Artsvis 54

For this final project, I ended up changing the entire  storyline, since I somehow could not make a progress

with the previous storyline.

The finished project is about a woman who had firmly believed in everlasting love, and being betrayed by her lover after the marriage. She greatly suffers from her borken relationship, but utlimately decides to not let go of her hope, finding another love…That could be the real perpatual love…

Through this project, I wanted to portray the heaven and hell experienced by a vulnerable human being, who is so easily influenced by the relationship with the person one loves.

Also, I wanted to mention that eventhough people experinece hell in their relatioships, they eventually regain their hopes of finding a “real” heaven by finding another love.

I used some lyrics and sentences of my own for the background voice, talking about the woman’s thought and feeling about her belief in love.

For making this animation project, I used tablet and photoshop, and imovie at the end.

I used the image of Duke chapel, my rose cossage, ststue of an angel, flowers, a ring(found on website), and the shdow of a couple(Website found).  

For the transition, I either moved the image for each frame or draw in some transitional pictures for making the animation smooth.

It was composed total of 216 frames, and the length was 1min 50 secs.

 It took more than I expected, since I am not really good at utilizing computer.

However, I like the finished product and I learned a lot of helpful techniques that could be used for other art courses.

 

Here are the images that I have used for my collage in Berlin wall project. I used photoshop to express the images. In the background there is a wall that I have cut out piece by piece to make a wall on my collage which was laid out on the top layer. I had fun doing this!

I completely forgot to update the blog with my final video!

The clip turned out well and I’m really glad I used the “radiohead” song as the soundtrack. Stopmotion was definitely a difficult process but I think the photoshop/digital photography method worked out very well. I would like to experiment with more stopmotion animation techniques, maybe claymation, or a diaporama of landscape photos. This project made me realize how interested I am in the relationship of music and video. Choosing the audio was the most exciting part of the project and I tried to time my slide transitions along with the musical beats. It was very interesting to see how people responded to the survey, some peoples’ “hells” were other peoples’ “heavens” I would have liked to take more pictures around campus but I did not have enough time to incorporate all of those photos into the video clip.

listen to the full song! It’s reallly good!

I’ve attached clips from the story board.

The first things I thought of when I heard about this project where a number of different videos that I’d seen on youtube like Grizzly Bear’s new video for Ready, Able

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Puph1hejMQE

and a video of a Ukraine sand artist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOMgDbcA84A

From the beginning I knew I wanted to do a stop motion animation, but I wasn’t sure about what medium I was going to use. I knew I didn’t want to use clay, because while I think it looks great, I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied with the results of my efforts. I decided to do simple drawings and at first I was going to actually do the entire animation on a fridge using magnets and pieces of paper, but in the end I decided to just focus on the scraps of paper. I tossed around several different ideas for the theme and story and eventually decided to use Robert Frost’s Poem Fire and Ice as the focus for my animation.

To make my images for the animation I drew each frame on a square piece of paper that I had ripped by hand. I used a black sharpie and then a few colored pencils. When I had all of the pieces of paper ready I took a picture of every piece. I used a lamp in my room for good consistent light and put the pieces of paper on a black background.

Once I had all the images I uploaded them in Smith and added them to iMovie. I was worried that I would have a lot of trouble with actually making the movie, but I figure it all out after awhile and had the sequence and timing of all the images done pretty quick. I used an effect on the images which made the black background much darker and gave the pieces of paper a yellowish color and old look.

Getting the song I wanted and having it time with the video was definitely the hardest and most time consuming part of making the animation on the computer. I spent a lot of time working with one song and then switched in the end. I eventually found a program online to use to edit it the way I wanted and once I figured out the timing, I saved and added it to iMovie. After that I just exported it to Quicktime.

The finished animation is uploaded on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M16XwvERy1I

My original storyboard was on a scrap of paper and in boxes about 1/2 inch big, so for my final I redid it on a piece of computer paper.

I have finished my video and my board that were both a part of the final project. I have got to admit that this was my favorite project by far and I had a lot of fun doing this. I could have done the images more detailed but the story speaks for itself. Here is the youtube link and pictures!! Hope you enjoy as much as I did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGSUHKRL5uI

 

Random Post!

I’m in the Fred Burns Film Anim class, in which we did hand drawn animations and shot each frame with the Oxberry camera behind the BC.

Throughout the semester we worked on our final project, a one minute animation. And every once in a while we had to do an exercise to familiarize ourselves with animating techniques.

Here’s a video with my exercises! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS_8-aJdbVM

The actual class final projects will be screened at the Student Film Showcase this Friday (tomorrow!) at 5pm in White Lecture Hall. I’ll post my final project sometime this weekend on youtube.

Sadly, Fred is planning to retire soon, but he hasn’t made an official decision yet! So if he offers it next fall, you should definitely take it if you enjoy animation

Oh and Duke’s Oxberry camera has the LAST PLATEN IN THE WORLD! (platen=glass thingie). how exciting.

For my movie, “fiat lux(xx),” I stuck with my claymation idea, and created a shoebox diaroma.  I found that a shoebox was too small, so I actually ended up using a wine crate.  I like how the clay fits within the childish aesthetic of the environment I created, and the shoebox (or wine crate) also lightens the mood of the movie — addressing my concern regarding the dark nature of the storyline.

Claymation proved a challening techinique for my first exploration into animation, so I ended up  scaling my plot down a bit.  I didn’t have a tripod, so I balanced my camera on books.  I now understand the main causes of the jerks in my video, so a second attempt would definitely come out much smoother.  I added the sound effects and music via Final Cut Pro.  The song I decided upon is Shinichi Osawa, “Ami Nu Ku Tuu.”

I posted my finished movie on YouTube for your viewing pleasure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGRws_t56ak

Week 2:

I’ve expanded upon my original idea of church arson, and created a (rough) storyboard.  I’m concerned that my narrative is far too dark, however, as I foresee my completed film having a lighthearted and playful mood.

The narrative opens with an establishing shot of a little bucolic church.  The camera pans around, and we see a priest, drinking from a eucharist.  Next frame is a close-up on his face, revealing a few tears tricking down the side of his face.  At this point, I plan on somehow indicating a flash-forward, and showing a highway where the rural church once stood.  To indicate that this is the same plot of land, I thought to use landmarks — a small church graveyard, and a little creek.

To bring the viewer back to real-time, I will return to a close-up of the priest’s face.  When I zoom out, the viewer will see a canister of gasoline at the priest’s feet.  He drops the eucharist, picks up the gasoline, and turns toward the church.  He slowly walks to the front of the church, and begins to pour gasoline on it.

Next frame is a close-up of the priest  lighting a match.  He throws it on the freshly-’gasolined’ church, which immediately ignites.  He opens the front door, and steps inside.  People from the congregation appear, a few at a time, and watch their church burn.

I went to Michael’s this morning before class and bought a variety of modeling clay (couldn’t resist the 24 pack), and I’ve been playing with the material to get a feel for it.  I first created a little figure out of brown clay and started molding him into different positions.  Erin suggested I start with a skeleton of wire, and then model over it to add some stability, so I squashed my first attempt and picked up some of the leftover wire from my soda can sculpture.

I decided to create the priest out of purple clay, because I think it contributes to a playful aesthetic.  I photographed him alongside some of the other colors I have to work with (!!!).

I also need to decide upon the background.  I’m considering a shoebox diorama because it would align nicely with the naivete of my modeling, but this might be pushing the childish aesthetic too far.

Week 1:

Grizzly Bear’s latest music video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Puph1hejMQE) has inspired me to try my hand at claymation.  I love the way the modeling looks unfinished — almost to the point of childhood naivete.  And the way in which the colors blend!

As far as my story line, I’m intrigued by the idea of church arson; a “heavenly” place goes down in flames.

I was too far behind to catch up on time. But here are a couple of images from my animation: heaven, represented by a drug trip, and hell represented by complete isolation.

