#narrativeproject

[imanolbuisan]

Chapter XVII. Wireframe

15.10.2019 Part of the daily narrative project: Malmö za Pressic

[audreygallego]

Fairy Tales + Proppian Key Characters

Today we were introduced the important topic of fairy tales and we took a first look at the Proppian analysis.

Animations students should study fairy tales due to the influential role that their narrative has played in informing most of the films ever made and it continues to do so, as Zipes says.

The Encyclopedia Britannica describes a fairy tale as: ‘a wonder tale involving marvelous elements and occurrences, though not necessarily about fairies.’ Making us wonder if that could be a description of animation too.

A fairy tale doesn't have to be about Disney princesses and ideal magic worlds although I can be.

Though, they do end ‘happily’, meaning that the justice is always served. They can be fairly gruesome, as the oldest fairy tales weren't intended for children. In fact, many people have tried to protect children from them as they were worried, for various reasons.

For example, the tale Bluebeard tells the story of a wealthy violent man in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of one wife to avoid the fate of her predecessors. Bluebeard presents his new wife with the key to a secret room, which she mustn’t enter, no matter what. Inside the room are all his dead wives.

In the medieval versions of Cinderella her step-sisters slice off their toes to fit the slipper –made of squirrel fur. These are the versions on which the Grimm brothers based theirs. There is no Fairy Godmother –Cinderella is helped by birds who visit a tree she plants on her mother’s grave. The step-sisters are punished by having their eyes pecked out by pigeons. This dark inversion of the birds who ‘help’ Cinderella offers another warning –suggesting that the natural world can only ever be appeased, not tamed.

In ‘The Grandmother’s Tale’ there’s no red hood (or cap). The wolf is a ‘bzou’ (werewolf) and the unnamed girl must choose between 2 paths: the path of pins (virtue) or the path of needles –needles being a symbol of ‘penetration’.

In 1921, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, author of The Little Engine that Could thought children should focus on stories about the ‘here and now’. Old-fashioned fairy tales had peculiar and disturbing messages.

Most evidence suggests that early folktales were shared amongst adults, not children. They had serious meanings and contained critical ritualistic elements. The evident polarity between good and evil acted as a warning of what might happen if you strayed from the righteous path.

Most of the fairy tales we know today come from two sources:

Charles Perrault (1697) Tales of Mother Goose – wrote stories based on pre-existing folktales.

Cendrillon (Cinderella) Little Red-Cap (Little Red Riding Hood) Sleeping Beauty Puss in Boots

The Brothers Grimm (1812) Children’s and Household Tales – collected ancient oral tales (and extensively edited them).

Aschenputtel (Cinderella) Little Snow White Rumpelstiltskin

‘When a story begins… “There was once a little tailor, a good and unremarkable man, who happened to be journeying through a forest” we settle back and ready ourselves for a journey we have taken before.’ 

Axel Olrik, in his book Epic Formulas in the Folktale, identified so-called ‘Epic Laws’, including:

The Law of Threes – ‘three is the maximum number of men and objects that occur in traditional narrative’

The Law of Repetition – actions in folk tales are typically repeated 3 times

The Law of Contrast – other people should be antithetical to the hero; therefore if the hero is generous, other characters should be ‘stingy’ to contradict him.

The Law of Twins – two people can appear together in the same role and should be similar in nature

The Law of Patterning – situations and events are told and re-told in ‘as a similar a manner as possible’

Olrik also said that folktales are ‘single-stranded’ and have a ‘unity of plot’. There is a Concentration on a Leading Character. They don’t branch off into sub-plots.

Stories have ‘constants’ and ‘variables’ as Vladimir Propp demonstrated in his 1928 work Morphology of the Folktale analysing 100 Russian fairy tales and founding striking similarities between them. His analysis was of chronological story sequence rather than plot, although it should be noted that, in general, the fairy tale is plotted chronologically.

Before Propp fairy tales were categorised according to ‘type’ or ‘motif’:

Animal stories

Fantastical stories

Stories of everyday life

The appearance of a dragon

and so on

But many tales belonged in more than one category, and the system did nothing to illuminate the underlying structure of the fairy tale. Propp argued that fairy tales had a ‘particular structure’. Many details were variable, but there were also set elements or constants.

Propp in 1968 stated 4 fundamental principles:

Functions of characters serve as stable, constant elements in a tale, independent of how and by whom they are fulfilled. They constitute the fundamental components of a tale.

The number of functions known to the fairy tale is limited.

The sequence of functions is always identical.

All fairy tales are of one type in regard to their structure.

