Creative Play - Week 7

I am interested in video editing, so I was highly anticipating this session when I discovered that it would be centred around editing sound into a movie clip deprived of its original sound. We would be completing this task using a technique known as ‘Foley’, which is where the sounds that are needed to be implementing into a film or video, are reproduced and recorded, often by getting sound from objects which are entirely different from the ones that are producing sound on film. They are then later edited into the film.

We decided to add sound to the ‘Nightmare Before Christmas clip’, as there are a range of actions which all seemed as though they would produce diverse sounds, and it would be interesting to see how we could replicate them using the objects that we had on offer. It also helped that I never seen this clip before, as I would have to guess the atmosphere and mood that the clip was going for. As we were watching the clip, I took note of all the sounds which I thought we would need to add, along with the times they would appear in the video, to help us later during editing.

This list is very accurate to our final product, and was crucial to helping us later, as it allowed us to record all the sound in chronological order, therefore making it easier to find them when it came to editing, and we knew exactly what objects we needed for what sound. I feel as though we found plenty of creative ways to replicate sounds. My favourite example of this, is the glove which we created which had paper clips sellotaped to each finger and thumb. This was used to recreate the sound of Jack Skellington’s hands as they made contact with an object, as I would imagine his ‘boney’ hands to have a very distinct sound, for example when his hands griped onto the banister of the stairs, we recorded me grabbing a pole whilst wearing the glove, and I feel as though the effect worked very well.

Some other examples of unusual objects used to recreate sound include:

-A ruler scraped against sandpaper to recreate the electric sparks from the battery

-My voice being used in several instances, such as the breeze at the start, the pop as the cherry is pulled out and the squish of the cherry

-A pen rolled across a table to recreate the turn of the dial on the microscope

I am impressed with how the final product turned out, aside from the irritating background noise present within some sound clips, which I was unfortunately unable to remove during the editing process. I do however know the reason for this, and how to prevent it next time, and that is by going into a recording studio or somewhere else where there is very minimal background noise. I was able however to slightly make the background noise less noticeable by fading out the starts and ends of the sound clips gradually in the editing software. The final design choice was to place a soundtrack across the clip, I decided to go with something which has a mysterious feel to it, but also somewhat of a playful nature, as represented by the clip, in the end I selected 'Aiden's Theme' from the 'Beyond Two Souls' soundtrack.

I thoroughly enjoyed the editing process and the making of the sounds, and this remains something that I am highly anticipating to implement into my own works in the future.

Here is the final clip -

https://vimeo.com/191291572

 Making of - Week 7

In 'The Making of' we have been tasked to start an ongoing project which leads up until March. We would have to pick something that we would be able to make an addition to each day. I eventually decided to focus on my already existing project, my Facebook page under the name of 'Simpsons Celebrity Caricatures', but become a lot more active on it, attempting to produce a character a day. I chose to do this as I have a lot of experience in this style, therefore drawing each character shouldn't take up too much time. I also think the end product could be really impressive, as I would have the dozens upon dozens of a wide range of caricatures all stood together in one huge picture. I could also experiment with alternate styles, and place them in the picture as well, creating a 'Where's Wally' type image, as you can search out the alternate cartoon styles. I predict that this could be possible as a daily project, if not, I could definitely at least get a rough sketch a day and the finished character on the following day.

https://www.facebook.com/SimpsonsCelebrityCaricatures/

Here is the product from day one, Rick Sanchez from 'Rick and Morty'

'Making of' - Weeks 5 & 6

During week five in 'making of', we were introduced to a new 'noticing' task, where we had to be observant and look out for what are known as 'thankyou' photographs, capture them, and finally title them. The title is usually a play on words or an interesting observation relating to the photo. I found that when I attempted to go out of my way to look out for these photographs I was unsuccessful, but during my trip to Liverpool and at Media City, I came across many by accident, and accompanied them with suitable titles, some of which I am very pleased with, others seem slightly too forced.

Liverpool isn't a fan of 'The Sun'

Locks by the Docks

I Luve this phune case

Music gives me a smile

Taking out the hash

I enjoyed this task as it shows us how much we pass by daily that we ignore or forgot, but though capturing them, I have preserved and documented them, however I wish I would have engaged with it more and included a range of different locations.

These are the movements which I captured via film which will be studied during 'Making of'. One of them is a generic walk cycle, which is essential to learn for animation. I was temped to document walk cycles when people are at alternate emotional states, therefore showing how that may effect there walking cycle, however I feel as though I should start with a neutral walk cycle and then progress to them later. I also captured two other movements, someone hitting a ball with a stick, and someone catching a large object, as I feel that these two movements both require a lot of different movements happening at once, which would be interesting to study. Weight and exaggeration could also be explored with these two movements.

