Part 4 of The Reedy Boy

So I've finally finished the massive Arts Council funded project, The Reedy Boy. I've loved every minute of working with such a lovely pair of talented guys. I think without such hardworking, supportive people around me I wouldn't have managed to get over 45 minutes of hand-drawn animation produced in just under three months. It's been a crazy level of commitment, and the learning curve has been steep as anything. In this last week I've learnt how to mask videos, composite photographic elements with hand-drawn images, create sunbeams and glowing fire embers in After Effects, composite real film and digital animation in with hand-drawn animation... to name just the things I'm most proud of/are most useful for the future.
Anyway, here's Part 4, The Final Chapter, The Finale, The End.

Final Fibonacci Film

Here's the final finished fibonacci film, with Bence Peter's music to compliment the images. 

Inky Mandala Messing

I tried to create a sort of link between my Fibonacci film and the mandala clips by exploiting the freedom of movement in the ink pixilation. It nearly worked. With a background of ink experiment footage it might have looked a bit better, I think it's a bit rough as it is here though. I do really like the way the light from behind shone through my mandala cut outs though and that the ink could be seen spreading beneath them. It's messy but could be quite pretty with layers of colour. Unfortunately, this linking section wasn't needed in the end anyway as my other footage didn't work well with the green screen effect (think I needed to use a stronger colour to take out), so my mandala pixilation films couldn't really be edited together smoothly. Sad Face.

Inky Messing About

After discovering that animating with inks could be done by putting a sheet of acetate on top of a light-box and filming the ink movement using a pixilation method. It's not exactly easy but it's an interesting way to animate and creates a really lovely fluid quality to the film. It's also a good method to use if you're struggling for a theme or need a bit of inspiration, as it almost creates itself. I suppose it's part of human nature to find recognisable images in something that isn't necessarily figurative, like those pictures of houses that look like faces. I sort of stumbled across the rabbit image (probably because it's an animal so dear to me). I might adapt this technique for creating single ink drawings too as it is a lot freer than any other technique I've tried and can be changed easily if I don't like the direction the drawing is going in.

Definitely something to consider for future projects. :)

Wish I'd known this earlier...

Originally, at the start of this project, I had an idea in my head of what my fibonacci film would look like. I imagined it as quite a fluid, inky animation with very smooth, natural-looking transitions. I realised quite early on in the project that trying to draw 720 frames with inks would probably drive me crazy, as the ink would never match up properly and is entirely too unpredictable to use in this way in a constrained time period. 

When I was putting my frames into iStopmotion in the animation studio though, I began chatting to a second year girl, Jen Ferentiuk, as we were both practically living in the studio at this point. If only, I had met her at the start of the project, because she showed me an animation of hers using inks, which was not only beautifully crafted, but solved the issues that had put me off using inks in my film. >http://vimeo.com/87952216

By using inks on acetate over a light-box and pixelation techniques instead of creating a peg bar animation, Jen  managed to get the flowing quality of inks in her animation without wasting paper and time. In the future this will definitely be a technique I will try out, however I think I would have struggled to create this kind of animation for Unit X anyway, as access to the animation suite was non-existant over the Easter break. Something to think about for the future though...

Pixelation is the way forward!

Soooooo, after 4/5 weeks of continuous drawing for this silly peg bar animation that I now hate from staring at it for so long, I managed to create 45 seconds of animation using the pixelation technique in an afternoon!!!! 
These sections of animation are quite quirky and sweet (I prefer them to my hand-drawn animation), but I'm not sure now if I'll be able to use them in a final film. The techniques I've picked up are useful for the future though, not just for the fact that it's a quicker process and therefore you can get much more done, but also because it gives a cute, homely quality to the film, which I love. (There was another video, but it is too large for the blog to handle unfortunately.)

Chakra Pixilation

This is the pixilation I made which should have gone over the ink footage from our workshop. I got the green screen (aka purple screen) wrong though and the keyer setting on Final Cut Pro X picked up too much of the rest of the image, rather than just the background. I tried adjusting the settings for the keyer effect so it would leave behind some tones but then my film had a lilac tinge to it which I disliked. This meant that the mandala film didn't get made in the end because my footage couldn't be linked in a professional way as it was. I would have needed to re-film all the pixilation work and there just wasn't time to do this. :( 

Collaboration!

