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...

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. 

Light and Water Workshop

Today we did a workshop based on the effects of light shining through water, and had various materials provided to us which would create certain effects when dropped into the lit water. We used an overhead projector with clear Perspex bowls filled with water placed on top. This meant that anything dropped into the bowl of water would be projected onto a wall and enlarged. We experimented with various coloured inks, washing up liquid, coloured films, oil, prisms and magnifying glasses. We also tried different methods of delivery into the bowls of water, such as dropping inks from high up and dribbling them down the sides of the bowls. We also experimented with the effects made by blowing on the water and using a straw to create bubbles. These looked really good when reflected onto the wall, as the bubbles collected a deeper tone of ink around the edges and refract light within them. Some of the images looked like living things, such as microbes or bacteria. The oil and washing up liquid worked well with the water and inks as well because they don't mix, and so blobs of oil separate in the liquid, creating suspended islands of clarity within the inky water swirling in the bowl.
The videos we made had a very ethereal quality to them, and give an impression of balance and magic. I think therefore that this technique will be fantastic when used as a background in my 2nd film about mandalas and the Buddhist theories on the karmic balance of the universe. Other techniques I may use in this film might be pixilation and paper craft.

I attempted to make my own projections at home using a perspex tray and my lightbox, but it wouldn't project clearly enough so I just photographed the tray itself. I think they look like forming galaxies, which is very relevant to my project.