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The link to my final website:
https://sethmilne.wixsite.com/seth
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Bibliography for Research Report Proposal
All Dogs Go To Heaven (1989) Directed by Don Bluth. Van Nuys, Calif.: Sullivan Bluth Studios
Amidi, A. (2015) Proof that Oscar Voters Are Clueless About Animation. Available At: https://www.cartoonbrew.com/award-season-focus/proof-that-oscar-voters-are-clueless-about-animation-109456.html (Accessed 27 April 2019)
Avatar (2009) Directed by James Cameron. Los Angeles, Calif.: Lightstorm Entertainment
Brockington, A. (2018) Brad Bird Says Animation Is Finally Being Respected as a ‘Viable and Vital Medium’ at Variety’s 10 Animators to Watch. Available At: https://variety.com/2018/film/news/brad-bird-animation-10-animators-to-watch-1202804093/ (Accessed: 27 April 2019)
Cao , C. (2019) 10 Animated Movies That Should have Been Nominated for Best Picture. Available At: https://www.slashfilm.com/animated-films-that-should-have-have-been-nominated/ (Accessed: 27 April 2019)
Child, B. (2011) ‘Andy Serkis: why won't Oscars go ape over motion-capture acting?’, The Guardian. Available At: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/aug/12/andy-serkis-motion-capture-acting
Crafton, D. (1984) Before Mickey: the Animated Film. London: The MIT Press
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) Directed by Matt Reeves. Los Angeles, Calif.: 20th Century Fox
Furniss, M. (ed. ) (2009) Animation – Art and Industry. Herts: john Libbey Publishing
Gardetta, D. (2005) Mr Indelible, Los Angeles Magazine, 50(2), pp. 78-83 and p. 272. Available At: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UV8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA78&lpg=PA78&dq=animation+at+the+oscars+treated+worse&source=bl&ots=81NFJ8KZYN&sig=ACfU3U0nWzwE5w35RUrtBL35HL8yrTIoEg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiqsJrBqNzhAhUHZlAKHbQ8Ccc4ChDoATAEegQICRAB#v=onepage&q&f=false
Libbey, D. (2018) Please Stop Calling It The Live-Action Lion King Remake. Available At: https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2462120/please-stop-calling-it-the-live-action-lion-king-remake (Accessed: 27 April 2019)
Mowgli: the Legend of the Jungle (2018) Directed by Andy Serkis. Burbank, Calif.: Warner Bros.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) Directed by Rupert Wyatt. Los Angeles, Calif.: 20th Century Fox
Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse (2018) Directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman. Los Angeles, Calif.: Columbia Pictures
Spiegel, J. (2018) IS IT TIME TO RETHINK THE LINE BETWEEN ANIMATED AND LIVE-ACTION MOVIES?, Available at: https://screencrush.com/live-action-vs-animation-in-2018/ (Accessed: 27 April 2019)
The Jungle Book (2016) Directed by Jon Favreau. Burbank, Calif.: Walt Disney Pictures
The Land Before Time (1988) Directed by Don Bluth. Universal City, Calif.: Amblin Entertainment
The Lion King (2019) Directed by Jon Favreau. Burbank, Calif.: Walt Disney Pictures
Walsh, R. (2015) The “Just for Kids” Excuse: Analyzing Animation in Modern Entertainment. Available At: https://the-artifice.com/animation-modern-entertainment/ (Accessed: 27 April 2019)
War of the Planet of the Apes (2017) Directed by Matt Reeves. Los Angeles, Calif.: 20th Century Fox
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My final animation for the visual essay based on Coraline...
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Weekly Summary 29/04/19 - 05/05/19
Over Easter I spent the time with my Personal Branding project to begin a website and put together a rough cut of my showreel ready for the tutorial we had this week. The feedback I got from Mhairi was really positive and reassuring, I think I’d been delaying doing too much for fear of doing the wrong thing so it was good to have the assurance that I was on the right tracks, as well as feedback for what to do next. The showreel had really positive feedback and just needs editing down and refining, the work itself is good, I just need to find the best bits of each piece of work and cut the down to fit into the rough minute time limit as well as make it all work with the music and titles. I chose music for it slightly more toned down and with a more relaxed mood to it than I’ve picked before, inspired by the Cartoon Saloon showreel and how effectively that works. The website is okay so far but needs more content and maybe rearranging to be spread out a bit more and more easily navigable. Overall though I’m happy with how I’m progressing and hope to just be able to refine the final elements of both my site and showreel to a result I’m happy with for next week.
