Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Nova Transition
After we split by episode, I haven't had much involvement with the other groups besides discussing ideas. Group 1 thought of an interesting transition involving cutouts and asked me to animate Nova falling so that the silhouette could be printed out and then animated.
Now We're Getting Somewhere
We decided to do it all in light.
We did a 5 hour shoot in a tiny library room.
I looked at the timing on our animatic and made a rough timing sheet. So far when we had done light shoots, we had only gone in with a rough idea of what we wanted to do, but this time it was necessary to plan it out down to what frames we wanted.
We tried out some more experimentation with light as well, and James' came up with the idea of pointing the light onto the concrete wall when I drew Nova out. It gave her a very ethereal look.
We experimented with the angles we drew at too, to get the idea of tangible space when creating the block animations.
Our timing sheet:
We did a 5 hour shoot in a tiny library room.
I looked at the timing on our animatic and made a rough timing sheet. So far when we had done light shoots, we had only gone in with a rough idea of what we wanted to do, but this time it was necessary to plan it out down to what frames we wanted.
We tried out some more experimentation with light as well, and James' came up with the idea of pointing the light onto the concrete wall when I drew Nova out. It gave her a very ethereal look.
We experimented with the angles we drew at too, to get the idea of tangible space when creating the block animations.
Our timing sheet:
Supernova Continued
After the nova part of the episode, we inserted james' design. We decided on an ending image to work with, a void. James' design was blocks that come forth after the explosion, so I paired it with a light image to transition it to the void at the end. To keep the idea of beats in our project, I tracked the beats in a clip of music so that we could just sample from it when animating patterns. (the song is m83's We Own the Sky... its a good song. )
Ghetto Mocap
After seeing some of Etienne Jules Marey's work on motion capture, we went back to testing light again. Part of the reason for that was also after working on the computer for a while, we felt that we lost some of the organic and gestural design that we had from our light tests. We took a bit of a diversion and tried doing our own 'at home' motion capture. We put together a stick with a string of lights evenly spaced and attached it to James' leg. He also taped on different lights to his hand and shoulder and we tracked those movements as well. Afterwards we took the light stick and traced out different movements as well.
Supernova
I animated a visualization of the nova sequence in the beginning of the episode.
My goal was to find a transition to make the character lead into a more geometric landscape. (Bridged with krisometry).
My goal was to find a transition to make the character lead into a more geometric landscape. (Bridged with krisometry).
Further Ideas on Composing the Episode
After we decided on beats for the episode, we started to hash it out a bit further. We decided to start with the image of Nova then move into a more abstract design.
We looked at the designs we individually were attracted to, mine being dubbed 'krisometry'.
We looked at the designs we individually were attracted to, mine being dubbed 'krisometry'.
More Character Designs
some more character designs. I started with my more ghosty/amorphous idea then progressed into more female focused designs. I tried to only put in a more subtle femininity to the character, so that her sexuality would not be dominating over her character.
At the end of class, the name Nova was chosen for the character.
At the end of class, the name Nova was chosen for the character.
Composing our Episode
We had done a lot of experimentation already for the visuals of our episode, but James and I had a lot of trouble figuring out what would actually happen within the episode. We both favored something more abstract, although in creative differences, I trended towards a more organic aesthetic while James tended towards a more geometric approach. We reconized these differences, however, and both agreed we would like to encorporate them together for the piece.
As a point to build from, we decided to split the episode into 4 'beats', to keep it consistent in timing.
We had been talking about implosion and explosion of stars, and snappy timing. James lent me his ipod to watch a couple of episodes of 'The Universe', on black holes and solar flares.
Since the episode is about the character transcending their current trend of thought, I tried making a visualization of the character's 'thought' expanding and contorting.
As a point to build from, we decided to split the episode into 4 'beats', to keep it consistent in timing.
We had been talking about implosion and explosion of stars, and snappy timing. James lent me his ipod to watch a couple of episodes of 'The Universe', on black holes and solar flares.
Since the episode is about the character transcending their current trend of thought, I tried making a visualization of the character's 'thought' expanding and contorting.
