Creative Digital Spaces

Last Thursday we were tasked with creating an idea for a proposed use of digital space or website to either help distribute animated films, provide animation services or help teach animation to students. My group decided that we would like to design a way of aiding the distribution of animated films. We decided to concentrate particularly on short animated films and independant films. We based the idea on existing websites/ ideas and used them along with our own ideas to create the overall proposal. We decided that the website would work like youtube, Itunes, and the Apple App store. We didn't want our idea to be a direct competator with huge sites such as Youtube, but be offering a more specialised services (that still caters to a big market).
The beauty of the idea we felt that due to the internet it would allow short film developers and film makers to easily and cheaply distribute their films, we respected that a lot of money is required to make and distribute a dvd. Itunes has demonstrated this with the fact that films are sold very cheaply on Itunes in a digital form, but the artist or film maker takes much more of that money that they do out of the amount made on a dvd sale.
We also wanted people to be able to easily see films by the same film makers, that they were a fan of, or see other similar films, by way of the website making recommendations. We also wanted a rating system like the apple app store which would help publise good film makers, although we were keen to elimate comments often seen on Youtube that are neither constructive nor useful, so we suggested a standard review form on the site for videos that would elimate one line useless comments.
Finally by having a Specialist group of people that the site caters for, it would allow Industry Professionals or Advertisers searching for new styles to see what is popular in up and coming short or independant films.

Wall-e

Today my lecture watched Pixar's Wall-e with a view to looking at how CGI is beening made more realistic by the use of cameras that impersonate the cinematography of real physical cameras used to shoot live action. The theory behind this is that we are so used to accepting what we see in live action films, that what we see being shot or filmed through what appears to be the same medium has the same effect and tricks the mind when it comes to realism. Pixar have clearly done a lot of research when it comes to this. By creating visuals we normally associate with live action filming, such as lens flare, and changing focus due to different aperatures the film gives the appearance that it was made using a film crew rather than a hoard of animators. Pixar are also clearly skilled at using the language of cinematography to tell the story much in the same way a live action director does, this method of working in similar ways to any other director really helps in convincing you that what your eyes see is more real than you would think.
But one of the key points I felt was important in highlighting how clever Pixar we being when using cameras, was how they portrayed a sense of scale, considering that there are no human beings in the first half of the film, and this is the distant future so buildings and landscapes we see are not neccessarily as good indicators of scale as we might think, we still know exactly how big Wall-e is. And when the first humans are introduced Wall-e turns out to be exactly the size we thought. This almost confounding ability to make us natural assume the exact scale of characters and landscapes that are completely fictionalized demonstrates how aspects of the film trick the audience into believing it could be real.
Obviously Pixar have a style that is styalized and isnt firmly based on ultra-realism but rather greating lovable characters and good stories, I still find it interesting that we can be tricked into believing that parts of the film could have been filmed from live action. Also interestingly I did some further research into Alex Roman's the third and the seventh posted on this blog last week, and it turns out that the cameraman ( a figure many said shows what see still cannot reproduce accurately in CGI, is actually a real person green screened into the animation) I found it ironic that the image that jarred with viewers in that piece was actually the only thing in it that was real.

Critical Analysis Assessment

Here is my infographic for the critical analysis assessment. I chose to base the infographic on Nick Park and Aardman, and a little background on how Wallace and Gromit came into being, along with some other animations made by Aardman studio. The graphic is laid out in the style of one of Wallace's cracking contraptions. The idea was to create a kind of flow diagram in the form of a bit machine that invented Wallace and Gromit and others works Park worked on. I've been watching a lot of Aardman animation: the entire of the Wallace and Gromit collection, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run and also Aardman's Darkside DVD. I did have some trouble when making the infographic as to how to do it and I still feel that for communicating information I think I would rather have sat down and wrote an easy on Aardman and Nick Park.

Draft Layout

This is the draft of the layout for my critical analysis piece, I am writing a short history of Aardman animation with a bit of a focus on the work of Nick Park. On Tuesday I went to see the Wallace and Gromit exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery/Museum in Coventry, here they had on display a number of sets and pieces from Wallace and Gromit's Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The sets were amazingly detailed and I made some sketches of them as I walked around, I picked one of my better sketches to be the background image for this piece. It was simply Wallace getting out of the Anti-Pesto Van. I chose it because unlike most of the other sketches I got nearly the complete scene on the page, whereas I couldnt do justice to some of the others because of the raw level of detail in some of the sets.

On the piece I have begun to draft in where blocks of text/ images will be along with where my title will go as I have yet to decide on an exact wording of the title. I like the opaque boxes as it enables the audience to still view the image and it doesnt break it up too much, so i think i will keep it like that when i start to add the information, although i may alter colours. The whole piece is sized as an A3 piece of paper which may not be clear from this image.

