Compression & Colour Selection

3D Max animation tutorial!

Leon posted me this link to Lynda.com Training for what he swore was an excelent tutorial for animation in 3D studio max.

AquaSixio

Work posted on Digicova by the artist AquaSixo.

One Minute Puberty

Lewis just showed me this on Vimeo

One Minute Puberty from bitteschön.tv on Vimeo.

Action Painting

Jonas Gerard live painting. I like his use of color and the energy in his work!

Conversation With Rob

Ok, I was just talking to my personal tutor Rob. He suggested that I look into a slightly different technique, again I find it a strange coincidence that what he suggests ends up overlapping with the some of the work that I have been doing, particularly with the Ink drawings that I did in Life drawing class last Friday. I also like that a strange coincidence occurred within the conversation. I asked if he entered anything strange into his religion category in his census. He stated he had filled out Holistic in other for his whole family. Whilst we were talking I was playing the 5 lives of an artist video featuring Raghava KK. Within seconds of what we discussed regarding religion, Raghava was talking about his fathers Holistic approach to life, a strange little coincidence. I now take these as good signs, like the universe saying, "ey, Ste. This way, over here..."

Anyways, Rob showed me a charcoal experiment he had done in his spare time and posted on his blog. The animation is a continuous image, or one background that he has drawn over again and again, using an eraser to cut into the charcoal.

He then showed me the work of William Kentridge (artist/ animator) who uses the same technique of using one board/ piece of paper for each of his scenes. One video describes how he uses charcoal to create his transformable animations. The second video shows the variety of visual styles that William Kentridge workes with and the extent of his experimentation. He discusses his career and why he does what he does.

Watch the full episode. See more ART:21.

Seeing these methods being used filled in a blank in my mined. Last friday I had been using inks to draw during Annikas life drawing classes. Her opinion was that what I produced there was much more visually interesting than anything else that I had produced. It is possible that I could use techniques similar to William Kentridge's in order to make this animate. I could also combine this with the Vibrant Raghava KK style colors and backgrounds to form the possitive, passionate energy that I intend to create.



I think at first It may be possible to achieve this with Inks, but I should also consider watered down Acrylics or Oils. Possibly even Gouache or Water colors.
In response to this Rob showed me Oil on glass animations such as Em Coopers show reel, for a bit of variety and Alexander Petrov's "The Old Man and the Sea", which appears to be pretty much the pinical of oil on glass animation. I have never seen it before, It is so beautiful!





This style of animation. Of drawing over the previous image rather than on a new page reminds me of the work of Marissa Delbrasine and her animation "Seasons" which used the same technique except drawing with sand instead.



Also, Finally a quick mention to an art style that influenced my painting in the life drawing class. Bellow is a video of Yoji Shinkawa at work during a live art show, I believe that I was trying to emulate his technique slightly with the use of the acrylics and inks. Just trying to go a little wild with my mark making and letting the fluid nature of the medum take over and run down the page.

Smoke Bombs

Just got linked this, might make some more posts on it soon. Time for bed tho!

Things to blog, my opinions on death and interactions with people around as as the most important element of our existence, this is important aftyer talking about the sex and relationships side of ni9ght swimming and everlong, the important things are what I said to Kez and Lizes brother about the people ive lost and my hope of knowing them better.

Niughtswimming , the fear and Everlong song meanings

Everlong in perticular!

Papagayo

I saw this software being used in the studio the other day (think it was Ellis).
It is called Papagayo and is for Lip Syncing. It was developed by Lost Marble and is available at LostMarble.com.

D90

I rented out a Nikon D90 two days ago and have just been experimenting with shooting film (and familiarising myself with the camera as a whole). In order to do this I checked out a few short tutorial videos on YouTube, short sweet introductions to the cameras functions brought to us by Elite Video and presented by a wonderful chap called Jon. Enjoy.

Back Water Gospells

Made a random friend in the studio last week, Ben something or other. Anyways he knows his onions when it comes to animation and he showed me this short film. The Back Water Gospels from the Animation Workshop. Work from this studio/school seems really awesome. They have a vimeo profile as well.

The Backwater Gospel from The Animation Workshop on Vimeo.

Burning Man

Here is a post I made in the travel plan blog that I started today. It is all about the
Burning Man festival in Nevada's Black Rock Dessert. I think that there will be a few cross over points between my travel blog and this one as they are both affected by my changing Ideals and life choices, also the direction I feel that I would like to take in life.
If you have been following my blog with an interest in my work and where it is going then I recommend that you read this post. It is important to where my work may go over the next few weeks.

