ATA: Train scene

After the first piece of collage translated so well across into photoshop, I made the decision to create more pieces and take them all across. 

The next piece I created was centred around the novel "colourless tsukuru tazaki and his years of pilgrimage" as the main character in that has a job of building stations but he also enjoys trains and spends a lot of his time visiting stations when he is down. 

One of the problems I first encountered was that I had created lots of textures in the mono print studio but didn't limit them to two colours. At first I tried to use just two colours from the mono print selection but it really limited the textures I could use in each piece so I opted to use all of the textures I liked despite the colour and then change the hue once I got into photoshop. 

I was really pleased with how it's started to come out, by adding a layer of blue hue it got all of the pieces to match whilst letting them retain their textures and each having a slightly different colour. 

After this I realised that the piece looked a little bit empty, I had managed to give the sense of depth but felt that by adding a character it would improve this but also it would lend itself to the feeing of isolation. 

I also experimented with different brushes but have not yet decided on whether I want a wet brush look or if I want the character to be more of an outline. Something that was mentioned in my crits was the inclusion of a darker tone to add more depth to each piece. I avoided adding it in for a while because I thought it might look too "busy" but eventually decided to add it in. Now I am just thinking about which character I want to place in.

LIKES 

• I really think the collage has translated well in photoshop 
• The textures work really well and it feels consistent with the other 

DISLIKES 

• I'm not sure if it is too busy or too much in comparison to "into the woods". 

IMPROVE

• Unsure about the depth of the piece, need to ask opinions on the character placement next time in crit. 
• Ask whether the inclusion of darker pieces makes it too busy? 

ATA: Creating the scenes

It was only after I had read three of his novels (after dark, Norwegian Wood and Colourless Tsaski)  that I decided on a theme to carry through into my finals. 

After reading them I knew that I wanted to create the same kind of isolation that Murakami creates in his works, so I knew I wanted to create work that where space and composition was considered. Time is a strong running theme throughout Murakami's work so that needed to come into that somehow. 

Discovering collage as a medium was a lucky accident really, I was stuck on how to manifest how I felt about Murakami's work and when I used some left over mono prints to create a new piece of work it communicated all the things I had hoped for. 

The distorted background and varying shapes allowed for me to display a distorted sense of reality and time which worked really nicely alongside a lone character on the page. 

I continued to create sketches from the scenes in the books that stood out to me and from them started to make compositions. 

ATA: Into The Woods

TURNING POINT 

The introduction of collage into my work has been the biggest turning point for me in this project, I have been stuck for weeks playing around with different mediums. I ended up reading three of Haruki Murakami's novels in the end before I really had a clear idea of how to visually present the work. 

INTO THE WOODS 

His work really made me feel a sense of isolation and disconnection from reality so that was something I wanted to bring into the work I was making. I was messing around with scraps left over from my mono print sessions and arranged something interesting on my page. I continued to make other work but kept looking at the piece I had made earlier and realised that the reason I kept coming back to it was because there was something visually interesting there and I should develop it further. This first piece is modelled on a scene in Norwegian Wood and so named "into the woods". 

I really dislike collage but as I played around with the composition I really enjoyed the sense of distortion it gave the work. I finished the collage but the problem with the original was that there wasn't just two colours in the print, but I loved the textures. This was something I brought up in a meeting with Ben who advised that I go to the mono print studio and produce lots of textures and colours and also that I take the existing piece into photoshop and convert it into two of the strongest colours so that it met the brief. 

I did this and then realised that I would have to make a decision whether to go landscape or portrait, after some consideration I chose landscape so it gave me more space to add textures in. 

After scanning it in to photoshop I realised that I would have to edit the original ( as it was made portrait) and this was the biggest problem I had with this piece. I duplicated the trees from the left hand side and took them to the right. It still wasn't sitting right on the page so then I embedded some tree like mono prints I had done in the workshop. I was pleased with it but it still felt like it was missing something. 

I left this piece along for a while so I could think on it as I created the others. I spoke again to Ben who encouraged me to keep the cats that had come from the mono print in my work. I began to collage the cats in the background of other pieces. The cats are representative of the women in Murakami's novels who were so mysterious but always present. 

LATER ON 

I came back to the piece after creating the others and decided to embed my favourite piece from screen print in the background and it worked far better than I had hoped. I could have easily left it out but I liked the screen print so much I felt it should be a part of the collage. 