He found that all 100 of the tales he analysed were built on a pattern drawn from 31 ‘functions’ (actions), occurring in a set order. In other words, only 31 things can happen in a fairy tale. But it’s important to note that the word ‘morphology’ means the study of forms, and in doing this work Propp was categorising form as separate from content.

Scarlett Thomas in 2012 explains further ‘A dragon may as well be a whirlwind if it has the same effect’. All plot types have ‘constants’ and ‘variables’, any basic plot ‘will have static elements and variable elements. If we decide, for example, that the quest is a basic plot then we can say that a static element is that it will always involve a journey. A variable would be the destination.

Propp identified 7 key characters who each have their own ‘sphere of action’:

The Villain

The Donor

The Helper

The Princess (or ‘sought-for person’) and her Father (who function as a single ‘agent’)

The Dispatcher

The Hero

The False Hero

However, characters are not fixed; a single character may inhabit more than one ‘sphere of action’ (fulfill more than one role). ‘If a villain inadvertently gives something important to the hero, then he or she is also at that moment acting as a donor’. In like manner more than one character may inhabit the same ‘sphere of action’; ‘Each function is connected with the designated character. So it is always the hero who ascends the throne at the end, never the villain’.

The Heroe

There are two types  in a fairy tale: 

Directly suffers from the action of the villain in the complication (Victim-hero). The person who is supplied with a magical agent or helper.

Or agrees to liquidate –‘remove’ or ‘solve’– the misfortune or lack of another person (Seeker hero).

A girl is kidnapped and disappears: hero goes in search of her. He is the hero, not the girl.

A girl is cast out or banished: we follow her narrative thread. She is the hero.

Propp states that each category of characters has its own form of appearing:

The Villain

The villain appears twice. ‘First, he makes a sudden appearance from outside (flies to the scene, sneaks up on someone)’. 

The ‘second appearance’ is as a person ‘who has been sought out’.

The Princess

The princess appears twice – the 2nd time ‘she is introduced as a personage who has been sought out’.

She is ‘sought after’ – often a ‘reward’ that the hero (eventually) receives.

Often bound up with her ‘father’.

The Donor

‘The donor is encountered accidentally’. 

The donor provides the hero with a magical object or helper (may do so unwillingly).

Not necessarily benevolent. 

Rumpelstiltskin gives a magical gift to a miller’s daughter (spins straw into gold) but demands her firstborn child in return.

‘The Magical Helper is introduced as a gift’. We can see Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother as a ‘magical helper’ in the 1950 Disney version.

‘The False Hero assumes the role of hero but is unable to complete the hero’s task’. Lord Farquaad in Shrek (2001).

The Dispatcher sends the hero away for some reason – therefore, often plays a pivotal role in inciting the action (similar to Vogler’s ‘herald’ archetype).

Tales begin with an ‘initial situation’, followed by any of 31 functions: the dispatcher, the hero, the false hero, as well as the princess, are introduced into the initial situation.

[freyabel-blog]

The Narrative Project, protecting endangered animals.

This is the end result for the cover front and back. The design is quite simple and slightly rushed. I feel this could be made much more engaging by more plants and use of bright colours. However, I don’t want to over complicate the design. I will revist.

[amberdennenyart]

[martyvisual]

Discover, Study, Narrate Outcome Responses.

From my Critical Presentation, I received the other day, I was able to revisit my work in my spare time and use the feedback I received.

The main feedback I had received was the acknowledgement of the colours I had used within my images. The colour of the building was most distracting from the story as it made many viewers concentrate on it due to its overpowering bright colours against the rest of the narrative. So in a response, you can see above, not only did I darken and lighten some areas but I recoloured the building in the story to a more withdrawn colour, now making the darker pots the main source of the pictures which I think works a lot more better.

As well on the side, when I was asked what I would change about my Images on the day, I mentioned the possibility of having every image black and white with the exception of the Green and Purple pot making them the main focus of the whole narrative, giving the whole story a different tone and feel.

[omartinsba1bnarrative-blog]

Watching Wall-E

now going back and watching the film I have mad notes a several key points in the film. I had never realised the impact the small features of the film had in the long run. Wall-E has always been one of my favorite films as I found the story truly compelling compared to other animated films at that time. I never noticed how significant it was that all of the dead lights would work around EVE. I had always assumed this was because she was modern technology. I now see it as an implication to her bringing light to Wall-E’s very dull and dark life. It is small features like that which make this film an excellent example for visual storytelling.

