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. 

Fibonacci Music

I knew vaguely that the fibonacci series related to music, for example that the keys of piano are in the series. 

I wanted to find some music for my animation which had been written with the fibonacci series in mind, so that hopefully the music would compliment the images on another level. In my search I found this TEDtalk about the power of the sequence within music. I might use something similar to this simple percussive music in my film, although I do like the power of the maths within chord progressions and harmonies so I might go for something with a bit more depth to it. It would be brilliant if the music I chose ended on a point like this video, but I think my timings would have had to be planned out earlier to match the music rather than finding music to match my video. 

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.