I found this very simple and informative video on YouTube regarding the animation walk cycle -

From this video, I have learnt that they are four key poses which make up the walk, all of which can be seen in some variance within my primary material above, which are as follows;

- Contact

- Down

- Pass poss

- Up

- Contact (with foot placement switched)

All these specific poses are illustrated beautifully in this diagram below, which would assist me very well if I ever get around to designing a walk cycle of my own.

Going back to my 'catching' footage, as I previously mentioned, exaggeration is a factor which could heavily impact the style and weight of the objects in the motion. The same creator who made the walk cycle tutorial above, has made a video regarding that specific animation principals, and by watching this video, I realise how someone can alter the movement and timing of a motion in animation to show a variance in effort or weight, which can be done through exaggeration.

After reviewing the footage that I captured the previous week, I concluded that there were too many issues with it for me to work with it further, especially on the walk cycle. The main issues being; as the subject isn't traveling in a straight direction, foot placement is very complex, and due to the fact that my vantage point is very close to the subject, the camera had to be constantly moving, making it hard to accurately track movements. So for these reasons, I decided to recapture one of these actions, and also record two new ones, keeping in mind what I had learnt from my first attempt. One of these is another cycle, as I wanted to experiment with something similar to the walk but in an alternate context, so I decided to perform a run cycle, as its surprising how much that alters the key poses. The other was a throw, as anticipation isn't something that can really be applied to any of the previous motions (apart from before going into a run cycle to prepare), so I really wanted to experiment with that animation principal. As you can tell, I have slowed down the speed of the last two motions, the reason being that as they are all concerned with capturing quick motions, I thought that it was essential to see every key frame in clear detail.

After all this preparation work, I wanted to make a start on working with the walk cycle, so using the reference footage above, I very simply drew out the key frames in my animation software, and then proceeded to allow the PC to fill in the in-between gaps, as I was using key-frames as appose to animating frame-by-frame, I lacked control which is why some of the joints come loose or overlap at points, but I feel that I have successfully captured the motion.

I later then went back and applied this movement to a pre-made model of myself, which has all the joints that would often move separately drawn as separate assets, therefore meaning I can apply the same process that I went through on my simplistic stick figure by moving the assets in place of the key-frames, but with a fully drawn body, below is the result.

Going through all these stages has made me realise how much work is put in an essential part of animation, and by documenting each stage, I have created an overview and reflection on the process, which is what 'making of' is all about, so I am anticipating applying this documentation to future much larger projects in the future.

Creative Play - Week 5 & 6

Due to my love of photography, and my knowledge from studying it at A level, I really enjoyed the lighting segment from this week 6's 'Creative Play' session. However I never had to opportunity to operate the lighting facilities that were available at Media City, so it was great to learn about how they work, and what certain effects they are good for producing. I felt as though during this segment, I successfully managed to direct the people posing, and feel as though I created exactly what I had in mind because of that. I have picked my three favourites that my group created, and have presented them bellow. The theme was Film Noir. I feel as though I should have opted to be in some of the photos myself, instead of just behind behind the camera, in order to get the full experience, which is something that I'll definitely consider in the future.

These are some sketches which I produced prior to this session after researching film noir. Unfortunatly, I wasn't able to recreate the one on the bottom, however the one on top heavily inspired the creation of one of the following images.

This is without a doubt my favourite outcome, as due to the composition of the lighting, a beautiful halo effect is created on the subject who is holding the gun. This helps to create enigma and mystery, as only the silhouette of the subject is shown, and the identity remains unknown, which I feel would work perfectly in a Noir film, as they are often centered around mystery. The subjects and vantage point of the camera were positioned so that the main areas of interest are aligned with the 3x3 grid, therefore following the rule of thirds and in theory creating a much more visually appealing photograph.

 I feel as though the reason that this photo stands out to me is thanks to the juxtaposition of the different levels of lighting, as the light shown coming from the subject on the left's head creates a huge contrast from the darker, low-key tone of the rest of the photograph. I feel as though that this light represents power, which is also shown through the height of the two individual subjects. My only complaint with this photograph is that I wish we explored an alternative angle as appose to sticking with a direct approach, as we could have perhaps chose an angle which represents even further the difference in power of the two subjects.

I really liked the idea behind this photograph, however I don't feel as though we pulled it off as well as we could have done. The idea for this came from my sketch shown above. The main issue was the lack of sharpness of the shadow, as I feel it is too soft which may have caused the subject to appear a lot less threatening, which wasn't the intention behind the photograph, so in future I will make sure to work out how to properly operate the camera so that the shadows appear sharper. I also don't like the brighter lighting consisting throughout this image, as it doesn't fit with the film Noir genre. However, aside from the lighting issues, I feel that the attire and composing of this photograph is really good and makes it feel very Noir themed.

