#but like from a character design perspective. the SHAPE LANGUAGE. the duo character contrasts. the character silhouettes.

[aroaceleovaldez]

re: my recent Hazel posting. more of yall have got to start drawing Hazel as fat. make her chubby. make her stout. i can't keep doing this alone.

[mi4017]

Coraline, Henry Selick (2009)

the clip starts with an unsettling establishing long-shot of the “pink palace apartments”.

the colour scheme is very saturated: with the most prominent part of the frame being the central, house.

The palace - is in actuality a dilapidated mansion, renovated apartment complex; once a house for one family, divided into several apartments.

Something as vibrant sounding as the ‘pink palace’ is in actuality very dull, and victorian looking. Perhaps referencing the theme of empty promises, with the main character constantly stating their desire to “go back home”  

a tall, strangely proportioned figure is seen squatting on the roof. 

(strange greyish blue skin: long slim arms, and legs - burly, macho chest and a long moustache)

strange accent, speaking a different language - this film’s perception of a foreign man, is contorted - with odd behaviours, and appearances

As the car approaches, he cups his brow - actioning that he is watching them

new arrivals are of interest, nothing changes here in this apartment complex: everyone living there is contempt with the lifestyle they have; so Coraline’s arrival will disrupt this equilibrium.

he staggers, almost falling - shaking his fist at the approaching car, before crossing his arms, confidently - and jumping down to an unknown section, behind the house

the figure shaking his fist is perhaps a signal of things to come: that things are not what they seem, and this incredibly dull, boring looking setting is hiding darker tones

the camera pans lower, its eerily silent as the sounds of the approaching car and moving truck pull towards the central piece.

a descending scale of plucks on a harp play, as the figure on the roof disappears to an unseen place - behind the house, which worries the audience, as jumping from the top of the roof is usually seen as lethal.

the film is primarily stop motion: sense of controlled elements - with everything especially designed for the scene.

two, fairly normal looking, moving men open the latch to their van - filled with boxes, subliminally telling the audience the story: without having to directly tell them, whats happening.  In this case, that a new family is moving into the pink palace

they begin bringing furniture to the door, as a grotesque woman uses a stairlift to come to the top of the stairs: observing their actions, again reinforcing the idea that this community finds new arrivals an interesting, and unfamiliar event.

she waves, flirtatiously and giggles at one of the moving men, who takes no notice of her - their role in the story, is no more than to move the main characters into their setting.

the music begins to build up here, with more elements of the story falling into place - more instruments and parts of the soundtrack coming in.

the strings play a repetitive baseline, and a seemingly erratic / random melody is played on some kind of keyboard instrument, perhaps a harpsichord

with the job done, the men take their leave. 

this shot is framed so you cannot see the central character, signing off on the deliveries completion: keeping the audience in suspense of who this individual is, and the power they clearly hold over the (assumed) family, through them being not only the first of these characters we see, but the primary figure - signing off on important documents.

the fact this figure is hidden behind the door, could also be a hint that they are closed off, too focused on their tasks to make time for the members of their family.

she closes the door, swiftly: implying the duo to leave, but not before the man stops the door with his foot, and subtly holds his hand out, to ask for a tip: only to receive a single crumpled up dollar note.

looking at the house their moving into, the fact the drive a car, and the items of furniture that were carried: i ruled out the conclusion of them being too poor to afford tipping: perhaps the family is quite stingy with their money, focusing their spending on things that are necessary, as the figure behind the door neither thanks the men for their work, and had no intention of tipping them. 

it was only upon being forced to, that she spared a singular dollar: much to the man’s disappointment.

this sets up the idea that this mystery figure is the head of the family, and someone who is too invested with their work for other people, most likely: the family that surrounds her.

the moving van leaves, as a black cat enters the frame: an expressionist symbol for bad luck.

it’s tail is crooked, with jagged unnatural corners that build up its shape. 

the audience is conditioned to believe the cat is bringing with it bad luck, and that now that the movers have left: so has the safety of equilibrium… 

a door creaks, alerting the cat: as the camera turns to girl in a yellow raincoat.

the colours in this shot are very muted and grey - in contrast to the girl, with her blue hair and her bright yellow coat - she stands out amongst the greyness.

this signifies her as the primary focus of the film: the titular character, “Coraline”

the dull colour scheme, seems to me: as a representation of her perspective of the world, the colours show how she finds her normal life boring

it could also be a reflection of her emotions - perhaps, as shown through her mysterious authoritative figure; Her family life isn’t very happy, and moving has caused her to be in a bad mood - hence why she is going out for a walk, as most people do: to clear their heads, when in a particular state of mind.

