Sketchbook Work: COP Practical

1930s:

1940s:

1950s:

1960s:

1970s:

1980s:

1990s:

2000s:

Animation Styles

So i've been thinking on what I want to do for the practical portion of my essay. I want to do an animation that morphs through different styles of animation throughout history. And since i'm looking at both eastern and western styles I want it to be able to flow in between them without too much of a jarring effect.
I've purchased a sketchbook and wrote "animation style practice book" on it and i'm going to fill it with several different artists styles to try my hand at doing them myself. Hopefully through this i'll be able to switch between different styles more easily and get my animation done more quickly.

Triangulation and Methodology

Last week we had a Lecture with Richard Miles on some of the important factors to think about when writing our essays. He talked to us about Triangulation, a method in which to prove a theory using multiple resources and quotes in favour of and against said theory. He told us that if we use other points of view in our essay to help bolster and strengthen our opinions and theorems, that it would make our essay come out better. He also told us to use opinions against our topic and criticise them in order to do the same.
He also explained to us the concept of Methodology. Simply put, a methodology is a set of methods, principles, and rules for the regulation of a subject, or thinking about ways of thinking. It can also be defined as a structural approach to a subject of analysis, and that the processes are immensley complicated. He told us it was important to show the limitations of our methodology, so we can know that it is only one way of viewing the subject of analysis.
He suggested we look at Successful Study for Degrees, a book by a person named Barnes. I'm going to see if i can find it online.

COP3 Proposal

For my dissertation, I want to look at style within animation. More importantly, how style affects the studio and the artist working in the industry. I want to see whether or not individual artists styles are necessary within large studio animation. And finally, I want to find the importance of the concept that as an animator, you shouldn't strive for a unique style, rather you should strive for a fluid drawing form that lets you emulate styles and drum up new ones in an instant.
This is my Proposal presentation that I made earlier.

Practical Response - Review

In the practical Response to my essay, I wanted to try and make a blend of 2-D animation and live action. Since my essay was about the various messages surrounding animated movies and their live action counterparts. I looked at various things that attempted this for inspiration, but the one that I enjoyed the most was the Take On Me music video by A-ha:

Its a music video that I think connects live Action and animation almost perfectly. I wanted it to be 2-D since I would be able to rotor scope it with filmed recordings I took of a volunteer, Max Ardron. I wanted it to be long enough to get the message across, so I decided to go with 10 seconds. I managed to check out time in a Photography Studio which is where most of the live filming took place. For some animated portions I recorded in the animation classroom, since it was going to be rotor scoped I didn't need a white background. I then put all of the video files I had into After Effects and threaded them together in an outline of how the final piece should look. Then I exported it out as a H.264 encoding as well as a lossless version, for animating. This is what it looked like:

After that I took it into Photoshop, and began the long process of turning most of it into a rotors coped image. I went with 24 frames per second since I wanted it to be as smooth as possible. If you couldn't already tell, I planned for it to be a digital rotor scope rather than a traditional, like the A-ha music video was. My reasoning was that I didn't have enough time to rotor scope the entire thing in analog, so I decided to use a Cintiq, just for the sake of the deadline, as well as my sanity. The most difficult part was probably the transfer between drawn and live action. Since my actor was going to be putting his hand up on a wall that was the barrier between the real and drawn world, I had to animate him phasing through it. It was difficult to tell which part I should draw and which I should leave live. In retrospect, I should have checked out another camera and filmed from another angle just so I would have that as reference to where he was according to where the barrier would be.

The animation part had some easier parts than others. One of the more difficult parts was drawing Max's face close up, since it had to have so much more detail than the other parts of the animation. On average I would say that it took twice as long as animating the other parts.

Originally I had planned to take an excerpt from the song Take on Me, but I decided to create my own audio on the recommendation of my tutor. Here's what the final outcome looks like: