The National Gallery's collaboration with Central St Martins College of Art

'Transcriptions Animation' is an innovative project which involves postgraduate animation students producing short films inspired by the Gallery's collection. I went to the screening of these animations and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I really enjoyed Mark Abbots 2D Animation called 'Bubblegum Splash'. I spoke to him after the show and he told me that it was created in Flash. I asked if he would come into College and talk to my students and he was a little shy, but I'm hoping he will come in as a guest speaker :).


Bubblegum Splash by Mark Abbot

This piece was said to be inspired by Claude, Landscape with the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca 1648.

Subtle additions to animations

I have been trying to upload the updated version of the non linear animation since last night (was up until early hours of the morning trying to be patient, but now I have spent too much time again this afternoon and it will not upload).... I hate to submit to defeat, but currently I cannot put the updated version on here. The original version is on a previous post. I think I will continue to develop it as although it is now submitted I have ideas of adding short, repetitive looped walks moving around as if they are in another dimension completely and I could also add more animation within it. It will continue to evolve :)

Jarah woodland creatures

As mentioned in the previous post, this animation was primarily used to develop masking techniques with 2D and real footage. I have added some hands for the smoke blowing character to hang on with, so very subtle changes made here.

2D Digital Animation Developments: Evaluative review

The experience of developing the animations for this module has been a huge journey for me. I encountered many problems, but eventually found solutions and ultimately gained more knowledge of using video and masking techniques within Flash. I facilitated self directed learning with Premiere Pro in order for me to achieve my aims and also improved software skills within After Effects. Even with Flash, I initially encountered a fairly steep learning curve due to using an updated verstion of the software (from Macromedia Flash 8 to Adobe Flash CS4), but now feel that the overall experience has helped to improve my skills and knowledge vastly.

During 2009, I viewed an animated music video created by Kristofer Strom, Minilogue - Animals (2009), which won a silver prize at Kolla.se in the same year. I had previously been impressed by Strom's whiteboard animations that were used for the Carphone Warehouse campaigns, but when I saw Minilogue - Animals, I was captivated. It inspired me to think about using masking in Flash in order to combine 2D animation into live footage.
 

Minologue - Animals. Directed by Kristofer Strom

The simple, but lively animations blend into the footage and although the whole animation is pretty abstract and non-narrative – it successfully captures your attention as each scene jumps out at the viewer with intense vibrancy.

Another example of utilising mixed media and 2D animation is a trailer for the 2009 East End Film Festival, directed and designed by Lucy Izzard, an animation director and illustrator based at Slinky Pictures. Photographs were taken around the East End and were used within the animation to depict changing scenes, and as the foundation for the animated characters. 

  East End Film Festival trailer. Directed by Lucy Izzard

This trailer is a variation of the theme as it is an example of blending 2D animation with photography rather than film footage, but the simplistic style of the animation fits nicely within the photographic image.

This fusion of real footage and 2D animation communicates effectively within a wide range of mediums: music videos, TV idents/stings, web and TV Flash series’, TV and web advertising, educational animations, documentaries, film and TV intros, corporate training, animated shorts, viral YouTube promos, TV gap fillers, flash banners, film/TV/festival trailers; the opportunities are endless within our visually frenzied culture. There is still a place for 2D at the forefront of animation, particularly when used within a hybrid blend of mixed media. Immediately, this brings 2D into the 21^st Century and it can look fresher and more stimulating than some of the mainstream, synthetic and hyperreal 3D that has now become the norm. In 2003, there was talk of animation being dead (Ryan Ball, 2D Animation: Dead, dying or Just Napping), but if 2D was caught napping; in 2010 - it is wide awake within the medium of mixed media. In the words of Lev Manovich, we are using ‘the language of hybridity’.

My first foray into experimenting with hybridity was by using film and masking within Flash - it worked out quite well and I did not encounter many problems – this was with Flash 8. Flash CS4 changed quite dramatically. One of the changes was that you can no longer directly import Quick Time movies – they have to be converted to FLV’s in Adobe’s Media Encoder, this was not too problematic, but adds to the overall timescale. Embedding a Quick Time movie into Macromedia Flash was very straightforward, I don’t know why Adobe have changed this.

There is currently an ongoing argument with Apple & Adobe due to the lack of support for Flash in the iPad, iPod Touch or the iPhone. Adobe rectified this with CS5, but Apple blocked that too. It was reported that Adobe were going to sue Apple for ‘restraint of trade’, and also rumours that Apple are developing their own version of Flash. There have been no official statements from Adobe or Apple, but the rumours are still ongoing.

