mi4012connorcostigan - Tumblr blog

[mi4012connorcostigan]

Final drawings

These are the final drawing I managed to produce, they aren’t exactly how i wished my final product to look like as they arent the correct visual style but i did not have access to the software in order to create them the way I would have liked, Overall though I am happy with the outcome given the circumstances we are currently under.

[mi4012connorcostigan]

Collage

Unfortunetly I forgot to upload the actual collage work i had produced that is still on the university hard drive but I do still have the drawing I based my work on.

[mi4012connorcostigan]

Research

For my visual research I have mainly looked into black and white animations as thats what im most interested in trying to create. The style i am going to base my work on/ get inspiritation from is a Short film called Cosmos Blackout that was made to commemorate the New York city black out of July 1977.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVCacQKaeOs

I also looked into other short films that had a similar style visual style that include one made by Melly Bee :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgONLURS0nE Steamboat Wille :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxf-UHuGobI

and MIND OF THE ARTIST by John Akomfrah (unable to find full film but i have the trailer) : https://vimeo.com/244920690

I personally enjoy looking at these art styles the most and want to explore them with my own piece of work to get a feel for the positives and negatives of using this artstyle over another. I also feel this project will best be done digitally so I can get the colour effects I want accurate.

[mi4012connorcostigan]

Story boards

Thumbnail sketch of my storyboard for my final piece. I want to give the impression that the arcade is fairly run down as it is in a remote part of a town so only a few machines would be turned when the camera is exploring the area. Storyboards need to be within a 16:9 as this is what is shown on screen and anything out side of this will be cut off.

For panels 1-3 i want to make look as if your a child looking out the car window so in order to do this i would layer the “car window” on top of the background and use after effects to have the only the background moving to create the effect of the car moving. And in order to get the shot for panel 3 i would  “stop” the camera and have the car move off screen and then pan up to reveal the sign that was otherwise not seen.

panels 4-5 i would once again have the whole scene drawn out and use after effects to have camera dolly across the scene, The black box on the sides is there as a transition that would look as though you are walking behind a machine and continueing around the arcade to give a sense of depth withing the other wise 2D animation. And at the end of panel 5 the final machine would be on and the camera would zoom into the screen giving you the effect of looking/ being in the video game for a few second before zooming back out of a different machine.

[mi4012connorcostigan]

Film Analysis

James cameron: Avatar

James Cameron’s Avatar has 2 different opening scenes, there is the theatrical release scene and there’s the directors cut of the film that is used on the Blu-ray release of the film. I personally feel as though the directors cut of the film introduces the scene better than the theatrical release because it introduces you to what the conditions are like on Earth, and how the main character spends his life, from socializing to where he lives when compared to the theatrical release in which it opens with the protagonist waking up from a 6 year space flight to get to Pandora and we are never showed throughout the whole film what life on Earth is like we are only told through character interactions.

Throughout the opening scene there’s narrative that comes from the protagonist that gives some background context of what’s going on to help set the scene, the very first scene is a great shot to set the scene as it shows this mysterious new world that is clearly not Earth which is supported when we are shown what Earth is like after this scene. One of the first shots we get that introduce the scene and character is a medium shot of the character in a crowd in which you can see he is surrounded by people but they are all a lot taller than he is, this was then shown to be him in a wheelchair when the camera cuts to a long shot of a crosswalk. The protagonists being in a wheelchair is used throughout the story later and within the narrative as the character is only doing a certain job to be able to afford getting his legs fixed. The crosswalk scene shows us how densely populated earth has become by using a crane shot, going from low to high and ending on a shot of a overcrowded street. We then cut into the protagonists apartment so we can see how small it is, this could be used to show how Earth is overcrowded thus rooms and apartments are a lot smaller, or the character is poor and in the dumps which is why he lives in such a small, run down place.

[mi4012connorcostigan]

Moodboards

What are moodboards?

Moodboards are type of visual presentation usually consisting of images, text or samples of material. They can be set with a certain topic in mind and usually convey a general idea of what you are aiming for.

Who would use a moodboard?

The main demographic of people that would use a moodboard are people within the creative industries such as photographers, fashion designers, game designers, animators, artists etc.. this is because its a visual way of presenting your idea.

Examples of moodboards:

[mi4012connorcostigan]

I took a trip to the closest arcade to me which was in The Gate, This arcade is rather unique as it has the sort of games you would expect within an arcade like racing games, shooters, claw machines. But they also have a dedicated area to virtual reality, i didnt get a chance to go on the VR machines but it shows how far arcades have come to modernize themselves to appeal to the new generations.

[mi4012connorcostigan]

Idea

For semester one we were sepreated into groups and came up with lists of different places we considered heterotopias. One of my first ideas were arcades and was the one i was most interested in, as a group we decided to do cinema so for semester 2 as its a solo project i deceded to continue doing some research into arcades and how I could use this as my focus. As you can see further down on my page I did some basic research on this area.

