#this is a redraw from one of the dave tapes

[hourglassdoggo]

“you were lost, but you soon will be found.”

[ahainesmajortwo2021]

ANIMATION FILM - DEVELOPMENT

(LONG POST)

After my tutorial I knew that I had to find a way to incorporate all the work I had previously done with my drawings and animation so I went back and looked at the works I had done, considering them now alongside the rotoscope animation I had. I wanted to find a way to bring these animations together and also consider how this could work with sound. I decided to go back to my dads original archive of scanned documents and images that he had given me at the very beginning of the project. I looked through these all again and came across this image...

I then started to think about how a ‘cassette’ could offer a way of structuring and bringing together my drawings. As we discussed in my tutorial I wanted to make this edit more... raw... less ‘clean cut’. This idea of a visual and sonic collage really stood out to me and I felt like the idea of looking through my dad’s cassettes could really work to bring this all together. 

From here I then considered that a timelapse/colour animation of just my dad and another of just Dave would work as a way of ‘introducing’ them and their roles. i went back to procreate and re made another two time lapse drawings which I then developed further into two colour animations.

original photo

The first drawing I completed of my dad. To create the smooth time-lapse drawings I first have to do one full drawing which I can then open as a new image, lower the opacity all the way down and then redraw over the top - this is how I am able to create the smooth visual of the drawing coming together. This took around 3 hours to complete. I then went on to recreate the colour animation in the same style as my previous. I decided with both of these images to exclude some detail from the original image as I wanted these to be simpler and the focus to really be on the people. I also wanted the final image of them together with ALL the detail, to stand out from these. 

This was my first version - I actually realised after putting it into the sequence that my original animation was much lighter and more textured - and typically - less neat ! Also the hair and skin was animated too which I hadn’t done here so I went back and re animated the colour.

This was my second attempt - much better !

original photo

Here is the line drawing I completed for the picture of Dave. This image had a lot more detail originally - all the brick work from the viaduct, and also my dad was stood in the background so I decided to not include him in the drawing and to simplify the detail. Again this took around 3 hours to complete and then also create the time lapse video. From here I created the colour animation.

Again - this was my first attempt - same situation as the first one of my dad. I later went back and re did it. 

Again - much better!

As this picture was black and white i decided to use my imagination for the colour. i spoke to my dad and found out the shoes Dave was wearing were actually bowling shoes - so for these I did the colours accurately. All in all I spent the best part of a day developing these animations - it was easier in some ways this time as I already knew the style and processes that I needed to do so it was very much just a case of executing them. Though it did take a lot of time I think these really helped to bring my film together.

From here I started putting together my animations in premiere , initially experimenting with different music and speeds of the time-lapse. I went back and did A LOT of listening through again of the hundreds of songs and IDEA tracks from my dads archive. I was doing this while drawing my two animations (above) as this definitely helped when it came to putting them into premiere and thinking about the sound overall. I listened to an earlier version of ‘seventh floor’ , one of my dads more finalised songs that i am quite familiar with. And it stood out to me for the clarity of the vocals and simplicity of the production (quite contrasted to the final version that I know). I decided to try this alongside the time lapse of my dad and decided to time it only as long as the initial instrumental - prior to the vocals beginning. This is when it begun to come together. I was considering how the time-lapse of dad could transition into the one of Dave and I thought back to the cassette tapes and decided to use the sounds almost as sonic punctuation to the images. I used the sound of the cassette being re-wound alongside the time-lapse image being reversed at a faster speed - this then brought the image back to the white screen and allowed me to bring in the next image of Dave. I synced this with the start of the vocals and created the same sequence style again with the next section of the song. I felt that this logically lead into the final DETAILED drawing of the two of them in the studio which could come in alongside the final version of Seventh Floor in all its loud and full glory. 

In a way my images and drawings were reflecting the process of the song making, and the use of the cassette sounds really helped synchronise and gel these elements together. I then decided to play around with animated titles. I really loved the written titles in the film I had previously looked at ‘My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes - so I wanted to re-create something similar in my own style. I think these really added another element and visual texture to the film, and worked really well. I then went in and incorporated the full colour animations too as the ‘climax’ of each time-lapse drawing.  

As the final drawing is much more detailed and overall a much fuller image - I decided to make this time-lapse slightly longer - also being with the final version of seventh floor I wanted for this song to remain for a longer time too. I then played around with the -re-winding / fast-forwarding again as a way of bringing in my full colour animation - also it acts as a way to slightly subvert the expectation -  by this time the re-winding element has become established so it is to be expected it will repeat this again, instead the re-wind doesn't quite finish before it fast forwards back in. 

At this stage I still felt that it wasn't quite ‘together’ as I wanted it, I felt the cassette sounds worked really well as structural /punctuation to the images, but  as it stood I currently just had sections of white screen splitting up each section of the animation (bar the titles for dad and dave). I initially considered another rotoscope animation of a cassette being loaded into a player.. I spent some time scouring the internet for a suitable video clip.. eventually settling on one which I begun to animate in procreate. However as I was doing this I felt it would just be far too time consuming at this stage and actually the clip just didn't feel right in the overall film. I then re considered again that I was being too literal in this sense and actually just a visual of the cassette with the titles for each song on would work a lot better and help to tie together the sound of the cassette. I removed the titles as I had made them for the songs and created new animations for these sections. 

I also feel that these animations really help to tie in my original rotoscope piano animation, but they still retain this ‘collage’ feel to the overall film. 

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE DRUM MACHINE ROTOSCOPE ANIMATION:

After putting together the rest of the film around my original rotoscope I decided to re-visit the colour image I did of the drum machine and actually decided to place it over the line drawing instead within the animation. I felt that with the colour in the other three animations, adding this would help tie them all together. I had also really wanted to include this colour image as it was another one I had done that had taken some time and I was really happy with the outcome (even though you can't really see it for very long in the animation). 

I also decided to play around with the words slightly. My original intention had been for the screen to be ‘split’ as it were, between dad and Dave - the bottom half is the music (dad), and the top half are the words and vocals (Dave). After watching the animation back with a friend she questioned who it was ‘laughing’ so this is what lead me to moving the ‘*laughter*’ to the lower half and playing a bit more with that placement - which I think actually works a lot better.

(END OF POST)