[fparvaneh]

#Repost @beyondshahsofsunset & @kayhan.london . . . On August 19, 1978, an arson attack on the Cinema Rex movie theater killed at least 377 people in what is one of the worst atrocities in Iran’s history. . Iranian artist Mahmoud Bakhshi (@mahmoud.bakhshii) has recreated the theatre in an immersive replica of the cinema’s interior, which opens in Narrative Projects (@narrative_projects ), a contemporary-art gallery in London on January 27. . Born in 1977 in Tehran, Mahmoud Bakhshi graduated with a BA in Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Tehran University. He lives and works in Iran, and has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally. . To learn more about the significance of the fire and to see some of Bakhshi’s conceptual art click on the link on the main profile page at @kayhan.london or visit their website by typing: www.kayhan.london/en in your web browser. . . #kayhanlondon #kayhanonline #abadan #cinemarex #iranianartist #mahmoudbakhshi #narrativeprojects #iranianrevolution #cinemarexfire #londongallery #modernart (at Narrative Projects)

[scawab-blog]

Fully Funded Spencer Foundation Conference Grants 2020

Details

The fully-funded Spencer Foundation Conference Grants provides support to scholars for small research conferences and focused symposia. This program is intended to bring together researchers whose substantive knowledge, theoretical insight, as well as methodological expertise that can be assembled in ways that build upon and advance best practices in education research. Fully Funded Spencer Foundation Conference Grants Fully Funded Spencer Foundation Conference Grants support conference proposals with budgets of up to 50,000 or less. The grant covers: Salaries (PI, Co-PI, Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Graduate Student, Researcher, Undergraduate Researcher, Other Research Staff, Other Staff)Likewise, benefits (PI Benefits, Co-PI Benefits, Researcher Benefits, Other Staff, Benefits, Tuition/Fees)Other Collaborator (Speaker/Participant Honoraria, Independent Consultant, Advisor)Travel (Conference)Equipment as well as SoftwareAlso, project Expenses (Conference Space Rental, Conference Meals, Supplies, Communication, Transcription)Other ExpensesSubcontracts Eligibility for the Spencer Foundation Conference Grants Proposals to the fully funded Conference Grants program must be for small research conferences. Moreover, it should focus on symposia that will build upon and advance best practices in education research in one of the areas of focus specified in the Program Statement. Principal Investigators (PIs) and Co-PIs applying for a Conference grants must have a doctorate degree in an academic discipline or professional field. Further, they should have appropriate experience in an education research-related profession. While graduate students may be part of the research team, they are not eligible to become a PI or Co-PI. The PI must have affiliation with a non-profit organization that is willing to serve as the administering organization if the grant is awarded. However, the Spencer Foundation does not award grants directly to individuals. The US, as well as international candidates, are welcome to submit the proposal. However, all proposals must be in English and budgets must be in U.S. Dollars. How to apply for the Spencer Foundation Conference Grants In order to apply for the Fully Funded Conference Grants at the Spencer Foundation, the applicants must the guidelines below. Registration: The Principal Investigator (PI) will register the project and submit the form. Completing Profile: After logging in, follow the directions to complete the information requested on the My Profile page and upload your current CV (10-page limit). Start a Proposal: To fill out the application, apply for the small research grants on education from the Workbench. In the application, the PI must submit: Project PersonnelProposal SummaryBudget as well as Budget JustificationProposal NarrativeProject TimelineProject TeamAppendicesDataSubcontractsLikewise, accommodations for people with disabilitiesDraft AgendaPotential ParticipantsConference Organizers Deadline Spencer Foundation accepts the application for the fully funded Conference Grants until 04 December 2019. Applications after the deadline are ineligible for the grants. Read the full article

[sicklysweetbee-blog]

It felt like falling in your sleep.

 “Oh yeah! By the way Amaya, this is Patrice. She’s gonna be sitting with us from now on.” My friend Kyla introduced another black girl she managed to trap into a friendship. She waved with her 5+ band bracelets swinging up and down her wrist as she tilted her head slightly which didn’t even budge her shoulder-length black hair. She was wearing all black and sported the same kind of glasses I had but admittedly, it fit her way better. I noticed the anime buttons lining her keychain last. “H-Hi.” I waved back from across the lunch table and she gave a small and shy smile back. ‘Oh no. Ohh no.’ 

https://open.spotify.com/user/0zbcvzq67zr8wvj7556g6v3om/playlist/700XuHe3OVBDxESPTMVnKW?si=s7Hh7gEYT72cha8uURuW5Q 

“Have you ever loved anyone? And if so, how did it end?” Taylor asked Jayden. We were playing Truth or Dare to wind down after a day of goofing off at Jayden’s community pool. I exchanged a pitiful look with Patrice. That question sounded tough.“Ooooh, yikes.” He started to scratch the back of his head as he tried to remember that trainwreck so I looked up to the stars and found myself relaxing in them. With Graduation around the corner and a day spent running around with my best friends like we were 14 again, I was really at peace and ready to face whatever else life had planned for me. I was sure I’d be alright.

