Out of the Inkwell.

I looked at the short animations Out of the Inkwell by max Fleischer, they were made using rotoscope and uses very simple line drawings and he very rarely uses backgrounds, this is very similar to my design style. It was also helpful to look at an animation that uses rotoscope and I will hopefully use a bit of the technique in my final animation.

Out of the Inkwell Modelling.

Out of the Inkwell a trip to Mars.

Colouring Book

Looking at my style designs I really like the roughly coloured elephant giving the look of a childs colouring book. I think for the beginning and middle of my animation i am going to roughly colour just small random objects. The end of the animation I want it to look like i have realised what the world and people are really like, I have grown up so all the colour will drain away. I think this will work as i was young when this happened so a childs colouring book effect will be relevant.

Dear zoo.

I also found this children's book called dear zoo. The illustration is also very simple but it does use a lot of colour. The style is quite similar to mine in the way that it uses many black lines and does have that much detail in the characters.

Miffy

I looked at Miffy the work of Dick Bruna's, children's book. He uses very simple line drawings to create the characters. The characters are very simple but they are very effective. He uses some colour but only on the clothing and objects. I like his style and i think it is quite similar to mine. Looking at his work has also inspired me to use a bit of colour in my animation, even if it is just a little bit, on certain objects.

Found Imagery Character Design

These are a few wild animals i found useful when creating my characters. The first two animals are my favourites as they are quite simple and use quite simple lines and style similar to my own. 

Monkey Animation Test

This is just a small test I tried to get a monkey to look like it is swinging. I watched a few videos on youtube of real monkeys swinging and drew observations from them. I think it has worked well although I feel that his arms need to swing down to show that he is swinging and not just sliding along. For my final animation I will work on this to make it look really like a real monkey.

Hand Drawn Animations

I have been looking into hand drawing my final animation as this is the only animation technique i have not yet tried. I think it will be challenging as I'm not the best drawer but hopefully the life drawing classes i have been attending will help me with this. I have looked up small animations to give me different ideas on how i can achieve this and hopefully the end result will show this.

Drawn Animation

Hand Drawn Animations from disney films.

Review of week 4.

This week I have done a lot more in-depth research into my story and looked at possible ideas surrounding that. I firstly looked at why people fear death and the reasons behind that, and i also looked into what happens when we die and what different theories surround that. I watched the film The Lovely Bones as it related well to my current research as it shows one possible explanation for what happens when we die. I look at news reports and interviews of people who have had near death experiences and say they have seen what happens when we die. I then conducted a few interviews asking people if they fear death and what they think happens when we die, I got a few interesting results but it was mostly what i had already researched. I then started thinking about ideas and completed my first storyboard. After looking at that i realised i wanted to make a fun animation from quite a serious story so I looked at the campaign dumb ways to die this campaign has created a fun song out of a serious matter of death. I then drew my second storyboard which I really like incorporating animals into the story. I then looked at the Procrastination animation on vimeo, i really like this animation as it is very visual and takes the narration very literally , I then drew up another storyboard using this technique which i think worked really well. I then looked at tim burtons character design to get ideas for my own animation. And finally i went to the sundance film festival which i found very interesting and very useful.

Sundance Film festival

I went to the Sundance film festival in the O2 arena yesterday and attended a talk with the directors of short and feature length films. I found this very interesting and they gave good advice for film making and getting into the industry. Shadows of time directed by Sambitt Banerjee was particualy relevant to me as it was about the london 7/7 bombings. It was about a muslim women who lost her husband on that day and had flashbacks to when they were together. He chose a muslim women because he wanted to show the contradiction between the muslim terrorists and 3 of the 52 people that died were muslim.

Shadows of Time.

Obvious Child

Dinosaur 13

Russian Roulette

Tim Burton Character Design

I have looked at Tim Burtons character design, to gather a few ideas for my own characters. I like his style although it is very detailed and i didn't want my animation to be more simplistic.

