Week 5, Day 2

Now that I have finished the storyboard, I am able to go into the character designs and concept art, which I am glad to finally be on. I am still experimenting between styles for the final piece, such as the birds, I am not sure whether to have them as plain black cut-outs or colourful, I feel that they should be colourful as they are exotic birds and should thus show this. 

I feel that I am quite limited on the character design for my main character as he is meant to be a shady gangster, but comes across more jumpy and scared, thus he has a high collar that hides half of his face. So i feel that instead i will need to focus on the character development of the surrounding people on the plane, such as the woman that is sitting next to him.

Week 5, Day 1

Finally, I completed all of the storyboards at the weekend and was able to start on character designs for my final animation. I had a lot of trouble deciding on which story to use as my final animation. I really liked the drunk woman story, but this bird story was far more interesting. I had a few ways of helping to decide which one to choose. One was asking people which one that they were more interested in, i explained both to them and nearly everyone chose the bird story, because they thought that it was so ridiculous and funny. Also listening to the tutors talking about radical ideas made me think about how in this project that i am meant to be challenging myself; through this i thought about how using a story that is practically laid out for me already is not challenging myself at all. I did have quite a bit of trouble finalising the bird story and have spent several hours over the weekend writing up ideas and crossing them off. I feel that where i have been doing storyboards all the way through i have run myself down and the though of having to do more put me off. However a positive from doing so many, I was able to pull in parts from past stories into this final storyboard, and so finally it was done. Also from drawing so many people over and over I feel that I have improved my drawing skill and my confidence with my own style, so even if this project does not go well in the end, I am glad that i have finally found confidence in my own skill and do not feel as inferior to everyone else in the pathway.

The final storyboard, slightly out of order and hard to read as i changed the way around

Authors own photographs

Character facial designs and clothing ideas, I was not sure which period to do this in, but as stated by some people; it is a long way from Australia to the UK even now.

Week 4, Day 3

Today I continued my research into puppets and different ways of presented it. I researched two animations that use After Effects and other computer programmes. The two animations were 'Dead All Along' by Giles Timmes and 'A-Z' they both adopt a collage style to their work and I love how each of them have so much detail and the characters are so bold
.

Photographs from Giles Timms, personal blog

I attempted to make a person out of newspaper cuttings in response to this animation, I feel that it did not go as well as i had planned, and would have looked better with paler colours. ((Photos from Sally Arthur's blog))

((Pictures from telegraph magazine))

I have looked through magazines for flower patterns that i could use as reference for my animation. I have also looked at pictures of flowers and scenery that is symmetrical, simple or flowing.

I felt bad for just cutting out flower patterns that other people had created so i had a go at creating my own patterns. I have found out that this is not something that I am very good at. Although they did get better as i went on, and I found that you take inspiration from things around you, as coming up with them from the top of your head is hard. I did know this, but I feel that putting it into action has reinforced it in my work.

FMP: Week 4, Day 2

Photographs from Isabella's Art

For more artist research i have looked into puppet design. I am intrigued by how puppets work, also i am not sure how i shall animate my story and i feel that puppetry could be an option. 

One of the people that I looked into was Isabella's Art, which is a company run by a husband and wife in the Netherlands. They do very intricate designs of people from various fairy-tales and myths, however, although these are puppets they do not have movable joints which is something that I will need to do for my project.

I also researched Chinese puppetry and the intricate design that they use, I feel that i will need to research more into this kind of puppets if i plan to use them for my final animation. 

Not authors own photographs

I also made a puppet to see how it would work if i made one in a similar style.

FMP: Week 4, Day 1

From the beginning of my project I had a strong idea of what story that i would be editing, however when i came around to designing the storyboard for this story i felt particularly hooked to it. so now i am not sure whether I will be using the bird story or this one about a drunk woman in a big fur coat.

FMP Week 3 Day 2

This week I began working on the storyboards for the story's that I recorded last week.

some i feel are harder to express than others, which I anticipated at the beginning of the project. For some of them I have slightly altered what happened and was possible in the time frame, for the purpose of comedic value.

My aim for the end of the week is to finish at least 80% of the stories, and i feel that I am on track to achieve this.

Add caption

FMP Week 3 Day 1

Today I continued the making of the puppet, I feel that it is going really well, all that I have to do now is to add a head and then i will be finished. I am very proud with how it has come out, I expected it to be a lot
worse. I do have a few elements of it that i have left out, such as the socks, which i have made to move up and down her legs.

skirt extended

skirt confined

hands back

Hands front

I also continued my response to my secondary research interviews. As expected some of the stories were harder to convey than others, one of my favourites was, the one below, which was about how my Great Grandmother was kicked out of her house by her mother because she had her hair cut into a bob and her mother thought that she was 'hussy'. I have taken a few liberties on this storyboard as television would not have been invented then.

((Authors own photographs))

Another fun story to illustrate was about my grandfather and his various adventures in Greenwich Park. They range from insane bike races with his friends to stealing apples from the park keepers garden.

One of my favourite stories was one about my grandfather taking his drunken grandmother back from the pub to her house, pitch black down a country lane. I had loads of fun sketching it up and designing the characters for the story. I feel that it will be hard for me to choose which story to animate for my finals.