30 Tutorials

Here are 30 cool photoshop tutorials that I should commit to completing, might be fun doing stuff for friends, Individual posters for them and the like hmmmm.....

Below is an example of one of the posters you could create:

Limitless

Here is a trailer for the film Limitless. Dont know much about it yet, but it seems to describe at least one of the themes I was looking at, in creating a hyper reality whereby the limits of your potential or more the high points of your existence can be drawn out or made permenent rather than fleeting. It also seems to be a commentary on addiction and one drug in perticular, Adderall.

VW Transparent Factory

Incredible looking VW factory in Germany.

FreedomLab

Saw this post on Derek's wall, thought it would be worth saving, interesting site!

Michael Landry

Earlier this year I overheard and watched the beginning of a documentary film looking at the best known work of the young British artist Michael Landry. The film covered his 2001 "installation" Break-down. The film which I later borrowed in full from my lecturer Anika covered much of Landry's career as an artist up until that point, his work mostly covered issues of consumerism. "Closing down Sale" was exhibited at his gallery with artwork displayed in trolleys and bargain bins and with posters and a tannoy encouraging customers to buy artwork at bargain prices, the piece was apparently intended to comment on the commodification of art. His most recognised piece before Breakdown was Scrapheap services, which produced little saleable work. I believe it existed in the form of a installation I and a series of videos showing thousands of little paper people being rounded up and disposed of. I guess it showed certain elements of society as a disposable commodity or something. Not all that interesting to me and my project, but another comment on ways in which things can have value or be disposable.

The video did cover this early work and featured interviews with Landry Discussing the processes of creating them and his motivation for the work, the majority of the film featured his most famous work "Break-Down", it covered the buildup to the project, footage of the installation and interviews afterwards of Landry showing how it had affected him and some elements of him slowly re-accumulating some of life's essentials.

The work itself consisted of Landry packing up and cataloguing every single possession that he had or owned such as his car, bank cards, house keys, birth certificate, old love letters from ex's, his fathers old coat that had been given to him that took his mother a whole year to pay for. These are just a few examples of possessions that he sacrificed for the project. In total he catalogued 7227 items that he owned. The next step in the project was to systematically destroy all of them.

The method for this was to rent a space from a department store and set up a small conveyor belt based workshop that operated to look like but serve the opposite function of a production line. All of these possessions were deconstructed into there component parts before being passed through an industrial shredder.

Here is a small segment of the film:

I found this video incredibly empowering when I watched it (it has been over 10 weeks now, this is a very late post) as I myself was staggered by the amount of things that I own and am attached to. It reminded me of two events in my life where I was shocked by the accumulated mass of my belongings. The first was when I returned from a trip to New Zealand. I arrived at a house I was renting and staying in with friends. Upon entering my room I was greeted by a huge pile of boxes in the middle of the room, I asked my friend Leon "Who else is storing stuff in this room?" his response was "Know one, this is all yours". Well I was shocked, it had been a whole summer since I had seen any of this stuff and I remember barely being able to wait to get back to some of it but I was shocked by just how much stuff I actually owned. I recall sorting through the boxes and finding things that I forgot I had. I thought later that surely if I forgot I owned it then surely I didn't need it?

The second time this happened was nearly a year ago now, I moved out of a house I was renting with someone and returned to Wolverhampton. We filled a whole pick up truck and a large trailer with all of my belongings. Whilst driving back home I turned around and saw through the rear window, all these things that I was taking with me. I imagined the weight of it, the effort the car was having to make dragging it and the impact on the environment that this had. The instant I looked over my shoulder I thought that it looked like I was carrying it all on my back and was reminded of a character from the film "The Labyrinth". A little old lady that lives in a junk yard collecting random items and adding them to the pile on her back, keeping hold of these "Valuable" things until they form a giant mound of rubbish on her back that forms her body but dwarfs what =must be her actual body. It makes for quite a miserable, monstrous form.

The subtext is that the protagonist is weighed down by all this "Junk" that she clings onto for one reason or another and that she doesn't really need any of it and that by escaping it she can identify and engage with what is really important in her life.

I was reminded of this by Landry's art work but also by his reaction to some more specific pieces of that he destroyed as a part of the work. He stated that he didn't mind seeing a lot of things go, but every now and then he would see something and hope that someone in the crowd would snatch it and run away with it so that it could be saved. I believe this reffed to his dads old coat, old drawings, pieces of art given to him by friends and in particular old love letters. He described the process of finding them when he was cataloguing his items for the project. He said the letters and some other personal objects he destroyed, he come across whilst cataloguing his goods having forgotten that he had them. He described what was a touching moment finding this little treasure from his past and being re-connected to a time in his life. I find it amazing that he was able to destroy these things. Yet it is still an important process as if they are really important to him he will remember them and if not then perhaps they weren't that important.