Since the trial version of the program I was using has a huge watermark on all the frames, some of the color in this storyboard will be off from the actual video’s. Storyboard scene 1-4 and 12-16 will be also slightly different from the actual because the trial version could only hold up to a certain number of frames and I made some changes after Thanksgiving (I imported most of the stills into the official version of the program that a friend had). I had to buy it and so I’m waiting for the code. But here’s the storyboard (click for larger version).As you can see, the basic conflict is between representatives of Heaven and Hell. The theme deals with the fragility of human life, irony, and the universal occurrence of death. But I put a humorous twist at the end because simply, you never know what can happen.

so i’ve been working with imovie which actually has not been as bad as i thought! im glad i chose this route as opposed to photoshop. anyway, i chose music for my animation after much debate over whether dave matthews was too cliche or not. the song i chose ties in fairly well with my theme of the temporality of this life and what comes after. it’s called “dodo”… and here are some lyrics to think about.
Once upon a time
When the world was just a pancake
Fears would arise
That if you went too far you’d fall
But with the passage of time
It all became more of a ball.
We’re as sure of that
As we all once were when the world was flat

So I wonder this
As life billows smoke inside my head
This little game where nothing is sure, oh
Why would you play by the rules?
Who did, you did, you
Who did, you did, you

When was she killed
The very last dodo bird
And was she aware
She was the very last one

yes… i did lyrics.com that one, but either way i thought the concept of the last dodo bird tied in well with the quote i am writing some of in the sand during the stop motion film: the dodo’s life was but a series of details, and nothing significant, until she died and her species became extinct. this had far-reaching effects on the world surrounding the dodo, and also our world today (most of which we will never know). it also made me wonder about heaven and hell in relation to the dodo, since i am really looking for more abstract connections to this theme. i wonder what it would be like to be the last of a kind on the planet- heaven or hell? adam and eve were 2 of a kind and in heaven without the rest of mankind. i also wanted to imagine what heaven and hell are like (as we tend to do) if they exist, and i realized that something we all have in common as a race is that we will never be sure, which is another thing that dave’s song “dodo” talks about- the certainty of being unsure in this life. he speaks of life as “this little game where nothing is sure”, and i extend that to ascending or descending post game to heaven or hell.

I am finally finished with my animation project!!! I was inspired by the show Supernatural throughout the entire process because the show is about our theme of heaven and hell. In my animation my character finds her dreams become reality; she eventually dies and knows she will go to  hell. At the end of the process, I just tweaked the music a bit  and some of my frames to use Professor Raquel’s suggestions, which were very helpful. I am happy with my project and it definitely taught me more about computers and files. Well, the whole class taught me more, but anyways it is finally complete and I hope you all like it!

For some reason, when I first heard about this project, I immediately thought of Yoplait yogurt and the ad campaign they used to use with angels in heaven. I thought that I could create kind of an absurd, ridiculous, lighthearted representation of heaven and hell. I was thinking about creating a story either through a diaporama or through digital animation, although I’m not quite sure how difficult that would be. The story is food, or more specifically, yogurt-centered, focusing on the taste of heaven, with Yoplait whips yogurt representing a slice of heaven and other yogurt brands leading the path away from heaven.

This idea also got me thinking about tastes and how people always say the common expression that something “tastes like heaven,” so maybe I could create an animation about that as well, taking a more literal translation of it.

Another idea I had was from the fact that Yoplait used a representation of heaven in their commercials. There are many other ads that have used the concept of heaven and hell and have referenced them in their campaigns, and I was thinking about maybe meshing these ads together into one cohesive form or story.

Update: So for the project, I have decided to use many advertisements and pop culture references of angels/heaven and hell/the devil from movies to Philly Cream Cheese, and merge them into kind of a fairytale about the stereotypical corruption of fame and getting caught up in that whole lifestyle. I want to create a typical fairytale starting off with the innocent and naive Kraft angel from Philly heaven who gets caught up in the supposed City of Angels—Los Angeles, with some ad references in between, and narrate it like a storybook using either a diaporama, which I think might be easiest, or white board animation. I think my biggest challenge will be that if I use a diaporama, I will have to come up with a lot of images that I might not be able to create without either Photoshop or a lot of props, so maybe a white board animation will be kind of fun too, especially since it will create a whole storybook effect that way.

Update: For my animation, I’ve laid out a storyboard and created a narration to go along with it. I still need to figure out how to record my own audio into iMovie so that the animation will read like a storybook or a typical fairytale because that’s how I’ve made my story to mirror, but I will also incorporate background music as well. I’ve decided that a form of a combination between a diaporama and claymation will probably be the easiest way to go, so I’m going to be using some easy modeling clay to form my characters and merge pictures of them, because given the settings of my story and the costumes that would be involved, using real props and people would most likely be more difficult than modeling them out of clay. One of my main concerns is that the animation as I have it planned out right now might be a little too long, but I think that once I get started, it won’t be too difficult to make sure I stay within the time constraints.

Update:

Here are some production stills of my final animation video. I actually ended up doing mainly a stop motion animation with figures made out of modeling clay and cotton balls for the clouds, but there are some aspects of it that seem like a diaporama, because I included pictures as well. The figures were especially hard to get to stand up and photograph at the same time, but I managed to get them to stay upright for the shots that I needed. I narrated the story to go along with the pictures like a storybook, and there is background music as well to fit into the mood of the scene. I actually ended up going over the alotted 2 minute time requirement, and I did manage to cut some of the video, but not enough, and it would be difficult to shorten the video without cutting out some of the narration now. But, hopefully I will be able to find a way to fix that and shorten the video a little bit to fit under two minutes.

Update: So I was able to shorten my animation! It’s still about 7 seconds over the 2 minute requirement, but I redid the narration and tried to say it as fast as possible without rushing too much, and I edited the video to fit the new narration. It came out to 2 minutes and seven seconds.

Finally I got done with the Volcano and I feel like it turned out good. It took me a while to figure out the best way to put it all together. During a process of putting it all together I have had to start over because my volcano has fallen apart, it was not fun. Finally I decided to create blocks of cans that were consisted of 6 cans wired together. I tried to use same cans on the outside and randomones on the inside. The coke cans (red) represent the lava. O! It looks like it just erupted..

Also, if you are working in an MPS lab for example you can access your AFS folder in Smith by downloading a program called Cyberduck, entering the network name godzilla.acpub.duke.edu and your netID. Professor Szabo told me about it and it was a lifesaver last week!

Speaking of making sculptures out of cans… this is a really neat project called Canstruction which was held in Boston in October, to promote a food bank (found it in the Globe since I am from Boston).

image

project website

What a great way to combine art, design and philanthropy!

I have not put up a new post for a while and that is because I have changed my plan several times and struggled a lot over break trying to make my video using only GIMP and iMovie. Because I have deviated so much from my original plan, I do not currently have an accurate storyboard to put up so I think I’m going to end up modifying it somewhat retroactively to keep myself organized. I still have much more work left than I intended on having at this point, but hopefully what I come up with will still be cool even though it won’t reflect what I initially imagined. Gotta keep pushing through but when I get to a good landmark phase I’ll post something more substantial.

Edit #4

Done! In the end I went with the iPhone commercial song “Perfect Timing.” I figured this background music would be more fitting to the iPhone theme and plus its a lot lighter and cheerier than “Stairway to Heaven.” All in all I am pretty pleased with how everything turned out. In the beginning I thought this project would be very difficult, since I’ve had little to nil experience with animation. But it was actually easier than I thought it would be. The lighting could be better in some of the photos though. And if I had more time, I would go back and edit the photos so they all look identical in terms of brightness, saturation, etc

Final product:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WqIRfl7GBg

Storyboard:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Edit #3

I was able to make a lot of progress over Thanksgiving Break and now just have some audio editing to do to put the finishing touches on my animation. I think overall everything went really well.

The basic plot of my story/game is broken into three parts..the three levels that the character of the game has to successfully complete into reach the gates of heaven.

Level 1: jump onto the clouds without falling off and try to reach the top cloud

Level 2: Climb into the right “hole” (each hole transports you into another hole) in order to reach the next level

Level 3: Climb up the stairs to get to the gates of heaven.

Right when he gets to the top is when the blocks on the bottom start to fall apart and the whole thing crashes. The figure starts falling into hell and that’s when the hand re-appars and click the button at the bottom of the iphone to return to the main screen.

I plan to use video-game audio for some parts while coupling the whole thing with the song “Stairway to Heaven.”

Will post final video and storyboard in entirety very soon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Edit #2

I was pretty pleased with the way my iphone and apps background turned out.

As for the Heaven and Hell application, I decided to make it into like a game. The objective of the game would be to get to the gates of heaven. The character would have to go through a series of obstacles to make it to the gates. I have some blocks and lego dolls at home that I plan to use for this part. I figure in the last stage in the series of obstacles, the figure would fail and began to fall into hell. But just as that happen, the owner of the iphone clicks the main button to return to the home screen.

Here is the rest of my storyboard along with the pictures of my makeshift iphone:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I had a lot of trouble coming up with an idea for this project that was 1.) feasible to convey in a 30-120 sec animation and that 2.) incorporated the theme of heaven and hell. I scraped about 4 or 5 ideas the first two weeks just because they didn’t fit both criterion. I know I didn’t want to do something too serious or literal; I wanted to keep it original and lighthearted..

After doing some research on the different methods of animation, I decided to go with stop-motion. This one you-tube video I found that uses post-it notes and stop motion totally blew my mind.

So now I had picked a method of animation. I still needed a theme. It was when I was just playing with my iphone once that I had the idea of an iphone application named “Heaven and Hell.” If such an app existed, what would it do?