Theres a noticeable music change when we first see Coraline enter the scene, from her perspective she is looking at the garden: what is congenitally a place blooming with beautiful natural forms, and life, is instead very uninteresting, and eery.

harmonic vocal music, accompanied by harp - enforcing quite a heavenly trope, about Coraline: reinforcing the idea of her being the protagonist in this story. the lyrics are unintelligible, as far as I’m aware: adding to the child-like aura surrounding our central character.

in one swift, decisive motion: Coraline snaps a twig from a discoloured bush, and strips it of its leaves, closing her eyes - and beginning a strange, emotive walk cycle - almost as if being lead by it.

in reality, this is a play on the myth of a “diving rod” a Y-shaped twig, or two L-shaped ones - that will supposedly help find underground water.  The rods are typically held in a position of unstable equilibrium, so that a small movement gets amplified into a big movement. Typically, the person that is dowsing holds sticks, and walks around a property in the hopes that the rods will dip, twitch, or cross when they walk over the underground water.  The dowsing rods do indeed move, but not in response to anything underground… They are simply responding to the random movements of the person holding the rods.

I like to think Coraline’s use of a dowsing rod exclaims that she is open to the idea of the supernatural, and settles us into the magical journey we’re to embark on - through her belief in finding water with just a stick.

the cat follows Coraline around, further showcasing that equilibrium is to be broken, and this girl is going to go on some form of journey that will disrupt the current flow of things.

the first line of dialogue is spoken, on her walk: she only talks when she leaves her house - perhaps showcasing a difficult home life, where she can’t be herself around the people closest to her, as maybe they don’t understand her.

the music evolves, with the strings from before now playing in a minor key, as Coraline fearfully runs deeper into the woods. as she gets deeper, large timpani drums imitating a fearful heartbeat the vocals from earlier, are played with - with the convention of what was angelic before, now sounding much more demonic: with three distinct pitches, perhaps signifying three as a significant number in the film… further in dissonant held brass chords play

the deeper she gets the more instruments join into the soundtrack: with this thicker texture, the situation seems more tense. this is supported through the overall composition’s change from bright and colourful, to scary and frighting the deeper into the woods Coraline wanders. 

perhaps her destination (towards the well) is an area of darkness, with all this surrounding scenery to compliment this idea.

Coraline stops dead in her tracks, inside a circle of rocks; perhaps an occult symbol - with her essentially being summoned into this world by the producers of the film

Coraline mocks the cat for not talking, perhaps setting up a convention to be broken later in the film

she also refers to her rod as “magic” - again signifying the fantastical nature that the film is portraying.

a masked rider, on a bicycle (a play on the horseman of the apocalypse) with a skull mask (symbol of death) rides towards her, from atop the hill. despite the very threatening mask, it turns out to be a boy named Whibey - seen more as annoying than threatening introducing the idea that things are not what they seem: and you should “never judge a book by its cover”

[landraxbct]

RECAP

Dang I am not good at keeping up with this blog smh. I tried to become more organised during this lock down. I needed to start making changes in my life, I am working on becoming more focused and creating a routine that will help me to keep up with my studies, which means that hopefully this blog will be updated way more frequently now. I mostly struggled with knowing what to write for these posts, but I sort of have an idea now since the lesson we had about what a good blog post looks like. I decided to do a recap for the lessons we have done already in the beginning of the year to help refresh my minddd.

Week One

CTEC502 (250220) - So during our first lesson in ICT, we got an introduction to what Creative technology is, we learnt about how different ways of thinking can contribute to our creative work. We want to find out ways of using technology to make the world a better place. Creative tech is about discovering new ideas, new pathways. Not particularly about finding what the best idea idea is, or the right pathway, it’s about knowing that there is always more than one way to do something. We familiarized ourselves with concepts and issues, and the theories and methods related to CT. The method we discussed during this week was Brainstorming. Our first Assessment was handed out during this week(vlog).

CTEC501 (260220) - We were introduced to the makey makey, I did not have much experience with this or papertronics and circuits before. I remember being excited to see what we could do with this. We used the makey makey to hack games on our laptops. The theme for this week was “What is an INTERFACE?” An interface is something that objects can use to interact, for example we used our bodies to control our character in a video game. We were then given an small assignment to hack a board game using the makey makey so that players can interact with the game more. My group chose to hack pictionary.

