Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Friday, 25 June 2010
Evaluation of completed video
Initially I wanted to create the video with paint and spray-paint and to have a complex, original and inventive end result. I included the full, detailed original plan in the post below. But unfortunately in the end I did not have the time or the equipment to facilitate my needs. Cheaply I did everything in flash in the end using my original walk cycle storyboard character and creating the backgrounds myself which would represent the world's changed from natural to industrial. I would've liked to have added sounds, rain, weather changing etc. to make the video more complex. I could not find the time to do any of this and I also am lacking on flash skills. Overall I'm not very pleased but also not unhappy with the end result. It could've been a lot better and it also could've been a lot worse. I cannot blame the poor result on lack of time but a number of reasons in it's lack of quality. Hopefully next time it'll be better. I am keeping hold of all of my notes, drawings and my full original plan because I would like to create the original idea in the future for maybe my BA or just as a personal project. Anyhow, I'm moderately pleased with the simplistic but good looking flash backgrounds I did. They are simple and are not well drawn instead they were quickly drawn and are not made to any brilliant standard but I think they are effective in their simplicity. In the beginning I wanted to create a man walking his dog which would've took a long time to be made to a perfect standard with well drawn walk cycles (in sync) so I used a basic character that I had drawn and looped the animation to give it the illusion that he is walking along as the background move. The character wasn't very time consuming to create or difficult even and originality isn't even apparent but I'm not unhappy with it. I quite like the moving gif image. Overall I obviously wanted the end result to have a lot of elements to it which made the plan way too complicated because it was not a complicated project. I set the bar way too high in my initial plans.
Original Evaluation and Plan
Dexter's Animation (Evolution)Project Final Plan and Summary
The Character and The Dog
The character will be a simple character. It will be a man walking his dog, possibly an elderly man. I will create and design the character after studying walk cycles perfecting the way the character moves as he walks through video and through the story. The dog, will be a labrador. Both the man and the dog will be as simple and easy to draw and will hopefully be as effective and interesting as a more complex and defined drawing. My initial idea for the character(s) was to make them more complex and more detailed drawings and add them on flash after I had filmed the background and the continuity of the storyline behind the actual character. In one sense this may have been easier. I wouldn't have to fiddle with getting the character's walk cycle and continuation into sync with the rest of the picture and ultimately to perfection. But there is also the fact that I'm an amateur at flash! And I also have to take into consideration that to the viewer of the video (including myself) the video would seem less genuine if it wasn't painted into the background in the actual making of the video and the evolution of the background. At the end I think it would be a lot less effective.
Like I said, the drawing of the fellow and his little dog I will draw from studying walk cycles and they'll be simple, but hopefully effective. Once these have been drawn over and over again with perfect seperate walk cycles I will cut them out and use them as stencils. The continuous line of cutouts/stencils will be used as spraypaint of the background in a frame to frame basis which will eventually give the illusion of movement from the character.
- One Alternate idea I had for the movement and production of the character was to create the character, make him more detailed and more complex (along with his dog) and scan them into photoshop, edit and then create a walk cycle and then from this I print these out seperately the different stages of the walk cycle. So in the video; the frame by frame would consist of these printouts and for each frame I would swap the last cutout and place the next in exactly the right spot giving the illusion of movement. I have already practiced this method in a side-project from this one. This would be a far easier process and could possibly look better for the character as he and the dog would be more than silouettes and also I would make less mistakes as I would with spraypaint. But there is also the fact that the walk cut out would be hard to place in exactly the right spot to get the walk cycle right. But I feel this method would also be less genuine than the one I am planning to use. (So this is more of a back-up method).
Background
The background will be made from thin lots of acrylic paint that I will be able to easily change an object into something else with the paint. For example, in my video one part of it is a group of trees forming into some sort of power plant. In doing this I'll constantly be rubbing bits out and painting over past objects and using one object and turning it into something new. It's a process that I'm unfamiliar with but I'm eager to see how it all turns out.
