Y3 SEM1&2

design journal 2018-2019

ANIMATION Y3 SEM1  

 

The Semester started rather slowly without any big bangs or diving head on in any induction projects.
During that time, I’ve worked on a collaboration with Holly Summerson student from the 4^th year,
helping her finish one of her projects.
For Hollys Birdwatching short I’ve worked on colouring of few scenes in her animation, oil painting on glass and then capturing the images with the Dragonframe software then to be incorporated with the previously done line work.

Awaiting for the Design Externality briefs I’ve also worked on few of my own projects, reengaging and refining projects from previous year at ECA and also from my HND course at Edinburgh College. Thus I finally finished all of the set designs that I’ve previously planned to be used in my last year Two Characters & Setting Project in exact detail and scale, as I’ve originally planned and I’m still looking forward to do more filming using them and finally extrapolate and integrating short movie out of this material. (the construction and set photos are available to view on my blog at the Summer section) I have also gone back to one of my projects from my previous course in Edinburgh College and produced a completely new version of that short film. This iteration of the short is much closer to what I’ve intended in the first place and maybe run out of time and strength at the time.

(the final project is available to view at my blog in the Summer section, on my YouTube and Vimeo channels) 

 SUMMER

 

After long deliberation about which of the projects to choose for my Design Externality Major I’ve decided that the one most desirable in my practice would be the Paollozi Project. I was also considering the I'm a Scientist, Get me out of Here! project but unfortunately the provided research material didn’t turn out quite interesting as one could think.

To digest the brief properly I’ve started deepening my knowledge about work and life of Eduardo Paullozi extensively researching abundance of materials about his work and life left in Edinburgh City and online. While waiting for the meeting with Dr Carlo Pirozzi from the School of Literatures, Languages, & Cultures at the University of Edinburgh I’ve prepared 3 simple responses to the proposed brief.

In short, my general and rather loose idea for it is to use the poems or their fragments as a lyrical background for the animation. I've read them all throughout and got few favourites.

I'm thinking about making 3 shorts (30 seconds to 1 minute each) in distinctively different styles inspired by Paollozis work and life, for example, 1.) stop-motion animation with a puppet likeness of Paollozi, 2.) hand-drawn animation of a scene from his life, 3.) computer animation of his sculptures coming to life.

Finally, just last week 17th Oct I had a meeting with Dr Pirozzi and one of his students about the project development and possible routs we can take.

The meeting was very interesting and insightful and solidified my confidence in working on this project, we exchanged our ideas about the project, views on Eduardo Paollozi and his work and extensive vocabulary of art that Paollozi provided us with to explore.

We agreed on 3 final concepts for the project to investigate them further and set up for the next meeting. As for now there is no meritorical rigid structure to the content of the short animations that we work on so the storyboards provided by me are rather explorative a conceptual design rather the final structure to be filmed and animated. 

After our meeting with Dr Pirozzi I’ve started developing few short animation tests and trying to synthesize first few solid ideas based on the poems provided and Paullozis work and life.

The tests are provided in the designated folder on the drop box alongside with the development sheets, storyboards, animatic and 10 research pictures (this is just a sample, the research I’ve conducted is rather extensive, hours of documentaries and historical footage, museum collections books and online materials available) some of the content can be also find on my blog page.  

An update on the semester and projects

After finalising the concepts for the 3 shot animated films and developing the story boards, development sketches and some animation tests I started on preproduction and gathering material for the three shorts.  We picked 3 poems of Christine De Luca's that would be the main inspiration and narrative force of the films: Parthenope and Egeria, Meeting Vulcan and Clamjamfrie.

 

 

During the next weeks I was gathering photographic materials of Eduardo Paolozzi’s sculptures based in Edinburgh public spaces and museums. The photographs where the used to create 3D scans of the sculptures using photogrammetry methods and software, then I’ve exported the 3D models in to obj files to be used in a Blender 3D in software in which I retopologies and reduced the poly count of the meshes to used later in animation.

In the meantime, session of lectures for Surface and Screens came to the end and I had to concentrate on my final project for this course. Here is an abstract describing my final project and essay for this course:

Simulating the Synthetized Reality

(Future of living spaces/ organic interactive surfaces/ abandoning of screens)

In my explorative research within the course scope of Surfaces & Screens I would like to concentrate on creative elements and experimental methods of engaging with surfaces and screens, explore the potential of what surfaces/screens mean to me and my practice; by creating new experimental forms of materials; by way of designing, programming, animating and filming. I will produce an essay and art installation which would explore possible futures of tangible interactive surfaces, video exploration of surfaces and movement where the video records performed series of ideas concentrated on movement and surfaces, their qualities and contexts with in the theorem of the course.

   The title in its self is a distillation of my idea for initial proposition for my critical project book. A short explanation of what my final piece will be talking about, an exploration of synthetized reality of the future and art installation that would try to simulate this landscape of hereafter.

Will there be a future after the end of history of screens?

A critical approach to thinking with materials-media and the confluence of organic-synthetic replacement of a screen medium leads to new experimental possibilities in design.

   As this piece is an exploratory abstract on what I will be doing / writing about in a future document. I would like to follow on with simply listing the explorative activities that I will be performing to engage with the course content. First, I would explore a hypothetical near future where we stopped engaging with smart devices through touch screens or receive visual information by means of screens all together.  Explore an experimental smart materials and intelligent surfaces that could provide a replacement for ongoing data stream that we are surrounded by and completely dependent on right now. I want to combine this exploration of a hypothetical future of intelligent surfaces with an art installation project that would explore those topics and anxieties connected to them. That would be a second part of my project, I would create a collection of (at most 4) prototypes of smart materials of the future with ambiguous and unexplained uses that could be only understood by their future users from just beyond the event horizon of our contemporary thought. In my essay I would present the hypothetical imagination of a near future and then explain how it would be possible. I will argue its meres through the screen and surfaces theory, engaging with several publications presented during the course. Then I would present the developed artefacts in their form and connection to the topic and combine with more in-depth explanation of how they function, what is their purpose as an art piece and their relevance to my art practice as an Animation student, that would conclude my essay.

