After some very kind website recommendations from fellow classmates, i was hunting through http://www.coolhunting.com/, and came across this wonderfully psychedelic graphical artist. His use of colour and shape combined and recombined is abstractively illuminating. He's just like a digital Pollock. I just wish i had discovered him a few weeks ago as in accordance to the recent projects we have been working on, i think these would have altered my perception slightly of what to undertake. Entrancing...
now this is the kind of thing that got me shaking in my pants when learning about AfterEffects. After receiving a wicked induction of a very nice chap named Ian, we were shown this `dead good` example pretty much summing up the true mastery of two dimensional movement. After delving slightly into the workings of AfterEffects and just looming over the actual essence of these animations, how the hell did she fuckin do it?! She's an absolute genius...fair play to her...fair play!
with all this contextual studies mumbo-jumbo looming over my head...i decided to weep my way into a lost attempt of post-modernistic discovery online...my smile fluttered when clicking through link-after-link of Japanese blog bon mots and miraculously finding this...need i say more...i am happy!
just came across this funky stop motion advert for Kettle chips when browsing through my new freeview channels. thought it was awesome how mainstream commercialism can still dignify such a basic process.
after dealing with the problematic ways of AfterEffects i had 48hrs to come up with some form of moving imagery. Fortunately after having some past experience with iStopMotion, i was quite comfortable with the process and therefore had a faint idea of what to undertake. Applying my two original characters from my previous project, and making a few slight changes to make them easier to incorporate, i cut each ligament out seperately to be able to manipulate. My initial idea was to set out a small story with each full character, having them approach each other from either side of the background then somehow merging in the centre. After playing around for quite sometime experimenting, i found the eccentricity of the movement too fun to keep to a basic storyline and therefore went a bit senseless. Utilising my original backdrop from AfterEffects, my tutor suggested integrating the essence of charcoal, perhaps outlining smoke from the chimneys of the houses. I then used pencil to keep the detail quite crisp and clear for the movement of the smoke only because my backdrop was sketched out in fineliner and i thought charcoal may have been too heavy to mix with. Overall, i am pleased with the result, however i think i could have added more features such as sound effects or difference in lighting and combined these in some editing software.
i cannot even express through any form of communication how much i BUM this movie. i could go on for hours repeating myself over and over and it'd never lose meaning. everything from the animation, the concepts, the characters, the backgrounds, the imagery, the storytelling, the atmosphere, the feeling, the emotion, the morals, the soundtrack and that's to name a few! it is not but a film...but an experience!
i thoroughly recommend to anyone of any age to give it a try. I have always been an obsessive fanatic of Japanese anime's and after purchasing the Manga of TEKKONKINKREET and to only find out that it was being produced into a full feature length, i was over the moon! It was more than enough as a comic. However, as a film i think it works more toward the heart. The storytelling is utterly stupendous; the film carries a warm blanket of youth and naivety that is enveloped through such emotional fervour, it is disturbingly evocative and tearfully clutches the heart-strings. the main reason why i decided to blog it up is in reference to what is currently going on with my own work. At the minute i'm studying the working's of some tasty animation software; Adobe AfterEffects and iStopMotion. We have been given the task to become as cultivated as possible with whichever of these programs in a two week timeframe and create a 30second animation based around the element of the figure and incorporating a specific descriptive word of our choice.
Through quite a struggle of unforeseen mishaps, i have postponed my study of AfterEffects for the time being and moved to utilising iStopMotion for my animation. I will update this as it progresses if all goes to plan.
"ahhh...it's time to relax, you know what that means, a glass of wine, your favourite easy chair and of course this compact disc playing on your home stereo, so go on, and indulge yourself, that's right, kick off your shoes, put your feet up, lean back and just enjoy the melodies, after all, music soothes even the savage beast"
