PRESENTATION BOARDS

COP 3 - PRACTICAL FINAL OUTCOME - EVALUATIVE NOTE

https://vimeo.com/251571037


Here is the final outcome of the project, overall I am very pleased with the outcome that I have produced, I feel that the message of connection through common interest is put through effectively using visual signifiers such as colour and sound.

The contextual research behind the work has also influenced the work in terms of those decisions made on colour particularly the use of red white and blue within this animation - a nod to the union jack and a nod to the colours implemented in social media sites such as Facebook.

If I were to improve anything about this animation it would be the quality of line in the character design and animation, and also perhaps fine tune some textures on the characters also.

COP 3 - PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT - RECORD SHOP & AUDIO

To Make the record store have the same background effect that the market had I made use of some found footage from youtube to create the atmosphere that I wanted using the same process that was implemented with the market footage.



The audio I feel was perhaps what i felt most challenging but I think the end result is good. I have implemented panning and reverb to give the audience more of a sense of emersion into the scene.

COP 3 - PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT - CHARACTERS & MORE

I have added an iteration of the younger character for better reference in the animation as i wasnt sure that it was clear that the blue thumb was indeed a character, i have created a walk cycle for him using TV paint and it has worked out quite well.

I have also added in a section of animation for both of the characters in which they are dancing in a record shop - which i have also made into an animated element, this is because i trialed a record shop front that was static and it did not match the jumpy aesthetic of the footage of the market.

COP 3 - PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT - COMPOSITING 3

This is the full walk cycle animation with the turns and drop shadow included. (above)

On the left here is the thumb of the younger character, I have included a drop shadow on thethumb also to give the illusion that the thumb is coming away from the screen a little bit.

The plan is to edit the two together and have it speed up switching between the two until the two characters eventually meet.

COP 3 - PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT - COMPOSITING 2

Here was an animation test made using an earlier walk cycle test animation composited using after effects and animated to move across the screen using the transform tools.

COP 3 - PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT - COMPOSITING

When it came to compositing the character animation on top of the video footage I decided to scale down the footage and place the character in front of the the footage with a drop shadow falling of the footage behind him, a little bit like a projection going on.

The idea behind this and how it is relevant to the written part of this module is that there is this separation between the person in a society and the cultural artifacts around them and that there is a different approach to experiencing culture from person to person. I have shown this through using the social media format in combination with the smartphone using a thumb at the side of the screen.

COP 3 - PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT - CHARACTER ANIMATION

To animate my character I decided to use TV paint as I find it quite accessible and suitable to my approach to illustration style. I used it to create a simple walk cycle (or stumble cycle!) for this elderly character. I decided to go ahead with the simple block colours - with a reference to the market with the red and white stripey attire that the character is wearing.

I also added a section of animation whereby the character turns away from the camera and towards the video edit of the market behind them as if they were browsing the goods.

I am still getting to grips with TV paint so there might be a point where I go back and add some more in between frames, and make the characters movement more fluid and exaggerated in some parts.

COP 3 - PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT - EDITING/IMPROVEMENT (BACKGROUND)

A way that I thought might improve the look of the footage would be to remove some of the frames in the video and apply a texture on top to make the video look like more of a stopmotion/pixelation animation than a video montage. The way I achieved this was to import the video frames in to photoshop layers and limit the amount to every two frames being imported.

I then opened an animation timeline, made the frames from the layers in the project and made sure the layers were in their own group.

I then placed the newsprint texture above the group layer and applied a soft overlay blending mode - to get the lighting right and the contrast correct I made further adjustments in the levels and hue and contrast windows.

Once i had exported the video out of photoshop I noticed that it moved a little too quickly so reduced the speed in premiere.

COP 3 - PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT - PRIMARY RESEARCH//EDITING

Here is an early edit of the type of pixelation animation that i would like to create out of the footage that I have gathered from the market, I am currently deliberating on whether or not to sync up sound effects to each cut the camera makes/ jumps to each scene. Or creating a loop that flows well and includes all of the different textures and colours that i would like to include in the background.

I think using shorter cuts would allow the viewer to concentrate on the character animation that is going on in front of the live action video.

I am going to have to improve the technique of this type of editing, by having colours/textures of the same kind cut together e.g having cuts of footage that feature butcher stalls put together - this way I think the footage would fit together better and the transition from each stall would be smoother, there would be a more stable background for the character to move in front of.

COP 3 - PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT - CRIT FEEDBACK 2

What was also brought up in conversation through the group crit was how I was going to represent the youth character in my animation. At first I was thinking about the colours that i have associated the older generation and also the atmosphere that they are placed in within my animation.

What i think distinguishes the older generation from the younger generation in this country is the competence, and in some respect the absolute absorption into social medias, and how the younger generation functions in society in general - there is a different dynamic.

