep mopping up around the melting ice. Water on the floor=water damage=angry landlord and roommates.

Ice melts really slow. even with a blowdryer, take a picture every 30 seconds, or even wait a minute.

Don’t freeze anything  you care about. The ice will compact the object and maybe even dent its head in.

Try to freeze your object in ice that is relatively flat. The taller it is, the more likely it is that it will tip over as it melts. Good luck aligning that.

Most newer cameras have the ability to be controlled from the computer they are plugged into. This helps a lot with composition, and also diminishes the chances that you will knock something and ruin the shot.

Most of this is common sense, and we didn’t necessarily make these mistakes.

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Project 1 – FAWN

Emma and I plan to use the words: Play, Rotate, and Decay to create our video.

Our initial vision revolved around children playing, but it changed completely to a expression of the lack of play that we experience in our adult lives.

We used a toy fawn encapsulated in ice as a metaphor for the inaccessibility of play. as we edited the video, we found that our video could be edited to express a rediscovery of play. This new direction also worked with the sounds that we had been toying with.

we had multiple objects frozen, but to change the focus would be more confusing, so we left them out.

In the end, Emma and I edited the film and adjusted our sound just a little. It all turned out okay, but I think to do it again, I would cut some of the back & forth between the girl and the melting fawn at the end. The constant repetition seems to be pounding the fact that the two are related over your head.

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Project 1 – Sound

I had a lot of trouble with this sound project. Ive never worked with sound before, and had taken layering and subtleties for granted. This was our first attempt at displaying “play”

(file will be uploaded shortly)

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Exercise Two – Circles

Emma, Phil and I went around campus finding examples of circles. I think I am most proud of the third picture in, where you get a view of TEL blacked out by a vinyl sticker. Finding circles wasn’t hard, but working together to edit something was.

we tried to test out a lot of the transitions available, but it didnt turn out as nicely as that of other groups. I think I would rather edit it alone if I were to do it again, though it is difficult because in the end, it is only a slideshow.

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Exercise 3 – Everyday Sounds

Part A

OUTSIDE

Place: The balcony of my apartment

Time: 5:30 pm

• running water
• muffled bangs
• Birds
• dripping faucet
• cars directly below, and in the distance
• a plane in the distance
• glass on a table inside
• wind in trees
• low grumble of construction in the distance
• car horn
• door being slammed in the hall
• a baby crying/yelling
• footsteps
• the roll of the balcony door opening and closing
• voices from other balconies

Most noises were muffled through walls and floors. Outside noises, like cars, wind, and planes created a constant drone.

INSIDE

Place: the Student Center

Time: 4:00

• People talking
• girls distinct conversations
• tone from many voices
• spraying water/toilet flush
• shuts
• laughs
• clanging of trays
• footsteps
• cell phones
• things dropping on tables
• styrofoam opening
• clapping
• change being dropped
• rip of paper

Many of these sounds go unnoticed. The drone of voices is often considered an annoyance, when trying to communicate with others.

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Part B

Place: Student Center

Time: 4:00

In order to hear what people were saying, it helped to look in their direction, or angle my body towards them.

eavesdropping on more than one conversation made it very difficult to follow the content of the conversations. The background noise made it difficult to pull out each conversation to begin with.

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Part C

2 sounds that evoke an image

• a siren
• someone yelling

2 images that evoke a sound

• water falling
• hands clapping
  

2 sounds that provoke a thought

• music emokes thoughts of dancing
• laughing reminds of happy times
  

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