Unfortunately, I didn't get as much of an fulfilling experience the week prior to this, as we were dealing with a topic which I felt really wasn't for me. Week 5 was based around a program called 'Arduino', which is an open source electronics platform used to create interactive experiences. We were introduced to this via some interactive sand-pits, which caused a disruption on the projected pattern when motion is sensed.

 

Whilst this did interest me, and I had some fun playing around with the patterns and illusions you can create, I still didn't feel invested to this topic. After we finished looking at these exhibits, we then went back to attempt some 'Arduino' ourselves.

 

This was a very stressful process, and it took our group a long time to figure out how to use this program and device to create and activate simple moving mechanisms and lights. Eventually, after a lot of fiddling, help and stress, we managed to create a motor which span a disk, which we could then temper with the speed and timing.

Though I was relieved that we actually managed to accomplish our task, I still couldn't envision me utilising this technique again later within the topic, as I didn't see how it could be of any use. That was until however, I was shown a beautiful video of how this can be used to create some wonderful interactive environments and scenery, which made me realise that if mastered or carried out further, this project may benefit later from this technique.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDDFvAYuhRM

https://vimeo.com/190776951

I attempted the Anticipation/Follow through movement exercise again, however this time it was created within Maya. I was relatively pleased with my initial stop motion exercise of this principal, though I think that on this version, I have improved upon it. This was mainly thanks to the graph editor tool, as I could easily alter the speed and build-up of the block at any time, which I think has helped me to produce a much more realistic looking motion.

This is my bar sheet for the following animation. Due to the fact that in this instance, I am working with two blocks, I have separated the top and bottom halves of the bar sheet to show the directions for each block, as many of the actions overlap with each other, and therefore it would be easier to show what both blocks are instructed to do at the same time. Unlike the ‘anticipation’ bar sheet, this bar sheet mimics near perfectly how the final product turned out, with nearly each frame the same as how it was written down. This proved problematic though, as the sprint of the block at the end of the final product should have been a lot faster, but as I was strictly following the bar sheet, the sprint was not as fast as I intended, therefore reducing the impact of the collision with the other block at the end. In order to get around this next time, I will take into greater consideration the number of frames that I wish each movement to occupy. Aside from this, this bar sheet greatly helped me during the production.

https://vimeo.com/190768124

This is my fifth experimentation in the stop motion room. This time I was tasked to make two individual blocks interact with each other, and come up with a story/situation it. I decided to have my story about block one creeping up to block two, and whenever block two turns around, block one freezes to prevent him from being caught, before finally dashing towards block two and knocking him over. I chose this story as it is relatively simple, and a good way of showing two blocks interacting with each other. As I am giving the blocks more of a character and purpose this time, I took into extra consideration how to animate certain movements, and when and when not to utilise certain principals of animation. For example, when the block is slowly creeping up, I didn’t use much anticipation, as the movement is relatively slow, however when the block dashes at the end, I used a lot of anticipation, in order to show that the movement is going to be a lot quicker. I also used ‘follow through’ for when the block stops when the other block starts to turn around, in order to emphasise the harsh stop. Overall I am pleased with how my simple interaction turned out, minis the dash at the end which I have addressed above, but thankfully I know how to prevent this next time around.

'Making of' - Week 4

After getting a chance to look at everyone's second attempt at the map making task, I found it interesting to see how this time, people were a lot more experimental, and seemed to really stretch the meaning of the word 'map', which lead to some very creative outcomes. One that stood out to me was one that utilised symbolism and simple patterns in geometric shapes as appose to representational drawings of the areas themselves, so I interviewed the creator, Ling to ask her about her inspirations and her feelings towards it- 

I liked the use of symbolism and simple patterns in geometric shapes as appose to representational drawings of the areas themselves, what was the idea behind this?

For this map, I've incorporated the colour and iconography to represent my key moments. As you see the red hexagon is the university of Salford, green represented garden, yellow obviously indicated the tram and grey implied the imperial war museum

How does this differ from your first?

Compare to original map, this one seems more abstract because I have simplified the landmarks to make viewers think about it. The first map was just detail sketches that didn't have any meaning or technique behind.

Which one do you prefer and why?

I prefer second map because obviously, I've put more thoughts and techniques in it compare to original one

Which did you have more fun creating?

I would say second map has more fun creating because I played around with colours and geometry on the illustrator, created a visual communication with viewers

If you were to do this project again, which direction would you take it?

If I was going to do this map again, I would like to transform it into 3D map. I think that 3D map is more fun than 2d drawing and will attract more people

It was interesting to gain her thought process on how she came to the final idea, especially considering how much of a unique idea it was. I find many similarities in this and my initial mapping project, as neither map is concerned with the in-between moments of the journey, and instead symbolically represents the key moments that we wish to communicate. I am very interested in character design and caricatures, hence why I was keen to implement them into my first mapping project, and from her previous work, Ling appears to be very interested in drawing patterns and nature, so she has also explored her interests in this project, which shows by the way she had more fun making it.