Having looked again on youtube for some fibonacci themed music to compliment my animation, I discovered Bence Peter. The speed and tone of his fibonacci composition was exactly what I was looking for and so I followed the link to his facebook page and sent him this message: 

"Hi, My name is Rachel and I'm a first year student animator in Manchester. I've been creating a hand-drawn animation for my final project this year based on the fibonacci sequence and I've been looking for some music to go with it. I found your fibonacci piece on youtube and I absolutely loved it. I was wondering if you'd object to me using it as the score for my minute long animation, as it fits beautifully with my images. It's obviously non-profit and I would credit you fully in my titles. And, if you were interested, I'll of course send you the film. Hoping you'll agree and wishing you luck with your future music. Rachel McMahon."

To my surprise, Bence got back to me straight away with a lovely message...

"Hi Rachel, thanks for writing to me and I'm glad you liked the music and of course feel free to use it for your animation! I always love to see creative people using it. If you provide me with your email address I might be able to send a better quality version too.

Thanks, and good luck! Bence"

I find that creative people are often very eager to help each other out, especially if you're a student looking for a bit of help or guidance, as they can normally remember the time when they were just starting out too and will empathise with you. Bence emailed me that evening with a higher quality mp4 track of the composition like he said he would. What a lovely guy and talented pianist!

Latest Line Tests

After a few camera issues aka me being clueless with technology again, I managed to get a few seconds of animation into iStopmotion. I had wanted to get the whole film done in the afternoon, but I severely underestimated the amount of time it takes to capture over 720 frames! It takes FOREVER! Especially when the camera is on auto-rotate, keeps changing its view and you don't know how to fix it. (It's actually really easy to fix...)
This time I definitely captured each frame twice so the animation is running to a normal speed, meaning no going back and adding in frames thank goodness! Good to know my intuition in timing is fairly sound. 

Ishu Patel

After telling my friend Cat about my film ideas, she recommended that I look at Ishu Patel's animations. Patel is originally from India, but has taken his work across the world with the National Film Board. His animation Perspectrum was of particular interest to me as it used a soundtrack that I think will be quite similar to what I'll be using for my mandala film. It was also very abstract and used only simple shapes but the movement links so well with the music that it is beautifully entrancing. I think this has highlighted for me that the film doesn't necessarily need to have an obvious theme, it an just be about the joy of patterns, colour and balance.
Patel's other animations, Afterlife, The Bead Game and Paradise are lovely too because they really abuse the freedom animators have in creating an entirely new world where anything can happen. In The Bead Game and Afterlife, Patel merges characters and shapes into new ones in the blink of an eye, or dissolves them into a mass of colour before transforming them again. He works seamlessly between the shapes, like clay being remodelled. I love the way he merges between different colours as well, using a chromatic spectrum it seems. Part of me wishes that I had not worked on white paper for my peg bar animation as Patel's use of colour against a black background seems to make them look like they glow like coloured lights and therefore the background could be anything if it wasn't in darkness.

A real line test! Finally!

So I've finally managed to get into a studio and capture my frames for the first proper line test of the animation. Normally I would prefer to get this done earlier than 629 frames in, but whatcha gonna do...? Luckily, my instincts seem to have served me pretty well whilst drawing and I've only got a few timing discrepancies that I need to sort out. 
The start of the grid formation in the beginning of the film and some transitional sections are far too fast for my liking but they can be easily solved by drawing in extra frames and taking double captures of the frames where necessary. 
The parts I'm happiest with are the meteor at the start of the film and the hand at the end. I like that the arc in my meteor's trajectory worked out well and didn't just look like I couldn't draw in a straight line, because meteors apparently never come straight at the Earth because of the gravitational field <(Fun Fact) I think the hand worked out well because I really had to research how a hand moves by filming my own and studying it frame by frame. I feel the extra time invested there has paid off. 
The only thing that worries me about my animation is that after connecting two line tests together on Final Cut, the length was only 33 seconds. 629 frames caught at double capture in iStopMotion ought to create 52 seconds worth of film... Where have my other 19 seconds gone???? My only explanation for this is that perhaps iStopMotion was not capturing the frames as doubles. Need to investigate this, as it might affect my timing problems in the animation. 