How the background changes throughout and what to
The video starts at the home of the man with his dog. As he walks past sloping hills and a grey murky, dull sky. As he walks these large, moor-like, rows of empty hills slowly merge into trees and here, we find our character in a woodland with huge, harrowing long trees that loom over him with the sun and the light slowly breaking through the thick green forest. Slowly the light dies away fading back do a watercolour grey and thick waves of rain and thunder disheartens the skies as the forest steeps lower and lower, shrinking into the ground into nothingness and from this grows towers from a parade of industrial plants. Rows of them far into the distance, thick white smoke gushing out of the brim of them, clearly visible rising up to the dark, navy skies. In the dark image portrayed; lighting strikes fiercely and effectively. Then, after the condemnation of the lightning; the industrial scene melts and sinks into the ground. From this a lake is created. It's crystal and it's beautiful. And in the background rises mountains in the distance. A perfect, peaceful image to the setting of the sun in the now bright, blue skies. And after all of this the man stops at a bench which is at the foreground of this sublime view of the mountains. He sits, with his dog and rests.
What I'll Need to create this video
Digital Camera
Spare batteries for the camera
Cans of black spraypaint x 2
Set of Acryclic Paints x 1 (at least)
Plain card (for the stencils)
Art Knives
Either... A blank canvas or... A plain, unused white wooden board
Paint Brushes
Paint Pallet
How the Video will be put together
The video will be put together using stop motion with my digital camera. Every time I make a new edit to the paint in the background or the man moves slightly the camera will take note of the new change and each take will be a new seperate frame. Presumably, I'll need help doing this because I'll be wrapped up in the painting and I'll need someone else to function the camera or else I'll have to walk back and forth between the painting and the camera which would waste an awful lot of time. Hopefully a teacher or even one of my classmates would help me out with this anomaly.
After the video is completed I'll need to use Adobe After Effects to compile the (JPeg) images of the video together because using my digital camera would mean that I have hundreds of stand-alone JPeg's that need to be strung together to make a motion video. After these images have been comiled together to make the motion video I'll need to edit the time lapse between the frames to rid abnormalities in the way everything varying from the characters to the objects in the video move. I don't know how drastic the changes will be to the time lapse yet. I also may edit things such as colouring, lighting, digital movements etc. But one thing that I am certain to add is sound effects to the video. They'll be much needed in the events that take place in the video such as lighting, winds, birds singing etc. And I'll also be adding musc to the video to give it as much life and as effective as I can possibly make it.
I may also have to have the painting either pinned up or on a stand so that I can get the lighting right and I can also have the camera on a stand and in exactly the right place taking shots of the whole painting and leaving out all excess like walls or posters in the background for example. Neither the painting or the camera will be moved until the video is complete.
How long it will take to put together
Because I cannot in any means leave my equiptment over-night in the college I'll have no other choice than to complete the whole video in one day. Other reasons such as the lighting of the video could be ruined or changed dramatically abrupting the video and it's quality if the camera or the painting is moved to a different place in it's duration or maybe even moved just slightly. And also when I am painting the paint would be better for me to form an object into something new if the paint was wet. If I did half of the video one day then edited it the next the finished piece would more than likely be a lot worse quality than if I did it one day for a number of reasons. The change in the quality and the halfway point would be clearly visible in the finished piece. The best choice for me to make to create this video is to bring in someone to help me create the video on a friday (which is my usual day off) of which I have no lessons and there will be no one to distract me from my work, so I will be able to spend literally all day for the making of this video. I'll obviously need a second person to help me because I cannot man the camera whilst painting.
Sounds and Music involved in the video
The Sounds of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel will be the music throughout the video. The song I feel perfectly captures the image and the mood of the video. "In restless dreams I walked alone...Through narrow streets of cobbled stone..." The words are a sort of reflection the the surroundings of the video and character himself as he walks through this beautiful and realistic but sorrowful landscape which is full of character. I will also be adding sound effects to my video. Effects such as the wind blowing, lighting striking, sounds of the sea to add a sense of realism to the video.
What the Story is about and represents
The story is about a man who is simply walking his dog. As the simplistic man walks his dog he unawarely walks through a landscape which dramatically changes through time and space itself wheras the man stays does not. The surroundings the man comes across in the video are not objects in themselves. They can be shaped and formed unpredictably into something new and unwordly, dark and deathly, full of sunshine or happiness from natural to industrial. The dreamworld is complex, it's full of emotion and feeling as the man walks his dog he is blissfully unaware of the world he lives in.
The short story I have planned (and at this point I haven't the vaguest clue how it will turn out because I haven't even started) represents the fact that the world itself, our surroundings, the natural or man-made structures, everything is just bigger than ourselves. Unpredictable in a way. We walk to our works, our colleges, our houses or churches every day and nobody is fully aware of the complex, dramatic or even destructive wonders outside in our worlds every single day.