((this was meant to be at the top but blogger won't let me move it))

Puppet as of now, still no head

Test Animation

Rocket Man, Final Cut

Creative Making Day 3

After looking over the animation that we put together yesterday we still were unhappy with the ending. Thankfully one of the members had an idea about what we should do. While us lbm students worked on changing the ending of the animation and then the editing; the graphics students created a booklet which shows the making and processes that have gone into this project.

I feel that overall our team has worked together seamlesly with out any problems or disagreements along the way. I am incredibly thankful for this and I feel that our respect for each other's opinion has improved our project work. From the start of the week we all thought it a good idea to split the work between each of us, depending on our speciality. However, we have worked closely together so that we can show our work each step of the way to the rest of the group to make sure that we are always on track. Documenting our work as it goes is something which we have taken very seriously in this project, as not all of us were in the same area at the same time we wanted to make sure that everyone knew what was happening. Also the photos help us when we are do documenting in our sketch books and here, on the blog. Social media has helped push our project further as we are able to contact everyone in our group at any given time.

Creative Making Day 2

Today we filmed the animation. We used the 'iMotion HD' app for iPhone; which I have used before and highly recomend. After the Crit on Monday we were slightly more conscious of our concept for the animation as we did not have one the day before in the Crit. We worked more on the storyboard and focused more on the ending; which we felt was the weakest part of our story. 

the animating process

The filming went well with few hiccups along the way, when we decided to re-shoot some of the footage in a more abstract way than we had previously used

Creative Making. Day 1

For the creative making week i teamed up with two graphics students and three other LMB students. I felt that our group was well planned out as there were two photographers and two animators, so even though our group was large, everyone brought something to the table.

We started out by looking at what everyone was doing for their FMP, there were a few crossovers but nothing that interlinked too well. so what we planned to do was use one person's FMP as a starting point and then interlink the others in as we went along. We went with Matt's title of 'Space' as we felt that this was the one that we could expand on the most and since what it is about, we can make it crazy and unrealistic as we wanted and no-one would find it strange. 

Making the paper stars

concept art vs actual model

Brainstorm of ideas

We planned to make a story about a spaceship going on a journey and from this we decided to split the work between everyone. 

spaceship/ rocket research. i looked at a number of ships from films vs real life. Studio Ghibli air-ships i find very interesting as they are very different from conventional spaceships

Concept art regarding the materials available

making 1

making 2

creating the mood board

FMP Day 3

I began recording my grandparents on Wednesday and Thursday, i still want more footage but i feel that this is enough to work with for the time being. 

Today (Friday) I visited Greenwich, where my paternal grandparents grew up. as i walked around the roads and park i could feel the stories that the told me coming to life. I also visited the houses that they grew up in, i have also looked at old photographs of Greenwich to get a feel of what the area was like at the time.

Fingal Street, Greenwich. Authors own

Haddo House, Deptford. Authors own

Another film that I watched, which I feel i can take inspiration from is 'True Grit' (2010). I find the panoramic shots of scenery intruding and i want to replicate this in my work. I experimented with some of the photos that i took today of the horizon of Greenwich.

Mix of Authors own and stills from the movie True Grit

After watching 'The Book Thief' the other day I felt inspired to do some work relating to it. I felt that the main character Liesel was such a dynamic character and i want to replicate that. I thought for a long time after watching the film, how i could try and recreate her in my work, and it took me until today to come up with an answer. A puppet. Puppets are able to do things that humans are unable to do and i feel this draws parallels with how Liesel has such a strong mental image with so many of the people that she interacts with.

1st Plan for Liesel Puppet

FMP Day 2

Photographs by unknown artist

Today I visited some of the places in London that mean something to my family. With my project it is quite hard to find galleries and exhibitions that relate.
I visited The Albert Hall because my Great, Great Grandfather Emmanuel Marks sang there. 'He and many other members of our family have been known for singing', my grandmother recounts. I wish I was able to go inside however the view from out and around the Albert Hall is stunning and I felt choked to think that a member of my family had such an amazing opportunity.

Photographs not by author

I have started watching films that I feel link into my title, two which I watched today, were 'The Godfather' and 'The Book Thief'. I have just recently finished reading 'The Book Thief' and the way that relationships are explored throughout inspires me. In watched 'The Godfather' because of the way that the family sticks together. Overall i found it a very long film and quite confusing in places but what i will take away from it os the way that the siblings and family react to each other throughout the film.

FMP Day 1

My FMP has the working title of 'It is a Miracle that I was ever born'. I aim to focus on the ridiculous stories of my family, and see how they have impacted my family and if i would have ever been born if they hadn't happened.

I started off my project by recording my family tress for both my maternal side and my paternal side. I did not use any ancestor websites, just my grandparents and parents knowledge of their family's. This part i found a lot easier that I expected; as my grandparents were quite welcoming to my interest. 

Some of the trees were easier to do as expected, such as my grandfather on my fathers side who was the youngest of 13 and didn't know any further back than his mothers maiden name.

Nan, Paternal side

Grandfather, paternal side

Top, Grandmother, Maternal side
Bottom, Grandfather, maternal side

Photographs by unknown artist

This week i was also had the opportunity to visit my grandparents (on my mothers side), who live in Nottingham. My grandmother has an exceptional amount of photographs dating back several generations, we did our best to identify who each person were, however were were not sure with many as on the back of many photographs there were contrasting names of the people in the photo. 

I am amazed with the quality of these photographs to say that many of them date back to the 1800's do my Great, Great, Great Grandparents.