danhowdenpractice2-blog

[danhowdenpractice2-blog]

Theme:

I’ve been aware of theme’s importance to practice 2 since Clinton mentioned it during our first tutorial in January. That said, it’s played a peripheral role in the unit due to my concentration shifting towards learning animation as apposed to creating the content. 

The two original animations I did produce are anchored heavily to the theme of architecture in the city centre, in particularly at night. This decision wasn’t something I strained over for too long as it’s merely an extension of the subject matter I’ve focused my print practice on all these years and something I stated i’d explore during the closing stages of practice 1. 

If you look close enough, I guess you could infer that loneliness is also a present theme within the two. 

‘Arndale Tram’ depicts a quiet, sparse Market Street.

‘Tuesday Daytime’ a singular building with accompanying audio that records a conversation I had with a passerby whilst out late on night, by myself, shooting footage.

When I think about it, almost every piece of original work i’ve produced since early 2016 has centred around the theme of loneliness in some way, shape or form.

Zayn On Everything - Depicts the many anxieties facing a teenage girl, one of these being loneliness.

Dressed To Kill - Depicts 3 mannequins in a shopfront being ignored by the outside world.

£100 Velcros - Plays with the idea of how loneliness can manifest itself when people conform to society’s expectations through the depiction of a girl’s bedroom floor.

Graveyard Car - Looks to tell the story of liberation from a comfort zone/routine/bad place - dealing with loneliness.

TBC Tinder animation -  Would perhaps explore £100 Velcros further - whilst stretching it’s sights further afield, too.

Those are just a selection, but from reflecting, it’s become apparent that the presence of loneliness within my work is far greater than I’d, at first, thought.

This also bleeds into my methodologies too as I intend to do more night-based research - recording scenes and gathering primary first-hand research. Though my desire to interview and collaborate with other people could change the tone and potentially the theme. 

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Positioning my practice within the contemporary design arena:

Since the 5/10/50 presentations that took place last week, I’ve been thinking about what I need to do to hit the assessment criteria. I thought the area with the biggest deficiency was the extent i’d tested my work within the real world.

Part of the reason for doing the 4th project was to address this. By creating something that could potentially be used by Intern Mag’s online presence, I could see how my work sat in a professional environment whilst also getting feedback from the views and comments. This was also a decent exercise at exploring whether my work could be altered to form a gif, for a example. 

But I didn’t feel this was enough. I’ve spent the past week visualising where I could take my practice in unit 3, and to great success, too. 

I plan to do lots of testing within the university, hiring exhibition space and exploring how the animation sits, is viewed, and ultimately received due to these (and more) factors. 

I reached out to Sam Meech (BA tutor at MMU and ex-tutor at LJMU) to ask whether I could potentially exhibit at Rogue Cinema in May-June. Unfortunately Rogue stops in May, but I’ll look elsewhere for opportunities and Sam has told me to ask closer to the time.

I also plan to produce a ceramic/porcelain installation to project my animation onto. As of writing this, I’ve reached out to Stephen Dixon with regards to the likelihood of this. I’m not very hopeful. Regardless, I’ll either outsource this job or produce something myself using the materials at my disposal.

It wasn’t until my tutorial with Ian yesterday that I was able to take a step back and realise that the entire objective of this unit has been to position my work within the contemporary design arena. I’m choosing to pursue animation with the intention of enhancing my employability by making my rigid practice more malleable.

With this in mind, I feel satisfied with my efforts to obtain this specific assessment criteria. 

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The Man With the Beautiful Eyes - Jonny Hannah

A printmaker, too. Here, Jonny Hannah tries his hand at animation to great effect. I spent a little time with this animation, scrubbing the bar back and forth slowly to see how each frame varies from the last. It’s an effect i’m noticing more and more and something I don’t use. Using a different texture each frame for the same object to give it a sense of life, of movement, of activity, instead of just...a wall...that’s present the entire time. I’m unsure whether this would work for me and therefore I plan to go back and revisit Arndale Tram as soon as P3 begins to see whether it could benefit from this technique. 