Spirited Away

I have recently watch for the second time Miyazaki's Spirited Away, I was struck instantly by how beautiful the visuals are in the film and I think the first time I watched it I didn't pay enough attention to the films visuals and instead just catagorized it with all the anime films I had seen previously. This was a huge mistake, for two reasons first of all the drawings and scenes of Spirited Away are truely spectacular in their own right and secondly is the clever but very subtle use of cgi within this animated film.

I have also just watch Origin-Spirits of the Past on a recommendation and I it useful to compare both films. Particularly on the use of cgi within them. Both choose to animate certain areas of the film with cgi, in Origin it is the huge industrial and war machines of Ragnar wheres Spirited Away purposefully kept the cgi lower key so that it "didn't steal the show" using it for hte large expences of water and other areas. Its not just the way that its used for two different areas in the films that interests me, it is how in Spirited Away it is so well blended into the handrawn animation. You can hardly tell which bits of the film are done with cgi programs, to the point that the first time I watched the film I don't think i noticed it at all.

These two films share a lot of similarities particularly in their message. Studio Ghibli always have quite environmentally themed messages in their films, notabley Princess Monoko along with Spirited Away. I felt it was particularly well illustrated in Spirited Away in the scene when Gehiro is washing the sludge spirit and pulls the handle of a bicycle out of the spirit drawing out a huge pile of rubbish revealing that it was in fact a river spirit that had been polluted by humans. This expressed the message about humans mistreating the environment perfectly. Origins does similarly in its entire backstory and takes this as the setting for the film, the forest took the abuse of humanity until it decided to save itself by becoming hostile towards humity. The role reversal almost of humanity destroying the environment I found really portrayed the message that it should be treated with more respect.

A Scanner Darkly

A Scanner Darky is based on the book by Philip K. Dick in which tells the story of a group of drug using friends based on Philip K. Dick's own experiences as a drug user and the experiences of his friends. The story takes place seven years from now and tells the story of an undercover narcotics agent who is simaltaneously an addict. The interested me in several ways, first of all the fact that the film was adapted in two ways. Originally a book adapted to a live action film, and then Richard Linklater had decided that the film would be animated through a technique very similar to rotorscoping allowing the entire film to have a cel shaded effect. This was no small task and did take 18 months of post production and over 350 man hours per minute of film. But the result is fantastic giving the film its very own individual style, and the style of the visuals really helps the complexities of the story. Due to the fact that throughout the film many of the characters are hallucinating it helps that the look of the film is consitant through these hallucinations and also when something is really happening. Because the alternative to this would have been to use CGI to create the hallucinations it would have been far too obvious when a character was hallucinating when perhaps for the purpose of story it shouldn't have been. The film did have some slow points in terms of narrative and particularly character dialogue, the problem with the entire set of characters being high throughout the film is that their conversations, whilst being what is needed for the story, are a little bit hard to follow or just make a lot less sense than a normal conversation. However as the film nears the end I found that the story really came together and personally I loved the ending so it was definately worth watching all the pointless at times conversations to get there.

Favourite Flip Shorts

There were a large number of the Flip Animation Festival Shorts that I really liked for various reasons. Of the first set of shorts Escale by Elea Gobbe-Mevellec struck me as an incredibly beautiful piece of animation. The story itself was very touching, but the style in which it was presented was even more impressive it was handrawn with a very simplistic style of line at times, especially when it came to drawing the faces of characters however the rest of the image retained a lot of detail. Scenes in the bar, where the sailors spent time when at port, were amusing especially the relationships between the women and the patrons of the bar.

Also from the first set was Deadline by Bang-yao Liu, this piece was impressive as it was shot in stop motion with the animator working at his desk and the animation being made on the wall above him using only post-it notes. The use of post-it notes gave the things he was animating a really pixelated feel, but none the less looked very different due to the use of the different medium. This was the main reason i liked the piece because of its unusual style and for using a material not normally used in animation. Also sections when the character of the animator was interacting with the post-its on the wall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpWM0FNPZSs

In the second set of shorts I watched I particularly like "the Hidden life of the burrowing Owl" by Mike Roush. The layout of the animation as a documentary was a nice touch. But what struck me as a brilliant idea was the parts of the story was the sections when the character of the burrowing owl acted in the opposite way to which the observer thought the species should act. The ending in particular when the burrowing owl, instead of hiding like he should attacks the car that killed his mate was rather ironic and ended the piece with me laughing because of it. For these reasons I thought it was a really good piece of animation.

The Final short I am going to talk about was from the Brother's Mcloed's ten animated films that had influenced them in certain ways. I found two of the shorts on their list rather disturbing, the Adventures of Pocketboy for the obvious reason that I was warned about before hand when the brothers Mcloed said "if yo u have an aversion to plastercine penises please leave now". But the other film that I wasn't so keen on was Suzi Templeton's Dog, the short film was incredibly dark and bleak and despite the animation being very good did nothing but depress and disturn me when the boys father tries to smother the dog to death and failing that caves the dogs head in with a lamp. The culmination of the entire piece I didn't find enjoyable at all because it was relentless in how depressing it was.