To show this different dynamic I thought about the way the younger character's scene might look on screen. The idea of using the scrolling format that you can find on most social media sites suddenly sprung to mind, the simple colour schemes that are also found might be something that I incorporate into this part of the project, to give a fitting juxtaposition against the warm colours of the market atmosphere.

COP 3 - PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT - CRIT FEEDBACK 1

In my group crit I mentioned that I wanted to use live action film and incorporate it in a manner that would look similar to a pixelation animation. This animation by Frank Mouris titled 'Frank Film' came up in conversation, it has inspired me to use the primary research that i have gathered in the market, turn the footage and images that I have gathered into a pixelation and use the pixelation as a base/ background for which I can place some character animation on top.

In the case of the footage gathered from the market, I will use the animation created from that as a background for the older character in my narrative.

COP 3 - PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT - SYNTHESIS 2

This element of live action that I had wanted to incorporate in my initial experiments was still present in my idea process, I still wanted use that element as feel that it puts the viewer into the atmosphere and captures it better than I could using my own custom assets created digitally or handmade.

So here I have used a series of photographs and made a pixelation type animation that uses sound effects so as to give the movement from picture to picture more bite/ make the viewer notice it a little more than they would if there were no sound effects. Also included in the animation is atmospheric sounds from the market place itself.

COP 3 - PRACTICAL EXPERIMENTS 3

Here in this experiment I had the idea that I wanted to use found footage of subject matter that would be relevant to the research in my essay, the idea was to use old television adverts that were indicative of the times investigated within my essay and somehow create a narrative through them.

After this one experiment I reflected on the work I had produced and realized that this method of putting together a narrative of found footage with a combination of animation would take too long and also would not have fit in as well perhaps with the route that my research had been taking me down.

It is at this point that i decided to dive into my sketchbook further to really explore what the aesthetic of my animation should look like - so that I might better be able to create a solid narrative around that.

COP 3 - PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT- SYNTHESIS 1

At this point In the research project I had to take a step back and question wether the work that i was going to produce really the reflected the ideas that i was throwing up in my essay. With this idea of British culture being splintered through age, ethnicity and by global influences from the the internet - readily available to almost everybody. I knew that i had to rethink the way that i was going to represent that through my work.

The way I thought about representing this was to produce an animation that incorporated local places that encapsulated what could be called traditionally British - so I chose to investigate the local market, focus on the colours in the market, the sounds and the atmospheric lighting found in each stall, the types of people found in the market etc.

I then thought about how I might represent the characters with the animation in a relative way, I then thought that using textures from the market to represent the older generation might be the best way to use the primary research that I had gathered.

The signage in the market is very distinctive and I would even go as far as saying that it is traditional - in the sense that some of the stalls in the market are businesses that stretch back many generations, so the same aesthetic/colour palette is still held on to.

COP 3 - PRACTICAL - EXPERIMENTS 2

In this experiment I used some video footage that has some movement in it to give the scene an element of realism, or moreover just to further investigate putting my animations in live action video
This was another experiment using TV Paint, again with no real idea of a narrative but with the conceptual idea of merging animation and live action video. I think what worked well in this experiment was the way that the animation fitted well within the scene using a combination of the Transform tool and Blending modes in After Effects.

COP 3 - PRACTICAL - EXPERIMENTS 1

Here is one of the first experiments that I worked up for my cop practical, this came before any previous notion of story boarding or any idea of a narrative. I did however at this point know that i wanted to further incorporate my illustrative style into animation. I decided I would do this by using character and implementing them into live action footage. At this stage I decided to use a static image to get a feel for how the scene might look with the animation moving along walls or around the scene in general.
It was at this point that it was suggested to experiment with 3D tracking in after effects using some footage that would be in motion.
This experiment is also one of my first experiments with the software 'TV Paint' - I find the program to be very useful and versatile in that the brushes are fully customisable, I also find the textures well suited to my work.

COP 3 Research Proposal ISSUU

Visual Journal Overview

In my visual journal I have tried to collate images, make images and add texture to all of the pages to convey the information that is contained within my essay into one seamless story, begining with a rich contextual basis and slipping into the more abstract ideas that are brought up in my essay.

Study Task 6 - COP 2 - ESSAY

Evaluation COP2

overall I think the module went okay, I developed a reasonable amount of research and tried to produce a well informed argument in critical analysis as best I could, however I do feel like I could have said more with less context and opened the essay up into more of a critical discussion with more triangulation and key points being raised. I do feel like I have answered the research question I originally set out to answer but could have done so in a more clearer articulate sophisticated manner.
What I enjoyed the most about this module was producing the visual side to accompany my essay, and although I did not have time to produce an actual animated response to my question I think that the visual exploration that I have undertaken clearly indicates how I might have responded to the research question through an animated response, with the mixed media approach and use of contextual images to set the scene as it were.
what I least enjoyed about this module or found difficult was the ability to stay focussed on my research and decide what I wanted to say in my essay in regards to my research, I also struggled to find many examples of animation that were relative to my research.
what I think went well on this module was the way the critical analysis ties in nicely with the visual exploration that I have gone through, I think using music form Muslimgauze really helped me ti get inspired and produce visual work that is of the same subject matter.
I think my time management could have been better whilst producing the work for this module, I think I underestimated how much work I would be undertaking at the start of it which lead me to focus on other areas within the course.
From this I have learned that to feel secure within this module it is better to do the bulk of the work quite early on so that when it comes the final outcome all ideas are clear and there is a set plan of action towards completing the work.