I want to emphasise the story on the surrounds (the background, objects and structures) in the video as opposed the man or his dog. I'll be expressing this in the way I make it as I'm planning to be using acrylic paint for the backgrounds and simply a stencil and spraypaint for the man.
How long the video will be
My aim for the video's duration is roughly 30 seconds. Now in camera shots, an image a frame is an awful lot of frames. I'm aiming for 12 frames a second (of which I'm unsure of) which would be roughly 400 images. I will also have to consider the time space between certain frames in the video because obviously there will be more space needed between certain time frames than others. Each different part of the video I'm aiming for 5 or 6 seconds long until I subtly but quickly change it to the next part. Because each image is going to be a new frame and each frame will have a certain change made (big or small) to the picture this means that there will actually be a lot going on in the video and it's details in the paint work.
The Character and The Dog
The character will be a simple character. It will be a man walking his dog, possibly an elderly man. I will create and design the character after studying walk cycles perfecting the way the character moves as he walks through video and through the story. The dog, will be a labrador. Both the man and the dog will be as simple and easy to draw and will hopefully be as effective and interesting as a more complex and defined drawing. My initial idea for the character(s) was to make them more complex and more detailed drawings and add them on flash after I had filmed the background and the continuity of the storyline behind the actual character. In one sense this may have been easier. I wouldn't have to fiddle with getting the character's walk cycle and continuation into sync with the rest of the picture and ultimately to perfection. But there is also the fact that I'm an amateur at flash! And I also have to take into consideration that to the viewer of the video (including myself) the video would seem less genuine if it wasn't painted into the background in the actual making of the video and the evolution of the background. At the end I think it would be a lot less effective.
Like I said, the drawing of the fellow and his little dog I will draw from studying walk cycles and they'll be simple, but hopefully effective. Once these have been drawn over and over again with perfect seperate walk cycles I will cut them out and use them as stencils. The continuous line of cutouts/stencils will be used as spraypaint of the background in a frame to frame basis which will eventually give the illusion of movement from the character.
- One Alternate idea I had for the movement and production of the character was to create the character, make him more detailed and more complex (along with his dog) and scan them into photoshop, edit and then create a walk cycle and then from this I print these out seperately the different stages of the walk cycle. So in the video; the frame by frame would consist of these printouts and for each frame I would swap the last cutout and place the next in exactly the right spot giving the illusion of movement. I have already practiced this method in a side-project from this one. This would be a far easier process and could possibly look better for the character as he and the dog would be more than silouettes and also I would make less mistakes as I would with spraypaint. But there is also the fact that the walk cut out would be hard to place in exactly the right spot to get the walk cycle right. But I feel this method would also be less genuine than the one I am planning to use. (So this is more of a back-up method).
Background
The background will be made from thin lots of acrylic paint that I will be able to easily change an object into something else with the paint. For example, in my video one part of it is a group of trees forming into some sort of power plant. In doing this I'll constantly be rubbing bits out and painting over past objects and using one object and turning it into something new. It's a process that I'm unfamiliar with but I'm eager to see how it all turns out.
How the background changes throughout and what to
The video starts at the home of the man with his dog. As he walks past sloping hills and a grey murky, dull sky. As he walks these large, moor-like, rows of empty hills slowly merge into trees and here, we find our character in a woodland with huge, harrowing long trees that loom over him with the sun and the light slowly breaking through the thick green forest. Slowly the light dies away fading back do a watercolour grey and thick waves of rain and thunder disheartens the skies as the forest steeps lower and lower, shrinking into the ground into nothingness and from this grows towers from a parade of industrial plants. Rows of them far into the distance, thick white smoke gushing out of the brim of them, clearly visible rising up to the dark, navy skies. In the dark image portrayed; lighting strikes fiercely and effectively. Then, after the condemnation of the lightning; the industrial scene melts and sinks into the ground. From this a lake is created. It's crystal and it's beautiful. And in the background rises mountains in the distance. A perfect, peaceful image to the setting of the sun in the now bright, blue skies. And after all of this the man stops at a bench which is at the foreground of this sublime view of the mountains. He sits, with his dog and rests.