[mi4012connorcostigan]

Start of Semester 2

[mi4012connorcostigan]

Evaluation

For my storyboard i wanted to portray the feeling of being a child experiencing the cinema for the first time. I don’t think I accurately portrayed that within my storyboard as it doesn’t quite capture that unique feeling. I could have focused more on the actual point of view aspects and showing the environment off from the view as a child instead of overhead/establishing shots. I wish i could have scanned my storyboard in on time and made it look more professional with the colour scheme that I wanted instead of just hand drawn with no colour or depth. 

Story wise it could be more exciting, there could have been some sort of action sequence, or the character could have wondered off and explored more of the cinema. I need to organise my time better in future projects to make sure i can get everything i want done and to a professional level.

[mi4012connorcostigan]

Storyboard

The aim of my story is to portray a trip to the cinema through a kids eyes, this means the majority of the film would be first person, it’s also portrayed more of a memory rather than happening at that moment so majority of it would be in black and white and only the most memorable things would be in colour.

[mi4012connorcostigan]

Storyboard Treatment

My storyboard treatment shows of the colours I would use within the film and reference images of how the cinema would look inside and out. It also includes some photos of films that inspired the style/theme I wish to use for the film.

[mi4012connorcostigan]

Storyboard Research

Researching some storyboards for different films that created a variety of different perspectives and creating a different atmosphere. This has helped see the different angles and if necessary, if something is coming from outside the frame/ going past the camera then to actually draw a little outside of the frame in order to accurately portray the movement.

They clearly portray what exactly is happening in that scene which makes it easier to showcase and for directors to know clearly what you aimed to happen.

[mi4012connorcostigan]

Final model

This is the final outcome of our model. I personally feel like we did make it look like how we wanted but I also think we could have put more effort into the making of it as to start with we only used bluetack to keep everything together and because of that we came back and it had collapsed and some pieces were missing so we had to quickly use a hot glue gun to make sure the essential parts were held together. I also feel like as a group could have done better in terms of meeting out of class  and commination in order to work on the model as our only form of communication was through facebook which made it hard to express what needed done and what was done. 

If we were to do this again I feel as though we would make a conscious effort to create something smaller and more detailed rather than bigger and less detail as unless told it is hard to tell that it is meant to be a cinema. I would also try and get people together out of class time to get more work done so we aren’t rushing around within the last week.

[mi4012connorcostigan]

Constructing the model

The next step is to actually create the model, in order to get the model done we split off and done separate parts that would then all come together to make the final product.

In order for us to start making the model I took Abbies drawn blueprint and scanned it into the computer, split it into 4 different quarters the size of a3 and printed them off so we could stick it onto the floor of our model.

For the actual construction I decided I was going to focus more on trying to get the smaller details in place and help with anything else that was needed. 

[mi4012connorcostigan]

Concept

After we had decided which 3 ideas we wanted to explore we individually researched the different concepts and then came back together to agree upon which one we wanted to expand upon which happened to be the cinema. After we all agreed on doing the cinema we then sketched up concepts of what it could look like.

These are 2 quick sketches that I presented to our group, They liked the idea of having a lounge and ticket booth area rather than just being the screening room so we went along with that sort of idea.

We also came up with the idea of having a more vintage cinema style notice board over the entrance because we felt as though that accurately portrayed the entrance to a cinema. After we had made these quick sketches and ideas Abby designed the floor plan for our model.

From this I scanned in the sheet and used illustrator to blow it up to a more appropriate size which covered 4 sheets of A3. The next step will be to get on to designing and constructing the model.

[mi4012connorcostigan]

Arcade

As part of the research for our project we were assigned groups to brainstorm ideas of what we thought were Heterotopias. One of the locations I thought of were arcades. I feel as though an arcade is a good example of a Heterotopia as they are still around and used today but not as much as they used to be in the 80′s because of home consoles and everything being digital. This makes them feel like a step back in time with the multi-coloured carpets and bright machines to draw people in. Time also seems slow down or speed up but never at a normal pace, from my experience it either feels like you have been there for 10 mins when its been 2 hours or vice versa. Often arcades will also only have one way in or out and no natural light much like casinos to cut you off from the outside so you lose track of time and spend more money, in traditional arcades this also could have been to help with the screens of the machines so there was no glare or anything. I wasn't able to make it to visit an arcade to take pictures but I do hope to make soon.

When making the model for this we would have to consider the detail in which we would want to put into this as arcades can be huge filled with hundreds of machines ranging from classic arcade machines to air hockey tables and some, like the one in metro centre, has a bowling alley, kids play area and dodgems within the arcade.