Study Task 5 - writing an Introduction

This essay will aim to give an answer as to how animation could be used as a tool to navigate the complexities of the on going conflict in the middle east, it will also give reasons as to why this may be an important issue for not just contemporary animators but also contemporary creatives in general. The reader will be guided to an informed conclusion to the overarching research question through the sum of research accumulated by trying to answer a series of sub-questions in relation to the subject matter. Using the research gathered and each idea formulated in an attempt to answer these sub questions triangulations will be made between pieces of evidence that support the claims that will be made in this essay. There are four main sub questions that I will attempt to answer in order to arrive at a conclusion to the overarching research question, and they are as follows:

Historical context, what is the historical context? How is it relevant? Knowing the historical context surrounding countries such as; Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, will give the reader a simplified yet in depth look at the key figures and groups in these countries and the historic relationship western governments have had with them. This historical context will also lead into comparisons being drawn between the current narrative of the western media towards middle eastern intervention, and those that were once presented to the public at times of western intervention in middle eastern conflicts – these comparisons will be key to understanding the relevance of the historical context.
The affect conflict has on culture, what makes this relevant? Why is this important to an animator/visual communicator? By keeping this question in mind whilst reading this essay, whether or not you regard yourself as an animator or creative practitioner – you build up an understanding of how much of an affect the extremities of conflict can have – not only on the people of a conflict stricken area, but also on the peoples of surrounding areas – a good example to point out would be that of Germany accepting a large amount of refugees from across the region and the problems that came as a result of trying to integrate people into society from a range of ethnic groups and cultures.
Western media coverage, How does the western mainstream media present conflict in the middle east to its audience? What affect does this have on western society? By analysing news stories and the mainstream political narrative at a given time in history and contrasting them with actual evidence based reporting and journalism – you are able to build up a clearer picture what is actually happening in area where conflict is present. This question is important as it’s answer holds much relevance to the answer of the research question, given that this essay is aimed at western animators/creative practitioners.
Contemporary Context, what is the contemporary context of conflict in the middle east? This question will be one that will be periodically revisited throughout this essay to assess the relevance of the research gathered in its relation to current affairs and contemporary animations that reference conflicts in middle eastern countries.

Study task 3 - Adorno & The Culture Industry

Adorno's view on television was that it presents conventional values in a way that is easily digested by the masses, that there is a formula that producers follow in order to make their shows accepted and viewed en masse but also put into categories/genres that follow their own individual formulas so as to give the viewer and idea/ preconception about which they are about to see, 'we are all familiar with the division of television content into various classes, such as light comedy, westerns, mysteries, so-called sophisticated plays, and others. These types have developed into formulas which, to a certain degree, pre-establish the attituinal pattern of the spectator before he is confronted with any specific content and which largely determines the way in which any specific content is being perceived.' (Adorno, 1954)

Adorno explains that the reason for this formulaic approach to making television programs is so that the audience does not have to think about what they watching too much, making it easily digestible - and it can be argued that most mainstream film and animation that is currently being produced still follow this approach, and this is to be expected of a capitalist society wanting to make the most money from a production as possible. If the content was challenging or jarring of peoples preconceived notions the production is inherently bound not to do so well in the mainstream.

Persepolis

Persepolis is a film that tells the story of Marjane Satrapi - a young girl growing up in iran at the time of the revolution and through the Iran-Iraq war. It is interesting an useful to my studies as the story is told from a female perspective and also from a middle eastern perspective. This is an interesting perspective to have a story told through as it is uncommon to hear the female perspective of woman from a conservative Muslim country.

This Is What Winning Looks Like - VICE

'This Is What Winning Looks Like' Is a documentary that explores the conditions in afghanistan as the British and american troops were about to pull out of the country and hand over the job of protecting civilians from the Taliban to the Afghan National Army.
This has helped me to gather contextual research on what the situation the country is now - and make some interesting points about the western media in relation to the conflict in the area.

Bryn Jones a.k.a Muslimgauze

Muslimgauze aka bryn jones is a musician that I found highly influential in relation to my visual journal, his music has a very political edge to it and a facination with arab world - incorporating middle eastern intruments and sampling news broadcasts he manages to paint a picture or create an atmosphere that I feel is really representative of the western point of view towards the middle east.
I have taken inspiration from this music and by listening to bryn jones' interviews on what he tries to accomplish in his music and tried to synthesize this into my visual research as I feel it would be silly not to take into account the work of someone who is trying to spark discussion around this subject matter with music as apposed to animation.

