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Voyager Golden Record The golden record briefly documents human history and culture. The record was sent into space on the Voyager Spacecraft where it will stay in hopes that another civilisation pick it up and play it. On the cover of the record are instructions of how to play the record using simple semiotics which should be understandable to the viewer. The record holds vasts of information including the sounds of Earth, images of the human body with details of evolution, a series of images of species on earth and people speaking different languages. On the record we see music being shown as a way to explain human emotions. I wanted to look further into emotions and throughout my project I focus on emotions of different species. I will look at the way people and animals hold themselves when in each emotion. I also want to show weather or an environment having an impact on a person or a creature to explain how the unnoticible changes our bodies go through to things we may not be even be able to see.
oer-wout j-w You can create the fairy tale-esque colouring by using the Colour Range Selection in Photoshop. Once a colour is selected you can copy and paste the selection onto a new layer, create a New Brightness/Contrast Adjustment Layer (Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Brightness/ Contrast) and then use the previous layer to create a Clipping Mask. From there you can adjust Brightness/Contrast. To make the colour even more luminous all you have to do is repeat the process. To make the lighting contrast significantly for a striking appearance you create a white or off-white shape from the chosen light source or original light source on a new layer. The brush should be set onto a low hardness or non at all so the edges are smooth an will blend well with the image. Then set the layer to overlay on the image below which should immediately brighten the image. You can also change the opacity to allow for a more natural softer glow.
Oer-Wout is a photographer on DeviantArt who’s work greatly focusses on forests and plants but also has an interest in seascapes and buildings. The main themes in his work are light, fog and colour which leaves each photograph with a magical presence to it.
The fog creates an eerie, mysterious feel to the image. You can also create this realistically on Photoshop similar to the method of the lighting effects. However in these images the mist is editted only slightly as the original photo capture the fog very well. The vibrance of the colour in his work is what I would like to create in my own. The detail of every picture gives me the idea of catogorising the plants and species in a certain area. I could also take this concept of a magical forest made from real surroundings and create a new reality possibly a futuristic view of the world. One of my original ideas was to present the world people haven’t seen as mankind are so enthralled with what is going on in outer space however they have not discovered their own environment.
“finally. is a dynamic and passionate creative studio. We are exploring new ways of presenting creativity.�
Finally Studio Founded in 2012 and based in Mainz, Germany; Finally is an animation studio which creates interesting and unique designs for advertisement. Most of their work is commercial however they do sometimes produce their own self initiated work.
The character in this animation would have been created on Illustrator by using the pen tool. To create less work some features on the character can stay the same for example the backend on the deer stays just about fixed all that needs adjusted is the leg length when the body has to raise throughout the transition. To recreate something like this with a smooth and realistic transition I would have to create each key position on illustrator and piece them together on
After Effects using key frames. I like the simplicity of this animation; it is contemperary stylistically and through it‘s colour schemes. The colours used are not too harsh on the eyes but draw the audiences eyes to the subject.
Initially I imagined creating an animation to show Elements, how they smoothly transfer into each other and the after effects of them. I could also create a set of portraits of people whos faces change to different detailed emotions.
However ever I could also create If I did an animation I would create one animations for Hidden Creatures like this as I feel it would work better and for Elements, it would allow with the overall message I want to get me to focus my work on the natural across. movements of animals and study them in detail.
Patakk Paulo Čerić Paolo Čerić is a Designer from Croatia who specialises in Programming and Digital Art. His work is influenced by science and genetics. In his animation he produces extremely detailed animations mostly based on geometric pattern and movement. To create something so detailed as this on After Effects in a short period of time would to be a challenge I have to concentrate on one large individual subject or lots of small different subjects. The above image is of an animation of the constellations in the night sky in which he has made a small and a large version. The large version gives you a panoramic shot of a part of space which gives you an idea how stars move and change shape. I love the simplicity in the way he has presented the design the dots
and the lines can be see as a form of semiotic to the modern day audience. Upon first glance it is obvious what the designer wants to translate. The slow motion in which each piece move transfixes the viewer. I am interested to see if a design like this would work well with a typographic imput. The contellations twisting their way into shapes that resemble words and then twisting out within the next frame. The typography element would work well in a piece that involves facts and information about a certain place.
