a-slateranimation

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2001: A Space Odyssey’s pen

2001: A Space Odyssey is a landmark in science fiction, pioneering a number of tropes and effects. One notable effect is the floating pen scene, in which a woman picks a floating pen out of the air and puts it in a passengers pocket. This was notable for giving the audience a true sense of weightlessness in a film for the first time.

When this scene was originally brought to my attention I was told to try and work out how the effect was done. All I was told was that it was a practical effect and there was a brief moment that would tell me the answer.

After repeatedly watching the scene the first conclusion I came to was that there was no way it could be wires, the floating was too controlled for that. 

Then I noticed a distortion in the top left of the scene, my biggest clue. This told me that the pen had to be attached to some sort of moving transparent plane placed in front of the camera.

The first hypothesis that jumped to mind was that the pen was attached to a pane of glass being moved. However I quickly dismissed this idea; Glass is heavy and reflective, it would be unreasonable to assume that glass would be a practical solution.

Maybe clingfilm then? I was stumped by this as an idea just as quickly, removing the pen would almost certainly cause the clingfilm to tare and if it didn’t it would defiantly bend and distort. 

So not cling film then. What else was there? Then it hit me: Plastic. Transparent, much more durable than glass in thinner layers and nowhere near as glossy.

I brought my theory forward only to find that I was wholly wrong and it was indeed a colossal pane of glass that the pen was suspended on. Furthermore the clue that I should have seen was that the woman's nails collide with the class when she reaches for the pen. This was an interesting exercise that has given me a better insight to viable practical effects.

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Generating ideas

David Hume proposed the idea that humans are incapable of generating new ideas, only elaborating on old ones. I am in agreement with him: what is a car but an extension of a rolling stone? Is not a plane simply a mechanical bird with the manoeuvring techniques of a bike? What is a computer screen but simply a roman mosaic that can change colour?  There are very few ideas in the world that are not based on something else, and a lot of unique ideas such as ghosts or demons were probably originally brought on by sleep paralysis (Lamb, n.d.), the state where you have woken up but your body remains in a protective paralysis. This state can cause panic and bring on hallucinations.

As such our creativity is fuelled by things that we find interesting, I am personally fascinated by the natural world and humanity’s ingenuity and ability to create technology today that 150 years ago would be seen as magic. Imagine telling someone from the 18th century that every book in every library they can think of can be stored in a slab of metal and plastic that fits into the palm of your hand. Magic! It would be like telling someone today that a nuclear power plant of the future would be no bigger than a barn.

Since I have such a focus on nature and space both the list of words I generated and my ideas had both of those things in common; they heavily had science fiction as their genera.

Upon reflection I’m not too happy with the first idea; there are too many tropes in the idea alone. Giant space insects have been used in a lot of science fiction, many species in Doctor Who, Stellaris, and even Elite:Dangerous are insectoids. What I am happy with though is the concept of a planetary parasite that feeds upon magma in the same way a tick would feed upon blood.

The second idea has an interesting core to it, but if I were to turn it into a viable story I’d need to heavily revise and elaborate on it. For example how would such a self riotous society realistically develop? In what realistic scenario would humanity evacuate earth but bring no other animals, not even dogs?

Overall both of these idea I believe have merit to them, but would need significant revision to become viable stories.

Reference: Lamb, R. (n.d.). Why are demons blamed for sleep paralysis?. [online] HowStuffWorks. Available at: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/why-are-demons-blamed-for-sleep-paralysis.htm [Accessed 12 Feb. 2019].

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Utopia Redesign

I was rather unhappy with with the original design I created for the luxury star ship: Utopia. So I researched luxury vessels of both the real world and in fictional ones.

Real world luxury ships tend to be “arrow headed” which has two functionalities: an ascetically pleasing look, but more importantly practically: The lower half of the ship must be aerodynamic in order to move through water effectively. However this is not required of the upper half of the ship, as demonstrated by cargo freighters; colossal ships that are built to carry lots of box shaped containers, meaning the ship is not aerodynamic. Therefor the slanted upper half of the ship is there primarily for ascetic purposes.

My research of fictional luxury ships yielded similar results. Above is the Beluga Liner class starship from Elite: Dangerous. The Beluga Liner is Elite: Dangerous’s largest passenger vessel and reflects a number of qualities from the real world cruse ship: It has a very aerodynamic shape including notably a smoothed arrow head shape to the front of the ship. The designers have also taken the liberty of adding multiple wings to the vessel which serve no other purpose than to make the ship look more aerodynamic: there is no air for ships to resist against in space and thus no need for wings. Very few of the other ships in that universe have wings on them, but almost all of the ones that do are passenger vessels in line with the beluga liner.

