The Third & The Seventh

The Third & The Seventh is a short (12min) CG film on photography and architecture. Everything on this movie has been textured, lit and modeled digitally. This piece is visually stunning, the music adaptation sits beautifully with what has been rendered.

The audience is immersed into the video because of the camera carefully situated at the front of the 'building'. It just shows that with enough attention to detail and textures you can achieve what is regarded as a realistic vision of 'perfection'.

Spirited Away

This feature long film by Hayao Miyazaki from the well known Studio Ghibli, is a story about a girl lost in a fantasy land trying to find her lost parents. It is acclaimed for many things from the mastery story telling, to the character design and realistic scenarios. The main character Chihiro, is lost in a parallel universe, with a tunnel being a way of entering and escaping it. The story is filled of unforgettable characters, Chihiro, Haku, Yubaba, No Face and many more.

One of the things that stands out for me, is the character design. I've always loved Miyazaki's style of work and looked to it for reference. Despite the amazing story telling, each character is portrayed in a unique way and apart from the twin witches there is little repetition of character design. Even though this animation is aimed at children, the story line and plot in itself could technically be aimed at adult audiences.

The power hungry Yubaba is always trying to outdo her twin sister Zeniiba. She is always trying to gain more control over the land. I like the music that is incorporated into her scenes- it just ads that extra humpf in order to create the perfect atmosphere.

No-Face is a well known character. He seems to be innocent however, later becomes a huge inconvenience. I think that the character design for him is outstanding. The mysterious appearance and the name form a formidable duo. I know if I was in Chiharu's position, I would definitely be cautions of him... he gives me the creeps!.

Overall, like every Studio Ghibli Film i've seen, this equals the outstanding work of the artists and storytellers. Definitely a must see!

I Met the Walrus

This 2008 production- based off an interview with a reel to reel tape deck, is about a 14 year old Beetle Fan named Jerry Levitan, interviewing John Lennon in Toronto whilst he was in the middle of his 'bed-in' phase. 38 years later, an award winning short film was produced. The incorporation of hand drawn with digital illustrations and photos, were able to create this spellbinding animation. The animation shows the visual movement of what is being said by John Lennon, he hangs on every word and you can see how all the ideas and suggestions were swirling through his head.

This is a great method of portraying how a child imagines, sees things in an all together different light than when you grow older. What I like, is despite the 38year old gap between the recording and the development of the animation, they have remembered the thoughts behind it.

This is a good way of illustrating how a thought pattern can occur. Something that could be looked into when creating my own animation.

Flip Festival (Day 2)

Opening Shorts

This was a clump of different types of animation throughout the world. They were aimed at inspiring people, and whilst some did the trick, others disgusted the audience (Puppet Boy) I still have nightmares about it... We just sat in a cinema and watch films, it was too dark to even take notes so it was a little bit pointless in that regard. I didn't gain much from it, apart from a list of animation films, for reviewing at a later date on Youtube.

The Brothers McLeod.

The Brothers McLeod presented a variety of animation which inspired them with their things. Although, most of the stuff they presented didn't sit well with me, I still managed to watch throughout hoping that this would lead me into understanding my subject/competition. Apart from the things I didn't like, I did come to find a couple of interesting things. This inspired me and motivated me in order to achieve better quality animations.

Lapsus

I really really REAAALY liked this animation. It had light humor which made it a definite contender for me. I like the idea behind it and a slight 'mockery' on religion (although some people may hate me for stating that). I thought the concept was original and something I hadn't seen before. I'm hoping to recreate something like that- although done digitally, I still like the simplicity of the characters.... it just links in well with the animation.

Overview

Although the review and question and answer session didn't really enlighten me into anything. Due to the fact that they didn't let anyone speak, they kept on interrupting throughout. I thought it was rude and apart from one person, who sounded at least somewhat prepared to do a speech was rudely interrupted by the host. Overall, the event was interesting. I don't feel it was a necessity to pay to watch films. Like I said, films and lists of things that are out there were okay, talk about animation and the whole point for the visit... 'limited'.

WALL-E . Looking at Sound

Wall E is an amazingly well created film. Despite having little or no dialog in it, it shows that a movie can still owe with only sounds. The reason for this was because they focused on creating new noises and ambiance sounds for every minute detail. Every character has it's own unique identity and this is portrayed with the sound behind it.

In Animation and sound design, you get nothing for free. It's hard to walk onto a set and know what the sound is going to be like, or the voices that would be depicted. In that case, sound really means everything here. From each squeak,bump,noise splat to the voices of Wall-E and Eve - everything has it's own meaning. Ben Burtt the academy acclaimed winner for the sounds of Star Wars, was asked to produce the noise for this film. He looks into the past of what sounds have been created by Disney, and the way they showed this.

One thing that still presents itself to me as being outstanding is the way the film is shot. Without adding too much details, you can get characters like Wall E to appear more realistic, than having something too clean and polished like Eve. The use of Depth of Field in shots and the shift of focus is something that for me, gives the film more credibility.

Below you will find a link, unfortunately I was unable to embed the video, but it is from the extra footage of Wall E DVD.

Enjoy

Wall E Special, Building Worlds from Sound

Le Voyage Dans La Lune

This movie was created in 1902 Georges Méliès, The idea behind this film was a way to awe the audience. For the first time, through camera trickery, people appeared to appear and disappear from screen. Due to the sought after techniques of his idol, Robert- Houdin, a master of magic and tricks, he found out a method he could use for himself. By pausing the film and changing the object or performer with something else, it gave the illusion of disappearing. Splicing, editing, rolling animation and many other techniques were used to produce the uniqueness of this film.

To date, Georges Méliès is known as a pioneer in Animation and Film Techniques.

We were asked to be in groups for the new animation. The groups were decided

but us- mine consisted of: Louie, Ashlea, Sarah, Zez, Roxy and Myself.

We were then given a selection of three different stories to choose from. We all decided to do Frankenstein.

We began by editing the script which was done by Louie. This can be found on his blog LJ Animation.

We began by doing research into asylums- they can be seen below.

I then decided that I would do the cat armature. To begin with the armature that I came up with was the one which can be seen below, followed by the plasticine moulding on top.

As I found out the hard way, you need to do face sketches from all angles. The cat does not resemble my initial sketch and the face looks startled.

After this I tried to do it again, I found that this time it worked better.

Replacement Animation

These images were taking from Coraline, this shows how they made a separate mouth for all the dolls and I thought it would be somewhat useful to do in this stop motion production.

This is the armature for Coraline. The eyebrows are changable and although they have used resin in order to achieve this look- the idea of diving the face into upper and lower work well.

This is an example of the cat walk cycle. This is an animation done by someone, and sometimes they get it wrong- so I thought I would record the Tiger walking, the day we went to the zoo.

Tiger Walk

Here is my version of the walk cycle- This was a bad test.....

Although I didn't animate Victoria, I asked my room mate if she could walk up the stairs to ensure we got the right movement.