A line based animation could also be used in my Genetic theme to show how cells can change and be manipulated and how DNA can be edited. The top right animation reminds me of the way weather patterns are shown across the world. The dots flow towards the middle then distort to give the effect of a 3d object. The bottom image is of another geometric animation. This animation has 4 different positions with movements that are similar to a hinge’s. When watching this your eye can only watch one piece at once because each piece moves at exactly the same time and a fast pace. From the shaping of each of the end positions this looks to be inspired by origami and the angles of scrunched up paper. For my work I will look into imitating oil or paper in my animation to express a certain message for my theme.
Romain Trystram Romain Trystram is a freelance illustrator from Arcueil in France. His work mainly focusses on his interest of Architecture. He .has a defined glossy 3d style which you can see throughout all his work. The selection of images are extremely detailed drawings created on both Illustrator and Photoshop. The ways to create objects that glow vary between preference. The most popular way to create glowing type is to create text then rastorize the type so it becomes editable, after that you can add a slight gradient on the type to give it a realistic change of tone. To create the actual glow outside of the type all you have to do is go into Filter>Blue>Gaussian Blur and edit the Radius until you get the desired effect. The use of perspective and angle are used quite a lot in this project and the glowing colour highlights that feature. In each of the panels I have noticed that every glowing object also higlights a use of energy e.g: transport,lighting, heating.. even if it was unintentional.
Solidarités International Solidarités International is a humanitarian aid organization that is mainly focussed on fighting water-related diseases. They also provide aid to families involved in natural disasters or conflict. This is an advert which is used to spread the message about diseases in unclean water. Throughout the advert a person drops ink onto what is thought to be a plain sheet of paper and the ink slowly tranforms into an image. This is done by drawing an image using a mixture of milk and water in a water brush-pen. Because of the thickness of milk, this allows the mixture once mixed with the ink to slowly move throughout the drawing keeping it’s bold colour. In the advertisement the clear mixture is being used as a way of saying what you can’t see can still kill you and when you look closer you can see the extent of the real problem. The black ink is also quite harsh and bold against the pale background,
the use of it enhances the power black has on the brain when it is seen as something powerful and also seen as a colour of death.
“The color black relates to the hidden, the secretive and the unknown, and as a result it creates an air of mystery. It keeps things bottled up inside, hidden from the world.” - empower-yourself-with-colourpsychology.com As an animation this is unique in it’s way of trying to convey it’s message. The natural way it creates the movement without the help of computers. The main theme I see in my ideas for animation is to create something natural whether it be studying the natural movements of animals or the handmade qualities of this advertisement. If I did something like this I would want to use the material as part of the meaning for the animation such as this has done.
Thomas Doyle Thomas Doyle is a contemporary artist who works on Sculpture and Photography. His work mostly focusses on dystopian futures or natural disasters. What made me interested in Thomas Doyle’s work is that he took the art of terrariums which promote life and growth and made them into pictures of the Earth being destroyed or broken in some way. His creations make you wonder how he made them and which objects are real or not. My original idea when looking into terrariums was to show the movement and change in an environment e.g. the desert. To show how the sand changes shape with strong winds I could create a set of pendulums with each of the balls housing small terrariums and when ever someone interacted with it the balls would collides with each-other hopefully showing the natural movement of the environment. However coming across this and seeing how different it is I could create a far different terrarium possibly showing Photo Credit: Martino Margheri and Amanda Erlanson
an underwater one or just a set of terrariums showing different habitats and plants species that inhabit them. The shape of the object housing the terrarium could also be another object it could look deeper into. I have recently seen a collection of jars in which the artist has interpreted her view on emotions by bottling colourful liquid to show anger, fear, happiness and love etc. The shape of the jars could have one meaning whilst the objects inside could have a whole different meaning. Another alternative idea is to incorporate this idea into an animation I create where the beginning we see the pendulum start swinging and the camera pans off them or inside one of the terrariums and onto another theme I’ve chosen e.g. Hidden Creatures For me to create my concept of the terrariums in the pendulum I would have to get materials that would withstand the force of being thrown together. The objects inside would have to be fake unless a way is found around the result of them being damage by them being thrown around. Looking back at the idea of the pendulum it would be possible to create a minimalist environment featuring each landscape.