I still think it works well within the piece and gives it that added extra mystery (as its not immediately noticeable) and I think out of them all this is my favourite piece (from the colour choice to the secret cat). 

ATA: More Monoprint trials

After talking to the group I decided to take my paper cuts into mono print to see what they would look like.  The end result was nice but again I'm not sure if it's exactly what I want to go forwards with.

ATA: Screenprint Trials

As part of the development I decided to trial all the mediums before picking one to go on with. Ive really enjoyed mono print and lino at moment and previously I have had nothing but trouble with screen print. 

I chose a really simple design this time and chose my favourite cat! That way the positives and negatives would be easy to make (I have seriously over complicated them in the past). 

It worked surprisingly well! I carried through the yellow and blue colour from earlier Lino experiments and I think they are definitely going to be colours I bring through to my final pieces as they work so well together. I picked them mostly because that's how i feel when I read the books. Listening to jazz and reading makes me think of dark blue tones and when something exciting and happy happens in the books the yellow is where I feel that from.  

LIKES 

• I thought these came out so well, there was something about them that I really liked. I could see myself making a set of these potentially. It was very simple but alluded to a lot of murakamis themes (leaves for passing of time, hands for possession and the cat as the females in his books that are so often lusted after). 
• Lining it up was easy
• The colours worked well together and overlaid

DISLIKES 

• Had a nightmare with pulling the first few, too much ink got on the screen at first and a few of the pulls came out far too thick even for a simple design like this (it ruined the hands and whiskers on parts). 
• It feels too simple at this point to choose it as a final, Murakami's works are so weird and distorted I'm not sure this shows that so I think I'm going to carry on making some more work and if nothing is as nice as this then I will come back to it. 

ATA: Working on 15 sting

I created a few storyboards in my visual journal and decided to take one of the more simple ideas with me into the After Effects Workshops.  That was I can just get the base done on after effects and add textures and more layers as I progress. This is so I always have at least a very simple animation if I run out of time at the end. 

Today I've experimented with the background. I chose blues as my gradient colour and black as my main as we can only use two colours in our animation. The idea was to make the sky behind the city change colour and to make the lights in the building change to form the letters "after dark" (the book that I have read the most times). 

I mostly experimented with timings and opacity today to change the lights slowly from a random occurrence into the letters that I wanted them to be. 

I was pleased with progress today but I think I might consider changing the sky colour and trying to introduce a painted texture into it. 

LIKES 

• The animations that have been put in to my current composition 

DISLIKES 

• I still don't know what my finals will look like and am struggling at developing those currently. 
• Im struggling to create a sting without a clearer idea of what the medium will be for my finals 
• Don't want them to be produced and have two completely different looks 
• Getting annoyed at myself that both my sting and my finals are no closer to being finished and they both hinder each other

ATA: Moving to a bigger sketchbook

PROGRESS TUTORIAL 
I had a progress tutorial with Theresa before and when we were talking about my work she asked me why I was working so small. This is something that has come up a few times throughout the project and has been spoken about a few times in first year. I have always felt most comfortable working to a A5 format and a lot of my scamps tend to be small even when I do have A4 books. I also often use ink in my initial drawings and I never really need a sketchbook bigger.
In the tutorial Theresa suggested buying a new sketchbook as I've been really struggling to produce work that reflects my author in my current A5 sketchbook.

KEY POINT
Since buying a A3 sketchbook (I didn't think A4 was enough to push me) my work has really been coming out easier so to speak. I've found the extra space good to help me push my work. This is one of the key points in this projects development, it's already changing my work so much already. I've had the chance to work with paint and a little bit with layering. 

When I spoke to Ben later (like a week or so) he said that the way I was working  in my big sketchbook was 'archaic'  in comparison to my smaller book, which in a way I suppose it is. Gluing things in is very old school but it's helping me to produce pieces of work and its helping me organise my mind by sticking in different colours and shapes next to each other so i think that maybe being old school for this project is going to work out better (being as working my normal way clearly isn't helping me)

LIKES 

That having more space has allowed me to experiment with overlaying objects
have more space to stick in things
I can paint big pieces
Finally feels like I'm getting somewhere with making stuff.

DISLIKES 

It's harder to carry around and stuff keeps falling out so I'm gonna have to figure out how to fix that

PLAN 

Carry on making work until something I actually crops up

ATA: More Sting Research

After looking at some bad stings on youtube I ventured over to vimeo to have more of a look at what can be done in after effects. On Vimeo I found far nicer things that were more inspiring for my work.