Adam Curtis - Bitter Lake - Contextual Research

I found Adam Curtis' Bitter Lake documentary to be very helpful in painting a picture of the events that have occurred in the middle east by bringing to light key figures and events that resulted to the present situation.

I think if \I were to produce an animated response to this brief it would be heavily influenced by this style of film making.

Study task 4 - Choosing a Research Question

1. Research question: How can/ can animation be used to navigate conflict in the middle east?

2. is it viable?
what is there to study? - the historical context of conflict in the middle east, the west's relation to the region and its various conflict's, how the region is percieved by the west, how the media present the narrative of heroes and villains to the public & how the political class see the region.
How conflict's began and which factions were involved.
How can we know about it? - watching factual documentaries (e.g. Bitter Lake by Adam Curtis), reading articles & books - news excerpts (news papers & televised news outlets), archive footage, personal blogs of people caught up in middle eastern conflict.

3. What resources are available on this topic?

'Perceptions of Islam in Europe: culture, identity and the Muslim 'other''
'News' - Jackie Harrison
'Expanding The Gaze ' - van der Meulen and Heynen

4. What animations/animation related artifacts relate to your chosen topic?

- Waltz With Bashir (2008)
- Persepolis
- waves '98

5. Peer Feedback

'Your question is one that could lead to a large body of research to draw from to try and answer it. '

-this post will be updated with sources and artifacts as they are discovered

Study Task 2 - Parody & Pastiche

Jameson deems postmodernism to be 'the sheer consumption of commodity as a process', capitalism and postmodernity play into each others hands, with felluga stating that "post modernists question any 'truth' outside of culture" he also simplifies the writings of Jameson & gives an answer as to why this happens, " postmodernism has lost a sense of any distinction between the real and culture."
Parody, according to jameson has been replaced by pastiche in the postmodern age, due to the quality of reflexivity, many of the parodies that once would have had a political edge to them have been replicated so much so that they become devoid of any real meaning or hold little power of social critique - any real political edge is worn away. One could say that due to this ideology of consumption and commodification that this is the postmodernist affect on any real attempt at an original idea of parody - not to say that pastiche is of postmodernism but more a symptom of it and late capitalism.
Hutcheon, contrary to Jameson belives parody is central to postmodernism and that postmodernism by its very nature is paradoxical, "for postmodernism signals its contradictory dependence upon and independence from the modernism the both historically preceded it and literally made it possible."
A definition of parody/pastiche could be drawn out by comparing and contrasting Jameson's pastiche with hutcheon's parody, I would be in favour more so of jameson's view to defining that a parody would have qualities of mimicry but then also in the same vein make fun of itself - pastiche however is in essence a parody but one by which has lost all meaning due to its audience not being able to recognise the cultural/historical significance of that it is trying to parody - this could be due to commodification of certain styles/genres from the past.

Study task 1 - Triangulation

In this seminar we were given the task of reading through the text 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' by Laura Mulvey, and in groups pick out: five key points that Mulvey makes within the text, five key quotes and five contextual facts about Mulvey that would help to build up a clear idea of why Mulvey might be inclined to make the claims she was making.

Five Key Points

1. Mulvey makes the claim that there are distinct differences in the roles of men and women in cinema.

2. Men project themselves onto characters on screen.

3. Males have an active role in narrative, whereas females tend to have a more passive role.

4. The concept of To-be-looked-at-ness

5. That 'among other things' the role of the spectator is to project repressed desires onto the characters on screen.

Five Key Quotes

1. (P.19) 'the woman has not the slightest importance' (to the narrative)

2. (P.19) 'woman displayed as sexual object is leit motif of erotic spectacle'

3. (P.20) 'as the bearer of the look of the spectator'

4. (P.20) '..just as the image in the mirror was more in control of motor co-ordination.'

5. (P.20) 'a woman performs within the narrative: the gaze of the spectator and that of the male characters in the film are neatly combined without breaking narrative verisimilitude.'

Five Conextual Facts About Author

1. Mulvey is a professor of film.

2. She grew up in the 1950's - rise of feminism on the rise.

3. Avant garde film maker.

4. 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' became Mulvey's most famous piece of writing.

5. Feminist

An interesting thought of my own through discussion in this seminar came about when the topic of modern film came up. One person made the claim that Mulvey's claims have stood the test of time in that the male in a film is still given the active role in that the male moves the narrative forward whereas the female in a film takes a more passive role within the narrative. But what was thought provoking for me was the claim that the spectators of a film play the role of projecting they're repressed desires on to the characters on screen, I feel in some cases this may be true however it would depend on the audience and perhaps the subjective experience of each individual within the audience.

