This is the short animation film i produced for my personal project. This version contains an ident, title screen and credits. 

Personal Project sem B 'Final Piece' - 'the Pass' & supporting work

This is my final piece short film animation for my personal project of semester B at UEL.

I decided to call it 'the Pass'

• Music produced by Andrew Coggins
  
• Visuals produced by myself
  
• Visuals and Audio composed, edited and film produced by myself.
  

These are pictures some just photography and some repainted in photoshop, they are some of which images helped influence the subjects and environment i chose to study and capture in my creative process for the project.

this is a bit of footage which i had captured on my phone which also gave me ideas for the project.

text

This is some text from a book called 'Gender Voices' by David Graddol and Joan Swann that had influenced a major part of my conceptual investigation which in turn informed key focal points of my creative processing. The books main objective is to explore and evaluate issues and differences between human identity, primarily about there gender (male and female) now these issues have connected in and out at various times within my own interests of investigations but to a secondary extent of yet (regarding subject of both animation and graphic arts). Rather, it was some of the supporting issues of this book that struck points of interest here for me as it helped me understand more in depth about the ideas of investigation and statement's i would have been trying to promote previous work. These 'supporting' issues within the books argument were about different types and strengths of languages/communication and the various effects they can have one, society and culture. Also, having my most previous visual theories subject being on 'Postmodernism' and my essay argument about a response to a Kevin Lynch quote "Cognition is an individual process, but its concepts are social creations" ( forward to environment knowing (1976) - City Sense and City Design) through my own persuasions about two artists work and their representation of space, subjectivity and vision within the postmodern metropolis, I felt a lot of similarities paralleling.

Up and onwards...I soon found that i was trying to piece a common ground between a variety of works, some my own, mostly others on alienation, suppression and hardships, in general forms of the individual, social and domestic forms. I reflected on these issues and thought about notions that infuse them in general terms and decided that obviously different forms of communication and languages were not just very complex and often problematic in translation but can also be very therapeutic and rewarding. It soon became important for my creative investigation to emphasize visually on the 'make-ups' and structures through information taken from what i find and capture, by also way of (which is becoming method of which i am currently working) layering and processing different techniques. 

Personal Project sem B

This is a animation based project which i had been assigned to do for the second half of my course year.

After coming into the new year with continuos ideas from the last semester this was a chance to explore some individual work in the animation/film field. Also as it was a personal project it was also my chance to develop something completely brand new in idea too. I decided that by this point as a lot of my research work and conceptual narrative building was very much linking and connecting in an interesting and a variety of  ways, some key issues involved which were starting to emerge were almost strong enough to pursue individual to that of another. This was good for my work as a whole because it now ment that as i hoped ultimately for this year my animation work would connect to my graphic art work in concept and narrative although have enough scope to field enough personal ideas interest for each project and to potentially continue development onward into the 3rd year of project course works.

Now taking up on some of the ideas from the previous narrative ideas and conceptual structuring i tried to fuse these issues to captain and give my visual footage development a language of which i assumed to proceed by. Here is a mind map brainstorm with some of these ideas and issues that i composed to tackle as a key starting point for my process...

 After analysing my work and critiquing my progress along with Pia (my tutor) and realised what had and had not been working by this stage. The footage i had been capturing to this point was very interesting and intriguing in the sense of movement, camera angle shots and subject. Although, the visual language had become some what fragmented and appeared to cause a blur within rules of film languages. This was an important factor at this stage and an obstacle to overcome in this process as communication of sorts was one of the key issues i was out to tackle. This lead me to reflect slightly more into my creative decision making and refine my conceptual issues of interest. These interest lie amongst ideas in languages of different entities (personal and social), communication in different forms, non communication (isolated also alienated). My aim was to now capture and try to translate these issues. Where as 'visual' is key to promote my aspirations here, the involvement of 'audio' would play a significant part. Having to translate these issues, the idea within the visual input was becoming quite delicate in mind and raw in subject form. I felt like i had to be careful with my decisive input with audio as it could either be very supportive in informing the conceptual idea or quite destructive having the potential to overpower the rhythm of the 'visual'.

I thought about recording natural sounds in various environments and creating irregular rhythm which seemed to be a complimenting structure to fashion the style of visual pace i had within stop motion footage. I also had the choice to involve music material, a unique and  instrumental piece of music. Having captured, reviewed and reflected on the sound section of this project i decided that as risky as adopting readily composed music could be quite dangerous, by diluting the 'visual' which portrays conceptual strength and in turn causing predominant effects in the overall composition this film. I did choose to involve this piece of work as well as involving the various natural environments recordings as to me this seemed to be other forms of language and communication that i felt best not to rule out. Mirroring the juxtaposition of the whole visual concept, this does seem to promote maybe to many layers of communication and language forms and a general kind of chaos, but in turn could also be successful as it reflects the world we live in today with the chaos of mass communication and loss of individual identity. I had also intended to include text and spoken narrative but my time fell short and needed to proceed with my task at hand.