With somewhat of an idea down, I began to create a storyboard. Right now I’m still somewhat stuck on what the app will do. I thought I could do maybe like a game titled “Heaven and Hell.” A friend suggest the app will ask you a question and depending on your answer you either move up one toward heaven or down one point toward hell. But because I want my animation to be more picture based, I chose not to go with that idea.

Any suggestions on what an iphone app called “Heaven and Hell” would do?? Ideas at this point would be greatly appreciated.

While I still think about that, I made my oversized iphone, and I still need to create the default page and applications page. The cut out part of the large iphone will pretty much serve as the background for my entire animation.

video

I took many liberties in the “heaven and hell” theme, and basically took it as two opposing forces which ultimately don’t get along, or do they?  I learned a lot from working with this kind of animation, something I had never done before.

Starting with a stop motion technique in front of a green screen, my results were sort of disappointing me.  Instead, I worked with more of the still images, and in After Effects tried to construct a more 3D effect by placing elements in an artificial space.   None of the characters were on location, instead, I went out and took pictures of a location simulating the perspective I wanted.  I’m more versed in camera operation and so I sort of emulated that idea with some camera movements and focus shifts, depth of field and that kind of thing.

I created all the characters myself, and used food for other props which was great because I could just eat them all when I finished.  The vibe was so eclectic and random, so I went with it and added chaotic texts and made it so high paced.

Some production stills:

this week i’ve been in the bahamas for thanksgiving with my family, and i had some time to draw and elaborate on my little bear story…. except i realized i was really falling out of like with it. i love to play golf, and i played every day while i was down there, and i thought it would be funny to document golf as an experience in heaven and hell. those of you that golf know exactly where i’m coming from- heaven when you make that 15ft put, or just drive a mile right down the center of the fairway, or hell when you shank right into a sand trap or hazard, or you lose your umpteenth ball. i liked this idea because it was still abstract, and i wanted to stick to the loose, abstract interpretation of heaven and hell that people can relate to.
sooooo i tried to document my journey on the gold course, but of course i was very frustrated and found it hard to concentrate on the game when i had to take a picture every other breath. dropped that idea.
my next inspiration came from an afternoon walk on the beach, where all of a sudden i realized the transitory nature of the sand on the beach, the seaweed distribution, the every changing shadows and sunlight so on and so forth… ultimately connecting all of this to the transitory nature of human life. what happens when it’s over? some think we go to heaven or hell. some think that our bodies just decay into the earth and become a part of natures ongoing cycle (could this be heaven or hell?- i wonder) which allows our bodies to become one with the earth and all of it’s components- mountains, beaches, oceans, lakes rivers, plains, deserts… blah blah you get it, we all learned the water cycle.
next step: i looked to find a quote that truly embodied the transitory-ness of life, and what comes after, if anything at all, the good and the bad being insignificant… i found this great quote and used it in an abbreviated way in my animation: “A mountain is composed of tiny grains of earth. The ocean is made up of tiny drops of water. Even so, life is but an endless series of little details, actions, speeches, and thoughts. And the consequences whether good or bad of even the least of them are far-reaching.” -Sivananda

i wanted to stray away from evil hell and purely good heaven, and evoke a more abstract thought process about what happens after and how insignificant it all is when its done and gone. so what? we do good things, we do bad things, we are not purely good, or purely bad. how can heaven be so black and white? the things we know are the earth, the ocean, the mountains, the water. this is our place to create heaven or hell, and the consequences of our actions here are minor, and yet we create heaven and hell on earth for ourselves. something to think about.

[caption id="attachment_2667" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="divot on impact"][/caption][caption id="attachment_2670" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="\"reaching\" in the quote"][/caption][caption id="attachment_2672" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="\"ocean\" in the quote"][/caption]

At the beginning, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the theme “Heaven and Hell,” but I knew I wanted to do something experimental in terms of medium. I wanted to do everything in Photoshop, so that my final product has a professional and polished finish. Since I’m really not an expert in PS, in order to achieve the polished final look, I decided to reduce all my images to grids and colors.

I guess because I’m an art history major, the first thing I thought about when I heard “Heaven and Hell” was Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel paintings, and I decided to take a literal approach to the theme by using the Old Masters’ paintings of the fall of mankind, but remix them with grids and colors. I wanted to dissect the paintings into little squares, and I hoped to move these grids and change colors in ways that complement the narrative.

Below is my storyboard, and as you can see, the narrative is pretty straight-forward. First, God created Adam and Eve, who were tempted by the serpent to eat the forbidden fruit and were expelled from Heaven, and The Last Judgment paintings followed. I superimposed colored grids onto some of the paintings to show how the paintings will change into the grids, but still it’s hard to tell from the stills, the video will give u much better ideas.

After I finished all the images in Photoshop (there were about 300 of them), I loaded them into iMovie and adjusted the duration of each to create my animation~ The song in my video is “The Burning (Desire)” by Raz Ohara and the Odd Orchestra. I remixed it in Audacity, so the rhythm goes better with the narrative.

Watch the video HERE: The Fall

I’m doing a stop motion video with origami animals using a pentax optio m40 for the first scene and a Cannon digital IXUS 90  IS for the 2nd and 3rd scenes.

location: my dresser

os=ostrich, ra=rabbit, sq=squirrel

this is the general outline of the story:

“*playing
sq: Hey, I’m bored. All we do is play with this dull yellow ball. Everyday is the same
ra: I know God has this place called Heaven, I hear it’s out of this world.
os: Hm, then let’s ask God how to get there.

all: Dear God, how do you get to Heaven? Please tell us. Amen.

God:     Are you sure? There’s no turning back if you go.

Heaven =/= Earth =/= Hell

Heaven is the direct opposite of Hell,
and Earth is in between

Heaven is over the cliffs and through the woods. –>
(so is hell)

*jumps
all: let’s go.
*walk off scene

—-scene shift—–

*walking over the cliffs (fireplace mantle)

sq: God, this sucks, I’m tired. I don’t want to go to heaven anymore.
God: Oh, really? You can go somewhere else, then.

*falls into hell (paper fire in fireplace.)

ra/os: O_O omfg.
God: Well, Heaven is that way   –>
if you still want to go

—-scene shift—–

*walking along side kitchen sink with a running faucet with a sign “HEAVEN (arrow down)”

os: Although we lost sq, and the journey was hard,
ra: We made it! It certainly wasn’t boring. Let’s go in.

*both fall over edge

both: O_x!!!”

My first set up of the first scene was a bit smaller than the one I  ended up going with.

After a few shots of this scene and trying to move my characters around, I found it to be a little to crowded to show actions easily. So then I added another row to the sky and another row of ground to have more depth to the scene.

I also thought about putting strings on the characters and maneuvering them like marionettes, but since I was working on the project by myself, I didn’t have enough hands to hold all the string and take pictures. In addition, the strings and shadows of my hands would show up in the pictures which I didn’t want.

So instead of showing that a character is speaking by rocking them back and forth with a string, I decided to move them side to side.

I also had to play around and with camera angles so that the characters could be properly seen and be an appropriate size in relation to the screen.

This picture’s background was too bright making the characters darker and thus harder to see.

This picture make the characters too small and has a bad angle. When the characters turn at the corner, they will be looking at the camera straight on and will be difficult to make out (since they are not very 3D).

2nd scene locations Few FF 1st floor commons :

3rd scene location: one of the few 2nd floor kitchens either in HH or GG

Instead of voice acting or using a song with lyrics, I typed out what the characters were speaking sort of like a comic book using photoshop.

And for the background music I used music from the games of Pokemon, Final Fantasy 7, and Super Mario Bros. which I edited together using Audacity and the later put into iMovie.

storyboard:

video

Guess the picture didn’t come out in my last post… here’s take two.

After plenty of consideration, I’ve decided to change the topic of my animation. I liked my previous light-hearted approach, but I feel that maybe it can be a bit too much so. I’ve been thinking about doing the project on drug use. After watching the movie ”Requiem for a Dream,” I’ve begun to see a connection between the extremities of heaven and hell and the extremities of drug abuse. What I can’t decide on is whether to take an abstract or more direct approach.

I put up the can project a few days ago.

Here’s the statement:

Mundanity

My work’s entitled “mundanity,” a combination of “insanity” and “mundane.”

I meant to convey the sense, that artists often face, of being the crazy person in a world of normal people.

The green within the main sphere emphasizes the growth of talent restrained by the ring of beige cans that symbolize a need for convention.

Post #1
So I decided to scratch my original idea because I realized that I’m not skilled enough with photoshop to use it for all the animation. After talking things over with a couple of people I realized that I want to incorporate their own interpretations of “heaven and hell.” First, I created a survey that summarized their ideas of heaven and hell. I asked them about the different places on Duke’s campus that they consider “heaven” and the different places they consider “hell”
I don’t want the film to be 30 seconds of montage so when I get home over thanksgiving I’m going to take pictures at the beach that I can use as the “motion” elements that I will then place between different images. I want to juxtapose people’s ideas of heaven and hell so I am going to project the images one after the other, with the “heaven” image in color and the “hell” image in black and white.