This week we had our second tutorials with Lynsey concerning our Research Report Proposals. Again, this was a really useful process that allowed me to focus on what it really is I want to write about, as well as work out a rough structure based on this. Although I was happy with my chosen topic for the report, I was finding it hard to work out what exactly would make it in and what would have to be excluded, I was also struggling to find a way to structure the research I’d done into the chapter format of the report because of this broad expanse of information. Having talked about what research I’d done and what sort of arguments were beginning to form we decided that maybe I’d have to be quite strict about the section that will include the history of both mediums as what I want to do is look at how they’re seen contemporarily. This section should only be to support a theory for why both a viewed how they are today and not really included much analysis of my own. As such it will mainly contain the theory and academic research of others to bridge the gap between the origins and now. I was also talking about where I think my research was heading and that actually I think my conclusion is more that the two are much more similar and increasingly indistinct in where they begin and end, yet the content produced for the two is still treated differently both by those that make the films and those that consume them. We also discussed how I could narrow the range of my research so I can fit it all within the word count and decided that the best way to do this was define what I’m looking into as specifically American, mainstream animation. With a large amount of my focus on Disney and their effect on the industry both historically and currently as well as wanting to look at how people in general view the two mediums it made sense to make these limitations. With this restructuring and reshaping of my idea I feel a lot more confident in my idea and being able to write up the full proposal.
The Collaborative Visual Essay project is beginning to take shape and I’m hopeful to be finished to a high standard for submission. My personal work went well over the holidays, I was pleased with the physical assets I created and how they turned out when scanned in and animated. I followed Millie’s suggestion for the mock cut out bits to work in twos to give a stop motion feel as opposed to the smoothness of After Effects animation and am really pleased with the result. I was struggling with the motion of the camera movement but after a while working it out with Millie in our most recent workshop was able to change my idea a little to make the movement work, with a 270° turnaround rather than just 90° to give more time for a dynamic sense of movement. The result is an animation I’m pleased with and think has a unique visual style as well as working for the part of the visual essay I’m trying to convey. I’ve also seen other people’s animations shaping up and think the combination of them all will present a really eclectic mix of animation styles and effects that should all fit together through the colour scheme and background, which should represent the nature of Coraline really well. The last elements to do is ensure everyone’s clear about the transitions between the person’s sections before and after them as well as record the voiceover next week. Due to the busyness of the sound recording studio we were only able to book in to record the voiceover next week however this shouldn’t be an issue as people have timed their animations to the draft version we recorded and as the script will stay the same everything will fit nicely. One of the reasons we’ve made such good progress has been the involvement of Cheznie over Easter. Although she missed a couple of the initial sessions she spent the time over the holiday to catch up and has put a huge amount of effort in to the project bible, checking up on people’s work as she’s had to gather assets for that. This has been hugely useful and reinvigorated the group a little when I feel like we were running out of steam a little over Easter.
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The assets I created for the transition into Stasia’s section in our visual essay. We all came up with fairly simple transitions we could use that helped add elements and visuals from Coraline into the animation and I decided to go for the portal to the other world, which would also fit with the end of my voiceover talking about drawing the audience and Coraline in. I wanted to keep the visuals as being hand created though so used crayons on tissue paper which also helped tie it in to the sets I’d drawn and the pencil marks on those.
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The second pass of my showreel (the first only had a different title I hadn’t figured out what to do with yet). The beginning is similar to how I want the rest to work however this was as a longcut version to show Mhairi in a tutorial to get feedback about. The feedback I got was that it looked good so far and only really just needed editing down. I’m glad about this as I wasn’t sure about which pieces of work to include and cut down quite a lot, it was reassuring to hear that my work is high enough quality to make a professional looking showreel. I’d also departed from my usual style of music to something a bit more chilled out and soft inspired by the Cartoon Saloon showreel. I was really impressed with the tone that it achieved and how dynamic it still managed to be without much of a beat to carry it along. Although mine still has and makes use of a beat to guide the edits I like the slightly more thoughtful and subdued mood it gives.