Donna Wilson The company’s selling point is their knitted items as that is what their brand was built upon but they have also create objects out of new materials such as wood, ceramics and leather. It’s interesting to see the wide range of materials you can create the same design with and still have an outcome that is relevent. The pattern and texture of the the prints and objects created add to the quirky design without it I feel that the characters she creates would lose their homely, handmade quality that reminds you that these objects were created or painted every inch by hand and each one is different. When looking at Donna Wilson’s products I wanted to see the impact of pattern on products and what impact this will have on my work if I were to create an animation. Creating animation by hand is very time consuming whatever method you choose. I personally prefer to create drawings on paper and/or edit or redraw on the computer.
Donna Wilson is a Scottish Designer who started up her business in 2003 making distinctive looking animals. Since then she has expanded her companys range by making cushions, clothing, blankets and decorations for the home. Adding pattern onto an animation would make the character more interesting considering the minimal apparoach I want to take with the design. When the texture or pattern is added the audience have something to look at and not just a flat colour, when the animal moves the pattern could distort to show stretcing of a limb. The pattern could also change depending on how the character feels or acts if I were to show a study of emotion in animals. The colour and intensity of the pattern depending on the mood so if an animal was agitated the might turn a pink/red and the lines of the pattern may go from straight to a zig zag. if the animal was sad the colour would be dark blue and the zig zags would transform into drooping lines.
Branching Ideas The next few pages explore each singular theme idea thoroughly. When researching I have come up with ideas that not focus on one subject area but two or three. Although each idea works well on it’s own and any of them can become my chosen project theme, expanding and mixing the ideas can create more interesting, engaging topics. This is a key to help me remember the ideas and theme mixtures I come up with as I go through the research stage.
Key System:
Archaeology, Human Propaganda Emotion, Elements Archaeology, Mythology Human Propaganda, Mythology Human Propaganda, Genetics, Evolution Genetics, Evolution Hidden Creatures, Landscape, Emotions
MYTHOLOGY IDEA 1 An advertisement or booklet that combines with the Human Propaganda themet to convince aliens that outrageous mythology stories are real. IDEA 2 A piece on how mythology influenced archaeoligical relics. IDEA 3 An animation about how the world would look if some mythology was still largely present in life. www.wikipedia.com - Bound by Scott Eaton
http://www.greekmyths-greekmythology.com
mythagora.com
http://www.ancient.eu
http://www.studyofoahspe.com
imgarcade.com
ARCHAEOLOGY IDEA 1 Create an animation which shows pieces of history being lost or a piece becoming a part of a story. IDEA 2 Recreate artefacts with a modern twist. IDEA 3 Combined with Human Propaganda a piece which instructs aliens about the Artefacts. IDEA 4 A piece showing how mythology influenced relics. IDEA 5 A booklet designed to teach ancestors about the modern life.
HUMAN PROPAGANDA Propaganda is a powerful weapon in war; it is used to dehumanize and create hatred toward a supposed enemy, either internal or external, by creating a false image in the mind. I see Human propaganda as a softer term for my theme. It can mean anything from the way humans are depicted in a movie to war propaganda. Anything can be made to be a huge influence on people’s lives.
IDEA 1 Combined with Archaeology a piece which instructs aliens about the Artefacts. IDEA 2 An advertisement or booklet to convince aliens that outrageous Mythology stories are real. IDEA 3 Mixed with Genetics and Evolution a guide or infographic on how dangerous humans are on how dangerous humans are. IDEA 4 An article of animation disputing how aliens see us in movies.
http://rexcurry.net
ELEMENTS IDEA 1 Combined with Landscape, Emotions and Hidden Creatures create an animation exploring the impact of the world by an uncontrollable force. IDEA 2 Explore pathetic fallacy used by writers who compare emotions to elements. Can create any outcome for this idea.
