Some photographic experimentation. I set the shutter speed to bulb and held down the shutter control while i sparked a lighter. The aperture is set really small in order to not let alot of light in. I turned all the lights off in my room while i did this.

I think the effect it gives is really nice as you can see the individual sparks of the flint, and this is something that i would not be able to do using stop motion or hand drawn to the same effect.

This will make up part of the lighter scene, with the images set sequentially. There will be alot of movement between the images which i feel is important in creating the energy to properly describe sparks going off.

Playing around more with Rayograms in the darkroom. Wanted to see if i could see my bones, which gave a pretty nice effect to the handprint. I exposed the hand for about 5 minutes at the highest aperture and a 5 filter.

The lighter was put on the paper with some foil and exposed under different filters. I wanted to see which would give the highest contrast and show the best detail of the lighter, and a 5 filter did this better than the original 3 filter.

I was hoping that the light would bounce off the tinfoil a bit more, creating sparks of light, but unfortunately this didnt happen, although thinking about it maybe it was never going to.

Before this i experimented with sparking the lighter to try and create explosions of black on the photo paper, but this didnt work either, and i just ended up with blurry splodges of black, so the image wasnt really worth uploading, but in my mind it seemed like an awesome idea.

The lighter is for the lighting scene, the last but one scene of my animation. I may experiment with photography though to try and make it look better, more sparks etc.

Here is another drawing of the guitar, hands and other elements that will make up this scene. These will be scanned in and animated in after effects. It looks sketchy, but thats the idea, the animation is a bit surreal, and is describing a scene of low-light, a smokey jazz bar, so i think these drawings will describe this feeling pretty well.

The word “Precise” in my list of 3 words describes the movement being precise, and the music being precise in that there are few elements that make up the track. Maybe “minimal” would have been a better word.

Some other sketches and bits on there, but it will make more sense when it all comes together.

First sketch of a scene involving a guitar being played. This may change, but gives the general idea of what a still from the animation might look like. The guitar is being played and the notes are flying away from the strings to move into the next scene of the animation.

Rayographs/Rayograms

Some Rayographs for the first and last scenes of my animation.

To do this I twisted up cling film and put it ontop of the photo paper, which gave a really nice swirly smoke effect that is needed for the first and last scenes. I will put these into after effects in order to animate the smoke and move into the next part, as described in my storyboard.

The movement itself may differ slightly from what was originally imagined, but its something i will experiment with.

I will use fades and ripple effects in order to make the smoke look like it’s rippling and moving.

I originally said that i would put this into the form of a flip book and film the flip book of the smoke, but i think it would work better straight from after effects, and time constraints stopping me from doing it aswell.

Pjotr Sapegin - Mon the Cat (1995)

This is a really nice example of stop motion and claymation. I really like the use of clay in the title sequence, and how the letters curl up and uncurl as something different. You can tell alot of time and effort went into making this happen, and shows how clay can be used within a transition from one scene or piece of writing to another.

Also, the use of clay as the backdrop is interesting; usually you might see clay figures in a normal environment but at a smaller scale, like in Morph, or within an artificial scaled down environment to fit the scale of the models, like in Wallace and Gromit, but i really like the effect that an overall clay-built environment gives to the animation.

This is my storyboard broken into 12 frames.
It starts with a flipbook of a smoking cigarette which then breaks into the main video.
The video pans out to smoke coming from the cigarette, which then turns into figures dancing in the smoke. These figures may leave an after-trail as if they are part of the smoke.
A hand wafts the smoke out of the way and the camera focuses on the hand as a guitar is picked up.
The camera rotates to see the fingers moving as if the hand is playing. The camera pans down to the right hand of the figure that is plucking the strings. Musical notes are coming from the strings as they are plucked and they float away.
The camera follows the notes as they stick to a wall and move around playfully on the wall.
The notes then melt down the wall. I will most likely use stop motion for this part as it will give a real but surreal feel to the animation.
The notes crawl along the floor and into a packet of cigarettes that is lying on the floor. They crumple their way in.
The camera moves to focus on the packet which is opened and a cigarette is taken out of the packet.
Cut to a lighter that is being struck and the cigarette is lit, as the animation comes full circle back to the starting frame.
The original flip book will be used in reverse from the opening scene and the words “The End” will come up in a flip book.
Then it will fade to black.

The reason for the story taking this form is the feeling that the song would be one that would play in a smokey little jazz bar, and the idea that the song is quite repetative, “Repeat” being one of the words i picked to describe the music.

This story works on the idea that everything is connected, and constantly moving. The reason it begins and ends on the same scene is due to the idea that the animation could be looped and looped, because of the repetitive nature of the song. So it starts with smoke, then the hand is introduced, which is then involved with the guitar, from which comes the notes, which dance themselves, before crawling back into a cigarette packet, which then goes back to the first scene.