COMP570 (270220) - Introduction to the class and Processing. I remember being nervouse about coding because I had no past experiences with it, I struggled a bit in the beginning, but after studying a bit more in my spare time by watching videos on YouTube and reading through the Processing references I was starting to get a hang of thing. Still could use more practice.

Week Two

CTEC502  (030320) -  During our second lesson we discussed creative practice, we were shown a model about the four constitutive dimensions. The first two are how we react inside: Paradox(wanting to find contrast and being accepting of it) and Curiosity(asking questions and being open to newer ideas). The other two are how we react in the real world: Object and Experience(being creative with our engagement with the world through nature, materials, etc.) and Empathetic Collaboration(ways we can work with others, which helps us to be more aware of being able to do things differently). We looked at dispositions, creative myths, studio pedagogy, and reflective action. Our topic method for this week was Affinity Diagrams. This method is good for examining large amounts of data.

CTEC501 (040320) - We displayed our interactive game with the class. We discussed iconography, how it’s an important part of affordance, we need to understand icons so that we know how to interact with something. “Icons are all about context”. the theme for this week was “What is the EXPERIENCE?” What are we thinking? What are our emotions? We talked a lot about emotion, how our body reacts to emotions, what triggers certain emotions. An exercise we did was to find something (a video, photo, etc.) that triggers an emotion and show it to another group to see how they respond. We were introduced to scratch and audacity to help us with our next mini project, which was to create something that evokes three different emotions using sound. 

COMP570 (050320) - Computers are dumb, we need to understand how they work and also how we can control them. Discussed binary code and how to read them, I have no prior knowledge of learning about binary code. I was happy to learn something new that week, with the help of some friends I was able to get a hang of it and have a better understanding of what binary code is. Looked at abstraction layers between hardware and human. we also looked at drawing primitives. Our first assignment for this class was handed out.

Week Three

CTEC502  (100320) - In our third lesson we discussed creative potential. What parts of our own lives contributes to our creativity? This was interesting. Our creativity can show our uniqueness. Who we are shapes how we look at things, everyone is different, which is why collaboration is an important part of CT. Working with others expands our creativity because we get to see things from a different perspective. We looked at Concepts, they drive our projects. We don’t usually start them, we grow and develop them. Our topic method for this week was Interviews. We did an activity in a groups of three where we had to interview someone to try and find out their darkest fears without being too blunt and straight-forward. Interviews is a good method to help us find out more about who we are designing for/with. It helps us to understand a persons beliefs and behavior.

CTEC501 (110320) - We showed the class our projects, my table used sounds to make the listener feel like they are walking in a forest listening to calming sounds of nature ended with a some pretty strange noises to make the listener feel uncomfortable. The theme this week was “WHO is it for?” Who is our target audience and how can they interact with our projects. We looked at gestures and languages. Then we lab inductions, we got to see the other creative labs we may be using for future projects. Our new mini project assignment was to create a performance thinking of who it is for.

COMP570 (120320) - we looked at variables, being able to store info inside a program, we use variables to tell the program what type of variables we want to store(boolean, int, float, char, color). We looked at variable scopes and operators. We learnt how to animate images in our programs, how to use the If statement, and how to change or maintain velocity in our programs. 

Week Four

CTECT502 (170320) - Our vlogs were duo this week, I was able to hand it in on time. Discussed what a good blog post looks like, I found this very helpful because  wasn’t too sure what was expected from these blog posts. We discussed mental and cultural switches, Gibbs’ reflective cycle, design briefs, and technology. Technophilia is when people have a strong attitude and belief that “technology will save us”. Our method for this week was Image boards, they can help inspire ideas.

CTEC501 (180320) - We displayed our new projects to the class, my table did a performance based on a sword fight. We used sounds for effects, it was quite enjoyable to watch. Our theme for this week was “What does it ASK?”, we looked into E-textiles(electronics in textile), materials and how different types evoke different emotions. We went to a lab where they use materials such as E-textiles, our new mini project was to create something using E-textiles to design an interactive interface.

COMP570 (190320) - Our first assignment for this class was due the day after. I was able to finish, I struggled a little but got a few classmates to help guide me. I was proud of myself lol I had never done coding before remember! Anyways, for this lecture we looked at loops(for, while) and conditionals (if, else). We learnt to make objects bounce off edges, fading circles, and drag drop.

I’ll make sure to keep my blog update on how i’m doing with my work. yeah. ok. bye.