Trying to explain what this film is about, i would say it is an exploration of the juxtaposition's between natural and industrial, movement and isolation, journeying and observation which in turn informs my exploration of the complex relationship between the social and alienation.

Final Piece - Short Film Animation "Town and Country"

Next Nick brought forward his very well composed ambient music ready for editing, which in turn (along with the choice of footage) would contribute and inform composing the rhythm of the movie edit.

After editing in After Effects and Final Cut Pro we produced this as our final Piece animation.

footage examples "Town and Country"

Here are some still photo examples of the footage we had captured for this project

'Town and Country' shoots

Here is some pictures taken from a few of our different experimental shoots

Sem A "town and Country"

This is a short-term level-2 animation group project: Our peers assigned us with an initial title to start our project: Town & Country. With this title as our starting point we would then be expected to develop and produce a finished short film animation from our ideas and explorations of space, subjectivity and vision within this project.

 

This is a  group project consisting of four members, my self and three fellow students the very talented: Helen Hayward, Nick Nenov and James Wills

 

The project is to make a short-film animation approximately 1 - 1½ minute long in screening.

 

Our aims are:

-To construct a narrative the animation will be based upon (or provide a supporting narrative, which may guide substantial direction for this short film

-To build and resolve a set/environment for the animation to take place

-To create virtual or physical subject/s to exist within the visual cinematic frame work

-To identify animated footage of some what within the short-film

 

In our exploration of development, process and production we must establish a balanced and pro-active work flow/ schedule within creating and resolving ideas as a group and provide effective individual support.

 Starting Point:

 As a group we had established our interest, shared ideas and influences and decided to go within the strongest common grounds... These initial group brainstorms lead us to begin our process unconventionally.

 As a group we looked at various works and other source material to get out creative juices flowing. We studied and scanned various productions and other artist’s works relevant to our subject/project, we analyzed approaches, techniques, styles, narratives and concepts of a variety of works. We investigated different practices and methodologies to allow us to interpret how varied works were made, from the cinematography used; shots and angles applied, the look and feel, the kind of materials that would have been utilized, the way sets and environment may have been created to the type of equipment that will have been used in these various works.

Here are some links to examples of what we looked at..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdfCOCIv_DU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhX1tvTgqC8&feature=related

:Jan Svankmajer "Dimensions of Dialogue" part 1& 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6xG4Nf9Dh4&NR=1 

:The Quay Bros 'Street of Crocadiles'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7ppwV-2a40&feature=related

:An interview with the The Quay Bros 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxQcBKUPm8o

:Tim Burton "Vincent"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM2SKfD7WAc&feature=rec-HM-fresh+div 

:absolum  vs  Quay bros  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNQxESodFlE&NR=1

:The 25th Frame "The Eye of Silence"

 

 We also shared some individual animation, film and concept interests too…Here is some of the footage and source material we referenced our interests and influences from…

:The Knife "Heartbeats"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=qWLuqly6uCQ 

:The Eel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=-_nBXrNcayE&feature=PlayList&p=1D2C45B0BE66AA21&index=0&playnext=1

:Orsen Welles "War of the Worlds (part 1)"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=4wf5TPVz56A

:TOCA ME design conference 08//trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2b2MBNCNiA&feature=PlayList&p=FFD20178663089E5&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=29

From these sources we decided that had some ideas and aspirations for our project 

Here is a mind map generalizing brainstorms of our general group ideas...

We looked out for narrative inspirations and choose to loosely focus on 'Orsen Welles War of the Worlds' as what would be the notion of our film..

As a result from our group brainstorming and ideas critique we decided that our 'Town and Country" theme would touch upon conceptually an idea of the juxtaposition between the organic and scientific which would relate to the use of solid and liquids within the environment and subject within animation film.

We new taking the decision to only "loosely focus on Welles' WOTW as the notion of narrative" would not only give our work substantial guidance but allow us to be more free with our visually creative produce. So now that the narrative was to become more so ambiguous it was important that we created enough visual effective work to stand us in good stead for the overall film to stand strong. Experimenting with materials and capturing footage had become the major time consumption of the time-frame we had complete our project within.

Our group shared creative strengths and weakness's and mutually assigned each project responsibilities and sub-assignments.

 

Here is fusion of technical ideas that would stimulate our studio shoots and also a visual map of assigned tasks