“Amaya,” Jayden called me after finishing his story. “Truth or Dare.” Without missing a beat, I said truth. Jayden already knew most of my secrets but choosing dare would’ve made me susceptible to any stupid stunt plus he was terrible at choosing truths anyways. “Same question. Have you ever loved anyone and if so, how did it end.” I had previously suggested a song for Taylor to play and before I could begin to grasp the nosedive my mental state had just taken, I was screaming in my own head to the melodic introduction of Broken Clocks by SZA as my anxiety rose higher and faster than a possessed teenage girl being exorcised. I stumbled over every word I tried to push out as I glanced between Jayden laughing and Taylor eagerly waiting for another story. I had spent a majority of my senior year repressing and beating back my feelings with a fairly large sized stick and now it decides to rear its ugly head? I mean how else were you supposed to get over someone you never dated?? “I am NOT telling y’all that. I can say that I’ve loved two people but one ended and faded away. I guess...the other one I just simply fell in love with. End of story.” I tried to remain as vague as possible though it made Taylor throw her hands up in frustration. I gave her a side eye. There was no way a game of Truth or Dare at almost 11:30pm was gonna make me face one of the biggest weights I’d been carrying since I was born a black female. Polar bears don’t have to deal with unrequited love and missed chances. Just ice and weird looking seals. Shoot, I’d elbow drop a seal if it meant avoiding confrontation. Reincarnation better help a girl out next time around. After 10 minutes of 100% pure concentrated stubbornness blocking all three of my friends attempts to make me crack, Jayden and Taylor angrily gave up and went to change clothes at Jayden’s apartment around the corner. I could feel Patrice staring a hole into me.

“So who is it?” As soon as they were out of sight she prodded again. Patrice had been one of my best friends since we met and found out we liked the same music and both watched anime more than we really cared to admit. I remembered going to my first homecoming dance with her and our other friend in tow, running around Six Flags with her giggling along, and every anime convention we went to together just cutting up and being goofy. The memories flooded back like an avalanche and I knew I couldn’t hold my own against her for long so we made a deal that I could ask her one question about anything I wanted and in exchange I’d tell her the answer I so closely guarded. “So. Who are you in love with?” A long pause of silence wrapped around the both of us after she had gotten her part out of the way. She never was the type to try and beat around the bush. My body tensed, I slowed my breathing as much as I possibly could, and ran through the last four years I spent slowly becoming more and more invested in this one girl with the bushiest eyebrows and the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen. I mean if she really smiled and you were lucky enough to see it fully, it even stretched to her pretty brown eyes and you could see the sun glow in every part of her brown skin. “It’s you, dumbass.”

[imanolbuisan]

Chapter XXI. Lost (diptich)

09.11.2019 Part of the daily narrative project: Malmö za Pressic

[audreygallego]

Weekly Summary 24/2

Animated Sketchbook

This week has been, by far, the most productive one referring to this project. I’ve been thinking about it since the beginning, however finally drawing the actual final pages turned out to be a rollercoaster of things to still figure out and indecisiveness. 

Animation Principles

This week I’d to focus more on other projects and didn’t do much related to this tasks.

Narrative Research Project

This week I’ve been finally fully working on the essay, I went to the library and took some books related to narrative and stop-motion. I also took the time to read reviews of others and made some notes of the points that I liked that they approached.

A few days after that, I finally started writing it, and there is no going back now, essay finished!

Introduction to Stop Motion

Even though I wanted to improve some of my animations for submissions, this week the has been impossible to do. I had to spend most of my time on the other projects but, apart from that, I went one day to uni for this purpose this and couldn’t find a single puppet still alive. Now I wish I did all of this earlier.

Introduction to Digital 3D

This week I only had to redo last week’s tasks as I had that little problem. Having to work again on these both animations has been pretty useful. I especially realised this as soon as I opened the program and couldn’t remember how we created a quick character selection set in the last session.

Against the odds, I plan to choose CGI for the Mystery Box Project, so I’m planning to start spending some more time on Maya to really be able to get the hang of it.

[freyabel-blog]

The Narrative Project, protecting endangered animals.

Sample plan of a page layout. I will try and replicate and experiment with pages in my sketchbook before digitally creating, howere this will be dependant on time scale as I would like to have a finished book at the end of 5 week if possible. I want to remind myself that sometimes less is more and some pages can be more sparse, like this one, with the right sort of illustration and text layout.