The art installation is now I possession of Mike Anusas.

Coming back to my Animation project I’ve shot few stop motion sequences for the Clamjamfrie short and prepared motion tracks of those sequences to be incorporated in a 3D animation.

I’ve started to work on compositions of scenes in Adobe After Effects combining the stop motion with rendered 3D animation backgrounds and recorded poems.

After I finish a final version of this short for Clamjamfrie I will be continuing working on films for the other two poems. The next film in line is the Vulcan 3D animation combined with live footage. For this short I’ve already prepared a storyboard and animatic and also 3D scans of the sculpture and some live footage.

After finishing Vulcan I will be working on Parthenope and Egeria that will be more graphic and experimental film that will conclude my cooperation with Dr Carlo Pirozzi and the School of Literatures, Languages, & Cultures at the University of Edinburgh.

design journal 2018-2019

ANIMATION Y3 SEM2

In the beginning of the semester 2 we were introduced to an idea of having to organise an exhibition that would contain a compilation of our up to date work from the course. Also, this session we started new course Issues of Representation that will include topics such: Gender/sex in mainstream animation. Animating 'the other' - non-white characters in animation. Challenges in the workplace, Tokenism in animation ,Stereotypes and performance, Positive representation.

In the first part of this semester I’ve concentrated on clients work and producing final ineration of the Paolozzie project and creating another animation influenced by Paolozzie work that would include one of the chosen poems. 

Here are some screen shots from the final film to the poem Clamjamfrie by Christine De Luca.

For the summative assessment for the Issues of representation we were asked to create a presentation that would outline the basic structure of our 300o word essay and 2 minute animation documentary.

heres an extract from my proposal : 

For my summative assessment essay and final piece of work for the Issues of Representation course I would like to combine topic of my film and the written work in one coherent structure. I would like the film to complement and accompany the written work and serve as an intro or a premise to my written word essay.

For the subject of my short film I want to use a poem of Charles Bukowski ‘Genius of the Crowd’ and make an animated film fallowing the words and narrative structure of the poem.

I chose Charles Bukowski’s ‘Genius of the Crowd’ poem as a topic of my film not only because its one of my favourite poems by this author but also because I think it fits very well the course content.

The pome talks about human discrimination and sources of it and darker parts of human nature that often come out unwillingly and masked as something else but still have deeply rooted consequences in human society.  Thus, may have wide influence on creative work and visual and narrative representation of any given character or topic. I find its more relevant then ever in current political and social climate in the UK, especially as we all undergo unwillingly changes to our lives at this very time.

This is how I see this poem connecting and being relevant to the Issues of Representation. In my essay I would like to take a wider view over the whole course content rather than concentrate on one given issue from the course that would dominate my work.[...]

[...] 

For a visual style and subject of my animation film fallowing the word of ‘Genius of the Crowd’ by Charles Bukowski I’m exploring two possible ways I might be taking at this moment.

First would be a CG animation using 3d scanning and then animating in a 3d software such Maya or Blender 3D. This would be a digital recreation of my own face from a time when I was 16 years old and showing all the changes and injuries that I have suffered until now (38 years old) from countless brutal attacks by members of alt-right organisations, skinheads and football hooligans in my home town as well as in the UK.

The second approach I’m considering as a visual style for my film would be a simple black and white animation fallowing the words of the poem (white line on black background).

At his point I have hit an obstacle.

During one of the first meetings about the upcoming exhibition I propose an idea of creating a booklet for the exhibition. During one of our online conversations other students held an utter disregard for anything I wanted to relay to them about graphic design and completely disregarded any materials about structure of a group work or design that I posted. Apparently some of the students put a formal complaint against my person also delivering to the university screen shots of our conversations ( that I find is not only against human rights but also against UK law in 3 different instances as its violation of a copyright law, violation of privacy and data protection) Dew to this formal complaint code of conduct procedures were started against me at the university and I was asked by the course director to not come to the studio space or communicate with other students for next 2 months. This have a very negative influence on my health and practically brought my work on any of the projects to a halt.  After about 2 months the code of conduct procedures against me were finished with a verdict to my favour and I was asked to rejoint the course. Unfortunately, it was too late for me to have any significant influence on the structure of the exibition or for my films to be added to the film reel for the show.

I still manged to take part in the exhibition and with help of other students to create an online profile (that was later removed for unknow to me and college staff reason) ,   . I’ve helped with technical organisation on the day and exhibit project board and some artefacts from previous projects and drawings. 

 https://www.facebook.com/events/2256984347909044/

 https://www.facebook.com/eca.flipbook/ 
 https://flipbook.myportfolio.com/artists

Poster from the exhibition preperd by other student: 

 

My project board from the exhibition: 

Issues of Representation Project

after first experiments with scanning my own face I started to rethink my project, not the content or the approach to the subject but its visual aspects and form. After analysing it few times I came to a conclusion that the digital recreation of my face through the time and visualization of all of my injuries in a realistic way might be just too graphic and it seems it could just easily become a gore video. So, I' m exploring different visual methods and techniques to produce my animation and maybe thinking about changing the content that would still be based around the poem.

New concept:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgsRCdy-BKw