Triangulation

In the essay 'Visual pleasure and narrative cinema' Laura Mulvey makes the point that in cinema, the role of a male in many films is an active one, meaning to carry the narrative forward, whereas the female's role in cinema is a passive one, 'as the bearer of the look of the spectator' (Mulvey. L, 1975) put simply- to be looked at.
Author of 'Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction' John Storey goes further on this point by stating that, 'popular cinema is structured around two moments: moments of narrative and moments of spectacle.' (Storey. J, 2008), he goes on to make the claim that for the male spectator to satisfy his own ego and project his 'repressed desires', the male spectator would fix his gaze upon the hero of the narrative ('the bearer of the look') of which is looking at the heroine removing her clothes, it is this 'second look' that is the spectacle, the male spectator projecting himself on to the hero of the narrative to satisfy labido.
A Paul Mcdonald writes a chapter in Richard Dyer's 'Stars' (1998) in which he states that Laura Mulvey's arguments are made using a 'psychoanalytic framework'. At a glance this way of looking at the relationship between the spectator and the characters on screen, may seem to generalize cinema in the way that the male is represented as 'the bearer of the look' and the spectator needing to satisfy his own ego by fixing a gaze upon the male character - the view of which received critique from other academics of film. This critisism could may be just, in the way that Mcdonald cites Dyer as pointing out that the look of a male character may show disinterest in a female character by looking up or away, not always a look that see's a female character as a sexual object.

Practical Response in Relation to Essay

My practical response to this module is one of commentary on the current political establishment
and they're almost inhuman - backwards - ideology that they are trying to instill into our society.
This commentary, or satire more so, tie's in effectively with the content of my essay and the points that I raise in my essay discussing the roles that animation has to play in times of social/political change. I make the argument that animation like any other creative outlet, can be used as a tool for any given means. An example I bring up in my essay is governments using animation as a means of propaganda.
The idea that animation can be used as a tool for many different purposes; persuasion, mediation, commentary, communication, a voice etc, really stuck with me whilst writing the essay and lead me on to using animation as a tool to put out my own commentary on the current changes that I have seen for myself in society and the political establishment. And so this I feel is how
my practical response to the question I have been trying to answer in my essay tie's in.

As for the actual format and content of the practical response I have chosen to render it in, I opted for a newspaper style satirical comic that plays on the choices made by the tory government and brings out the absurdity in the decisions being made. This is relative to animation in the sense that this is sequential imagery, it also uses a few principles of animation such as exageration and anticipation in some of the panels.
To give the comic more of a sense of timing in terms of when a character speaks or an action continues into the next panel I have decided to create out of this an animatic, key framing where I want the viewer to look and how long with voice overs
of each character and added sound effects.
Another reason why I opted for this approach was the time constraints that i was under whilst the practical response was in

production, it had to be simple and to the point - much more effective where satire is concerned.

Study Task 4 - Triangulating

1. A paragraph that shows the ability to triangulate between the four texts.

In the 1964 first things first manifesto the signatories talk about the mass amount of advertising that designers are being designated to, they say that there are vast amounts of other things that should be spending their time designing. They also say that they want to pursue work that is more long standing more worthwhile. 
'we are proposing a reversal of priorities in favor of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication.' (Garland.K, 1964)

In the reviewed version of 2000 the signatories have more of an urgent message for example, 
'There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention.' (Adbusters, 2000)

This is in relation to the great rise in consumerist culture since 1964, causing pollution and devastation in exploited countries   through corporate elitism. The following manifesto tells of the great distaste of the corporate elite and how they have engineered these disasters through providing this culture.

'Corporations have become the sole arbiters of cultural ideas and taste in America. Our culture is corporate culture.' (Kalman.T,1998)

2. A paragraph that shows close analysis of an animation which relates to one of the texts.

In the animated series south park, a show noted for its satirical content, the episode 'sponsored content' features the characters of south park in a narrative whereby the relentlessness of corporate advertising reaches a point of artificial intelligence, I feel that this quote from the First Things First manifesto points towards what Trey Parker and Matt Stone were trying to get across in their animation - consumerism and advertising has made people very distrusting of each other as the idea of the individual and what they can get out of an interaction has taken over.

'it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.' (Adbusters, 2000) 

3. A paragraph that shows evaluation of one of the texts

Overall the manifesto 'Fuck Committees' is very accurate of it's time and still relevant today more than ever, Kalman makes an excellent point that in america, culture is bought and paid for, aswell as the fact that any art from creative minds is now deemed as 'content'.



4. A paragraph that shows your ability to paraphrase, summarise, or produce a ‘précis’ of one of the texts.


The first things first manifesto of 1964 carries with it a tone of dissatisfaction within the design industry with the work that they feel they have been 'deduced' to, 

'advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable means of using our talents.' (Garland.K, 1964) 

To summarise one could say that the the manifesto is the first in a long line of statements that artists and designers have held dear since the beginning of the consumerist age - when their imagination, hard work and art became content. 

Study task 3 - Essay Plan

Essay Plan


Question
“Discuss the role that Animation played during a period of social or political change."



what academic sources will I reference?