The first I looked at was a 51 sec vimeo on how to road trip with friends.


How to roadtrip (made in 48h) from Pierre LE CANN on Vimeo.

I think that the music selected for the piece was well chosen, it inhibits the mood of the video and the animation is synced in to it also. This is something I am now considering about doing with my piece.

 Although more complicated than anything we are expected to make this time round I think the the transitions between scenes were simple and the whole thing was very fast paced and that the colours reflected the mood really well. These are things I can take from this and move forward with (as they are things I think i could probably manage in after effects). 




BAA Stings 2014: Long Egg from BAA Stings 2014 on Vimeo.

The second sting I looked at was for the British Animation Awards. This again was longer than 15secs but this time coming in at 25secs. 
At first look I thought it was complicated but after going to the After Effects workshops it actually seems quite easy. Most of it is just panning in and knowing how to move objects around. In contrast to the previous one this didn't use a musical soundtrack as such but instead holding back on sounds to add to the eerie atmosphere. 





BAA Stings 2014: Suzie Hanna from BAA Stings 2014 on Vimeo.

The third sting I looked at was one that was closer to something that I was aiming for. It was very textural and was only 14 seconds but carried across it's message. This sting is a very cutesy play on sheep in comparison to the sting above, however it is done well with the childlike music of "baa baa black sheep" as well as the stars in the night sky that also spell out Baa. 
From this I think that I will probably have some text in there somewhere to break it up from the textures but I just don't know what text yet and where to start on my sting exactly. 

Made You Look, Twilight Session Showing

Made You Look is a creative documentary, created to draw attention to the useage of manual techniques in a digital age and to show how it is still relevant even with many digital techniques.

There were more things I disliked about this documentary than things that I liked.
I disliked the way it was shot and I found that there was a lack of speed, it all felt very slow, drawn out and made me not enjoy watching the processes that were shown in the film. I feel like music could have been used to a far better advantage to get people excited about the creative industry (which is an exciting vibrant thing isn't it really?). The way it was all presented dulled it down. I know they were trying to show how great these processes were but they could have done more to liven it up, it tried to hard to be an edgy art film and to be different but all I saw was (at least 3) people asleep in the lecture theatre so I think it missed its audience (so it missed it's point a little). (but I am a film snob so it could be that too.)

The things I did like about the film were the range of creatives that they spoke too and the large range of production and process that was shown. It did highlight how manual textural work can still be relevant in a modern day and age. It was also nice to see bigger studios getting involved with what was essentially a small scale film and trying to bring the audience in to their worlds.

ATA: Monoprint and Lino Print.

When I went to the workshops I really didn't go with much in mind. I still haven't decided anything concrete about my final piece. I hadn't done much past working on A5. 

I really enjoyed monoprint the most, it was quick and fun to get some interesting work out of. 

I tried a few different techniques; drawing in pencil on the back of the piece of paper to create a few different shapes, using a cotton bud stick to wipe away ink so when I pressed the paper down in created a nice pattern and I also tried placing different textures on the plastic to get a nice pattern too. I really liked the paper I used for my red Midori images (it came out shiny and new looking) but the image itself was one of my weaker ones (this was later discussed in a crit). The purple cat images were defintely my favourite just because of their playfulness. 

I did like mono print but I'm not sure that it will be right for my final, it feels too loose and doesnt quite fit in with the structural mysterious feeling that surrounds Murakami's writing.

Lino Printing was very different. I had never (ever!) tried Lino print before so I was quite nervous with it. I copied an image that I had already created in my book with papercuts for my first attempt. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be, so knowing this now I might try it again with something a little more complicated and see how it turns out. I created 3 small lino pieces (her back, a cup of tea and takahashi low fat milk) that were symbollic of what had happened to characters in the book. After I had created them I tried them out in different combinations. I like how they aren't neatly in lines and a little off centred. 

It gives an almost comic book feel to the work but I think if I created a set of three this could very easily be my end product when I have created a final image I want to work with. 

I liked screenprint as equally as I liked lino print so I think it's just a case of creating a really good few final images (I'm pretty decided on making a poster rather than a book) and trialling them both out, make one as a lino and one as a screen and then decide from there. 

