The Clip

Group Brainstorm

Individual Brainstorm

Media Design is a new way of seeing existence. It provides us with a potentially infinite number of ways of seeing our world and the worlds within it; the world of reality and the worlds of our minds. Film, games, the internet, networks, television; all of these are mediums through which we perceive them. Media Design makes connections that break the barriers set up by language and physical distance. The world has been shrunk to a global village as everything in Media Design is connected.

Media Design is freedom. We are no longer held back by physical constraints. We design the worlds we want and immerse ourselves within them. This is the aspect of Media Design I wanted to capture in my-motion animation through the narrative. The character is taken through the most iconic forms of media where he entertains himself with what they have to offer. He sees his world as a source of entertainment, a form of expression and a means of communication. His journey is bracketed by the bitten apple and the apple core as an allusion to the company Apple Inc., which is one of the companies most involved in the media world.

But the world of Media Design represents is not perfect. It is still very young, however growing rapidly, and we are learning all the time but some aspects are still under development. A small reference is made to this in my animation by the appearance of spam advertising. Media Design is also very future-oriented and strictly 'first-world' but with such potential for development there is no telling where it will take us.

My first test animation using the stop motion technique. Frame rate is 10fps.

See earlier post for annotated and sketched storyboard.

And the final clip. Full credit to Philip Raivander for providing the music.
Media Design - a new way of seeing.

References:
Images:

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/articles/article/jamilcolumn1.htm/

http://savproduction.com/about.html

http://tamk-artmedia.blogspot.co.nz/2012/01/apply-within-three-weeks-to-study-media.html

Music:

http://soundcloud.com/philipraivander

Long Time, No Scene

It's been a wee while hasn't it. After a particularly eventful weekend left me on crutches and in need of an extension (and no, it had nothing to do with town), I haven't been able to produce a video for today's interim submission. It is the perfect opportunity to show what I have done so far. I was lucky enough to be allowed into the school's ergonomics lab to take photos as I was in need of a green-screen effect only to find out later that due to the lighting we used only half the photos were useable (you live and you learn I suppose). The ones I could salvage allowed for me to produce some excellent effects for the game and movie scenes. Also a massive thanks to Philip Raivander for allowing me to use his track "Background Music 1" in my clip. You can check out more of his work here at http://soundcloud.com/philipraivander.

Our makeshift green-screen for the retaking of my photos.

Just a sneak preview from the start of my clip;

Sunny With a Chance of Techno

I was searching soundcloud.com for potential background music for my clip and came across a number of tunes I would consider using. I am still tossing up whether or not to use a more futuristic/techno style piece or to go with a more subtle acoustic one.

This one, as cool as it is, is a bit intense for what I want but the electronic style is similar to what I'm looking for.
http://soundcloud.com/noisia/noisia-alpha-centauri
Something a bit more like the later half of this is more like it;
http://soundcloud.com/forekast/ludovico
As far as acoustic ones go the first is probably my favourite for subtlety but the second is more lively. I would have to check both against my clip to see which suits best and within that find which 30 - 40 seconds are best.
http://soundcloud.com/philipraivander/background-music
http://soundcloud.com/philipraivander/background-music-2

Got Any More Audio?

Statement:
For the second group work task for the project The Clip, we further explored the company we previously advertised in poster form, Milk Audio by creating a  filmed 15 second advertisement.
The intention of our 15 second advertisement was to show the various operations that the company Milk Audio does, including sound effect for video gaming, production of film soundtracks, and also music production. We used the branding material that we created in the first group work task at the end to show a continuity of branding within Milk Audio, with this displaying the company name and slogan. The demographic that the advertisement was aimed towards was people within the fields that we mentioned in the 15 second clip such as game and film producers, and musicians.
Initially we had planned on adding the more humorous element of having milk mustaches on the actors which we would generate on Adobe After Effects, yet due to a lack of familiarity with the software programs we were using and time constraints, we were unable to add this element, however we are happy that the advertisement we have created is of a good standard and brands the company well.