Propaganda - Edward Bernays 

First Things First Manifesto - Ken Garland

Occupy - Noam Chomsky

The world History of Animation - Cavalier


What animation will I analyse?

'Hans Richter - ghosts before breakfast'

'commando duck - donald duck 1944'

'Coonskin - Ralph Bakshi'

'momotoro vs mickey mouse'


Essay Map

introduction 

Thesis - explaining why i think animation is a tool that can be used just like any other creative outlet to carry out any message or agenda.

Analysis of animations - using quotes from academic sources to back up certain points about the animations 

Conclusion - to make a point that is relevant to animation being used today in our own times of social and political change 

Colour Theory 2

This lecture covered the colour theory in relation to design. The lecture first touched upon johann it ten's colour wheel and the discovery of complementary colours - for example when we see a flat block of colour on a blank background and that colour is removed our eyes will react by imposing the complementary colour of the block of colour that was on the screen.
The lecture also covered the temperature and weight of colour, subjective colour and reactive colour.
I shall have to revisit the subjects of this lecture to gain a better understanding of how colour works in design to better apply it to my practice in animation.

Colour theory 1 - Lecture summary

This lecture covered the fundamentals of colour theory and how colours work together, before looking at colour theory being applied to design. In this lecture it was touched on how, our eyes only see white spectral light reflecting off of objects, and that there are rods and cones in our eyes that allow us to perceive colour and tone - our brain then receives this information and builds the 3D world wee see around us.
The lecture also made the point that understanding of colour is based on the comparison of one colour to another, this infers that when two colours are placed next to each other the way we see one colour may be affected by the colour placed next to it. This also means that there is no such thing as the purist of one colour, as you could have many hues of the same colour and each time a new hue is revealed you might decide that a different hue is the purest form of that colour.
This being said then leads us on to the subject of classification: pantone - the coding of different hues of colours, the swatches we see in certain programmes such as photoshop are organised using this code.
Overall this lecture was interesting and informative, gave a scientific answer for why we see certain colours the way we do.

Practical Response - Comic

Here is the comic that I have created for the practical response to the question chosen for my essay. The narrative is relative to news stories that have featured whilst the tory government has been in power.

Research - Visual Response

I visited the library in search of some form of satirical material as this is the approach I want to take for my visual response to the question I chose to discuss in my essay. The question/subject for the essay was ' discuss what role animation plays in times social/political change'.
In my essay I brought up the point that animation could be used as a tool to suit any given agenda much like any other creative outlet, and for this reason (other than time constraints) I have decided to opt for a satirical comic - still relevant to animation, yet still image. I may decide to make a short motion comic out of the work I have produced.
The research that sparked this idea came in the form of the book ' Notes From Underground Zines (and the politics of alternative culture) ' by Stephen Duncombe. This book talked about the personal aspect of zines in that the creators of each zine would express their own opinions and perception of a given topic.
It is this idea of personality that I wanted to get across in my short comic I have dubbed 'The Privelaged'. I have not however researched any visual styles to inspire my work, I have only worked intuitively on this project to produce something that I feel is unique to me and how I perceive the political ruling class at this current time.
There are subtle nuances and visual references in the comic that poke fun at the physical appearance and demeanour of certain politicians. The story of the short comic is based upon actual news stories that  have come out recently.  

The Designer as Social Critique

I found this lecture to be very informative and it gave me lots of names and work to explore after the lecture. I found this particularly interesting because having a voice and a specific message in my work are important to me as a creative practitioner. The lecture covered the importance of recognizing that as designers we have a responsibility in that we should consider the implications of the messages we are wanting to project out on to the world.

postmodernism - lecture summary

In this lecture we covered postmodernism which is a topic I have studied before but not in as much depth as modernism. The lecture helped me to understand the postmodern age and the attitudes that were held by creatives at that time. In the postmodernist art movement there was a rebellion against 'modern life' and modernism, a disillusionment with capitalism with many calling this time 'the end of days' for capitalism. Postmodern art and design was a mish-mash of different styles with combinations incorporating the modern and the classical.

Modernism - Lecture Summary

Having previously studied modernism in art I feel that in this lecture there was a lot of information that I had previously taken on board and this lecture acted as a recap.
However in this lecture the insight into modernism was much more in depth and gave me an idea of why society progressed in the way that it did with the combination of urbanization and the industrial revolution. One of the key aspects of modernism at it's height I feel was this principle of functionality in design with form following function. This principle permeated all areas of art and design for example architecture, furniture, graphic design, fine art, typography etc.

consumerism - lecture summary

This lecture delved deeper than I had gone before into the subject of consumerism and it's faculties. What I found most interesting in this lecture was how consumerism came about- through the thinking of learned men giving advice to politicians and the elite, these learned men being Sigmund Freud and Edward Bernays. Freud was a psychoanalyst who believed that human instincts must be supressed - or rather controlled -  in order to sustain civilization. One way to do this was through consumerism, to provide the individual with an outlet for them indulge in their primal desires/needs, all for a price.
In this lecture it was made clear that consumerism is an ideological project that has continued to the present day, it is unclear how long the grip of consumerism on society and culture will last due to the need for a new model of organizing society and the economy.
A thought that was left at the end of the lecture was ' to what extent are our lives 'free' in a consumerist society.