I talked to Bill and I think this can work if I focus on smooth transitioning between images.
For the soundtrack I want to use Radiohead’s “Jigsaw falling into place” or something similar.

All I need to do now is mount my storyboard and just make sure I have done all I could do with my project. I like it, and although I wanted to, I decided not to add the color because I felt it wouldn’t fit; however, I did end up adding the bloody tears, which I really like because it adds something to my animation. I do not have a definite title for it yet, but I am still working on it. Oh, and the music in the background I used from the show Supernatural;I remembered hearing this really depressing song on one of their previews for their season premiere, and luckily I found it as a download on the official website!! It’s called O’ Death, which is self-explanatory. For my lack of computer skills I would say I did pretty good, and I worked really hard on it. Here are some of the bloody tear pictures:

Brainstorming Ideas

When thinking about “Heaven and Hell”, the first things that come to mind for me are angels and devils. This association then extends to colors such as black and white and to notions about good and evil. Because of all these stereotypes, I made a conscious effort while brainstorming for ideas to think of something less predictable. As I tried to avoid these common perceptions about the theme, I came up with a couple ideas mostly based on the concept of a journey.

For my project, I have decided to use the “Angel’s Food Cake” and “Devil’s Chocolate Cake” mixes to create my storyline. Although the two common stereotypes associated with heaven and hell (angels and devils) appear, it is not how you would normally expect them to be portrayed. My project will be a stop motion animation and I plan to take photographs of the two boxes of cake mix emerging from a plastic shopping bag and “fighting” over who is better one. Throughout their argument, they will rip open each other’s boxes and decide that they should make themselves into cakes to determine the winner; however, there is only one bowl with ingredients enough for one cake so the two compete to add their own cake mix into the ingredients first. While in the bowl, the divide between the white and dark cake mix is blurred and ultimately as they are baked in the same tin in the oven, they are mixed together. The resolution of their conflict is a tie because neither of the cake mixes has taken over.

Process

The photographing of this stop motion animation was actually simpler than I had expected. I think that having a storyboard all thought out and sketched out onto a piece of paper really helped me stay on track. I had also spent a lot of time prior to the photographing trying to manipulate the boxes in convincing ways so that they seemed like they were moving and fighting. This was one of the most difficult parts because the boxes are not very flexible obviously so there are a limited number of ways you move it. I ended up settling for some bumping and rolling to replace the original wrestling effect that I had wanted because it was not really feasible. I also had to use different objects that I found in the kitchen to prop up the cake mix boxes and packets to make the pictures look more interesting.

Another thing that took me a while to figure out was where to photograph my stop motion. The location was a big factor in determining the success of my animation because I needed a kitchen space with an oven. The oven ideally had to be close to a counter so that I would not have to photograph my baking tray traveling too much to reach the oven. I wanted to find a kitchen that was not my dorm kitchen because it is rather boring and not homey enough; however, I still ended up shooting the stop motion there because it was the most convenient location for me. Although the surroundings are a bit bland, I don’t think the plain background turned out as bad as I thought it would because it actually helps to focus the attention on the “action” in the foreground.

I did have some difficulty with the tripod for a while and I didn’t realized until after, so some of the pictures have frames that are moved slightly to the right. Also, I ended up adding the extra section in the end where the cake is eaten just because I thought it was a bit abrupt to end it after the cake is taken out of the oven. Another issue I had was actually with iMovie because somehow the version on my computer would not allow me to make the frames go faster. This took me a while to fix and I ended up settling for a lower speed, which is not ideal because it makes certain parts of the animation look choppy but still acceptable.

I also had intended to use a series of real recorded sounds as the audio; however, I didn’t realize until I imported my photos into iMovie that the animation was so long (because of the slower frame speed). This made it really difficult for me to match sounds for almost 1:50 minutes of video so I decided last minute instead to change my idea and find an instrumental piece. The soundtrack that I wanted for my stop motion had to have a good beat so I searched around and stumbled upon this song by Anthony Green called Springtime Out The Van Window and used it as the background track for my stop motion.

Overall, I am pretty satisfied with my final product even though it is not as smooth as I had hoped. I hope you guys enjoy it and in case you were wondering, never mix Devil’s Chocolate cake and Angel’s Food cake together, it doesn’t taste that great.

The Brainstorm: (11/10/2009)

I have been spending a lot of time on YouTube finding videos that I like. So far, these are some of my inspirations:

Animated in Bed
Amazon Kindle Commercial
Helpless

I really like this animation effect–it’s called Tilt Shift and it makes the entire world look like miniature models. I still don’t have much of a story line, but I think my video will be a combination of my inspiration videos. I also will be traveling to New York City for Thanksgiving this year and think that location will lend itself so well to different photography and filming perspectives. Hopefully, I will have an idea on this heaven & hell motif and get to story boarding this week.

Prelim Animation

I am finally a bit inspired by a conversation I had with a few people on campus and coworkers. Sticking to the theme of “Heaven and Hell” has been difficult for me as I was at first a little unsure about what approach to take–literal? abstract? I started storyboarding this past week and finally decided the animation process that I will be using. I’m doing stop motion, but in photoshop–every image will be created in photoshop and then put together (kind of like a collage). Here’s a quick preview!

Thats only 2 seconds of the video but its the effect I’m using. Suggestions? Like/dislike? Let me have it.

One day my dad picked me up from school, as I’d stayed after for yearbook. When we got home, I played around on the guitar a little bit; then I left to go visit my boyfriend. When I got back home later that night, my dad asked me to play the guitar for him. A few years prior, the two of us, driven by a mutual love for classic rock, had sneaked against my mother’s orders to buy an electric guitar for myself, an old black Fender from a local pawn shop. “I need to change the strings,” I declined, “but I can’t find the wire cutters.” After I went to bed, my dad entered my room. “Want to go outside with me to find the wire cutters?” “No, I’m tired. Good night.” At 3 a.m. my mother woke me, frantic that my father,  breathing labored, would not wake up. I pounded on his chest to no avail. Within hours the doctors would pronounce him dead, citing of all things, a failed heart. Minutes later, I found the wire cutters, rusty tipped with rubber blue handles, sitting on the counter. I changed the strings that morning.

My animation will basically follow this story, juxtaposing the “heavenly” memories of times with my father with the “hellish” pain of death. I plan to use digital animation for the moving parts and acrylic hand-drawn paintings for the backgrounds. I am currently working on painting the backgrounds and finalizing the digital figures of the characters. Fortunately, I don’t have much to do this holiday break, so I will have plenty of time to work on the more tedious, repetitive drawings.

Anyway, many years ago, my dad and I used to watch the sunsets and the stars, laying on our backs in the grass. These childhood memories, combined with the memories of “rocking out” with my guitar, will form the backbone of the positive side of my animation.

My story will start with a dream of such star-gazing, from which the heroine will wake up. She will nostalgically look at a picture beside her bed, which features her and her dad playing guitar. The camera zooms in on the picture, leading to a scene in which girl and dad buy said guitar and goof off together. The rest of the story will essentially follow the plot I described above. The plot concludes with the girl ultimately playing guitar again, although she considered giving it up for good. The ending will revert back to the dream, continuing the dream for a few happy seconds. You can see this summarized in this rough, initial planning storyboard.

I already have my song picked out: it’s one I wrote, actually. It’s perfect: my dad loved it and it deals with bittersweet memories: holding on and letting go. I had a Nashville studio cut a professional record last year, and although it didn’t match up entirely with my original vision for the song, it’s still good, so no one will have to endure my horrendous singing voice.   You can listen to it below.

Endless Summer by Cortney Cameron

I had a dream about you last night
It didn’t come as a surprise
‘Cause I can’t keep you off my mind,
Even when I close my eyes

Hold me, and let’s pretend
That we will never die and
Summer never ends, because
You can’t relive the moment

Now I know you’re not the type to stay
And I’m too afraid to hold on on
But that’s why we have now to try
And make it count before tomorrow comes

Chorus

The summer slowly left,
The weather turned to cold
Autumn kissed me on the cheek and
I felt myself growing old
We’ve been apart for so long now but
I still have those memories
I will always love that
Part of you inside of me

Chorus

I wanted to do a stop motion animation which lasts about 30 secs. Tentatively, I plan to draw action figures and simple landscapes on index cards. I would draw about five pictures for one second of the animation. After much of brainstorming, I decide to draw inspiration from the great Italian poet, Dante Alighieri’s eternal classic of Inferno. I happen to be reading it in one of my Focus Program classes and I enjoy it immensely. I will probably spend some effort to depict each of the nine arch sins of lost souls in hell described by Dante in his great poem, namely Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy,Violence, Fraud and Treachery. But instead of portraying the sins in the same context as that in the era lived by Dante, I will try to make a modern parody of the sins by putting commitment of these sins in a modern society. Hence I am talking about a Hell of fast food, mini-malls, ATMs, corporate logos, consumer detritus, and the homeless. It would be a hell at once recognizable in our times. But since the theme is Heaven and Hell, I still have to figure out how I am gonna connect the sins in Hell to the glories in Paradise. Maybe some inspiration could be drawn from another masterpiece of Dante, Paradiso.