Sita Sings the Blues

Sita Sings the Blues is a fantastic piece of animation. The entire animation as a piece is rather complicated as it contains two parallel storyline and three different animated styles. Although i felt the combination of different animated styles really lends itself well to the piece, I also was impressed by the modern take on the story of Rama and Sita, not least the choice to tell part of the story through blues songs alone. The story is narrated by three figures and tell part of the story of Rama and Sita, the animation is fairly simplistic in these sections, apart from on the narrators, as the characters appear to be cut out images that are moved as whole images. However the purpose of these sections of the film is to explain simply the story, making the film very accessable for those who don't know the story well or even at all. The second style of Animation is a much more detailed and individual take on the design of the characters from the story of Rama and Sita, and although they look different to the same characters they represent in the narration they look similar enough to avoid confusion. The really interesting feature is the choice to set it musically to a soundtrack of blues songs to tell the story from Sita's point of view. The final style of animation is also the parrallel story which takes place in modern times in a combination of the western world and india, and as such has a very different style of animation to the other areas of the film. The parrallel story tells the story of Rama and Sita in a modern context. As a result the Animated film does wonders for an old tale, in modernising the original story with more recent music and also doing a completely modernised version.

I have been concentrating some what on looking at the sound in animation at the moment and Sita Sings the Blues really intrigues me from this point of view, the choice to tell a story in the style of a musical but with songs that where written hundreds of years afterwards is an inspired idea. And the choice of blues songs do really help to convery Sita's emotions and the story. Whilst it doesn't do anything as daring as having a feature length film with no dialogue for the first forty minutes, Sita Sings the Blues is a very different approach to telling classic tale and uses sound superbly

La Voyage dans la Lune

La Voyage dans la Lune, translates to a Trip to the Moon, is a short black and white film directed and filmed by George Mellies in 1902. Mellies is in many ways a pioneer of a variety of modern special effects. He began his career as a stage magician before progressing into becoming a film maker. Mellies loved the magic of film making, and was in many ways obsessed with illusion. It was these illusions in his films that made them so impressive. On film he could perform many tricks a magician could but even easier and in completely different context. He discovered what became known as the "mid shot trick" when film jammed on one of his early cameras. This special effect allowed Mellies to give the illusion of the magician disappearing and reappearing a woman. Because Mellies was a master of stage arts and how to get the best out of a theatre production from his time running the Robert Houdan theatre, coupled with his knowledge of his special effects, his films really were ahead of their time in many ways. In one of Mellies films he is credited from using double exposure and splicing film back together, only he exposed the reel of film seven times. This is so significant for me as this effect that Mellies was using in the 1930's was still considered state of the art special effects when it was used by the special effects team working on Star Wars in 1977, thats how far ahead of his time Mellies was.

La Voyage dans la Lune was filmed with a mix of live action film and painting sets. Much the same as a theatre production uses a set and actors. This was Mellies signature style by this point. There were also a number of other points in the film that highlight it as Mellies, for instance the use of actors and actresses as the stars and other planets. Not only this but the short film, running only eight minutes long on 25 frames a second, has had a large influence in popular culture. Everything from rock group Smashing Pumpkins very Mellies inspired music video for the song tonight tonight to comedy from the Mighty Boosh making use of Mellies moon with a face.

Pencils to Pixels

Pencils to Pixels details the history of classical cel animation all the way up to digital animation and even 3D animation pioneered by Pixar. One of the earliest animation's was Walter McKay's Gertie the Dinosaur in which Walter McKay himself intereacted with the moving animation of his dinosaur Gertie. McKay would talk to Gertie calling her over to him and offering her an apple that was thrown onto the screen. After Gertie the Dinosaur came the first animated superstar Felix the Cat who inspired a generations worth of animated characters. Felix was also the first animated character to be anthropomorphized, by which an animal was given human characteristics. Animation improved in leaps and bounds Walt Disney's Steam Boat Willie, the first animation with recorded sound rather than live music being played in time with the animation, inspired Walt Disney to create the first full length animated film Snow White in 1936. The project took four years to complete, with 600 animators working on the 83 minutes film. The work was so intense that some animators booked themselves into hospital in time for the end of filming. Disney followed the Success of Snow White with Bambi in 1942, and continued to make cel animated films for years. But in 1995 a new form of animation was discovered. Pixar animation studios was bought from Lucas Arts for $10 million by Steve Jobs, head of Apple, John Lasseter took Computer Animation which was largely developed as a science rather than an art form and applied the prinicples of animation to his work, the result was the short Luxo Lamp. This short was very successful and it allowed Pixar to work on their first feature length animation Toy Story, Pixar made the largest change to animation in 60 years and like Disney had completely revolutionised the art form. Film makers Dreamworks have criticized Cel animation claiming that the art form is dead, but with Disney returning to the Cel roots on thier next feature length film and studios such as Studio Gihbli making animations such as Spirited Away, Princess Monoko a new benchmark has been raised for the Cel Animation industry and it looks that for many years it is anything but dead.