Thoughts on the Animatic

Starting the animatic process. I was a little worried and still a bit confused on how to do it. Since this project is experimental, there will be a mix of media used for animating and applied to the environment. Yesterday as I was gathering references and looking at inspiring videos I thought about how they must've storyboarded and what essentially an animatic is. These are my thoughts:

1. An animatic is a timed storyboard. 
2. It includes sound. 
3. It should be as close to the final time and look of the film as you can get. 
4. Storyboards and rough sketches are ironed out in the animatic. 
5. However, that does not mean an animatic includes final drawings. 
6. Camera angles and complicated movements should be clearly shown in an animatic. 
7. Good animatic's show depth and perspective even if there is no background. 
8. Characters' movements and any other animated parts of the film should be visually described in the animatic. 
9. Everything should be in grayscale except for red directional arrows

This seems like common knowledge (if you're in this field) but it has really helped me grasp exactly what an animatic should say and do.

Images I'll need

• sun
• sky scrapers
• buildings
• roads
• construction work
• pipes
• girders
• clouds
• bushes
• sky
• atmospheric devices
• small creatures
• train
• parts of a train
• steam engine
• smoke
• metal
• steel
• dirt
• light
• color

Ciara Phelan

http://www.ciaraphelan.com/

Collage artist and designer.

I like the fun she puts into all her work. Her collages have many elements but each has a purpose to the photo or theme she is given. 

She inspires me because she works both with traditional cut paper and digital collage techniques. 

Collage Animation 2014- Hannah Gee

This film is doing several things really well. The collage elements work together in tandem with the music. Even though the piece is without a clearly defined message, everything is slowly building up over the course of the film and getting even more crazy. It compounds any interpretation by each new addition. There are nature vs man, man vs god, man vs society, and man vs mind themes throughout the film.

This is a good example of the general mood, sense of disorientation I want to portray. I really enjoyed the technique used: combining found/ cut photos with drawings with 3d figures, all in stop motion. This film is much longer than the time we are given but it is still well deserved inspiration.

Finding Images

The Why and How

Using Images- Copyright and Fair use


Public Domain

http://www.pixnio.com/

http://search.creativecommons.org/

https://www.google.com/advanced_image_search

Terry Gilliam's cut out class

"The whole point of animation is tell a story, make a joke, express an idea."

• magazines, books, old pictures, newspaper- anywhere
• take image out of context, play around with scale, combine in amazing ways
• need 2 photographs/christmas cards for everything used 
•  cutout comes from one
• other retouched and used as background
• cheat as much as possible- save time creatively
• be aware of limitation of cutouts
• simple things and quick sudden movements work best
• forget about realistic motion
• first thing is storyboard
• can be crude
• write sound effects needed
• mark down approx time
• reminder for shooting (animatic)
• cutouts can be round and rich
• keep character parts together with envelope
• be aware of shadows
• tape down pieces when shooting

Horizon

I have learned a lesson today.

Beat boards

Early beat board ideas I never got around to posting!

Internship workshop w/ Zark

I had an opportunity to go to a workshop with Zark discussing internship opportunities. It was actually an unscheduled visit during an animation club meeting. During the presentation, I learned more on the new process for applying to internships and what internships were available next semester. The workshop was also beneficial to me because I am a peer mentor and there were a lot of freshmen that I can now educate on the process as well.