For the background music, I am thinking of Stravinsky’s Firebird. The piece of Firebird is ballet melody that is divided into two major parts in its development. The first part is peaceful and tranquil which echoes with the theme of Paradise, while the second part of the piece is dramatic and ferocious which echoes with the theme of Hell.

Hopefully, I could have some substantial progress on my project during the upcoming holidays.

Progress 2

Over the Thanksgiving holidays, I had a frustrating time experimenting with my previously proposed idea, namely a hell made of fast food, mini-malls, ATMs, corporate logos, consumer detritus, and the homeless. Apparently to illustrate such a complicated idea on index cards using stick figures is a little beyond my capacity. So I decided to have a major change of direction. Instead of doing a stop motion animation, I tried a flip-book animation. The basic idea of my project is we, as average students, go through heaven and hell as the semester goes on. It is meant to be a mockery of the unorganized and indulgent life of an average college student. For this piece of work, I was inspired by the famous Korean cartoon series Mashi Maro. The protagonist of my animation, who I shall name as “Mashi”,  is adapted from the cartoon figure Mashi Maro. I devised a clear plot of my story. In the beginning of the semester, Mashi feels rejuvenated and refreshed after a long break. He feels confident about the journey ahead in the coming semester and swore to study hard and earn good grades. At this stage, Mashi feels as if he has been elevated into Heaven as he has a loft goal in mind and is empowered by self-motivation. However, college is by no means easy to handle. After a week, Mashi is exhausted and overwhelmed by all the assignments, essays, homework and projects. He thus begins his journey descending to Hell. With the mid-term coming, Mashi has pretty much given up on his work and chose to lead a life of decadence by indulging himself in material enjoyment. No doubt, his sins surely guarantees him a place in hell as the mid-term comes. Thoroughly embarrassed  and regretful, Mashi can’t help crying after the mid-term. Unfortunately, this does not teach Mashi a good lesson, and he soon starts indulging himself in the “Heaven” he perceives again, while in actuality he begins descending to some place even more eternally condemned than Hell. Now the final exams are approaching, and Mashi just can’t feel any pressure and choose to continue playing with his life. 7 days are left, Mashi goes to bed early, dreaming about his indulgent and decadent life. 5 days are left, Mashi continues to ignore the exams and indulge himself in the paradise of music. 3 days are left, Mashi can’t help having an inner struggle about whether he should do some revision. However, the sad truth is that the accumulated inertia of doing nothing all the way through the semester quickly makes Mashi dozing off even before he could start working. This time, what is Mashi dreaming? Hell, maybe. With only one day left, Mashi realizes his doomsday of descending to some place deeper than Hell is imminent. Now Mashi starts hating himself and becomes self-destructive. Nevertheless, it is too late to change anything and our Mashi is just mentally too tired to proceed with any work. He dozes off again on his desk. During the final exam, Mashi already knows what his fate is. He is just helpless now. After the exam, as what Mashi is doomed, he is condemned to Purgatory.

As our character Mashi’s college life goes on, he goes through the journey from Heaven to Hell and back again. His ultimate fate which is descending to Purgatory is of course predetermined by his own personality.

Here are the pictures of my storyboard.

Progress 3

I checked out a DV camera  at Link. However I didn’t notice tape is not provided. I was pretty much stuck at East Campus as an international student. Without tapes, the DV is unfortunately useless in my hands. So I had to resorted to a normal digital camera in order to film the animation. With only a digital camera at my disposal, the quality of the images in the film had to be compromised. However, I did try my best to shoot the film. I rehearsed many many times before I started shooting the film. However, when it comes to actually shooting the film, I still had a lot of NGs. Finally after many rounds of trial, I was able to flip through the notepads almost smoothly. I had drawn a total of 4 notepads of pictures, and it turned out my animation lasts roughly 40 seconds.

I used Windows Movie Maker to edit the film. Most of my editing dealt with slowing and hastening certain parts of my animation film so as to make motions of my character Mashi more smooth.

I decided not to let any piece of music go with my animation. The main reason is that it’s very difficult to fit one piece or several pieces of music into my animation which has a lot of major changes in plot in a short period of time. To keep the integrity of my work, I didn’t add in any music. In addition, I actually like the rhythmic sound of myself flipping through the notepads.

I also decided to make the whole film Black and White so as to keep inappropriate lighting from disturbing the pictures.

Here are some pictures of my work.

That is a prodigious amount of work, isn’t it?

11 Dec 2009

The idea for my project 3 changed, as I focused the topic of my animation video on a personal event rather than a parody of the Fresh Prince. However it still showed a version of “hell” at the boarding school. The plot and content of the video is evident after watching it. The process of making the video required flash animation, photoshop and actual footage from FlipCam. At first I tried to incorporate flash animation seamlessly into the actual footage, however this kind of animation required extensive individual animation for each frame of action. So in a twenty second clip of me kicking a ball would be about a thousand frames, and each frame needs to be animated in order to do this. So I compromised and decided to animate actual footage by simpler sequences such as me drawing a ball or writing in the air (in the video). The still animations were done with flash. I tried to place actions sequences (motion animated by flash) illustrated by flash, but they seemed to be unfitting with the rest of the video, so i decided to use still frames.

Here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM9qKykVwv0

And this my storyboard:

To show how the process of my animation looked like, I included some images of the work I did on Flash. I placed layers to make things appear on top of other things (for example the body against the sky background or the wall in the freekick behind the ball) and used a motion sequence for the animation that had flash with real video.

23 Nov 2009

For Project 3, I had a few ideas for what I wanted to do. Because the film project could only be two minutes long, I tried to think of some sort of story of heaven and hell that I could convey under that time. The intro of the TV show, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, is a little under two minutes, and I thought it would be interesting to put my interpretation on it. For those unfamiliar with the plot of the intro, it is a theme of Will Smith’s transition from Philly to Bel-Air. I had a similar transition from LA to boarding school (except from west to east coast), or also boarding school to Duke. I probably will use the transition from boarding school to Duke to be my comparison of hell versus heaven (Duke being heaven, of course). I started to play around with some flash animation, which I am familiar with, and thought it would be a good tool to use for flip animation. I also filmed general moments of my day for the past weeks, but I haven’t edited or formulated how I will use it to incorporate these segments with my overall theme.

Project 3 — Stop Motion Animation

For my project I am going to be doing stop animation with legos.  I have one lego that looks like a Devil type of character and another that looks like an angel.  I am going to try and depict Lucifer being cast out of Heaven.  Then Lucifer will return to Heaven and there will be a battle between the Devil and the angel.

Post 1:

I do not have my connector to my camera, so I will upload my story board later..

I really struggled with coming up with a story that kept the heaven and hell theme in mind. I was listening to my itunes on shuffle the other day and “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd came on. This is one of my favorite songs and has a lot of personal meaning to me and luckily, it totally relates to the theme of heaven and hell! In my stop-animation video, I plan to make a sort of music video to part of “Wish You Were Here”. The story will consist of a stick figure protagonist and black and white stick figure drawings of interpretations of the following Pink Floyd lyrics:

“So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?”

I am leaving for Thanksgiving break at 7am tomorrow, so I will not be able to complete my project in the lab, however, I plan to use photoshop at my dad’s office throughout the week to complete my video. I will post my progress once I find my camera connector cord.

I’m excited for the final product!!

Post 2:

Above is my original rough sketch of a story board. At this point, I knew that I wanted to create the feel of a simple flip book, but time it so that the actions of the plot matched significant points in the music. In this first story board, I picked out these specific parts of the music that I wanted to get the timing just right for. I was focusing on the larger picture with this first story board and therefore didn’t plot out each individual frame or even a lot of the plot sequence in between the crucial parts in the song clip.

I went straight into creating my images to photograph for the stop motion/flip book animation. I planned out the in-between plot sequence as it made sense to get from one key part in the song to another. I wanted to make sure that there was relatively fluid motion and that every image was relevant to both the song “Wish You Were Here” and the theme of heaven and hell.