The Team

Group team members: Scott Brebner (scottbrebner.blogspot.co.nz), Hannah Kemsley (hannahkemsleydesign.tumblr.com), Vincent Than (thanarang.blogspot.co.nz)

I'm Out of Storyboard Related Puns

Here is my pencil draft of getting ideas on paper. My sentence in studio to portray my ideas was "a new way of seeing the world and the worlds within it" but I am thinking of ways to reword it to make it more engaging.

The dual storyboards is so the movements and transitions and such can be clearly displayed on the annotated one and the coloured one is to provide an unobstructed view of the frames. Enjoy.

Testing, One, Two...

Having a play with stop-motion animation on a sunny Sunday morning. I found my focus jumped around this too much. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be looking at the apple or Brigid holding it. Perhaps a slower frame rate would allow more time for viewers to get their bearings or less movement overall. The one difficulty with this is is that people cannot hold perfectly still and holding the same pose for a long time gets tiring so I'll have to be cautious with how I get people to pose.

This is the style in which I want to produce my frames. With the individual components stuck on in layers it means I can animate particular aspects at different rate, whether I want something to be smoother or freezeframe etc. It depends on whether or not I can get access to a greenscreen or something similar because constructing each frame on photoshop gets less and less appealing the more I think about it. But I do like this style. Sometimes you do stuff just because it looks cool :) Thanks to Brigid Quirke for being a patient model.

The Vision

What is Media Design all about? Alex, Brianna and I boiled it down to something that looks a little like this;

Without technology we wouldn't have media, and without media there is no way anybody could design for it, making media design pretty redundant. Media provides us many things; perspective, connection and, what we saw as the primary aspect, entertainment. It comes in many forms from many sources.

I want to apply my skills in my discipline to the development of games and film so I focussed on what it is that makes games and movies  entertaining. One key element I found in both of them (although far more necessary in movies) is a good narrative or story. A good story is what makes a film memorable and can make a good game great. I want my stop motion clip to show media design to be a doorway to a new way of seeing and tell it through an engaging, however short, story.

Surfing the Web on My Storyboard

I'm going to go ahead and apologise for the title now...

Link to image

What I like about this segment of storyboard is it doesn't just show what happens next but analyses the jumps between frames, showing development and process of thought. A storyboard needs to show more than just a sequence of images so annotations are key.

Link to image

Link to image

Now I know comics and manga aren't technically storyboards but they hold the same format and one thing about comics is that they put a lot of thought into things like camera angles from which the action is viewed. Even without animation they are visually entertaining.

Yeah, it's going to be hard to beat...

Wow. I had been planning on using post-its before I saw this but now I'm a bit intimidated. And then I saw this and I almost cried out of admiration;

Incredibly clever work. It's got me thinking of ways I can use ordinary things in alternative ways, such as the environment shown here;

This next video was shown to me by a friend of mine. I love the use of collage to set up the scene;

Videos found at:
Post-its - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZtxHOfmhH4
Bad Apple - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=240Vq6tIxio
Gulp - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieN2vhslTTU
Jimmy - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnbl94GZ6TM&ob=av2e

Got Audio?

Company: Milk Audio

Slogan: Got audio?

Company Bio: We cater for all your sound production needs, be it films, games, or a simple song over breakfast.

Demographic audience: Musicians, sound companies, music companies, gaming companies, 18+ age range.

Group team members: Hannah Kemsley (hannahkemsleydesign.tumblr.com), Scott Brebner (scottbrebner.blogspot.co.nz), Vincent Than (thanarang.blogspot.co.nz).

One Word Final

The final cut for One Word Film in all its animated glory.

Home Stretch

One Word Film as depicted in my storyboard. I want to extend it by having the camera switch to a blank screen part way through on which letters begin to float by and "evaporate" fades on screen then off. If you were to look at all the motion tween paths together it looks like something a preschooler would bring home... or modern art, depends what you're into.