Aside from this, the part I find most compelling is the voice over, and the space, calmness, and time it gives to the entire animation. I’ve spent much of this unit thinking about audio possibilities. I’ve considered interviewing people and also meeting with people i’ve met online and using their voices to form a narrative. But I hadn’t considered letting them narrate the whole piece. Instead, I planned to fragment this and faded them in and out to give the impression that they’re memories.

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Realism

Verisimilitude within my work has been a reoccurring theme during practice 2. It’s not a concern I expect animators have to contend with too much as they’re commissioned to manipulate the work of clients, and sometimes their own (but often to someone else’s brief) -  Like Anna Ginsburg for Bombay Bicycle Club in 2014

In this instance, I’m animating my own illustrative work and out of the 4 animations i’ve produced, only 1 has been firmly routed in reality. 

I’m finding the added possibilities that animation brings to the process are tempting me away from pursing realism. I’ve found that audio, in particular, to be causing this issue. The Arndale Tram animation had realistic intentions until I implemented piano into the audio and it changed, to me at least, the entire complexion of the piece. Realism is something I tend to strive for, especially in my print work.

Maybe this is due to:

Older demographic/customers inhibiting me

Architectural subject matter

Adhering to the colour palette of photographic referencing 

But perhaps this is all much a do about nothing? 

I always want one foot of my work to be anchored within real life. It’s of personal importance as I’m influenced by nostalgia and memories are routed in reality, whilst also enabling a wider audience to potentially relate, too. But maybe I should allow the other foot some freedom to pivot and roam -  and celebrate this...

Thinking ahead to Graveyard Car (a project I certainly see myself producing in P3), obviously, the remote controlled car is fictional, but I want the rest of the world to mimic real life. This slight unbalance could work to great effect, I feel. 

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Assaf Benharroch - Shower At The End Of The Day

I reached out and contacted Assaf in the summer of 2014 asking for his participation in my dissertation later that year. At the time, I had limited knowledge of his practice (I just needed as many illustrators as possible), but after some research I discovered Assaf animated, too, with his collaborative partners at Studio Poink.

This animation they did is one of my all-time favourite pieces of work. The way the soundtrack marries with the imagery on screen and the feeling it gives me as a viewer is unparalleled. This video is everything I strive to create.

Having not watched it for about 6 months, it’s fun to now view it through the perspective of someone trying to animate. I find myself (as i’ve done with many over the last few weeks) hammering the space bar to pause and play the video to see the frames shift and understand how it works. 

What’s special about this particular animation is the naivety of the art. The way the cars simply rotate around the corner and the drivers appear within their vehicles. Though this is blended well with very technically astute techniques that culminates into something wonderful. 

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Sara Andreasson X Anna Ginsburg - Selfridges. March 5th 2017

An unbelievably well-produced collaborative animation. Sara Andreasson produced 320 frames in a short space of time whilst Anna conducted the interviews and reduced 8 hours of audio footage down to just 2:30mins.

This video highlights the limitations of my current animation practice. I neither know how to use 3D nor extend the properties of objects on screen, like roots extending, liquids dripping. I need to devise a framework/vision for how i’d get around this.

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Project 4 -  Full Animation - Advertising Intern Magazine Issue Four

An increased amount of on-screen activity made this particular project the most technical to date. It was truly exciting to see a once static print being brought to life, and subsequently made better as a result. This was the first (intentional) narrative I animated during the project and I’m satisfied with the compositional element given the short turn-around time from conception to finish. (2 days)

Additionally, this time around, I stuck to the script and stayed true to the storyboard. This was simply down to me buying into the concept more coupled with it being more coherent and visually stronger.

I attempted to research 3D techniques in After Effects, but I think a plug-in/additional download is required - meaning I had to make do. The initial frame suffers as a result but i’m content with my vision being, at the very least, implied.

I’m really content with this particular project and I certainly want to tell more stories during practice 3. I understand I face ethical issues using a soundtrack that doesn’t belong to me, but I intend to address this and perhaps create my own in the future. 

