Week 5 was the best week so far. I discovered Blu Blu. The work shown in the lecture this week was so wonderful and inspiring. I just loved the concept of this and the link between design and street art - the way new mediums can help create new ways to see things. I also enjoyed the references to music video clips and contemplated the ones I loved and why.
I also got to see some other students work - which is the main reason I enrol in Face to Face classes and drive down to Brisbane every week. Sharing and problem solving with peers is more valuable to me than the new skills which I am capable of learning at home on my own. There were some amazing gifs shown in the team's chat which was great because I have been wanting to get an indication of what is happening for others. I am unable to see what those students are doing normally so it was great - they were inspiring.
I also got to see all the variations of Chris and Nattanakul gifs in progress which to me is the really interesting part - the directions and decisions they made to get to their final designs. I also love how each of the disciplines emerges in the projects - the fashion...the business side etc. below are areas I asked questions around - tweens, duplications and exporting issues.
I asked Questions. about duplicating new layers - this was causing me problems particularly with this image
I had some questions about the different export options -
We also looked at file sizes and how we were to take it into After effects
trying out tweens for control
The best part of the class was listening to Pieters stories of creative exploration. HIs time in London - How thinking broadly and experimenting took him around the world and enabled him to be involved with some very exciting projects. He was explaining how curiosity and investigation lead to creativity.
We also talked about how viewing size needs to be taken into account with our animations - is it designed as a gif or a movie? We have booked the lecture theatre for our final showcase of assessment 2. I am extremely excited about this. - I will bring popcorn and hope covid stays away.
Exploring Ideas for Stop Motion
Falling
who are you talking to0
your legs are fading
jump, run sand
It might be said I became a little obsessed with Shadows for about 5 days - this was what I intended my stop motion to be about - still maintaining that sense of self for a theme. I now have hundreds of shadow images on my phone. I actually took so many but it was proving extremely problematic as a stop motion idea because the light would always change and to move your shadow you needed to move and I quickly realized I would need to do a lot of photoshop editing before I even started for this concept.
I had some pretty terrible ideas.
Idea 1 - These started with a test in the kitchen. Note to self (DO NOT USE GREEN DYE ON WHITE STONE BENCH TOPS EVER AGAIN). This was good as a test although it still took time - the biggest lesson was to shoot in landscape always. It was a pretty dull idea and my family let me know it.
Idea 2 - I live near the beach, the perfect place to use sand as my backdrop -inspired by the video "Gulp" shown in tutorial by 'Sumo science and Aardman' in the UK.(https://vimeo.com/26877221)
Of course, as soon as I started I realized the sun was moving pretty fast changing the light rapidly and that shadows - my own included would determine the angle and crop of the frame. I made many mistakes in shooting this because I thought I would be able to fix this in after-effects later on - this did not happen.
Idea 3 - Another idea inspired by a tutorial example - El Chapo title sequence where they used torn newspaper to illustrate the concept. the figures and stories emerging - see link below
https://www.methodstudios.com/en/methodmade/el-chapo-main-title-sequence/
El chapo titles
my version - less dark
Gulp - inspired stop motion
boring food dye
test video - problems with light, and orientation
I am finding After Effects extremely difficult to learn. I have played in it before and accidents can happen - however I am finding it hard to navigate the interface and understand the language. Not being able to control the outcomes or understand the knock-on effects has been extremely frustrating.
On top of this, I have not been well for weeks now with a persistent and worsening middle ear infection that stubbornly won't go away no matter how many antibiotics I take. This has ment my patience has been at a low and my learning time has been less productive. I managed to produce quite a few videos - some are too long and some have some weird effects happening but they move which for me is a milestone. Some of the tests and iterations below
A trimmed and cropped section of a much longer video
Experimentation
Below is a mess of a stop motion where I attempted to change the vibe and enlarge the dragon... but as you can see I had no control over the timing and a few weird frames made the cut The one below has lightning.
Evil dragon gets red and angry
A longer more effective stop motion - this was not cropped or resized yet