First I tried creating my images on a white board because I thought it would be the most effective way to get fluid motion from shot to shot. This proved to be more difficult than I thought. After playing with white board animation for a little while, I decided to use my sketchpad. I started by drawing the first image on the last page and working back through the pages so that i could get the placement of the objects right by seeing slightly through the paper. This proved to be much more accurate in terms of object placement and was also easier to see the progression of the motion. I propped the notebook up against a stack of books on a table so that it would remain in a consistent place. I kept the same two lights on the scene, however, the lighting didn’t remain completely consistent throughout. I didn’t have a tripod so I propped the camera atop a few books so that it would remain in the same place and at the same level in relation to the scene on the notebook.

I originally wanted to show that the images were drawn on a spiral notebook, so the frame of the images was around the entire notebook and included a spiral. When I looked through the images after shooting the scenes, I decided to crop each photo to only include the white of the paper. Because the lighting was slightly inconsistent, the background around the notebook changed too much and I wanted a sense of consistency.

After cropping the images, I played with the brightness and contrast levels within iphoto so that they matched the mood of the particular part of the song and emphasized the feeling that I was trying to get across. For example, the line “did you trade your heroes for ghosts”, I had a ghost appear and the entire scene got much darker.

Once I was done editing the still images, I created my final story board, highlighting the key points of my animation. I found this to be very helpful in creating my movie- keeping my ideas in organized and allowing me to visualize the images that would make up the plot to go along with Pink Floyd’s lyrics.

When I was done editing my images, I imported the photos into iMovie HD. It was giving me a lot of trouble and after a while of playing around with it, I decided to use the regular iMovie, which proved to be much more enjoyable to work in.

I used garage band to get the length of the song clip exactly how I wanted it. I had never used this program before so it was challenging at first but once I figured it out, I was able to get the exact clip that I had planned to use from my first story board.

I spent the most time in iMovie getting the timing of the images exactly how I wanted it. Because I had previously selected specific parts in the song clip that I wanted specific animation for, I had to play around a lot with the in between images to ensure that the most significant parts of the clip were emphasized.

I am really happy with my final project! I love the simplicity of the flip book animation (it was not simple to make!) with the timing exactly how I wanted it with the music.

Here are some stills from my animation:

So I sat down to think about what the closest experience I’ve had that exemplifies heaven and hell. I immediately jumped to the idea of creating a relationship. They tend to have extreme highs and lows which can be heaven and hell on earth. I decided to not use people but to use a classic combination of Peanut Butter and Jelly.

I wanted to set them apart, that being the hell circumstance, and then have them reunite together through insurmountable odds in a heavenly bliss. Kind of like a Romeo and Juliet with condiments. Although I wasn’t quite sure how to reinforce the theme “Heaven and Hell” to be strong enough.  I decided to follow trace the theme through music.

I used “I’d Walk Through Hell for You” by Say Anything and “Heaven is a Place on Earth” by Belinda Carslile. I also spliced in my favorite Owl City love song to open and “All You Need is Love” by the Beatles.

I also drew inspiration from a band I like called Reggie and the Full Effect. Here is their video for “Congratulations Smack and Katy”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wBx_2dluD4

I used a Nikon D60 Camera and a tripod and made sure the lighting was consistent. Here are some example stills from my project

It is turning out nicely and took forever!

Here is the Youtube link! Enjoy! : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5HmhHKBGyg

I am making a stop motion video with post it’s. In my room I have a wall of pictures and post its with drawings. I am going to tell the story of how a post it of a cookie character came to real life and came off of the wall. He will he discovering the room but will get intercepted by another post it that came to life. This post it wants to eat him. The hell in my story is the post it coming to life and entering the real world. The heaven aspect is the post it just being what it was meant to be, a drawing on the wall. I will post pictures and a little bit of the video on Wed. or Thursday.

#2

I stayed over Thanksgiving break to finish my video. I shot for 3 different days. The first day I shot The part where the sticky is coming down the wall, the second day when it is walking across the bed and the third when it encounters the bunny. I came up with the idea of doing a post it video after I was looking at my old post it drawings for inspiration. I decided to use a drawing of a cookie character on one of the post it drawings. The shooting process has been hard and I am sure that the sequencing and editing will also be hard.

#3

I am sequencing and color correcting the photos. I had to clone stamp some portions so that the post it that I used to keep the sticky up wouldn’t show. I also had to clone stamp my hand out of some of the images where the bunny is attacking the cookie post it. I decided to start sequencing on Final Cut because i know that program well. Also because I can manipulate the audio and make frames slower or faster. For sound effects I wanted to get a sound of a door closing and of a pencil writing on a piece of paper. I was listening to Pandora the second day of shooting and I heard the song “The Winner Is” by Danna. It came out in the movie “Little Miss Sunshine.” I thought that it would fit perfectly with the sequence of photos.

I will post up pictures soon.

here is the updated versionof my sorty baord, the phots ar einbalck inwhite but the actual animation will be in color (beige and blue) i think my current videa is around 30 minutes so I’m moslty looking for a soundtrack the gist of my sotry is that at froma a grave rises a demon/loard who is half man an half squid he sumons a mini demon who changes color and channels and angelic demons who then sucks the deamon lord formhis tombstone and eats him

So, I have been working really hard to finish my project before fall break and I am happy to say I am very close to being finished!!! However, I still have some problems I need to work out. I am asking people to watch my video and see if it makes sense to them. For the most part they have understood, but I think it could be stronger, so I am thinking of adding bloody tears; however, I am not sure if it should be pure black or red because color doesn’t seem like it would fit, but it could really add something if used in the right way. Another thing is the music in the background. It works and everything, but I need it to flow more because I am only using two parts of a song that do not really go together along with three other sounds. But I’m sure I can work this out. I just need it to be more striking, so I am going to work at that today. The beginning and the end are fabulous. it’s just the middle (which is the meat of the story) I am concerned about. Regardless, I am still satisfied and proud of myself; It’ll be great!!! Here are some more pictures:

In my animation this eventually spells “burn in hell.”

This is a picture from the show I got the demon idea from.

Lastly, these two pictures show where I plan to add the bloody tears:

When we were given the theme of heaven and hell, I was really excited!! I watch this show called Supernatural which is now playing on the apocalypse, angels, and demons, so I naturally thought of the show. For my animation I want to have a dream become a reality. A girl is sleeping and dreams of herself as a demon and sees her grave that is blank at first, but then “burn in hell,” appears on it. In the show the demons’ eyes turn this pure black, so in her dream as she wakes from the dead her eyes are black like a demons, and when she finally wakes up her eyes slowly turn black too. I’m just trying to make sure it makes since, and the music is a real struggle right now. I’m still figuring out how to put certain sounds to certain parts of the animation with iMovie. I may add more slides though if the movie doesn’t make since to some people. Anyways. here are some of my sketches for the animation project. Please comment and give me feedback! I love advice!!

This is my character as a demon!

This is one of her sleeping poses.

This is the picture of her when she finally becomes a demon in reality.

So, I have drawn about maybe 40+ pictures because I messed up on a lot of them and had to do them over again. In class Tuesday I mainly focused on lining the pictures up with one another; even though I scanned them in the lab, I had to scan them over because I had some issues with lining them up, but it actually became a lot easier. I am slowly beginning to know what I am doing…

Here is my first progress on my volcano. I Basicallyack the cans on top and tie them with the wire. It is not easy because the cans itself are not really stable. But as I go on I should be able to get it more solid and detailed.

Here is my evolving volcano. I have not tied all of the cans with the wire like I have been planing, but I will get this squared away pretty soon. I just need some more cans and I should be able to figure everything out from there. Also I will shape the red cans on top that will animate erupting lava. It should be nice!

Conceptsmall

That link opens a video which shows some of the test clips I took today.  I used it as a way to see the limitations of the technique I am using.  I basically took many pictures with little movement between each picture and let them last 2 frames in Final Cut Pro.  I noticed that movement is acceptable, its fluid.  With people, it also works, but definitely use a tripod (unless the jerky movement is wanted).