I’m keen to see if Alec had any feedback.

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7 Second Looped Promotional Ad

Whilst storyboarding It struck me that there was enough scope within the prints to produce 2 animations rather than just one. Through including photography, I was able to impose an image of Intern Magazine into the clutch of the doll. 

As my aforementioned plan to position my work within the contemporary design arena depends on Alec a) seeing it b) liking it enough to post it (external factors outside of my control) I figured I’d produce a piece to evidence how my work (in its current state) could be adapted into a professional environment - used to promote/market a product. 

By looping the video and mimicking its start and end, I gave the animation the appearance of a gif, a hugely popular form of promotional marketing adopted within business today.

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Project 4 (final project)

I had intended to stop and reflect after the last animation, however I feel there’s still development to be made within this unit and I’m not satisfied with only having produced 3 short animations, to date. 

I originally intended to return to, and animate, a pre-existing print - carrying on from the exercise I undertook during practice 1. However, whilst looking through the learning outcomes I realised there was a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and do this whilst also positioning my work within the contemporary design arena were I to animate the prints I produced for issue 4 of Intern Magazine, published November of last year.  If the finished outcome is deemed good enough, perhaps Alec Dudson will promote them on Intern’s Instagram account to their audience of 10,000. 

Ideally, people comment and it’s seen by many. This scenario would mean I could gauge the nature of people’s feedback and reactions. Though regardless of whether the feedback’s positive or negative it would be great to see one of my animations on platform such as this for the very first time. 

Again, as I want to keep each animation new and challenging this attempt will look to build upon all facets of the previous 3, including:

Animating to a soundtrack

Using a variety of scenes/angles/panning

Coherent storyboarding

Incorporating planes to add immersion

Telling a narrative

Ultimately, the goal of this final animation is to illustrate why I’ve decided to take my design practice down this path. I’ve identified that print, alone, does not allow me to express myself sufficiently. I believe that combining the two is a logical next step and the way forward for my practice in the future as motion encourages me to include, explore and develop ideas, themes, sentiments and stories.

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‘Tuesday Morning’

The finished animation.

The purpose of this animation was to, once again, attempt something different. By starting with a soundtrack, I was able to animate and sync the imagery to align. I sat from 9:45- 4:30 staring at the screen and my eyes have suffered as a result. 

Upon watching the finished animation back a few times, I began to notice that I may have inadvertently created a narrative. The building throbs and flashes in time with the soundtrack’s deep reverberating voice and almost suggests ownership, personifying the building.  

Approaching the animation with an animatic under my belt certainly was beneficial, though I did deviate from it as the afternoon wore on. Perhaps this indicates that the quality of my storyboard wasn’t to a good enough standard, though it’s natural for ideas to percolate during the creative process intuitively.

Thinking back to a comment I wrote in my sketchbook a couple of weeks ago about depicting Manchester in a negative light, I feel as though this video, although not negative, certainly depicts Manchester in a peculiar manner. 

Overall I believe it’s been a success. Again, I’ve tried something new and though I probably won’t pursue this style of animation in the future, the experiment has proven that something can be made out of one singular image, with some filters and photoshop expertise.

On a final note, it’s really interesting to witness the difference between the animatic and finished animation. 

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Project 3 - Animatic Test -  Feb 20th 2017

I decided to make an animatic of my next animation. It’s a method/process that I’ve never tried before and it’s proven really useful as it’s helped to highlight potential flaws/pitfalls before I produce the final thing. These potential bumps in the road can now be avoided, something I wouldn’t have been able to do had I jumped straight into the final animation. I think i’m going to approach every animation from here on out using this technique.

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Soundtrack 2nd Edit - Feb 18th 2017

I decided to have another go at modifying the sound. It occurred to me whilst storyboarding, as I’m trying to plan the animation around the sound, that more layers within the music would have a similar outcome to the volume of planes present on screen. With this in mind, I decided to included the sound of a distant ambulance, in keeping with the context of the piece, and also some distorted piano to stabiles the composition of the track. It starts abruptly and ends a little textured. I felt the middle needed some normality.