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The other world assets for the visual essay. Again I was pleased with this set and the brighter colours to help distinguish them from the normal set. On both sets I made an effort to keep pencil strokes and marks (also my motivation behind using coloured pencils) in the colours to help build the handmade feel I wanted to capture from Coraline. The next step is to begin animating with them.
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The set of assets for the normal world section of the visual essay. I wanted to keep the drab and dull colours to match the set and help set it apart from the other world version. I’m pretty pleased with how cohesive I managed to make the set of colours across all of the separate pieces and they work well together as a full set. I’ve also cut these versions out on photoshop,having torn the edges on the physcial pieces to get a textural paper feel to the animation that I think helps allude to the handmade nature of the stop motion in Coraline.
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I managed to do a test version of the video for my home page and it worked really well. The video in this at the moment is just to demonstrate, to create the full version I need to put together my full showreel or a version of it that works in the space.
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Weekly Summary 01/04/19 - 07/04/19
This week in our Personal Branding lecture we looked at names and logos and how key they are to summarising your brand. I’m quite fortunate in that both parts of my name are relatively unusual so I don’t need to be concerned about changing my name or using a working name to help myself stand out. I have been having difficulty however in finding a way to write my name that looks good as the ‘s’ at the beginning specifically doesn’t seem to look nice however I go about it. Having a small brainwave in the lecture today I’m considering turning into somewhat of a logo by having a paintbrush mark stroke in the shape of an ‘s’. This will just be a case of iterations on the computer as I quickly tested the type of shape in the margins of my notebook and out of over 40 attempts only a few looked good. I think this could also work well as the paint stroke has good connotations for my work, suggesting creativity, artistry and a kind of hands on approach, I might try using this as a motif throughout my website too and incorporate it into my branding.
This week we had the opportunity to have a tutorial with Lynsey in regards to our Research Report Proposals. Mine was really useful, and has changed the direction I was thinking of taking for my report and given me a focus to work towards. Previously I’d been wanting to write about how animation is often dismissed as a medium for children, however I’d been struggling to find a good angle to approach this from, or way to narrow what I was studying, there was too much to cover in a wide subject area. When I was discussing this with Lynsey we worked out that maybe what I was more interested in in the subject area was the dismissal in general when compared to live action film. As I’d been considering my topic and working out arguments to do with why animation was seen as a children’s medium it had been the idea that this made it lesser that I was most focussed on and had been naturally drawn to, it made sense to change the focus of my research to look at animation as lesser art form rather than my former topic. Along with this Lynsey gave me a list of sources to look into regarding the origins of both live action and animated film so to help me build a basis of understanding for why there might be the distinction between the two mediums. The next step will be to begin this research and try to put together a rough structure and chapter order for our next tutorials with Lynsey.
This week in the Collaborative Visual Essay project we looked at the script and put together an updated version of our animatics along with a temporary voiceover. As it’s been the last week before Easter I haven’t made loads of progress with the physical work itself, but aim to plan and create my assets as well as animate over the holidays, we’ve agreed to aiming to have finished our individual sections by the end of the first week back with draft version by the beginning of the week so we can spend time reviewing each other’s work. Hopefully we’ll be able to reach these deadlines so we can focus on editing together the finished version ready for submission.
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I also worked on an image I’d be able to use on my front page to help give me some identity. As I’d had an idea in another lecture I wanted to see if I could have this on my home page with a video of my showreel playing in the hair space. First I had to develop the image itself and I’m pretty happy with what I was able to create, it is a balanced visual but also helps to give an image of who I am. I used the same mottled texture in the hair as I had done in the logo brushstroke to help tie it all together and add to the arty mood across my site
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I took the time to work on a logo for myself, during one of our lectures with Mhairi I’d thought about this idea with the paint stroke. I’ve always struggled to create a nice looking S and had the same difficulty when trying to work out a signature. The iterative process to get the right shape took a long time and the top two images had even more versions that just looked weird or awkwardly shaped for some reason. Expanding on the idea of the paint stroke I decided to add a mottled brush texture to the S as well, I will look at how i can incorporate the brush strokes as a theme into the rest of my website to help build more of a brand image.