I liked how exciting the image looked with real people, however I think if I spend sometime with very peculiar objects, I can create a pretty cool set.  Green screen backgrounds are also a possibility, but the matching of perspective and things may just be too hard.  However, it would be cool to hide some of these claymation animations in a real environment.

originally i was leaning towards constructing a judd-esque wall piece, but i realized while talking to bill that judd would have valued the can as a whole piece rather than cut it apart, and i really wanted to destroy the cans’ original shape, so that was not an option. i began to think about sculpture with found objects, and who my favorite sculpture artists are. tara donovan popped into my head. i fell in love with her work this past summer while interning at pacewildenstein gallery in chelsea in new york. they represent tara donovan, and i was lucky enough to see some of her pieces and experience them in a wonderful space. she does work with silver mylar tape that’s stuck on walls in little swirls, and i though that the mylar resembled the aluminum can that we were working with.

so after looking at donovan’s pieces, i started to think about how i could take her techniques and make them my own. i began to play with cans in swirls, and see how i could assemble them on the walls like donovan.

that was a fail, but i realized i could make contained chaos with the simple shape of a square. i also did not want to waste any part of the cans that i had lovingly collected, so i decided to create a grid of six squares, separated by a few inches of space between them using different parts of the cans. i realized while i admire donovan for her ability to naturally costruct free forms, i naturally construct precise forms. in my life i like organization and cleanliness, so i gravitated towards a gridlike pattern for my final design.

i wanted to use this cheesy little story- which is actually about a giant stuffed bear that i have- to demonstrate abstract ideas of heaven and hell. i wanted to avoid devils and angels and “in your face” plots that take the theme literally. my goal was to take something cute and fuzzy, formulate a story, and still be able to convey the same emotions of utter despair and total bliss. i think everyone can relate to baking and eating the perfect cookie, so the emotions that my animation will hopefully evoke will be more tangible and real than if i were to literally draw a story about someone going to hell or going to heaven.

i am somewhat lackluster when it comes to drawing, so i’m a little worried about the way the animation is going to come out. i want to go for a low-res old time cartoony feel for a few reasons, one of which is that i’m intimidated by all the programs used to make intense animation, and the other is that i think it fits the vibe of the story. stay tuned to see how much i struggle!

11/15

For my stop motion film, I would like to do something similar to this clip of a dancing figure model that I found on youtube:mannequin stop motion

Over the weekend, I purchased a figure doll from Michael’s Arts and Crafts…here it is:

I plan to spend the upcoming class focusing on my storyboard and developing a story that involves the mannequin and fits the assigned theme of heaven and hell. So far, one of my ideas was to have the doll do Michael Jackson’s thriller dance – so I may even spend class making sure that the doll can bend and move into the positions of the thriller dance!

11/22

Well after numerous attempts to get the poor little mannequin into thriller positions (almost lost a limb!), I decided that this idea would not work. To a certain extent, I was relieved because it would have taken over 500 (yikes!) frames to look realistic.

A friend told me that I should try to have the mannequin act out the seven deadly sins…almost like the film Se7en. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114369/. At first this seemed just as daunting as recreating thriller, but after some brainstorming, I have fully committed to this theme.

Some of this will be done at home over break, which is nice because I will have more time and can make use of some great props I have at my house. Here is a rough idea of how the sins will be recreated:

• Gluttony: The mannequin will be doing several things involving eating human sized food. He will first dance around my thanksgiving table because what could be ore gluttonous than a giant turkey and numerous pies! I may have him take a post meal nap on top of one of said pies. Then I will show that time has elapsed and he has eaten so much food that he even fell asleep in the refrigerator. And upon waking up in the refrigerator, he eats some leftovers while lounging on the egg tray.
• Sloth: I plan to use my niece’s doll house for this segment. He will most likely be lounging on the living room couch. I have to somehow incorporate movement here for the sake of the film even though sloth requires no movement whatsoever!
• Lust: I thought extra hard about this one because the last thing I wanted was to do something obscene! I decided to create a tiny magazine called Playdoll (get it?) and have the mannequin reading it. He will turn a few pages and then get to a drop down page that is so long, it reaches the floor.
• Greed: I will use the money from my monopoly set at home for this. The money will fall from the sky and the mannequin will dance around in it. Then he will roll around in the money and go for a quick money swim.
• Wrath: At home, I have a larger doll that I will use for this role. The larger doll will kick the smaller one and maybe throw him across the room or we’ll see! The little one will be in obvious pain.
• Pride: I have some old trophies at home that the doll can stand next to. He will look at them in admiration, touch them and even kiss them. If I can find a small enough medal to place around the doll’s neck (or even make one) I will do that as well. Maybe I’ll use a ton of medals for dramatic effect.
• Envy: For this one, I will use the larger doll again and have him flexing his muscles while the smaller one watches and bows his head in shame. Then I will have the smaller one jumping because he wants to be as tall as the big one. I’m not sure how he can jump, but I may have some wire at home so it at least looks like he’s jumping.

I am a lot more passionate about this idea than my original…and maybe even a little excited to work on it! My next step is to figure out what kind of music goes best with each sin. So far, I think I’ll use Justin Timberlake’s “sexy back” or maybe the Temptations “my girl” for lust.

My original intention was to create a stop-motion, but that seems to be failing miserably…some aspects may work out to be stop motion but as of now the ‘lust’ segment looks like more of a diaporama. Maybe in the end, the finalproduct will be a diaporama.

12/1

Here is the final version of the film:

<the film file is too large to upload to wordpress>

I have titled my film ‘untitled’ because I am currently unable to think of a better title. (Funny, I thought that would be the easy part.)

Certain aspects of my film did not work out as planned and some scenes, like pride and gluttony had to be completely redone. With gluttony, I wanted the dolls to dance around the table before thanksgiving but that never happened…I was too busy cooking all day with my mom and sisters! The sin I dreaded the most was sloth because I honestly had no idea what to do. I was listening to some oldies and Otis Reading came on, and since I have a million little sailboats from Cape May all over my house, I decided to use one to show the passage of time while the figures acted lazy on the beach. For this one, the song came first unlike the others where the music is matched to specific scene. The scene for lust was extremely difficult because the movements were so slight that every time I tried to move him into a new position, the camera angle seemed to be altered. Sadly, I do not have a career in stop-motion animation.

Here is a complete list of songs used in the film:

Lust: SexyBack by Justin Timberlake

Pride: We are the Champions by Queen

Gluttony: Here it Goes Again by OK GO

Sloth: Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay by Otis Reading

Envy: Material Girl by Madonna

Greed: Hustlin’ by Rick Ross

Wrath: Under Pressure by David Bowie

Here are some photos from the storyboard:

With some more time to think about it and more time to research, I have a much clearer idea of where I want to go with my video. I have started making some sketches and experimenting on the computer, but most of what I have is still conceptual. I still want to go with the Divine Comedy theme, but I want it to be more referential and less literal than I had originally thought. Reflecting on the technique of animation, specifically stop motion, and just reflecting in general, I keep coming back to the idea of trains. Part of what I found particularly interesting about the Divine Comedy is how Dante’s questionable good luck grants him an inside look at the afterlife conveniently as he approaches the end of his rope and considers giving up completely. The rest of us aren’t offered this free trial period and are pretty much stuck with whatever train we’re on, possessing only a vague and conditional sense of where we’ll end up. As of now, the story-line I’m considering for my video begins with a man (Dante) asleep on a train; he is clearly a mess without hope as indicated by his attire, expression, etc. The scene will then zoom in on the man’s closed eyes and fade to black and then a rapid sequence of images including mini-flashbacks, the figure of Beatrice, religious symbols, etc. From the montage the frame will rapidly cut again to a somewhat slow-motion shot of the man running desperately down the cars of the train, switching back and forth between shots from different perspectives from both inside and outside the train, which I think I want to have winding up a mountain. I will use a variety of methods to convey the division of the train cars into sets for Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso and within each of those to convey the division between different circles. Prior to the dream sequence I want to use exaggerated sound effects in a way that sounds somewhat musical, but isn’t actually music (sounds from the train, snoring, outside, etc.). As the montage quickly shows I want the music to begin and then get into the real beat as Dante starts running. I still have no idea what music I want to use so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! As Dante approaches the end of the train his movement becomes even more slowed and he ends up running right off the end of the train, which is turning sharply to stay on track. Dante falls and falls and the fast montage repeats but in reverse order and suddenly the Dante from the first scene wakes up with a start as the music cuts off and we hear the train crashing. The last shot will be a long shot where we see as the entire train comes to ruins and the voices silence. Then it will cut to black, slightly before the sound of the crash seems to have wrapped up, and the black screen will remain for just more than a comfortable amount of time before it glows to white and the clip is over. I’m not sure where this extremely vivid image in my head of what I want my video to be came from, but I am sure that my final product will not look exactly like it so I need to stay flexible and not get too caught up with sticking to my original plan that get overly frustrated or don’t finish at all. Again, help with music for the running part, which will probably be the main body of the video, is welcome! Other comments/suggestions are appreciated as well of course..

My story board first delt with an idea of a statan getting into some sort of a war with satan later when i began to work with the white board animation my basic story what is happening now is that some menacing figure is rising fromthe grave who then draws out some deomnic creature who in turn acidently summons an angelic deomn that consumes the initial menacing figure ive cincluded inthis post some still frames

11/29 UPDATE

Over the break I finally got hold of a digital camera (!) so I made huge progress on my animation. Since my last post, I had experimented with clay to see if I could create what I had envisioned for my original storyline. Long story short, I couldn’t achieve what I wanted to, so I needed to re-work the storyline. I started getting further and further from using heaven and hell as inspiration, so I decided to turn to my iTunes collection to help inspire me. Finally, my idea crystallized. It’s actually composed of several different elements I’d considered in the last few weeks.