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Quick/Raw gif Idea: Jan 16th 2017

 A short gif I made (it refuses to loop...) to illustrate an idea I had whilst producing the most recent animation. It would blend my work with photography and perhaps video. Elements of the animation perhaps swivelling around the phone and re-entering from the other side, an analogue representation of a gif, of perhaps continuing onwards, encountering other obstacles.

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Arndale Tram Abrupt Ending

Whilst the revised animation was exporting, I began to play around a little more. I’m still getting to grips with the After Effects software but I feel i’m making sizeable strides each time I return to it. I realised that if I let the animation play past the desired duration time, objects began to disappear. As I watched this, I instantly envisaged a toy-like town. The child finishes playing with his model railway and the lights go off abruptly. Now that I think about it, this revised edit completely contradicts my original intention which was to make an animation that strived for realism. Interesting how an additional 2 seconds of footage can alter the context in an instant.

I made a decision to lower the volume of the soundtrack for all of these edits as I didn’t want the noise of the tram to be as prominent; the camera’s focus wasn’t at street-level, and neither should the sounds be, Fortunately for me, within the soundtrack there’s a faint sound of a *click* where I wanted everything to fall still. I use it as light switch. I think it’s effective.

Abrupt endings are among my favourite cinematic tropes. Jay Clarke’s talk on Tuesday reminded me of the influence cinema can have on my animation. Towards the end of his presentation, Jay set an exercise to pick three favourite film scenes, mute them, and analyse why they work. I chose to watch the ending to Richard Linklater’s 2014 film Boyhood. I remember the chills it gave me when I witnessed it in the cinema. 

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Arndale Tram edited #2

As I sat watching the revised animation on loop, I felt there may have been too much negative space. To combat this I decided to include the moon. Due to the medium of the animation (lino) everything looks a little rough round the edges and low-fi meaning the perfect radius of the circle stands out like a sore thumb. I’m still in two minds about this version. I like the idea, it solves the spacial problem but it may be too perfect.

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Arndale Tram Edited: 16th Feb 2017

Clinton’s Housekeeping lecture on ‘editing’ earlier today really resonated with me and ideas were flowing throughout the talk. Once it ended I sat myself back down in front of a computer and set about re-working the original animation I posted yesterday. 

I’ve spent the past month mentally wrestling with the notion of what sets a BA apart from an MA and I keep returning to the same conclusion. A BA is brief-driven, it’s interested in outcomes and execution. An MA is more exploratory, taking apart things and questioning them in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding. At least I think it is...

With this in mind, Clinton’s talk got me thinking: Why spend an entire weekend painstakingly producing a set for an animation only to finish it and never return to it again?

My favourite aspect of Arndale Tram is the plane that slowly dirfts across the night sky in the background. It’s sublte. I didn’t want to draw attention to it as it was simply included to give depth, atmosphere and a small injection of verisimilitude. The way the lights, almost ghost-like in their movement, drift in out of view from behind the cloud and then disappear furthermore behind the glare of the street lamp was arguably the piece’s biggest success.

I decided to edit the animation and focus the camera’s attention well and truly on the skyline. By no means do I think it’s perfect, or even successful, but it feels good to re-use something, a methodology I rarely incorporate. More often than not I quickly move onto the next thing rather than play around with and adjust/critique what it is i’ve made. 

I do believe the original animation is more captivating and effective. However, this small exercise is good for my mentality going forward. Being selective, taking an aspect, blowing it up and seeing what the results are.

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Arndale Tram - 3rd Animation - Feb 15th

My 3rd attempt at linocut animation, and my first attempting to marry motion with my typical style of lino. Having started this during the weekend ( 10th Feb) This 5 day project has been a lot of fun to craft and has been enlightening, too.

There were 35 components in total, most of which I accounted for, however, there were many I had to produce on the day using photoshop and the sheets of textures I’d scanned in the day before. 

The editing took a few hours, similar to the ‘Zayn’ animation I produced a fortnight ago. 

I intend to write a reflective piece on this experience, hopefully posted above.