Thursday, 17 April 2014

Experimental Animation exercises

Over the course of the semester I have been completing weekly tasks to build up an Animated Sketchbook for my Experimental Animation module. It has been great to just be let loose with these tasks, not have a plan and just go with my instincts. Definitely my preferred method of working!

                                                               Week One: Charcoal 

The brief was to brief find a piece of music and create a short animation that was in the style of William Kentridge. I chose a song by Yeasayer but didn't have a specific plan to what i would do. I chose to use a chalkboard and chalk and a textured paper with charcoal. This led me to create something which played with light and dark, creating a film about turning a light on and off. 



                                                       Week Two: Animated Journey

Using the work of  Stuart Hilton, Robert Breer and Jonathan Hodgson, as inspiration to create an animated journey. Having always wanted to make a film using a Super 8 camera I sourced an old camera but unfortunately found that processing costs of 16mm film is very expensive. After doing more research I came across a redeveloped hand cranked movie camera called a Lomokino by Lomography that worked using 35mm standard film. Using 9 rolls of film I documented my journey across San Francisco and LA, it was a bit of a gamble as I had no clue whether or not it would work, I even doubted if I had loaded the film properly as it felt like such a flimsy bit of plastic!



After developing the film I used a macro lens to film each frame of the negatives, a very laborious process! With the negative footage i inverted and colour corrected each scene in After Effects, I decided to leave it uncropped and show the white paper, i thought the changing colours added an extra feature.
                             


 The final result, I find, being like a sub conscious memory of a trip. When you look back on a holiday and have memories of places in fragments and short snippets. This is why i left in the footage that had not developed as it is like the gaps and blank moments. I was really happy with the final result, definitely a goal of mine which can be ticked off the list, and a big learning curve of how to use the camera better next time!




                                            


Week Three: Manipulated Images

Looking at Rotoscoping I sourced an old film clip I had recorded of a point of view on a swing. Splitting it into frames I then printed it out in black and white and began to manipulate each image. As the footage was of me swinging I wanted it to seem as though I was swinging into colour. I used watercolour paint to paint the frames then shot it under the camera, using a cardboard frame to keep each one in the same place.



Week Four: Pixelation 

For this week's task we had to work as a group to produce a film using Pixilation, using Norman McLaren's Neighbours as inspiration. It is always a challenge when working in a big group to agree on an idea but collectively decided to make something fun, using hopscotch. We all decided to edit our own versions, I wanted it to be quick and snappy with a light hearted soundtrack so I sampled a Kraftwerk track called Morgenspaziergang.







Week Five: Cycles & Replacements 

This task was to look at Eadweard Muybridge's photography and select a cycle to animate. I chose a cycle of a cat and used after effects to manipulate the image to create an animation. 


Week Six: Scratch Film

Looking at Len Lye's work, I was given a strip of 35mm film on which to scratch and manipulate. The strip that i got contained a few frames of footage of a close up of whiskey being poured into a glass. I used this as a starting point, zooming into the glass and creating an abstract view.



Week Seven: Experimental Drawing 

Our final task was to document a type of experimental drawing. After an unsuccessful attempt at getting my cat to draw a picture, i decided to go to my sewing machine instead. Using paper I fed it through the machine and created and abstract pattern using the needle as a pencil. I have decided that this technique could work really well for my Sky Arts Sting.


                                         


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