[omartinsba1bnarrative-blog]

director research

This is a video I have found online. The video is of Andrew Stanton (Wall-E director) giving a talk at TED. In the video he describes how he tells a story and gives examples of how he used these techniques will making Wall-E.

[fparvaneh]

#Repost at @kayhan.london . . . . . . On August 19, 1978, an arson attack on the Cinema Rex movie theater killed at least 377 people in what is one of the worst atrocities in Iran’s history. . Iranian artist Mahmoud Bakhshi (@mahmoud.bakhshii) has recreated the theatre in an immersive replica of the cinema’s interior, which opens in Narrative Projects (@narrative_projects ), a contemporary-art gallery in London on January 27. . Born in 1977 in Tehran, Mahmoud Bakhshi graduated with a BA in Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Tehran University. He lives and works in Iran, and has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally. . To learn more about the significance of the fire and to see some of Bakhshi’s conceptual art click on the link on the main profile page at @kayhan.london or visit their website by typing: www.kayhan.london/en in your web browser. . . #kayhanlondon #kayhanonline #abadan #cinemarex #iranianartist #mahmoudbakhshi #narrativeprojects #iranianrevolution #cinemarexfire #londongallery #modernart (at Narrative Projects)

[vfxaesthetics-blog]

Duet

Background

Duet is an interactive animated story for Motorola X that combined the drawing style and flourish of Glen Keane, Director and Animator (formerly of Disney Studios) with a the software engineers and technical directors of Motorola.

‘Duet employs a multi-layered approach that could best be described as a double helix in which the characters story arcs literally spiral around one another.” - Motorola blog

‘I think of it less as a traditional film and more as a visual poem.’

The audience is able to move the camera around in space, allowing them to follow one of two story lines that, at several points in time cross.  Besides the complexity of animating for interactivity, the piece also heavily relies on the music, which had to be composed in a way that could be manipulated easily to fit with whatever scene the viewer chooses.

Brief given to Keane was to make something beautiful - makes something that will make people feel something.

Music composed by Scot Stafford

Concept/Theme

Love and Friendship and its place in the journey through life.

“There is a goodness in Duet…it speaks to the purpose of life.   It celebrates beauty and emotion.  It celebrates life.” (maker mag) Glen.

It also touches upon the idea of fate, coincidences and destiny as the two children frequently fall in each others way throughout their lives.

Plot summary

Rather than a linear story, Duet does something different.  Influenced heavily by its interactivity, the two characters each have a story arc that weaves and spirals around each other.  The viewer has control of the camera, giving them control over what story arc they want to follows.  However both characters eventually meet.

Link to Narrative Theory

Disrupts the traditional linear narrative.  Whilst an overall storyline exists and a story arc can clearly be defined (especially in the directors cut), the interactive story displaces the traditional role of the camera and director, and therefore the storyline as it introduces an unprecedented amount of exploration and discovery.

How does the use of CGI and animation lend itself to the concept/theme?

Used CGI animation where the viewer controlled the camera

One single shot reflects the flow and continuity of life and hence the story

The use of hand drawn animation adds nostalgia and lends Duet emotional support.  It also allows the director to fluidly transition from one form to another, showing the difference between places and times in mere seconds.

References

Motorola-blog.blogspot.com.au, (2015). Glen Keane on the Making of “Duet,” Now Available on Moto X and Moto G 4G LTE - The Official Motorola Blog. [online] Available at: http://motorola-blog.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/glen-keane-on-making-of-duet-now.html [Accessed 12 Aug. 2015].

Animation World Network, (2015). Glen Keane Talks ‘Duet’ and the Legacy of Disney Animation. [online] Available at: http://www.awn.com/animationworld/glen-keane-talks-duet-and-legacy-disney-animation [Accessed 12 Aug. 2015].

Astle, R. (2015). “I See It More as a Visual Poem”: Animator Glen Keane on the Interactive Film Duet | Filmmaker Magazine. [online] Filmmaker Magazine. Available at: http://filmmakermagazine.com/88591-i-see-it-more-as-a-visual-poem-animator-glen-keane-on-the-interactive-film-duet/ [Accessed 13 Aug. 2015].

[matthewstevensphotography]

Narrative Reflection

I feel that my narrative project could have gone better. I am happy with the images I produced and think they created a narrative of Brighton but I feel they could be stronger. I need to be more confident taking pictures of people as this would create better photos.

I would have liked to push the narrative idea further and if I was to do this project again I would have liked to push an actual story and not just create an overview.