IDEA 3 Combined with Landscape, create a design that shows how elements affect the landscape. E.g. an interactive pendulum with terrariums as weights. The force of the interaction will show how wind and rain sculpts the landscape.
EMOTION IDEA 1 Explore pathetic fallacy used by writers who compare emotions to elements. Can create any outcome for this idea. IDEA 2 Combined with Elements, Hidden Creatures and Landscape create an animation exploring the impact of the world by an uncontrollable force. IDEA 3 Short animation showing creatures going about their natural habitat aand how their emotions affect their behaviour.
EVOLUTION http://www.sheppardsoftware.com
Adaptive radiation is when a species quickly adapts to take advantage of the resources in their particular environment. For example, the Galapagos finches developed different beak shapes to access each island’s sources of food.
www.nearingkolob.com
IDEA 1 Create short animation showing evolution of a creature e.g. bird flying down showing off it’s wings changing shape as time passes. IDEA 2 Show how the advance in genetic technology can adapt our bodies in the future. IDEA 3 Combined with Human Propaganda and Genetics. Create advertisement that shows how deadly the human world and humans are to aliens.
https://vle.whs.bucks.sch.uk
GENETICS IDEA 1 Mixed with Human Propaganda and Evolution a guide or infographic on how dangerous humans are on how dangerious humans are. IDEA 2 Show how the advance in genetic technology can adapt our and evolve our bodies in the future. IDEA 3 Create a fun infographic that talks about everything genetics ranging from eye colour to futuristic ideas of cyborgs. Dan Roosegaarde has come up with an idea to genetically modify trees using the genetics of animals to create bioluminesant trees that will eliminant the need for street lamps. “Like the luminescent abilities of jellyfish, mushrooms or fireflies, Roosegaarde, scientist Alexander Krichevsky and the State University of New York are all on the case, splicing DNA from luminescent marine bacteria with the chloroplast of a houseplant.� www.huffingtonpost.com
LANDSCAPE IDEA 1 Document all the creatures or flowers in a certain landscape. IDEA 2 Create pendullum terrains that show how elements effect the scape. IDEA 3 Combined with Elements, Emotions and Hidden Creatures create an animation exploring the impact of the world by an uncontrollable force.
HIDDEN CREATURES Frilled Sharks share many characteristics of ancestors who lived in the time of the dinosaurs. Preferring to swim in water 5,000 feet below the surface they are rarely seen.
IDEA 1 Combined with Elements, Emotions and Landscape create an animation exploring the impact of the world by an uncontrollable force. IDEA 2 Short animation showing creatures going about their natural habitat and how their emotions affect their behaviour. IDEA 3 An infographic about the unseen creatures of the sea and a prediction of of what else we haven’t discovered.
The Vampire Squid swims 10,000 below the surface in the unilluminated part of the sea. It’s eyes are bigger than any land animal.
http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com
IDEA 1 Create pendulum terrains that show how elements effect the scape. For the terrariums to be used in this way I would have to find suitable materials such as reinforced glass.
IDEA 2 Combined with Elements, Emotions and Hidden Creatures create an animation exploring the impact of the world by an uncontrollable force.
I would like to study an animals movements for this piece to portray the emotions correctly. To animate a bear would be difficult if I was to do this. A creature such as a fox would be easier as I could study a dogs posture and their emotions are extrememly close to that of a humans.
IDEA 3 The idea behind this was to create a series of family portraits which slowly start to express emotion as time goes on, this not only will show complexitiy of human facial expression but also the relationships between the characters. These drawings explore the drawing style I would like to create for the piece. The above illustration is along the lines of what I imagined for this piece. I would like to add slightly more realistic features.
IDEA 4 A booklet designed to teach cavemen and other descendants about the modern life. The main concept of this idea was to create a booklet using imagery of the way our ancestors used to communicate to explain modern society and culture today. The booklet would recreate imagery such as heiroglyphics and cave painting. The final recreations would also have an element of modern identity to them because of the use of modern materials. This may be enhanced on purpose so the viewer would know something was wrong with the image from first glance.
Experimenting with Ink and watered down milk mixture IDEA 5 The idea behind this was to create illustrations and type which slowly transformed into eachother as part of a natural animation. This technique was going to be used to show a series of pathetic fallacy lines. During my research I became interested in the mixing of emotions and elements.