LIKES 

• Really liked the mono print looseness 
• Carrying cats through as a theme 
• Need to do some more mono prints before I decide for sure what I should do 
• Yellow and blue really popped as colours

DISLIKES 

• I liked lino but I didn't know what I was going into so I think next time I would pick better things to do in Lino 

PLAN

• More mono prints 
• more reading (not sure I have enough to work with at this point) 
• Less people more cats, more landscapes. 

Analysing Old Briefs (BBC vs Charity)

For responsive we were all in small groups of 5 or 6. I was sat on a table that was mixed with animators and illustrators.

We were asked to consider what our practice is and what we would consider doing and not doing.

For my own personal practice I listed some things that as a creative I am most interested in developing.

Publishing

- illustrated book covers

- film posters

- event card production (birthday anniversarie etc)

My Own Shop 

- Embroided things

- Ceramics

- Prints - Posters

- Badges - Tote bags

Character Design 

- Storyboard Artist

- Games design// character designing for games

- NOT interested in graphic novel production

- Running my own blog with small zines of my characters.

- Online Zine

We were then given some older briefs from last year to look at and asked how to handle them.

A majority of us on our table found it very hard to answer the questions, mostly because the briefs that we were offered were not in relation to any of our personal practice mindmaps/lists.

We then discussed about approaching work in the industry and when to take on jobs. Most of us agreed that if we did not enjoy the brief we would struggle to take it on but would probably attempt it. I was one of the people that disagreed saying that if a brief was not relevant in any way to your portfolio you were building it could damage your portfolio if you were going for a specific job role (i.e if you were a character developer but making a lot of logos for companies that could be interpreted as split focus and make you less desireable for a job role).

We also discussed whether money played a strong role in what briefs we would choose. If a brief was for a company that had a powerful influence and a large audience (BBC, ABC, ITV etc) should we do it for free for the publicity? Or would we reject it on principle that creatives should be paid for their work. Many of us said that we would want the publicity up to a certain point, then money would be needed for us to take an interest. Most of us agreed that we would probably be more inclined to create work for a charity for free (more of a moral choice).

ATA - After Effects, Storyboarding and Stings

 

We've been taking After Effects workshops to help us with our animated shorts. At first I didn't find it useful as it was just moving objects around but as it got further into the sessions we learnt about imbedding music into the work and how to step the music in and how to step different transitions. 

 Every after effects must have a composition, just like setting up a page in photoshop. 

Grey chunky bit on the time ruler (blue handle) can select a certain section. 

Composition - new composition - composition presets (end product list) - HD def PAL NGTSC standard definition 

If you make a mistake and need to change it - composition settings 

if there are no layers showing are you in the right section? click composition layer section. 

moving the red bar in the time ruler section changes the time on screen.

LAYER PROPERTIES 

• to the left of the layer name, small triangle. if you click on that, reveals more options! 
• Transition, anchor point, position, scale, rotation, opacity. 
• Click on stopwatch for position that creates a key frame (diamond shape) 
• then move time indicator to where you want transition to finish 
• Should move path. 
• Then AE animates it automatically. 

Render settings - Best settings - time span (whole work or part you choose). 

Output module "lossless" - Format options H.264 

RENDER. 

Keyboard Shortcuts 

Position - Layer selected + P 

Anchor - A 

Rotation - R 

Scale - S 

Opacity - T (for transparent) 

New composition - preset for brief - PAL D1/DV wide screen square pixel. 

can have multiple composition in one project 

Select layer - O - the marker will line up with the outpoint 

Select layer - N - Brings workspace to end of work 

Select layer - U - shows all properties of the layer 

                    U twice - all the modified properties of the ayer 

Drag click box, then key frames, when both are selected they will do the same thing. 

Select all the layers THEN alt -click drag very first or very last key frame diamond. this can change the time of the whole thing. 

Photoshop - new - film video preset - size PAL D1/DV

exactly same as AE

cmd + to set guides. 

rectangles are safe zone 

everything significant keep inside 

File - import - always check your importing type. If it is in the project folder, drag it down OR double click the file. 

STORYBOARDING 

Storyboarding is a sequence of pictures created by a production illustrator. 

Key positions and key framing. It helps with visual thinking and also with composition. 

For our final deliverable it helps show development for final piece, helps to show exploring rather than showing the end product. 

Lighting and pace can be shown in storyboarding easier. 

