Uncategorised

Out of Your Head

⋅
When we got this project, we had already started to think about our concept and what ultimately attracted us was about dreams and reality, so we decided to draw some wonderful scenes and a brutal environment in order to create this kind of comparison, we realized there are few words can fit this atmosphere, they are mountain and forest, mountains always remind us of cruelty and oppression, to the contrary, forest can be warm and cheerful because of the beautiful scenery and animals. If we want to show the cruelty and oppression, we need dangerous and death, then we made the mountain became the snow mountain to let audiences feel the cruelty, also, a screen of storm devours the footprint was a part of our storyboards. About the dream, we added it a warm color filter and a very prominent orange light source, so that it can be in the other side of that snow mountains and storm, vibrant, this will be the key words of dream, so the deer appeared in our animation, this was aimed to show the vitality, what is more, we think the deer is a very spiritual creature and this will help us a lot to create atmosphere of dream. So in the last the five words that we decided were mountain, footprint, devour, forest and light, the story is an old man trudged on a snowy mountain with long footprints behind him, but the storm swallowed him up. As he lay dying, he seemed to see the forest he had always dreamed of. The deer danced softly before his eyes and birds sung around his ears, and we do not know will anyone find him because his track have been buried under the snow. 
 
In the process, we encountered many problems. We could not get the same style in visuals, I prefer a more realistic style while Lily prefers a cartoon style, I think realism helps enhance the atmosphere and she thinks flatness is the soul of animation, so on, even we had already decided the final concept of this animation, our progress slowed to a halt due to style issues, so it was necessary for us to make concessions, after a long discussion, we finally decided that we would have one person for each part so that there would be no stylistic fragmentation throughout the film and there would be more layers in the film. I was responsible for the background and animals, and Lily was responsible for the character and some storyboards. However, we ran into new problems as the process progressed, we met offline after we had drawn our animations and it turned out that these videos did not work together as we expected when we edited them, each separate video looks great but it was hard to combine them together, and we realized that was our communication issues, we did not communicate too much while we were drawing and we got a strong fragmentation on frames, so we did a lot of changes on the frames that we already done, cut few frames that influence the look of the film and added some new frames to make the film looks more soft and made them match each other better while editing. But the most challenging part of this part is that we all had different vision on our work, and this caused a serious problem that we could not be satisfied with others’ work and we almost fell out over it, we talked about one thing and she did another thing but so did I, nothing will change if we kept staying in this condition, more gumption should be spent on discussing, we need a right and clear direction, so we insist on working face to face in order to deal with unnecessary negatives because we can deal with them beforehand in the process of work. 
 
About drawing. I focused on the natural scenery, I tried to bring the beauty of the nature into my work. Powerful storms hit the towering snow mountains, the ground is a thick layer of snow, no excess color and life, only dangerous, cold and death, but when the sun is going down, the warm orange glow of the setting, and the light on the ground of forest reflects off the deer, this is the world of dreams and what the old man saw as he lay dying. Overall, I think this is a great experience, in the past, I seldom work with others, but this project gives me a opportunity to feel cooperation and I faced a lot of problems that I have not faced before, we communicate with partner, we do concessions, all of those will be a improvement for me.
our storyboards
Lily was responsible for the character and this is the character she designed.
some scenes that I drew
This is our process, we edited this film in the Videoleap
Here are some screen shot of the final film.
Liked Liked
No Comments

Sounds

⋅
Tutor asked us to collect sounds of nature and we can even create sounds by ourself, I used key to sweep the table and that sounds like planes’ engine, that was quite amazing then I did more practice, such as create wind by mouth and rub the spoon to make the sound of the blade coming out of it’s sheath.


It was an amazing rotation, before getting in this rotation I did not think too much about sounds while I making an animation, but through this rotation, I realized that sounds really do a important part of my work, different sounds create different scene in the animation, I am supposed to pay more attention in sounds.

I choose 3 different sounds to create different feelings. A person is woken up by three different sounds, knock on the door, vacuum cleaner and bell, although there is no sound source in the picture but the audience can sense where the scene should take place.

Liked Liked
No Comments

Point Of View

⋅

When talk about the thing that touch me most, I would come up with this idea, every time I see these people singing in the street, I am moved because they are so sincere and full of passion for music and music has the power to transport people to another world, that is a sensual world, it can wake up a memory, a relationship, a moment.

But, I have made 3 animations when I was in my foundation course, so I truly wanted to try some new materials such as videos, that should be funny. Then I decided to take some videos of these guys and I tried to create an atmosphere so it should be a kind of montage.

This is the performer I like best in the video, he pretended to be Grinch, said hello to us and waved to us, he was full of passion and so lovely!
This guy has the most powerful voice, he is so good at singing so I chose his voice as the BGM of my video. What is more, this guy has his own instagram and that is LUKESILVAMUSIC.
I came across him when I was on my way home, he was playing a musical instrument that I have never seen before, but I quite like his dress, he covered his head but eyes and he does not have eyebrow, that was really cool, looks like a character in movie! also, he gave me a tube map to help me get a right way!
An old man with tattoos all over his head looks like an old rocker from the last century
This photo was taken in a bar in China, the atmosphere was quite nice in such a dark light, they were performing a song about youth and regret.

Actually I got some difficulties during the period, sometimes, people were not willing to be recorded by others. That was a black man with green suit playing a saxophone, it sounds excellent but when I opened my camera, he blocked his face and motioned me away so I did not take a video of that man. And during the montage editing, video and audio must be separated and synchronised even when they are cut into parts. However, the most regrettable thing is that I have not learned how to handle the camera, so some scenes will look less professional and shake violently.

Liked Liked
No Comments

Location Drawing

⋅

At the beginning of this week, our teacher took us to the Tate Art Museum and we saw a lot of artworks. We needed to make some stops in the art museum to capture passers-by and scenes, which was the purpose of this course. However, it was difficult to draw a sketch in such an environment where people kept moving. So I sit in a chair and I watch people and I make a mental note of the moment they hit me and I slide it down.

It was fun for me to draw different people in the museum and I can learn how to get inspiration from daily life through this way.

Liked Liked
No Comments

Photographics

⋅

I took those pictures when I went for a stroll in the evening, I was attached by the texture of that building, garage, and the colour of that picture about the bicycle.

A large number of repetitive elements appear in this set of photos such as the windows, the holes and the leaf, they are grouped together regularly or irregularly, also I deliberately poured out the angles to give the picture a sense of movement.

Actually they have an another same element—- road, and that reminded me of my carsick so I made some very blurry and distorted effects in my work, and a strong contrast was shown by making the distorted shapes and regular shape appear in the same picture. What is more, I did not turn the bicycle into a B&W because I quite like the light and the colour. In fact, I truly felt sick when I worked on this picture……

Liked Liked
No Comments

Traditional Animation

⋅

We were asked to draw pose to pose animation by traditional animation process and I drew a animation of a man punching his fist.

About traditional animation, I think this is the most interesting rotation for me, because here I was exposed to the most traditional animation process and a lot of new technical terms, such as keyframe and dragon frame. This new knowledge was always exciting.

But we had to draw 24 pictures for just 1 secon, that took quite a lot of energy and patience and I went over and over my drawings to make sure that the final product was not weird.

Liked Liked
No Comments

Load More