Research - Contemporary Influences

Fluorescent Hill
http://www.fluorescenthill.com/video/onyourway.html
Mark Lomond and Johanne Ste-Marie, also known as Fluorescent Hill, direct animations for music videos, festivals and adverts. Their animations tend to involve at least some traditional animation, often including photographs or digital work. For instance, one of their music videos, for the track "On Your Way", uses traditionally animated characters and what I sincerely hope are photographs for the background, because if they are animated or painted, they look far too realistic. I quite liked the aesthetic, because I feel the colours were nice, with the greens and the brightly coloured characters.

Weirdly, the characters somewhat remind me of the Gruffalo. I, personally, feel like I'd like to have textured trees, but I'd like my trees to look more fanciful, because I'd like to try and mimic what I imagined when I was a child, when I was told stories. When I was told about twisted trees, for instance, I would always imagine twisted up paper. Perhaps I will make a set, but not with real trees the way this was (hopefully) made.

Saimon Chow
http://www.saimanchow.com/
I have to say, I'm not a fan of this guy's work. I am not a fan of art that supposedly has a deep meaning, which is completely not apparent in the art itself. Sometimes I can deal with it if the art itself is visually pleasing to me, but I feel this isn't due to the confusing shapes and colours.

I think the one piece of work I like from this is the very non-indicative Goopocalypse adverts. I really enjoyed those, and how they worked with the fact their characters were Creme Eggs. For instance, one of the Screme Eggs, acting like zombies, is split in half, and 'crawling'. Since it's a Creme Egg, it doesn't leave a trail of blood, but filling. I find it interesting that they took a situation that, were the characters human beings, would be horrific and gory, and turned it funny.

I also think it was quite interesting that the creators have made characters that I can feel empathy for... Out of eggs. This is especially evident in the "Last Stand" advert, where three eggs escape the Screme Egg zombie apocalypse. I was honestly quietly cheering for these characters during the video. I think a big part of how these Eggs have made such good characters is that they have very clear personalities. One starts the animation hiding, clearly a civillian, another egg has a Rambo-style bandana, and is clearly the action hero leader.

Also, in the "Last Stand" advert, the Creme Egg survivors have a suped up car with whisks on the wheels and a spatula on the front. This is a hilarious addition, because the additions are cooking utensils clearly associated with eggs, and it's an interesting parallel to real life when the situation is an apocalypse of zombie chocolate eggs. Also, Creme Egg survivors in a Mad Max style weaponized car. It simply must be seen to be believed.

Bruno Mayor
http://www.brunomayor.com/
I'm somewhat apathetic of this man's work. A lot of it is designed to look a little bit creepy, which is actually a thing I often appreciate. I believe he uses some rotoscoping on some of his animations, putting different images on top of some edited film of a live person.

However, my personal favourite of his animations is "Guerre Naive". This film has 3D animation, designed to look like stopmotion, and with some 2D effects put on top. I like this, because it creates an interesting contrast, with the brighter 2D effects, yet they also keep a strange kind of togetherness, with the cartoonish designs of the characters. I doubt I will take much from this man's work, due to my wish to have a very different aesthetic for my own animation.

Joel Trussell
http://www.joeltrussell.com/
I quite like this guy's work! I find it interesting how he creates engaging characters out of inanimate objects, with animation digitally rotoscoped over the top. Of course, he also does animations another way, which is 2D animation. However, his puppetry is more recognisable. I think my personal favourite of his works is "Carrot and Stick", about, well, a carrot and a stick. What I like about it is the aforementioned engaging characters out of inanimate objects, but also how there's a combination of how he uses the puppets. Usually, the characters are obviously props held in someone's hands, with facial expressions and such rotoscoped on top.

But, in long shots, the faces vanish, and the props are simply used in conjunction with a live dog. The reason for this is explained in the animation.

SWOT Analysis

To learn about what skills the careers that I would like to work in in the creative industry would require, I went to creativeskillset.org and had a look at how my skills and weaknesses would apply. However, I also had to examine my skills on their own merits.

Strengths Good at drawing Especially frozen motion Creative Film literate Leadership qualities Storyteller Understanding of image layout and composition	Weaknesses Decision making Organisational skills Drawing consistently Tact
Opportunities In College for a creative industry course Competitions such as the Macmillan Prize and Illustration Friday Websites Word of mouth	Threats Judgement based on my disability Communication problems Lack of confidence with software Lack of confidence

Skill Analysis in Careers

I went into creativeskillset.org and examined different careers in the creative industry, before comparing my skills and weaknesses against the skills that would be required in the specific careers.

Storyboard artist

Skills: Film literate, good storyteller, understanding on sequential imaging, layout and composition. Should be able to work either alone or in team, and take direction.

Needs Development: Drawing consistently, everything the same size. Familiarity with storyboard software.

Animator CGI

Skills: A feel for movement and timing, creative and artistic qualities, appropriate technical skills. For character animation, acting talent, observational skills and animation experience. Take direction, work in a team. Organisational skills, communication skills and attention to detail.

Needs Development: Animation experience.

Director

Skills: Creativity, imagination, artistic flair, storytelling, film literacy, leadership qualities.

Needs Development: decision making, organisational skills, tact, management.

Illustrator

Skills: Drawing skills, working to a brief, Creativity, understanding of computer graphics

Needs Development: Time management, selling ideas and making presentations

Adventures In Photoshop 2: Revenge of the Linework

In College, we've been asked to create pictures for a thing called the Lookbook, a book filled with examples from the students work, as well as a profile written by the students themselves. One of these images is the profile image, created in A3, but meant to be sized down to a tiny image. We created them in A3 so that we could later print them out full size and use them as portfolio work.

I may have gone slightly overboard on it, I created four.

This is the first one I completed. It was part of a full character, but I decided that the arm holding the axe would look cool as it's own image. I outlined the pen drawing in Adobe Illustrator, as I did for each of the following pictures, but this one is distinct for the fact that I selected a different style of line, one which looked like pencil lines. I decided, upon selecting that line style, that I wanted this piece to look hand drawn, as if it had been illustrated in a book. Hence using a texture of old paper, and letting myself miss spots when colouring.

This one I decided to give a somewhat pop-art like look, with flat colours and invisible linework over a gradient background. I'm somewhat annoyed that her rope vanishes into the background at points, but I feel it would likely draw too much attention to it. I'm especially proud of her right hand, and how it looks lined.

This one is more traditionally coloured and shaded, but it also has invisible linework. The character featured is the character I play in Dungeons and Dragons, whose name is Bree Cedarfoot. I chose to make Bree's linework invisible, as it gave the image of her an airier appearance, which I felt suited Bree as a character better. Bree is something which, in Dungeons and Dragons, is called a Halfling. However, Halflings in Dungeons and Dragons are inspired by Tolkien's Hobbits. In turn, Bree's outfit in this image takes heavy inspiration from Bilbo Baggins' outfit in The Hobbit movies.

This was the final image I completed, as well as the one which I chose as my profile image for the Lookbook. Similar to the first drawing, I wanted to lend this one a hand drawn appearance, through missing spots while colouring it. However, where before I wanted it to look like an illustration in an old book, this one I wanted to look childlike and innocent, like how I imagined the bag to be. I gave it a simple striped background, with warm brown colours to accent the bag itself. I wanted the bag to be visible, but not to pop too much.