Print Culture and Distribution - Lecture Summary

In this lecture it became known to me that because of print culture, the 'everyman' became able to own a piece of artwork - art became domesticated and was no longer reserved for the aristocrats, public elite etc. Print culture also allowed the working classes to produce their own culture rather than the elite designating what would be seen as the culture of the country.
In regards to print culture the industrial revolution brought acted as a catalyst for social change through the introduction of the printing press, and the working class producing and distributing their own material, forging their own culture. And with the means of production in the hands of the working class, 'pop culture' emerged - this was something that the elite detested and were afraid of.
In this lecture it was also brought forward that the reproduction of an image/a piece of art kind of devalues it or rather breaks up some of the mysticism and pretense that surrounds art.

What is Research? - Lecture Summary

This lecture has helped me by taking a step back just to look at the research process and how we should research in order to formulate new ideas effectively in order to come up with a solution to a creative problem.
This lecture covered that research both qualitative and quantitative and should be evaluated even before you have even generated any ideas from the research, this is to make sure that the research has been relevant and that it is substantial enough to generate ideas from.
A point that I really found to be true in this lecture is that in order to arrive at a solution you must be prepared to compromise what you initially wanted to do.
Overall this lecture has been a very informative an helpful recap on what i have already learnt about the research process.

History of Type - Lecture Summary

What I will take from this lecture is the knowledge of how typography has developed further than being an agreed upon set of symbols to represent the individual sounds/phonetics of a language, to more of an art form that is very much an illustrative discipline rather than being more associated with graphic design.
I also caught on to the notion from this lecture that type also unifies the people, making them more connected through written communication, and having an agreed upon system of symbols to represent the spoken language helps to educate and provide the people with the means for organisation through written communication, this helps build towards an egalitarian society.

COP ANIMATION - IDEA DEVELOPMENT

Study task 2 - Reading and Understanding Texts (OUAN401)

Analysis of Texts: 'First things first manifesto' 1964 & 2000.

Points made in text;

- The 1964 manifesto identifies that society has become saturated in consumer advertising.

- The 1964 manifesto states that there is a consensus of designers who think that there are things that designers/visual communicators think are more worth spending their time on, other than for advertising purposes.

- The 1964 manifesto states that designers believe they are told that advertising is the best means for using their skills.

- (2000 Manifesto) The bombardment on the public of commercial images is having a negative affect on how people in society interact with eachother.

- (2000 Manifesto) visual communicators/designers who signed the manifesto believed that at that time there were great issuses present that they should be using their skills to address and make change for the better.

Key Quotes;

- 'unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention'

- 'it is changing the very way citizen consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. to some extent we are helping draft a reductive and immeasureably harmful code of public discourse'

- 'the most lucrative effective desirable means of using our talents'

- 'We think that there are other things more worth using our skill and experience on.'

- 'we have reached a saturation point at which the high pitched scream of consumer selling is no more than sheer noise'

Tone of voice

I  think the tone of both the 1964 and 2000 manifestos is very much a tone of frustration with how visual communicators are being sold out in the way that most of their time and effort is spent on consumerist advertising for items that are in-essential - making them feel like their efforts are in a way meaningless,like the only purpose of thier work is to sell consumer products that have no real meanigful value.

Analysis

in the first things first manifesto, 1964 it is identified that in society the general public has come to a point whereby the visual landscape of the public's surroundings has been inundated with a bombardment of consumerist advertising to the point at which it loses all true value as individual pieces of communication, as this quote suggests, ' we have reached a saturation point at which the high pitched scream of consumer selling is no more than sheer noise.'
the manifesto also expresses that the signatories feel that there is a need to re-focus their attention/re-direct their skills into pieces of communication that have more meaning behind them and could serve a better purpose, 'we are proposing a reversal of priorities in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication'.
the signatories also stated in their manifesto that they believe designers and students are taught in a way that describes advertisement as being the epitome of employability for people with such a skillset with many individuals who hold such a midset praisingthose who have turned their cretivity towards prucing advertising for in-essential consumer products, 'we have been bombarded with publications devoted to this belief, applauding the work of those who have flogged their skill and imagination.
in the updated , 2000 first things first manifesto, the signatories state that the constant bombardement of commercialism on the public has had negative effects on how the people in society intereact with one another, i quote ' to some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.'.
in the 2000 manifesto, the signatories believed that at that time these were significant issues present that they felt they should be focusing their skills on adressing, 'unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention.'

