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From our initial briefing on the project, I understood “Mark” to be a collaborative network of artists and designers in the areas around Cornwall. I was very excited about contributing to an innovative and expanding organisation. With this in mind I drew up some ideas, the strongest of which I thought was moving graphics (arrows) tracing out the outline of the Logo, then fading out. I also considered the idea of having the arrows fill out the negative area, leaving only the logo in place. The meaning behind these simple lines is meant to be individual paths crossing, and branching off of each other to form mark.

Our initial meeting with the client definitely cleared things up, whereby we were informed of the context of the animation i.e. Use as an introduction for their website, and the general style they were looking for. However, I was slightly disconcerted by the nature of the business (furniture production) and what they were actually asking for, which would essentially be the theme for their website, as it had not been designed yet. I was also slightly annoyed that they had decided to change their logo, which meant it was back to the drawingboard with my arrows.

Football
Bowling Ball
Ping-Pong Ball

First off we began making the dancefloor in Flash. The grid was surprisingly tricky to make with individual morphing lights. By repeating four seperate box animations the grid was built up. At this point we considered the idea of animating each cell of the dance floor as if it were a tv screen. i.e. opening with static then flickering into the logo colours, possibly with images. However we decided this would become too complex and busy, drawing attention away from the dancers.

The background crowd was quite a simple idea of animating just two frames in time with the beat. We decided to pull the poses ourselves with a little help from Will, Dan and Ben. We then traced their outlines in flash. In hindsight it may have been interesting to illustrate the figures outselves, contributing abit of stye. We composited these elements into Adobe After Effects, which was I tool I had not really used before. I liked the versatility of the program and the lighting effects you could render. However I soon found out that you cannot render lights from nothing, so by creating coloured circles in flash I found a way to create some spotlights behind the crowd. This turned out quite well, as we could animate the movement of each light.

The final and most important stage of the project was capturing the dancers on the greenscreen, then filling them with a solid colour. We found it difficult to organise some people to dance in an embarrassing way, but we were lucky enough to recruit Sean in exchange for a soundtrack for his ident. Our direction of the dancing was quite laid back, in that we just nudged the style in a direction we wanted and kept the camera rolling. I think that this worked to our advantage, whereby any choreography may have caused an unatural appearance, even though we had a very good idea of the kind of thing we wanted. Implementing the live-action was surprisingly easy, we edited out the background, but found a few difficulties when the figures sometimes overlapped. We created masks in order to resolve this problem then added a slight glow.

The animation of the Logo was intended to swing in, then back abit, in order to give it some weight. I think this came off quite well, along with the shine at the end, which implies the network is full of energy.

Here is the final ident for anyone who has not seen it already:

Having listened to a professional scriptwriter about the structure and techniques of scriptwriting, I was quite excited about putting together my own characters and storyline. The writing technique that most interested me was using opposing ideas for comic effect. Initially I found it very difficult to come up with a story purely from my imagination, without any flaws or inconsistancies. I was also quite concerned about revealing my story to an audience, whereby something very personal to me might be rejected or sneared at by others. This seems to be quite an on going worry with my personal work, when I realise that the more personal a story the more human and genuine it seems, whereby people can relate to it.

I then remembered an experience someone had once told me involving the martial art of Kendo. I thought this was quite an interesting subject, opening up the realms of far Eastern culture. Essentially it involved an unlikely Yorkshireman as a Sensai, giving a class in Kendo. The idea of this character provided the main opposing factor for the story and his undermiming by his pupils. I introduced the idea of using senses when sensai Ray asks his wife to turn out the lights, wich also set up the punchline.

In hindsight I think that the outcome of the events may have been quite obvious given it’s buildup. I also think that I could have payed more attention to detail, having had a specific environment in mind, I could have described this far better, aswell as the characters. All in all I think that my rendition of the story was quite well facilitated, but could have been more concise and detailed.

The first animation undertaking would be viewed in the form of a zoetrope. The freedom to produce a depiction of any subject matter whatsoever was great, but sometimes too much choice is a bad thing. I can see myself encountering this problem alot, as the possibilities of animation are pretty much boundless. Eventually i decided on depicting a chain of stickmen holding hands. Their movement would be in the form of a Mexican wave, but with the slightly graphic twist of their heads popping up when the wave passed them. As we only had 12 frames to work with, I found it quite difficult to squeeze this movement in. With 12 frames being the tv equivelant of half a second (with there being 25 frames per second), I should have pre-empted this problem beforehand. When it came to spinning the zoetrope, the animation did appear a little fast, but i think you could just about tell what it was.

Looking through the gaps in the side of the zoetrope made me realise how animation is just an illusion that tricks the brain into thinking that a static image is moving; which is pretty crazy if you think about it, and quite mesmerising.

I have never made a blog before, or a diary for that matter, but I think that recollecting thoughts and experiences is definitely good for inspiration. I doubt many people actually read blogs, but even so I think it is great that people all over the world can share their thoughts opinions.

I will try to be as open and honest as I can, mostly for myself, but also because I might be able to contribute things that I might not think of at the time or not have the intrepidety to say out aloud. Also there is so much bullcrap on the internet, I think it would be quite original to actually say what I think.