Some more Light Experimentation
James and I decided to continue with experimenting with light. Kon brought up the idea of magnetism being a part of how the character communicates other beings around it, so we tried to encorporate that idea into our experiments.
Here we were trying to animate the actual lights instead of just drawing images. We were still unsure at this point as to how hard it would be to animate with light. We tried using several tracking devices so that the line would not boil so much from how our hands shook and moved.
We also tried coordinating different movements so that we could get two movements together, ie, the ripple from the bouncing light.
Here we were trying to animate the actual lights instead of just drawing images. We were still unsure at this point as to how hard it would be to animate with light. We tried using several tracking devices so that the line would not boil so much from how our hands shook and moved.
We also tried coordinating different movements so that we could get two movements together, ie, the ripple from the bouncing light.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Development of Character Design
It was decided that we would include a character for sure in the project, so I drew some character designs.
My idea for the character was to have one that was genderless and slightly amorphous, both in terms of developing it with the rest of the class and so that no immediate roles would be placed upon the character in viewing.
Reconfiguring After the first meeting
After the Canada Line meeting, the class dropped in mood. Everyone seemed unclear on how to proceed. What was strange was that the group who's idea had been picked also seemed to drop in enthusiasm. I met with Kon and we discussed some of the issues with the idea that had been picked. We felt that the idea really went more in a commercial direction and didn't accomodate the majority of the class in how they wanted to express themselves in this project. We formed a new proposal which stemmed from the old idea and encorporated elements from the other groups.
First we isolated the elements we felt were very strong ideas in the other groups:
Urban frustrations : the idea of connectiveness through familiar situations
Dance Parties : Rhythm and patterns from movement, and the idea of spreading a positive idea
Space and Time: Reflecting upon our position in the universe and observing ourselves on that scale.
We talked about introducing a character that would be in every episode, both as a way to form a continuity between the episodes and to document a development in the character. We also discussed how we would manage to encorporate all the ideas and styles of everyone in class and how to avoid creating a discord in the work.
What we came up with was as the character develops through the episodes, the methods and media can reflect that development as well. Basically, to start simple and move into the complex.
1) Gestural (the formation of the character)
2) 2D, cutouts (the character gains self realization)
3) 3D, stop motion (the character gains a realization of environment)
4) "4D", abstract (the character transcends super-ego)
We didn't want to be pushy with this idea but we hoped that it would help encourage some ideas if we started from a broader framework for the project.
First we isolated the elements we felt were very strong ideas in the other groups:
Urban frustrations : the idea of connectiveness through familiar situations
Dance Parties : Rhythm and patterns from movement, and the idea of spreading a positive idea
Space and Time: Reflecting upon our position in the universe and observing ourselves on that scale.
We talked about introducing a character that would be in every episode, both as a way to form a continuity between the episodes and to document a development in the character. We also discussed how we would manage to encorporate all the ideas and styles of everyone in class and how to avoid creating a discord in the work.
What we came up with was as the character develops through the episodes, the methods and media can reflect that development as well. Basically, to start simple and move into the complex.
1) Gestural (the formation of the character)
2) 2D, cutouts (the character gains self realization)
3) 3D, stop motion (the character gains a realization of environment)
4) "4D", abstract (the character transcends super-ego)
We didn't want to be pushy with this idea but we hoped that it would help encourage some ideas if we started from a broader framework for the project.
Team Time and Space Debuts
When we started with this project, we started with the themes of 'Time and Space', 'Dance Parties' and the 'City as a Body'. I spent some time with the city group and then moved into time and space.
Time and space always manages to extricate lots of nerdy talkings, which is a shame it is seen that way... there is a lot of math that can describe it but despite that there is a lot of natural phenomena and patterns that can be seen in this subject. We had a lot of discussion involving the idea of scale in the universe in relation to people. We branched into the idea of connecting people and observing those links.
Some of the topics we went over that we were interested in showing through the Canada Line project:
-the Realization of being connected-
Particularly in regards to dark matter, the invisible form that shapes the universe we know, we considered things that shape our personal community and space. These things are not always obvious at first but if we take the time to step back and observe they may form. We thought about that in regards to scale as well, that nested within other elements are more things, such as the individuals in a community, etc. This is where we also thought of the importance of the very brief but wonderful encounters we experience every day, a touch on the hand, saying hello, a kiss, etc.