“the sea carried up a thick, fiery breath” - Camus’ The Stranger
“the rain pattered dismally against the panes” - Frankenstein.
Horton Hears A Who In the movie Horton the elephant comes across a speck of dust floating around and he hears people screaming, he rushes to get it to safety and catches it on a flower. Throughout the movie he protects the speck, to everyone around him they just see a crazy elephant talking to a flower. The movie contemplates the scale of worlds and how even the smallest or biggest creatures exist even if we can’t see or hear them. Throughout this movie Horton protects the speck from not only his neighbours but from himself as a sigh or a small jump to him can destroy their buildings and create strange weather patterns. This movie best explains what my idea focusses on. The animation will be about how the elements not only effect the landscape but will also zoom in on the animals and see how they are affected by weather and how their emotions fluctuate in these situations. I want to show how small we are considered in the grand scale of things. We cannot control the weather or the landscape. We have to adapt to our surroundings.
Where The Wild Things Are Where the wild things are is a movie about a sad, lonely child called Max who runs away from home to go on an adventure. He finds a boat and travels to an island where he meets these creatures and they make him King in hope he will make them happy. I have chosen to look at the characteristics of each of the animals. The characters are meant to represent Self-indulgence, self-destructiveness, self-delusion, jealousy and vanity, each of them are a part of Max’s emotions so he can connect with each of them. At the beginning we see Max bonding with Carol the most who represents self- destructiveness so he tends to cause grief among his family, which is also why Max ran away from home. Throughout the movie Max intereacts with the others and becomes more grown up, accepting therefore becomes disconnected from Carol. The end we see Max coming home having been able to be at peace with each of the characters (his emotions).
The emotions and movements of each character is interesting I looked at the way they hold themselves when they get to an extreme state of their own particular emotion and how their faces project their feelings. This will become useful when trying to show the emotions of the creatures I create for my animation.
Animade Animade is a London-based animation & interactive production company. Producing animations with a similar drawing technique.
These technical animations are created on After Effects using keyframes. I particuarly wanted to look at this company because of their use of texture on their characters. It’s positioning is quite clever oftern mimicking light and shade or even lighter patches of hair (see bottom left images of made and the bear.) I want to create something like this to show fur texture on my animated creatures, I could also incorporate it onto the landscape so the design is more detailed and less flat. I could recreate this by experimenting with ink stamps and editing them on the computer.
I chose to do a fox as the character in my animation because of it’s similarity to expressing emotion with humans. Although not through facial expression their use of posture would allow me to convey emotion without having to emphasize facial expressions or movement. With foxes being closely related to dogs I can study movement of these animals closely and portray them realistically. Using a human to show how the world affects us in this piece would take away from this piece and the story of it. The movements would have to be clearly exaggerated for the viewer to get the overall message.
HAPPY/ NEUTRAL
ANGRY
SCARED
After researching colour theory and how colour affects emotion. I picked colours I would associate with these emotions, I also thought on how they would transition naturally from one to the other during the animation. Pattern also affects emotions and can be used to send a message e.g. a narrow zig zag pattern can be seen as an angry emotion and threatening.
I am going to use these textures i’ve collected on my creatures and patterns. I don’t want the character to be overloaded with detail so the final result may just be the texture as an overlay on the character.
The end result of my animation had less than I wanted to add. I removed the pattern because it became to confusing and overwhelming with the piece. Once removed it still didn’t flow as well as I would have imagined due to length of the animation. So I decide to rework the storyboard for the animation and see if it made the end result less disorientating.
This is the storyboard I came up with for the piece I removed the unneeded camera panning and went back to basics. The end result now features three foxes one in a gently swinging world which then collides with another causing a storm, which upsets the second fox. The final fox is left without an interaction and becomes upset.
With the animation I wanted to show how uncontrollable forces affect our emotions and everyday life. I believe I have gotten the message across in some form. Rearranging my final animation has also given me the chance to expand the final work so the end result includes a short snippet of the fox going through it’s emotions along with the fox in it’s habitat.