Boiling water audio found at http://www.freesound.org/people/RutgerMuller/sounds/50767/

Compulsion to Blog Episode 09

The word I have chosen to animate for my One Word Film is "evaporate" so I figured looking into the motion of steam and evaporating particles would pay off and this is what I came across;

A slow motion clip of water evaporating mid-air found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6anMpNZYpe0

This clip shows the motion of steam a bit better found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPZZhQps90s

To capture that fluidity of the motion would be key in showing the essence of 'evaporate'. While the boiling water may be quite vigorous, the motion of the steam is very soft.

While looking up these videos I also found this next one. It's not entirely relevant but I find the fact that it exists hilarious so here it is; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kieGBkOdyMU

One Word Submission

Design teacher always told me that I had to work on my typography skills and I can't think of a better way to do so than this One Word Film project. With the cutting exercise (the jargon used to describe the spacing evades me at this hour) I found myself subconsciously comparing the spaces between my cut outline opposed to the actual letters. This is quite evident on the butter-pad page (butterpage?).

Kerning

Butter-pad

This nimbus of inspiration is a whittled down version of the list of words I came up with during the lecture. My favourite ones anyway. Looking at it now I noticed that even though the words had a lot of potential for fancy animation I didn't think too much about the design principles of project one. Although font behaves differently to imagery I should try and keep things like hierarchy and balance and such in mind when developing my three storyboards further.

Brainstorm

I found out that we can only use the letters of the words as shapes in our animation and nothing else, meaning that in the cases like "Chaos" or "Perspective" the scribbles and construction lines would have to actually be comprised of small letters or larger warped ones.

Concepts 1

Concepts 2

Concepts 3

The next three storyboards are my favourite three words where more detail can be shown from longer storyboards.

Evaporate development

If I was to take 'Evaporate' further I would extend the sequence with a high angle or bird's eye view shot above the beaker where the gaseous letters would drift past the screen but some would stick to spell out the word "evaporate" in the middle of the screen.

Perspective development

To take 'Perspective' further I would increase the size of the 'P' and instead of having it flip back into it's position the letters would rotate into the screen so that when they would normally flip and be inverted they change to be "PERSPECTIVE" spelt properly.

Tension development

If I was to develop 'Tension' I would find a soundtrack to put behind it that was from a classical horror movie as a possible substitute for the heartbeat to increase the tension. I would also want to try comical sound effects for the reactions of the 'e'.

Compulsion to Blog Episode 05

I wanted to see how glass looked when it cracked and how this could be adapted to a word. The other word that comes to mind when I look at this is "Pressure" but I feel it's a bit cliche.

A Storm Is Coming

Before we actually began to brainstorm we had a brief moment to make some simple storyboards. As you can see by the testing of pens on the paper I had other ideas I liked over these ones.

My brainstorm is in the post with the rest of my hand-in pieces of work but these were created afterwards as an attempt at more detailed storyboarding.

A thought I had during the creation of these was to use the word 'Tension' like 'Shatter' but have Tension pulsing like a heart with a heartbeat sound effect in the background. A crack would begin to appear from the      'o' in Tension and the heartbeat would increase. The crack would spread and become more severe and the heartbeat would become more frantic. Eventually the cracks would get too numerous and the word would shatter.

Another idea that I found attractive was the second to last frame of the "Perspective" storyboard. It held a lot of what perspective can mean in a far less literal sense than just portraying different forms of perspective. An animation based entirely on this motion would be just as effective, if not more so, than the complex one shown above.

The Finale

Final touch and draw being all complete and conclusive. My happiness when I finished this was so thick you could have bottled it and sold it. I couldn't even wait until the morning to upload it. So that's copy and transform then... I will miss all the drawing.

Sectional (Abstract)

Final sectional all abstract and open to interpretation.

Essentially Drawings of Essence

Here are my experimental sketches for touch and draw. I wanted to play with forms, geometries and drawing with different stationary. I shall be steering clear of paint as a main method as my experience with paint is bluntly minimal. In truth the ink drawings and charcoal have me the most excited, probably because I'm most at home with a plain pencil...

Sectional (Standard)

My original sectional drawing. Who would have thought NCEA Level One Graphics would have come in handy one day. Mr Hughes, you are a champion.