The History Of Image - CoP Lecture Summary (OUAN401)

In  this lecture it was brought to light that there is still a mysticism that surrounds visual communication, this can be traced back to the earliest forms of communication - The Lascaux caves, France are home to cave paintings that are said to be the embodiment of animal spirits, dating back approx. 17,000 years.
This mysticism and shamanic quality surrounding visual communication has transcended time, we can see this when we loo a the art of somebody like Rothko, who's paintings are said to have a depressive affect on the people looking at them - to me this is where shamanism can be said to play a part in visual communication - Rothko was able to, in my eyes, embed a part of his consciousness/psyche into his work that, for those who are more emotionally/spiritually attuned, are able to pick up on.
This mysticism can also be found shrouding one of the worlds most famous paintings- 'the mona lisa' - there is much fascination surrounding this painting, yet it is one of the most well known images in collective memory. This suggests to me that the mysticism arises from the elitism that we find in art galleries- that somehow the art is exclusive and reserved for the wealthy.
'The Mona Lisa' is a good example of how reproduction of an image can re-contextualize it, put it into public hands. Marcel Duchamp and Banksy are artists that have shown you can re-contextualize an image through reproduction.
In this lecture i have learnt that as a visual communicator you have the potential to change opinion, in society, culture, through images and image making.

CoP 1 - Study Task 1 - Comparative Analysis, 'Duck Amuck' & 'Fresh Laid Plans'

In 'duck amuck' we see that the animator/s are trying to show us that animation doesn't just focus on the character performing on screen, but the world in which the character is placed and how that character interacts with it's surroundings. In the animation the character on screen is faced with the removal of any setting/scene and so he addresses the animator in charge of providing that setting to do so accordingly, animated brushes and pencils come in and out of shot producing a chaotic series of different scenes, the character on screen asks why this is happening and asks the animator to cooperate with him in constructing the usual linear formula of story telling.
At the end of the animation it is revealed to the audience the reason why the animator was not cooperating with the character on screen, it is revealed to us that another character -who's personality gives the character tendencies to be uncooperative- is the one who was animating the different scenes.
The way Daffy Duck asks the animator what he is doing with his world makes me grasp on to connotations associated to the historical context from which the animation comes from, perhaps the animation carries with it a message to the public to question authority on what they were doing at that time in 1953, close to the beginning of the cold war, where there were many covert operations and paranoia amongst the government agencies of the US.
In 'fresh laid plans' it becomes apparent that the animation is a propaganda cartoon aimed at children, which uses the agricultural industry as an example of how having a centralized authoritarian system - such as communism- can affect the participants within that system.
The animation explains simply how having prices, wages and profits fixed with commodities rationed for the purpose of an equal society can backfire with the criminalisation of the free market which becomes 'the black market' -there is a segment in the animation where a sinister character crosses out a 'free market' sign with the words 'black market'- as businesses collapse due to illegal trading, the economy suffers and this angers the public to the point of an uprising against the oppressive regime.
The message in this anti-communist propaganda film is that through communism comes tyranny- economic tyranny whereby people are trapped/ unable to progress economically as wages are stagnated and profits are limited.
This is interesting, as if we compare this paradigm/ narrative to what is the current paradigm -that being free market fundamentalism- we see that what was thought to arise from communism has presented itself under capitalism. This is due to massive inequality caused by large corporations forcing out small businesses who are unable to compete with their higher productivity, higher prices, low production costs and immense profits. And as people are unable to compete in the market they struggle to progress economically.
When comparing the two animations I ask myself: How do the animations differ? What are the similarities between them?
'Duck Amuck' & 'Fresh Laid Plans' both share a similar aesthetic in their animations that was popular in the fifties, I think this caters more to a young audience due to the sense of playfulness and slapstick comedy within it.
The two animations differ in their subject matter, however I feel the subject matters of the two are connected by, one could say, the historical context from which they both come from(1950's, cold war era, anti-communist propaganda, covert ops, etc)
Inherently the two animations share a similarity in the way they communicate their message, you could say that the messages that these two animations are trying to communicate are communicated to the audience almost subconsciously- covertly.
Another comparison can be made between the two in regards to the techniques behind them. Both animations, I think, use the process of straight ahead animation combined with pose to pose animation. I come to this conclusion due to segments in both animations where movements are transitioning from ridgid movement to movements that have more fluidity in the way that characters/objects move.

Lecture 1 - notes on visual literacy.

In the first lecture of the programme i have learnt that we as a society- globally - share a common visual language of some form, the meanings of certain symbols and signs can change quite substantially when manipulated as this, depending on the manipulation taking place, can create many different interpretations based on cultural/contextual references.
i also learnt that while we all use visual literacy in some way, we may not be fully aware that we are using our visual literacy skills, for example - understanding a disabled parking sign or any road sign.
Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate and make meaning from information represented by an image.
Colour association also plays a big part in our understanding of visual literacy, for example, the colours blue and pink are often used for gender association.