- overlapping opportunities -
Another theme we looked at is at the progress of time as a linear function. When those timelines overlap they have the opportunity to create a completely new experience. In relation to people we thought about how an interaction with a person can create much larger experiences than we could ever create on our own, and that in the idea of linear time, we could possibly have hundreds, thousands, etc, of these interactions that we are not even aware of yet.
- exploration of space and time principles -
We looked at the way things move in space, because it is at a much different scale and of different properties than we experience on Earth, the way things move and react to one another will be very different from what we are used to. Particular elements we liked were how masses in space attract to one another (made us think of people coming together to make towns and cities, or on a smaller scale, families). We also looked at how stars implode and explode and found that type of motion very engaging too, particularly in regards to the short screen time we have on the project, so we were looking for interesting and grabbing visuals.
From there we thought about what other visuals we wanted to look at, and the idea of drawing with light on long exposed photographs came up. We decided to do some tests to see how hard it would be to animate with that method.
we were focused on using light to represent the dynamic energy that is constantly in motion in the universe. We also didn't want to create character using literal visuals, so the use of light was to serve as a visual representation of a character/place/object in space's energy. We also tested out compositing the images to see if that would work. It was fun to create the still images but animating it proved to be very challenging.
For our first pitch to the Canada Line, we wanted to integrate the human elements that attracted us into the motions and visuals of space and time.
Our pitch video:
What I worked on for this video was the rotoscoped elements. I chose two video clips from The Human Animal of interactions between people that I thought carried a subtle beauty when observed. I wanted to rotoscope enough of the silhouette to show that the characters were human, but not so much detail to make fully representational characters.
Time and space always manages to extricate lots of nerdy talkings, which is a shame it is seen that way... there is a lot of math that can describe it but despite that there is a lot of natural phenomena and patterns that can be seen in this subject. We had a lot of discussion involving the idea of scale in the universe in relation to people. We branched into the idea of connecting people and observing those links.
Some of the topics we went over that we were interested in showing through the Canada Line project:
-the Realization of being connected-
Particularly in regards to dark matter, the invisible form that shapes the universe we know, we considered things that shape our personal community and space. These things are not always obvious at first but if we take the time to step back and observe they may form. We thought about that in regards to scale as well, that nested within other elements are more things, such as the individuals in a community, etc. This is where we also thought of the importance of the very brief but wonderful encounters we experience every day, a touch on the hand, saying hello, a kiss, etc.
- overlapping opportunities -
Another theme we looked at is at the progress of time as a linear function. When those timelines overlap they have the opportunity to create a completely new experience. In relation to people we thought about how an interaction with a person can create much larger experiences than we could ever create on our own, and that in the idea of linear time, we could possibly have hundreds, thousands, etc, of these interactions that we are not even aware of yet.
- exploration of space and time principles -
We looked at the way things move in space, because it is at a much different scale and of different properties than we experience on Earth, the way things move and react to one another will be very different from what we are used to. Particular elements we liked were how masses in space attract to one another (made us think of people coming together to make towns and cities, or on a smaller scale, families). We also looked at how stars implode and explode and found that type of motion very engaging too, particularly in regards to the short screen time we have on the project, so we were looking for interesting and grabbing visuals.
From there we thought about what other visuals we wanted to look at, and the idea of drawing with light on long exposed photographs came up. We decided to do some tests to see how hard it would be to animate with that method.
we were focused on using light to represent the dynamic energy that is constantly in motion in the universe. We also didn't want to create character using literal visuals, so the use of light was to serve as a visual representation of a character/place/object in space's energy. We also tested out compositing the images to see if that would work. It was fun to create the still images but animating it proved to be very challenging.
For our first pitch to the Canada Line, we wanted to integrate the human elements that attracted us into the motions and visuals of space and time.
Our pitch video:
What I worked on for this video was the rotoscoped elements. I chose two video clips from The Human Animal of interactions between people that I thought carried a subtle beauty when observed. I wanted to rotoscope enough of the silhouette to show that the characters were human, but not so much detail to make fully representational characters.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)