The both ships also have a substantial amount of windows on their hulls, allowing passengers an excellent view.

The base colour of both ships is white with a darker, high contrasting colour for further ascetic value. In the case of the Costa Atlantica it’s blue (possibly as a reflection of the ocean), and for the Beluga Liner: black.

So having taken this into account I started the redesign of the Utopia: it had to be aerodynamic, almost arrow like in design, but also had to feature the heavy segmentation shown in the other ships in the short. Eventually I settled on reflecting a wheat ear, it is segmented and when stylised it can look aerodynamic.

Finally this became the base model

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Background testing

I have created a background for my one minute animation, the background is a simple galaxy. I tested the background in blender by creating a sky sphere then viewing it from different rotations

102° from centre

0° from centre

-123° from centre

A test animation showing the main body of the galaxy

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Animator Brad Bird essay [WIP]

Born in 1957, Film director and animator Brad Bird has created multiple high reputation movies - mostly with Pixar Studios- including The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and WALL-E.

Whilst growing up Bird had a huge fascination with animation, going so far as to, at age 11, declare that he would be part of the Disney animation team whilst on a tour of the studios. He began work on his first 15 minute animation shortly there after. By age 14 he was being mentored by Milt Kahl; one of Disney’s “Nine Old Men”.

The Nine old men were Disneys core animators and consisted of: Eric Larson - One of the most revered animators; known for scenes such as Peter Pan's flight over London to Neverland, Frank Thomas - Co-authored Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life, John Lounsbery - Utilises a distinctive squash and stretch approach in his animations, Les Clark - specialised on animating Mickey Mouse, Marc Davis - Animator for Snow White (1937) and various characters from other films, Milt Kahl - Aforementioned mentor of Bird and character animator for Peter Pan, Ollie Johnston - Character animator for Mr. Smee and Cinderella’s step sisters, Ward Kimball - Character animator for The Mad Hatter and Jiminy Cricket, and Wolfgang Reitherman - Producer for Disney after Walt Disney’s death in 1966.

After a 3 year gap from graduating high school Bird was awarded a scholarship by Disney to attend the California Institute of the Arts where he became friends with Pixar co-founder and director John Lasseter.

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Character development

Research

I started by researching character / character designs that I thought were interesting, Including The Doctor (Doctor Who), The Spectre knight (Shovel Knight), and Esmerelda Weatherwax (First appearance: Equal Rites, Last: The Shepherd's Crown). A common trope I noted among most (but not all) of the characters I researched was a cape/ cloak / long coat.

First design

The first design I created I did not complete due to a combination of the character being too complex for a full character sheet to be completed within a limited time frame.

Final design

The final design I created started as a five minute warm up exsersize to create a simple character. Minor aspects to the character changed, most noticeably the shape of the shield.

The character Design was heavily based on character from the games Shovel Knight and, to a much lesser extent, Dark Souls. The characters personality was influenced by Sergeant Fred Colon of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. The major characteristics being cowardice, easily aggravated, and laziness.

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Brief 4 – The Principles of Animation Part 2

Research

I looked at several slapstick cartoons, primarily “Tom and Jerry” (Hanna-Barbera) and “Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner”(Warner brothers Looney Tunes), specifically focusing on the the timing of movements and proportion characters are warped to when moving fast or suddenly hitting a wall. In the above example there is approximately a second between Wile E Coyote’s leg being pulled off screen and his head being pulled off screen, during which time his neck visibly stretches (elongating while getting thinner). 

Development

When creating the animation I would create a simple one panel story board in the background of the scene to plan out the animation. The image above shows an animation I began but never finished as I had realised it didn’t fill the criteria. In the background the can be seen the original plan for the animation, depicting a cannon ball being fired, hitting a wall and rebounding. 

Below is one of the animations I did complete, showing a block alarmed at seeing a bomb, jumping up, getting stuck on the ceiling and dropping back down.

Critique

I have issues with all 4 animations, the primary issue I have with all of them is that objects would accelerate or decelerate seemingly in accordance with some formerly unknown forms of physics.

Here are the issues I have specific to the animations: 

Animation 1: Domino This animation is too small. It only uses a very small fraction of the space available.

Animation 2: Trampoline The ball in this animation appears to be capable of hovering very slightly longer than it should, and I forgot to apply any squash and stretch to it.

Animation 3: Stretch The blob returns to shape too quickly after it finishes “stretching”.

Animation 4: Alarmed

When falling down, the rectangle is shaped as though it were falling upwards. Further more the “bomb” very sharply decelerates at the end of its cycle.

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Character design - Early stages

I have started by creating and utilising a 3D manikin I created in blender, posing it and framing it. I then used it as a reference to create the initial character outline