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Weekly Summary 25/03/19 - 31/03/19
Our Personal Branding this week was a tutorial where we got to talk in more depth to Mhairi about the project. Because I’m still not sure how to present myself I hadn’t managed to put anything together in the form of a website or showreel had had lots of ideas I was able to discuss. We spoke a little more in depth about directing and what the role involves as well as how I can approach my own branding. I think the most important thing I took away was the role of the director not as a leader but leader collaborator; Mhairi mentioned Peter Jackson specifically as an example of a director whose strength lies in his ability to gather and work with the right people to get the best results. This is something I want to work on more in the current and next year’s collaboration project as a way to build my experience and knowledge of the role. Ultimately, she said the best thing to do with regards to marketing myself is find people who make the sort of work I want to make and do the same sorts of things and use the same terminology.
At the beginning of this week we had a meeting for our Collaborative Visual Essay project group and then produced storyboards and animatics in a session on Friday. After Monday I was feeling quite optimistic, I had gone into the meeting with an idea to have each of our animations in the shape of one of the letters of ‘Coraline’ for the end to then pan out and reveal the whole word. I knew it would be quite ambitious but with the format demanding no horizon line and lending itself to a sense of continuous movement I thought it may be an impressive and inventive way of presenting the essay as a whole, and was willing to work through the difficulties to achieve this. I consider myself to be open minded and a good collaborator so was absolutely ready to enter the meeting and have my idea dismissed and be absolutely fine with it, if it’s not what we wanted as a group then that’s absolutely understandable and necessary adapt and compromise to work to in a group project. By the end of the meeting though, everybody seemed to be in agreement that my idea would be how we’d structure the project and we also worked out a colour scheme to work on and designated a rough order for our animations to go in based on the facts and quotes we’d gathered. This made it even more frustrating then, that later in the week we were working out more specifics of the colour scheme and I drew up a plan for the animation to help give a visual map of our essay and members of the group began to question whether it was too complicated and sounded like too much effort. It wasn’t the turning down of my idea that was so disheartening, I was always ready for that to happen, but rather the fact that we’d had a meeting, in which at times I felt like people weren’t really listening or paying attention to working together, in which we’d decided on a course of action but then that people weren’t really as invested. It made me feel as if the meeting had been a bit of a waste and that people weren’t going to dedicate themselves to the project or working collaboratively, as I got the sense that during the meeting the idea I’d proposed had only really been decided on because no one else particularly suggested an alternative and people hadn’t been paying enough attention to actually consider it in full. I had been excited to be able to listen to and merge and be inspired by other people’s ideas and creativity. Despite this disheartening setback we have settled on a simpler, and potentially more achievable format, and were able to compile the animatics we’d produced into an initial draft. The next stage will be working out a full script that we’ll be able to time our animatics to, to get a fuller sense of the animation as a whole. I spent some time considering how I wanted to approach my own section and settled in the end on animating solely in After Effects. I explored options of working in stop motion as what I wanted to do was simulate a top down cut out animation and then pan round the side of it, but after discussing with Tracey at length how this could be achieved with camera movement and the resources available in the stop motion studio we decided it would be either impossible or really difficult to approach it this way. After a quick test of the 3D settings in After Effects I worked out it would be better to use scanned images for the cut out and then be able to pan round them digitally. I’m intrigued to work in this way as it will test my skills in After Effects further and be a new way to work in it as well as producing a result that hopefully will be inventive and demonstrate what I need it to.
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My first version of an animatic. I looked at reference images of the sets in the normal world and other world of Coraline to create the 2d sets. I’m happy with the shape of the animation and for this to be my rough guide. The next step will be to retime this to act as a better guide for voiceover work.
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A quick test i made using free images to see if my idea to pan round the side of 2d cutouts would work. I wanted to use images rather than shapes to ensure that as the camera panned round it would treat any content on the face of the image correctly. The test worked really well and I think I’ll try to work using this method as it should look even better with irregular shapes pieced together to make a set. This seems a much better alternative to trying to do the same with physical stop motion given the limitation of the studios at Uni not having access to track that could be used for the camera movement. The trickery to change from 2d to 3d could pay off to be really effective as well as demonstrating my fact about 3d space well.
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