What I'll Need to create this video
Digital Camera
Spare batteries for the camera
Cans of black spraypaint x 2
Set of Acryclic Paints x 1 (at least)
Plain card (for the stencils)
Art Knives
Either... A blank canvas or... A plain, unused white wooden board
Paint Brushes
Paint Pallet
How the Video will be put together
The video will be put together using stop motion with my digital camera. Every time I make a new edit to the paint in the background or the man moves slightly the camera will take note of the new change and each take will be a new seperate frame. Presumably, I'll need help doing this because I'll be wrapped up in the painting and I'll need someone else to function the camera or else I'll have to walk back and forth between the painting and the camera which would waste an awful lot of time. Hopefully a teacher or even one of my classmates would help me out with this anomaly.
After the video is completed I'll need to use Adobe After Effects to compile the (JPeg) images of the video together because using my digital camera would mean that I have hundreds of stand-alone JPeg's that need to be strung together to make a motion video. After these images have been comiled together to make the motion video I'll need to edit the time lapse between the frames to rid abnormalities in the way everything varying from the characters to the objects in the video move. I don't know how drastic the changes will be to the time lapse yet. I also may edit things such as colouring, lighting, digital movements etc. But one thing that I am certain to add is sound effects to the video. They'll be much needed in the events that take place in the video such as lighting, winds, birds singing etc. And I'll also be adding musc to the video to give it as much life and as effective as I can possibly make it.
I may also have to have the painting either pinned up or on a stand so that I can get the lighting right and I can also have the camera on a stand and in exactly the right place taking shots of the whole painting and leaving out all excess like walls or posters in the background for example. Neither the painting or the camera will be moved until the video is complete.
How long it will take to put together
Because I cannot in any means leave my equiptment over-night in the college I'll have no other choice than to complete the whole video in one day. Other reasons such as the lighting of the video could be ruined or changed dramatically abrupting the video and it's quality if the camera or the painting is moved to a different place in it's duration or maybe even moved just slightly. And also when I am painting the paint would be better for me to form an object into something new if the paint was wet. If I did half of the video one day then edited it the next the finished piece would more than likely be a lot worse quality than if I did it one day for a number of reasons. The change in the quality and the halfway point would be clearly visible in the finished piece. The best choice for me to make to create this video is to bring in someone to help me create the video on a friday (which is my usual day off) of which I have no lessons and there will be no one to distract me from my work, so I will be able to spend literally all day for the making of this video. I'll obviously need a second person to help me because I cannot man the camera whilst painting.
Sounds and Music involved in the video
The Sounds of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel will be the music throughout the video. The song I feel perfectly captures the image and the mood of the video. "In restless dreams I walked alone...Through narrow streets of cobbled stone..." The words are a sort of reflection the the surroundings of the video and character himself as he walks through this beautiful and realistic but sorrowful landscape which is full of character. I will also be adding sound effects to my video. Effects such as the wind blowing, lighting striking, sounds of the sea to add a sense of realism to the video.
What the Story is about and represents
The story is about a man who is simply walking his dog. As the simplistic man walks his dog he unawarely walks through a landscape which dramatically changes through time and space itself wheras the man stays does not. The surroundings the man comes across in the video are not objects in themselves. They can be shaped and formed unpredictably into something new and unwordly, dark and deathly, full of sunshine or happiness from natural to industrial. The dreamworld is complex, it's full of emotion and feeling as the man walks his dog he is blissfully unaware of the world he lives in.
The short story I have planned (and at this point I haven't the vaguest clue how it will turn out because I haven't even started) represents the fact that the world itself, our surroundings, the natural or man-made structures, everything is just bigger than ourselves. Unpredictable in a way. We walk to our works, our colleges, our houses or churches every day and nobody is fully aware of the complex, dramatic or even destructive wonders outside in our worlds every single day.
I want to emphasise the story on the surrounds (the background, objects and structures) in the video as opposed the man or his dog. I'll be expressing this in the way I make it as I'm planning to be using acrylic paint for the backgrounds and simply a stencil and spraypaint for the man.
How long the video will be
My aim for the video's duration is roughly 30 seconds. Now in camera shots, an image a frame is an awful lot of frames. I'm aiming for 12 frames a second (of which I'm unsure of) which would be roughly 400 images. I will also have to consider the time space between certain frames in the video because obviously there will be more space needed between certain time frames than others. Each different part of the video I'm aiming for 5 or 6 seconds long until I subtly but quickly change it to the next part. Because each image is going to be a new frame and each frame will have a certain change made (big or small) to the picture this means that there will actually be a lot going on in the video and it's details in the paint work.
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