Using Zeitraffer

I've been experimenting with filming a wire toy I have that reminds me of a 3D version of a mandala. It's very delicate and can be manipulated into different shapes. It's so 90s too; a relic from the age of mood rings, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and dungarees. 
I tried to create a pixelation of it at home, but without a tripod, proper lighting and just your basic digital camera, the result is a bit poor. I think this needs to be re-shot in the studio. The only part I like really is the section at the end where it gets squashed down, because you can see the transition quite clearly. (I used my suitcase as a homemade tripod there). Really I wanted this film to be used in my second animation, and reflect the paper cut mandalas, which will be revolving. I'm not sure how clear the transitions are though because the object is so complex, so I'll have to retry the pixelation and then see how clear it is. 

Chakras and Palmistry Experiment

To compliment a section of my hand-drawn fibonacci animation of an outstretched palm, I've been looking into Buddhist ideas of chakras in the hands for my mandala film. I've discovered that different parts of the hand relate to different areas of the body according to the chakra theory, and this correlation is shown by colour-coding the matching areas. The complimenting film section that I could create for my mandala film could therefore be a pixelation of the coloured areas spreading across my left hand (to mirror the right hand in the fibonacci animation). The film section needs to only be 3-5 seconds long which is plenty of time to paint and draw across my hand and map out the basic chakra areas. 

 < Section of the hand-drawn fibonacci animation. Right hand holding a nautilus shell. 

< My left hand painted to demonstrate the areas of the palm relating to chakras in the body. I painted onto my palm using acrylic paints which come away easily afterwards, as opposed to inks, which stain. 

< My painted left hand with patterns drawn on using biro pen. I thought the colours alone looked a bit bland and bare, so I experimented with shapes and lines I've used in my mandala creations. I might alternatively just write onto my palm which sections relate to which chakra in the body, as they all have different names. 

First-hand research

For a section of my fibonacci animation I wanted to animate a hand picking up a shell, but having never drawn  something like that before, I wasn't sure of the exact movement. After the gif I made ofMr Rufus Rabbit went so well though, I figured the best way to handle my problem would be to film my own hand picking something up and then watch the movement until I could replicate it. There is a certain amount of intuition that still goes on with this method, as this time I'm not rotoscoping the image the way I did for the rabbit gif. 
Using first-hand research (pardon the pun), is definitely the best way to approach animating something new, otherwise it is very easy to get the movement wrong. For something as commonplace as hand gestures, I did not want this to happen as it would be very noticeable if the action wasn't naturalistic. 

Line test for Fibonacci Animation

Unfortunately, I've had trouble trying to get line tests done over the Easter break due to a lack of access to the animation studio. I did manage to do a very short test using my digital camera, which seems to be at the speed and accuracy that I want, but I'm still unsure of the rest of the film. I'm hoping that my instincts are correct in the drawings though and I won't need to make any adjustments. This section is of the fibonacci spiral transforming into a galaxy. 

How to draw a galaxy...

My animation design has meant that I have set myself the challenge of drawing and animating a galaxy. Having never even attempted to draw a galaxy before this was probably not the brightest idea I've had so far in this project, however it seems necessary in order to visually explain the theory of pantheism (that life on Earth originated from a single organism transported to Earth by a meteorite). In my animation it is, of course, a spiral-covered, Fibonacci-infused meteorite in order to create a planet full of life forms exhibiting the Fibonacci pattern... makes sense right? And equally logically, this meteorite needed to come from a Fibonacci galaxy.

So, how to draw a galaxy? 
I needed the design to be fairly quick and simple to reproduce, otherwise the animating would take far too long for the schedule I'm running to (approx. 24 frames a day currently). 
My original designs consisted of a few quick line in pen in a vague spiral form... not very inspiring, beautiful or scientific. 
I then began to mess around by smudging the inks, but it still wasn't achieving the magical, beautiful look I was after. I decided that in order to get the desired effect, I'd need to add some sparkle and colour, so I invested in gold, cobalt and magenta inks to experiment with. 
I kept the strong black lines though too, as I want them to be a stable feature throughout the film. 
Having not done a line test yet on the animation though, I am still to see if this technique works the way I want it to. I may, for example need to adjust the lighting so that the gold is picked up properly by the camera. At the moment though, I'm happy with the images I'm producing and think they hold the gaze. 

Papercraft Animations

My research into origami and papercraft has led me to paper-cutting in animation. As paper is such a versatile material, it can be used to create 3D stop-motion animations, because it both holds its shape and can be easily manipulated into new positions/forms. The best examples so far that I've come across are those by Andersen M Studio, who make short promotional animations for books, TV series and websites. My favourites are either the promotional video for the novel, 'The Distant Hours' or the advert for a new Discovery Channel TV show, 'Shackleton: Death or Glory'.