• Look at cameron Stewart. 
• - Positional, Pan, Zoom, Track. 
• Get it down on paper dont keep it in your head. 
• Screen "grab" mid or post production to get feedback from collegues. Helps to show your progress to potential pitchers. 
• Resolve something on screen that comes across in print. 

This was the image I chose to take into storyboarding. Below are examples of my first few attempts at storyboarding. I found it quite challenging getting something out of my head onto paper, also having nine slots made it harder and I had to think more about the composition. I also had to consider Position, pan, track and zoom as tools.

I didn't find this task very easy, we had to use our image as the middle of the storyboard so I had to think about how to get to that bit. I think I probably over thought it a bit too much and that is something to consider with after effects. As we only get 15 minute stings its probably easier to keep it something simple. We also got suggested to think about the soundtrack. I have listened to a few pieces of music on Free Music Archive and British Library but I havent found anything I am really thinking about using yet.

By developing my storyboarding skills it really helped me think about the actual things I can do with 15 seconds and how much you can get across in a small amount of time.

STINGS 

I had a look at some different animated stings, this one was only 9 seconds long, for E4 stings.

Although it was short it was aimed very well at its audience (15 - 24 year olds// younger "hip" age range). By using a fast paced shape system to keep attention and quick repetitive music that drew attention fast.

The music used is not very contextual, it is simple noises with a heavier "dubstep" beat underlaying  to give it that edge that will be relevant to the music 15 - 24 year olds are listening to these day. The beat keeps in time to  the images that appear on screen. The images themselves do tell a story, a very short one that reveals itself at the end as those shapes being finger puppet shapes made by a weird unexplained character. The bright colours attract our eyes with the shapes jumping up and down to get our attention, although it is probably digital the white background is given a paper like quality to move so nothing is still in the frame. .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A8H-89ABHc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73gpdC7ni8w

This next one is a slightly long sting at 20 seconds long for Comedy Central. 

It focuses on a cowboy trying to shoot some cans off a fence with his gun. 

The music used is realistic music, sounds of him walking with his shoes, the sound of a gun reloading and everytime he shoots his gun a different noise (accompanied by a shape) appearing out the end. 

It is used in a comedic way, using jokey sound effects when different shapes appear. 

 I dont think this one is as effective as it isn't very humourous and i think the music doesn't support the animation very well. 

ATA: A5 Journal works

Not much going on in here so far, I've been playing around with collage and to loosen up I've been using paint. Still haven't really got a direction I'm heading in so I will have to keep on experimenting. 




LIKES 

• nice to loosen up doing work 

DISLIKES 

• no where near to anything I like yet
• Doesn't capture the essence of murakami 
• Too many people drawings 

ATA: Immersing

After some advice from some of the level fivers, I've took out a book from the library on traditional japanese drawing, that sort of helped with what I was doing today but the more and more I draw people the less and less I like them. It's really hard to get away from drawing the characters as Murakami's books are so heavily based on human interaction. 

In a bid to get away from characters I drew Takahashi milk which is just one of the small things that weave throughout After Dark so I had a go at drawing some (using google as a reference as no shops in leeds actually sold it). 

From drawing these I realised that I actually enjoyed writing in Japanese so I had a go with that again in the next thing I drew. A scene where Mari and Kogori are talking about Korogi's past. 

I was pleased by how this came out. Using simple lines and the faces blank really helped me out to figure out their positions in relation to each other without having to worry about which way their eyes would have to be directed etc. 

I also raided the scrap draw and found some nice black paper, I illustrated some of the characters trying to draw as simply as I could using the traditional Japanese as a reference point but I was'nt overly impressed by anything  I made.

 I started doing some paper cutting just because it suited the part of the story where Korogi is explaining her abusive past. I think this is one of the only things I made today I can take forward which is annoying but at least its progress. 

LIKES 

• using Japanese within the artwork made it more unusual 
• drawing non character based things 
• using ink without shading 
• using basic lines to communicate something bigger 
• paper cutting as a medium for this 

DISLIKES 

• how drawing people is really easy to get stuck into when trying to communicate Murakami's stuff 
• black paper and gouche didn't get me anywhere but at least I know not to go there (and I think using the colour blue is a definite yes for this) 
• drawing people in traditional japanese style, just isn't working 

PLAN!

• Read more of Murakami's stuff and try going after specific objects and illustrating those 
• Take the paper cutting and the mari/korogi talking scene forward. 
• incorporate Japanese into work again perhaps?