There was talk of Adobe improving the importing of movies within Flash, I do not feel this is the case because when you import a movie and embed it into the timeline, it does not always import the sound effectively. This only happens when the movie was embedded into the timeline, not if the FLV was a player. Fortunately I did not need the whole of the movie’s sounds for the animation in which I was developing the masking technique and I also did not need any background sound kept with the time lapse footage, but if the sound had been needed throughout the movies, it would have meant that the sound would need to be stripped from the original footage and added separately, which would have lengthened the procedure.

I was pleased with the masking techniques used within the first animation. It was time consuming, but it was worth the effort. I had a few problems initially when I nested animations within movie clips and then masked them, because the nested animation would not work at all, but I realised that if I changed the mc’s to graphic symbols within the Properties Inspector, everything functioned again. I used the bone tool for the cloud carriers that hang from the ‘flying island’. The bone tool is new to CS4 and incorporates inverse kinematics, which uses an articulated structure of bones to create movement, this is more sophisticated and complex than using the hinge rotation technique. By focusing on the techniques, I felt that although I had a range of problems with the video camera that I used and consequently the quality of the footage, I managed to improve my knowledge and skills within Flash with this animation. Below are examples of some of the nested animations.

                             'flying island'

                               

For the topic of Non linear time and space, I researched non linear dynamics, better known as the chaos theory: 

www.encyclopedia.com/topic/nonlinear_dynamics.aspx (accessed: 15.6.10) and  Topotransegrity – Non-Linear Responsive Environments – Robert Neumayr (accessed: 15.6.10).

The research led me to think about time lapse photography and  speeding and slowing down movement and putting different time levels into the same space.

My original thoughts for this animation were based around: 

• the ebb and flow of the wind
• Non linear urban environment - jumping from scene to scene in a non linear fashion - voyeuristic views into windows of high rise flats... jumping backwards and forwards in time.

The development of this animation also enabled me to learn new skills, but in a different software (Premiere Pro). I wanted to speed up and slow down the footage and searched for this technique and found a very good tutorial, which helped me to achieve my aims by using keyframes to set points within the timeline where I could speed up and slow down. I also experimented with time lapse photography, which I had never attempted before, which I found intriguing, but less easy to manipulate. I imported the edited footage into Flash, and used some masking within this movie, but not on the same scale as the first one. I also used nested animations, frame by frame, masking and rotoscope within this movie. 

Overall, this module has helped me to develop and enhance a range of skills in Flash, develop skills to take Flash into After Effects and to learn new skills in order to use software that is new to me in order to achieve my aims. 

Digital Images from non linear animation

 

  

  

  

Inspirational artist - Pascal Campion

I just stumbled upon this video based on Pascal Campion its interesting viewing and he comments on drawing, storytelling, and the fear of sharing your artwork.

Finally got a new scanner :)

Got a new scanner - not the one that I really wanted because it's too pricey, but the one I got does the job for now. At least I can finally upload some of the sketches from my sketchbook. Here are some of the ideas for the non linear animation. I drew a few pages based around eyes as I wanted to put an eye looking out from the Ten Bells pub ~ this is linked to a number of things such as;

• the pub being so old and its as if its soul is watching all that goes on. 
• Mary Kelly spent her last hours at the pub before 'Jack the Ripper' murdered her and the eye or the soul of the building is now keeping an eye on everything that passes it by. 
• The eye has links to the 'Big Brother' outlook of this country - cameras watching you everywhere you go - to the point that they become almost invisible as we become less aware of them watching us....

This page of sketches has more connotations with the link to Jack the Ripper

Motion Tracking - After Effects

Been trying out motion tracking today - I found a tutorial on You Tube & thought how useful this would have been to use on an animation I was previously working on in Flash. I spent ages trying to put in a black shadow to look like a hole in a wooden stake that I wanted to have a creature pop out of. I had lots of problems because I hadn't used a tripod and consequently the footage was moving all over the place and to try to make the hole appear as if it was sitting on the wooden stake was just impossible and looked amateurish. I spent a lot of time trying to make it move with the footage using frame by frame!! I then deleted it because it looked so rubbish!

The motion tracking in After Effects is perfect for this problem, but I tried it out on the Flash animation and the tracker had a problem - I think it is because I have two sequences of footage within the same movie and it confuses it. A great feature though - I have come to the conclusion that I must keep learning techniques within After Effects, I need to do this while I've got a short window of time before getting back into prep for the new academic year that is looming.

Here is a Motion Tracking tutorial from YouTube. (Best viewed within YouTube).