The Distant Hours video was beautiful because it used only basic materials of paper and dirt, but the lighting, sound and camera angles of the film made it into a short drama, filled with tension and intrigue. The juxtaposition of harsh straight edges and the curving lines of flowers also made it a beautiful film to watch, and attests to the wonderful combinations of shapes that can be achieved with just paper.

The Shackleton film appealed to me because of the connection between the materials used and the subject matter. The animators used nautical maps of the southern polar regions to create a ship and waterscape scene based around Shackleton's journey to Antarctica.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=w694zRej5QQ

After seeing these gorgeous animations, I'd really love to combine paper-cutting into my 2nd film based around mandalas, pattern-making and balance. I think because of time limitations and because I've never done a paper stop-motion before, I will probably keep the film quite simple. Perhaps just spinning mandala patterns overlapping and intertwining for one scene of the film before they fold into an origami shape for example.

Origami Mischeif

As I've been thinking about maths in art and the power of geometry and symmetry, a leap into the world of origami didn't seem that far a stretch. Some origami patterns share similar characteristics to mandalas; focusing around a central point, layering of shapes, symmetrical composition etc. Most people know how to make a simple origami fortune teller (a lost skill from their school days) so I thought it would be a nice little exercise to make an animation of the making of one. It was also a quick way for me to sample the new Zeitrapher app on the Macs in the animation studio. 

It's not the neatest animation as I only took photographs using my phone and did not use a tripod to keep the camera steady, but it's a jumping off point for future films. A discussion with my tutor led to the idea of using   green screen technology so the paper could be manipulated on screen without seeing my hands. This could also allow me to put further animation into the background perhaps. These little clips of origami manufacture could also be adapted by putting a kaleidoscope effect on the film to create a mandala-like image of origami structures. 

16mm Film Test

I took part in a workshop this afternoon, which involved damaging, drawing and painting onto 16mm film. We used tipex, sharpies, nail varnish, spray paint and stickers to add to blank film, but then on film which was already exposed we used pins and scalpels to 'interfere' with the original images on the film reel. These created an effect which reminded me of the punk tendency to cut and stick and use existing images. It had a very obvious hand-made quality, but also the urgency and violent feel of punk videos. 

As a form of inspiration we were shown the work of Len Lye, and tried to unpin the materials he had used by watching 'Swinging the Lambeth Walk'. We decided that his hand-painted films were created using found objects, such as film sprockets and combs, to stamp and make marks. What impressed me most about Len Lye's work though was the perfect timing with every aspect of the music; it was like stepping into the mind of a synesthete.

Unexpected Inspiration!

I went to see Bombay Bicycle Club play at the Albert Hall last night and received some unexpected inspiration during the gig. Aside from the music and atmosphere being incredible, the group had commissioned animators and set designers to create a backdrop during the gig, which featured some beautiful animated videos. (All were created by Anna Ginsburg I think.)

The set consisted of five circular screens, on which the videos were projected, as well as further projections up the walls on either side of the stage and old organ pipes behind the band (a relic from the days when it was presumably a church). The animations themselves focussed on the movement of the human body and cycles within the world, such as the rising of the sun and moon in the transitions between day and night. Some of the animations were, I can only assume, rotoscoped images of the human body moving as they caputred the arc of dancers and athletes as they leaped through the air. The movements were captured and then repeated to create circular patterns (almost like mandalas made from the human form), which reflected the screen layout onto which they were projected. I managed to capture part of one of the many animations featured during the gig, which relates very closely to my research at the moment, as it shows a spiral made up of tiny human figures (cue Rachel jumping up and down with excitement at a fellow Fibonacci lover!).

The band have also used animators in their official music videos. For 'Carry Me' they enlisted the help of Grace Helmer, Jake Evans and Luiz Stockler, to work collaboratively on the animated music video. According to a post on www.itsnicethat.com, by James Cartwright, the video was originally created as an interactive piece that could be manipulated on screen, but after realising this would not work for the millions of Youtube users, they brought in Grace to create hand-drawn animations to compliment the shots. The project was overseen by Anna Ginsburg, who also created 'Luna' and 'How can you swallow so much sleep' by Bombay.

N.B. I think I have a new favourite person. Looking through Ginsburg's sketchbook washing line and showreel on her site is a way for me to spend hours of my life. http://www.annaginsburg.co.uk/index.html