[Before I started, I wanted to test out my stop-motion technique. I made a short clip, but it's apparently too big to upload here. Maybe I need to play with compressing?]

My animation, tentatively titled “He’s in a Better Place,” takes place at the funeral of a friend (an egg). I have a few strange characters, thanks to the elements lying around my house: a koosh-ball unicorn, a dog toy snowman, a small teddy bear and four of the seven dwarves. The revolves around each friend’s idea of what their dead egg is up to in heaven. The twist at the end is that the egg has actually landed in hell…

Some stills!

I really like my story line and the scenes I set up, but the biggest problem in shooting was keeping the camera steady, as I didn’t have a tripod. I made a make-shift one that functioned well for the steady scenes, but when the camera needed to move, the perspective is less than continuous. It is also freezing where I’m from, so my outside shots were really frustrating! It rained the day I wanted to use an outdoor backdrop, which was aggravating, but turned out to be a nice addition to the melancholy funeral procession.

I am hoping I can use song clips with impunity, since they do help convey emotion and move the story along. It was quite a challenge to express plot without dialogue, but I think transitions help.

My only question at this point is how to easily change the audio for a small section of the clip – I can easily add it and change the audio to where I want it to play, but it’s really time-consuming! Is there a way to add the song just to a certain series of pictures in iMovie? Thanks guys!

11/24 UPDATE

I’ve been solidifying my storyboard and scanned it in to show my progress:

I’ve decided to definitely go with the storyline of a criminal escaping from a policeman. When Shambhavi Kaul visited us I was so inspired by her lecture, I wanted to stick with a storyline that had action so I could try the techniques she went over. Each frame of the storyboard is really specific – I can picture in my head how I want the camera angle and the zoom of it. The only thing I’m still struggling with is the resolution of the action. I want it to connect the storyline solidly to heaven and hell, and I don’t think my original idea (his life flashing before his eyes as he falls) relates more closely to death than heaven or hell.

I’ve begun making the (VERY) simple characters out of clay. I actually spent 15 minutes staring at all the different colors, thinking about what I want to represent with each character and how the colors still have to work together in the end. I’d like to incorporate household objects in the video as well, inspired by this video, which I love. If I end up wanting a “trampoline”, I plan on using a circle of wire mesh, and what the criminal steals will be a clay bag with shiny beads stuck on the outside of it.

11/15

I’m juggling two ideas for this third project right now:

1) A burglar is running from a policeman, slips off the edge of a building (or for my purposes, a desk) and falls, his best life moments flashing before him. He is rudely interrupted when he bounces off a trampoline (some wire mesh) held out by cops and is caught. This one is less directly related to the idea of heaven and hell and more tangent to death, so I’m not sure if it’s appropriate.

2) My second direction is less developed, but I’ve thought about exploring the idea of hell being a completely silent, lonely place.

I’d like to use stop-motion photography because it’s something I’ve never tried before but have always been curious about. Is using clay going to be too time-intensive? I was thinking of making very simple wire skeletons covered in clay because they’d be easier to get all the exact positions I want, but maybe I should embrace a format with more restrictions and see what I can come up with…

Yay I love animation : ] and yet I hate it for being so time consuming. Ah such is our bittersweet relationship.

I’m in Fred Burns’s Film Animation class right now, and it has taken us a whole semester just to animate a one minute film by hand. See the massive pile of drawings!

hundreds and hundreds. And trust me, if you’re doing a one minute anim. by hand, it’s going to be just as many!

So the fact that we only have TWO WEEKS is like @.@ ahhhhh T__T but I’m glad for the project because, honestly, I didn’t feel confident at all with the last two projects (collaging and sculpting)..and I’m “fairly” confident about animation (knock on wood). plus I need a grade booster…so the high standards I set for my animation is going to drive me cRaZY because we only have two weeks!!!!

Luckily I discovered the magic that is Adobe Flash! Guess what! It creates the tweens for you! suuuuch a time saver! (tweens are the in-betweens, so all you have to tell Flash is the key positions…as someone else so wisely puts it, this is flash’s way of saying “I love youuuu”). Flash also lets you create skeleton structures, bone/hinge animation, and lots of other cool things that make your life as an animator easier. Oh and I love the smoothing feature in Flash :) btw, you’ll probably want to have a tablet if you’re doing digital anim.

While I’m thrilled to be using Flash, I still hate that it has such a steep learning curve. Seriously…I can’t tell you how many tutorial vids I’ve watched, and I’m still like O__O? most of the time.

Right now I’m working on my intro clip….and having fun playing around with and animating the text. I tried to upload it but my file is too big! It took me a long time to figure out what dimensions (px) to use for my flash document and I still have no idea if I’m using a good size…I’m using 640 x 400 (for widescreen). Is that too large?? the vid I tried to upload was maybe 2-5 seconds…just my title scn..*sigh*

Anyway my plot centers around Matthew 19:24, the part when Jesus tells the young ruler that it is easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. I came up with two storylines (basically, one has a camel, and the other doesn’t), and I couldn’t choose between them for the longest time. I like the camel one because I enjoy animating animals, but I decided to go with the second one (which centers around the rich man’s experience at the gates of heaven) because it has a message. Then I was just bummed about the lack of camel. So….I decided to just throw in the camel into my intro sequence! He’s not in the actual plot but hey, camel presence is camel presence.

So I opened up Corel Painter and doodled with my tablet.

 

 Yay Mr. Camel! (He has a phobia of needles.)

Right now I’m going for an animated movement quality/style similar to Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends  

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Storyboard

  

   

   

 

  

  I think I’m going to have to throw out sections 20-29…which is a major bummer because that’s the “message” part of my whole animation. It’s supposed to show the fact that Matthew 19:24 isn’t saying the money itself is evil – it is only “bad” when man idolizes money (as shown by the rich dude’s heart stuffed with $$) and cannot separate from it in order to pursue an eternal relationship with God. The rich man being told this verse by Jesus ends up leaving sad because he is unwilling to separate from his wealth to follow Christ.

My animation is (hopefully) humorous, but with a deeper message. I don’t know…I feel like sections 20-29 are really important, but I just don’t have the time! I may leave them out for this assignment, and then maybe over the summer or another year I’ll add them in

here’s a preview of part of my title scene (without music) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIPQqz_a_MY

—— nvm the dimensions of the other one were wrong so I redid part of it today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNNZ_r9hgQo (I still need to color in the words/tidy things up a bit)

Last week I was in Taiwan to see my grandma, so I haven’t had much time to work on my project. Can I say I’m satisfied with the end result? Meh..considering that I had to master a whole new program, I think it turned out okay. The quality of movement isn’t that great but I think it’s because the tween animation just can’t replicate the organic feel of hand drawn animations like in my other class. I’m also not a fan of the harsh lines Flash makes you use, nor the tediousness of creating symbol after symbol. But I love the tweens. So in the end, it evens out; I’d say, overall, Flash is “eh.” Next time I do an animation I’ll probably render using photoshop and then import the characters/bg into Flash to get that high quality look. I did some of that (with the heaven scn) but the importing process is tedious so I mostly drew with the Flash tools.

Basically I did all the body of animation in the past two days (two all nighters). The rest of the time I was figuring out Flash – throwing out failed products and studying tutorials. I think 2/3 of my time was spent learning Flash, and the other 1/3 is my actual animation. ha.

Even though my animation is between 1:30-2:00 minutes, it’s still only an abridged version of what I originally planned to animate. Maybe I’ll do the whole thing over winter break? We’ll see

Now I’m off to edit my polar bear animation! It’s going to be  shown at the Student Film Showcase this Friday. but it’s due tomorrow and I’m so far behind. eep.

Students can get free downloads of Autodesk software, including Maya, with 6-month licenses here:

http://students7.autodesk.com/?nd=register&savelang=1&coe=1&adsklang=en

It really works! I downloaded Maya onto my computer.

The idea behind project two was to portray a paradox: to emphasize and combine opposites; while also being a commentary about human’s constant attempts to make the artificial seem natural.   At the top of the installation, there are three large Green Tea cans covered with a floral pattern as if to indicate to a consumer how pure and “All Natural” the product truly is.  From the cans, which are meant to be reminiscent of hazardous waste barrels, flow aluminum feathers cut from soda cans.  The piece cannot be considered a stand-alone sculpture, as it is more of an installment to best serve the space and the subject matter.  The wire functions not only as the installation medium, but is also intended to serve as a visual representation of the energy and motion of the weightless seeming feathers as they tumble gracefully in space; it is for this reason that I have added both graceful and sporadic twists, loops, and kinks to the wires.  Through this way of installing the piece I sought to accent the idea of opposites by making metal seem weightless as a feather.