Third Storyboard

This idea was based on making the visual images in the story very literal relating to the narration. It would take the narration very literally in the visuals it displays as it is spoken the visual action would appear on the screen. I like this idea however i don't feel the character has changed going through the story at all so i would need to work on that if i was to make tis as my final animation. I think it would also be hard to make everything into a metaphor and therefore I'm not sure the technique would woe for the whole story.

Visual Images

I watched the Procrastination video on vimeo which i really enjoyed. I watched it because it uses a technique that take stye narration very literally in the visuals it displays. It is a narrated animation and as the words are spoken the visual action appears on show. I really like this technique and I think it could work really well with my animation, especially with my dad narrating the story. It also made me think about using several different animation techniques such as stop motion, illustration and computer animation all for my final animation.

Procrastination

Second Storyboard

This is a first draft of my storyboard, I have tried to change a serious situation into a funny one by making the people into animals. I think it works well and is a creative alternative to the real story. It is also very childlike which is relevant as i was a child at the time and loved wild animals. So I am incorporating two memories from my childhood, one happy memory and the other not so happy memory. I want to work on the ending as i don't think it is as good as it could be but I like the rest of the animation. I am still going to have my dad narrating the days events throughout the story which I think will work well and contradict what is going on.

Dumb ways to Die

The campaign Dumb ways to die was set up by metro to warn people to be safe around trains. They created several different characters who have all die by doing simple but dumb things, such as set fire to their hair, sell both kidneys on the internet and get your toast out with a fork. They created a song and advised people to share it to worn others about train safety.

The campaign changes a quite serious situation 'death' into a funny and entertaining video, this is what I want to achieve in my animation. I want to take my personal quite emotional story and turn it into a fun and entertaining animation. I like the little characters they have made and I would like to use this idea in my animation, I also like the bright colours they use to add to the vibrant nature of the animation.

Dumb ways to die.

Idea 1-London Bombings.

After my research I started to think how I could make my animation. The first idea I had was to record my Dad talking about his experience and animate what happened. Once I drew the storyboard I realised it wasn't very interesting and I don't think it would make a very good animation as it is just showing what happened, I don't think it would keep the audience gripped. However I do like the idea of having my Dad narrate the story, I also really like the style of the storyboard. I originally hadn't thought about hand drawing it but I like the simplicity and effective nature of this. This is an idea i may look further into and practice drawing a bit more before i make my final decision of how i am going to make it.

Interviews-Do you fear death?

I carried out a few interviews and asked people:
Do they fear death?
Why is that?
What do you think happens when we die?
The majority of people i asked said they do fear death. Because of the fact they don't know what happens when they die. They are worried about leaving children and families and how they would cope when they are gone. There was mixed results about what people think happen when they die a few people said heaven and hell, someone said you just go into a state of nothing and some people said they have no idea, there are about 3 possibilities that could happen but they try not to think about it.
This has been an interesting experiment and I will use the results i collected in my research and development of ideas.

The Lovely Bones

I watched the film The Lovely Bones as I thought it related well to my research 'why do people fear death,' especially the fact that no one know what happens when we die. The film follows the story of a girl called Suzie Salmon who is murdered by her neighbour when walking home one evening. The film is narrated by her as she watches over her family before going to heaven. She tries to let her family know she is still there and get justice for her death. Only once she is ready and feels it is time to let go and let her family carry on with their lives she goes into heaven. This is a very moving film and made me realise there is no answer to what happens once we die and we will probably never know, making the fear of death even more scary.

Why do people fear death?

I have decided to look into death and the reasons people fear death. The idea has come from the fact that I could have dies that day but I had no idea that I could have, I had no idea that I was that close away from death and even after it had happened I didn't fear death. At the end of the day anyone could die anywhere at anytime and eventually its going to happen to everyone so why fear something you can't stop.

People fear death because they dont know what happens once we die, we don't know where we go, there is no clear answer of what happens. There are so many different theories of life after death, heaven and hell and the idea of the unknown, I think this is the biggest reason of why people are so scared. I personally fear for the people we leave behind and how loosing a loved one will affect them, because I know if I die I wouldn't want people to be sad, I would want them to get on with their lives and not worry about me.

These are a few animations i found which i think are really interesting and good research for my project.

Don't fear Death

Nothing to Fear