Get it?

I was conscious of the fact that photography, stop motion and the hand drawn all need to be used, and i think this story will allow me to do this.

This may be a bit ambitious but i want it to flow pretty quickly and come full circle within the 30 seconds.

Stoked.

The three words i have selected as a response to the music given are:

Sultry

–adjective,-tri·er, -tri·est. 1.oppressively hot and close or moist; sweltering: a sultry day. 2.oppressively hot; emitting great heat: the sultry sun. 3.characterized by or associated with sweltering heat: sultry work in the fields. 4.characterized by or arousing passion: sultry eyes

—Related forms

sul·tri·ly, adverb sul·tri·ness, noun un·sul·try, adjective

—Synonyms
1. oppressive, stifling, humid.

Precise

–adjective1.definitely or strictly stated, defined, or fixed: precise directions. 2.being exactly that and neither more nor less: a precise temperature; a precise amount. 3.being just that and no other: the precise dress she had wanted. 4.definite or exact in statement, as a person. 5.carefully distinct: precise articulation. 6.exact in measuring, recording, etc.: a precise instrument.

7.excessively or rigidly particular: precise observance of regulations; precise grooming.

Repetition

–noun1.the act of repeating; repeated action, performance, production, or presentation. 2.repeated utterance; reiteration. 3.something made by or resulting from repeating. 4.a reproduction, copy, or replica. 5.Civil Law. an action or demand for the recovery of a payment or delivery made by error or upon failure to fulfill a condition.

definitions from Dictionary.com

The main reasons for these words is that when listening to the song I got the feeling of being in a dark, smoky little jazz bar type room, and i want to reflect these feelings. The animation will mainly take the form of black and white, which will give me an ideal chance to make use of rayograms.

This is an awesome video that combines photography/stop motion and hand drawn really well.

Procrastinating.

Also, heres the trailer for sin city, a film that i love, originally by an artist i admire.

This is the Hollywood realisation of Sin City, and for once they didnt ruin it by making it a film, infact its pretty much frame for frame the same as the original books.

One from a series of really odd but amazing videos by Australian film maker “Keith Loutit”. He makes use of time-lapse and tilt-shift cameras to create a sense that the subjects in the video are tiny models shot with a macro lense due to the illusion of a narrow field of view and slightly sped up action.

When the waves crash against a rock in the video it looks like its shot in a bathtub, its the opposite of model making and filming like in Thunderbirds where the models were filmed and slowed down to give a larger scale, this was sped up to give a smaller sense of scale.

Although i might not use tilt-shift in my animation, I thought this was a really interesting approach to film making.

Awesome music video for “Work it Out” by RJD2 featuring Bill Shannon, who also appeared and was involved with directing a similar advert for Visa to do with contactless payment cards, “Life flows better with visa”.

The guy on the crutches is insane, he has some kind of arthritic condition where his joints are the wrong shape and size, so hes spent a load of time on crutches, and has developed skills in skateboarding, dancing and moving in a fluid way aided by these special crutches.

This is all shot in one, which has got to take alot of time to get right.

Awesome song and awesome video.

Heres a video about the “Shannon Technique”

I think things like dancing, especially this kind of movement, would lend itself well to rotoscoping, for instance if you edited out the crutches to make it look like someone floating about, moving in an unnaturally fluid way.

Repost, something I did last year, stop motion is gruelling.

Original Post is HERE

First attempt at a flipbook which ended up half the size of the flipbooks, mainly to save on printing, but it just made it way more fiddly to make and put together.

Quite enjoyed this, got a few more videos that i want to turn into flipbooks, maybe trying with other binding methods and colour, over-drawing/rotoscope type stuff.

It’s not shown that well on the video, and its also backwards, but you still get the idea.

Roobarb.

Roobarb was a cartoon from the 70s that was drawn using marker pens in a deliberately sketchy style, creating a wobbly animation effect known as “Boiling”.

And the theme tune is rad.

Kasabian - Shoot The Runner

Kasabian music video directed by film duo Alex Courtes and Martin Fougerol. It is drawn using rotoscoping, so the video has been shot on film and then drawn over, giving a slightly sketchy look and line edges that seem to wobble, which looks to give more movement and energy to the video.

I really like the use of a limited colour palette and block colour.

Alex & Martin are also responsible for the following music video for Kaiser Chiefs song “Good Days Bad Days”, which combines film and a sort of element of stop motion, using small segments of stop motion to add bits of colour, change the colour of the band, add instruments etc.

I really like this use of stop motion because it looks really raw and is quite playful and it demonstrates the possibility of adding pieces of traditional old skool techniques to video.

This video is much better viewed full screen.