I will cover this again in a later post but I find these Items, the ones which we have a particular emotional attachment too of great interest.

After destroying all of his belongings we were shown Landry living with friends slowly rebuilding the essential elements of his life. One of the first things he did was apply for a new copy of his birth certificate as he would need this to apply for many other things. The second was to replace his Bank card so he could regain access to any money that he still had. Clothes were then donated to him by his friends and family as well as money to replace anything of importance. In a way I guess many of these things are essential in our society but there is a little bit of me that was disappointed that he reverted back to the same old routine, although I guess the impact of this complete 'refresh' would take longer to show on his life. I still imagine he was empowered in many ways by this complete material detachment, although he did seem a little vulnerable afterwards.

Anyways, a few weeks into the first term of this year I visited Wolverhampton and spoke with my friend Odera, I discussed this work with him and his response was to tell me about an installation he had heard about that he thought was at the Tate over the summer (might have been my mistake, cant remember) where there was a hole in the ground that artists were encouraged to throw there work into from a great height, damaging there work. This work would later be collected and destroyed. It took me a while to find it as it was at the South London Gallery but as it turns out it was called Art Bin and was in fact another project by Michael Landry. The premise being that artists donate/ sacrifice there work. I think that this is interesting in two ways, 1st destroying something that you have an attachment too and have spent many hours of hard work on and second to prevent yourself being to precious as an artist by willing do destroy it and move on.

Expression

Ok, so I've been thinking about what I might want to express. There is a picture I took of myself almost exactly a year ago now when I was deeply unhappy and quite emotionally stressed. I remember this picture because I recall trying to smile for it... but I just couldn't squeeze one out, it shows in the picture. I was just thinking this as the starting point of my project and how I moved from that point to an almost explosively energetic summer, where I felt more awake, more alert and more alive than ever before. It made me think of the work I wanted to do as the Idea of a new start, starting something new, slash and Burn if you will. But using what may have happened to you as a source of growth and strength, looking on any negativity as a positive thing.

Raghava KK

Raghava KK's website.

Beautiful Imagery

I found this blogg by Bunny Mandala which has some truly amasing visuals up, I just dont want to forget about it.

Kevin Thakkar

A Soho artist who has takne manny pictures of Raghava K.K's work. Here you can find a good gallery showing a lot of Raghavas work, enjoy.

K.K. Raghava

I allready made a post about this artists and the talk that he gave at a TED conference.
The video bellow shows the development of his project:
"Anthropomorphism-when paintings dance" where he collaberated with a dance groop by painting on there bodies. Read this article for more information.



I find it interesting that an artist who I allready found so insperational has created work in which I see parralels with what I now want to achieve. I like the way that he paints onto the bodies of the dancers in order to mke his work come to life. I love the horrezontal lines that appear cutting across his gestures when the fabric creases as he draggs his fingers over it. His use of colour and the simplicity of the faces that he paints astound me, his work is so vibrant. I want to practice painting in this way, I stocked up on actylic and cheep canvases for this very purpose, I guess I also have a tonne of cardboard that I could use.

Animex Animation Festival

A friend posted me a link to the Animex Festivals site. Its an international festival of animation and video games held up at Teeside university in Middlesbrough. I figure it would be worth while remembering it.

What am I doing?

Well over the weekend (well OK the weekend before last, I've just been too lazy to post) I felt as If I had a bit of a brainwave. I was chilling out at home wondering what I could do next with my project. I believe I was still at a point where I was finishing off my second test animation, (I will post some examples of what my work looks like at present soon). I had developed a visual style where that I felt could possibly be used to express some of the feelings and emotions of feeling truly alive, a heightened sense of reality or being if you will.


However I had no narrative or Idea of exactly how or why I would or should deliver this animation style. However over the weekend a few ingredients seemed to mix together inside my brain and I will now describe how as to share my current understanding of my project.


During one of our group discussions before the end of the week I created a mood book and mood board using images that I had gathered from the library over the first term. Whilst finally printing them off and forming them into a booklet/ mood board form I realised there was a general theme or similarity/ mood between certain pieces, there was a degree of consistency. In particular an enthral, washed out style using inks, interesting, detailed line work, mysterious forests, beautiful fashion models and textured hand made paper.


I showed the mood board that I had produced, along with my mood book to the goop. It was agreed that there was a consistency that matched the line work that I had produced for my animation tests ( I think there was anyways, I thought there was).


Anyways, Derek highlighted a couple of images he liked which were of Moddels with Biro (or Biro effect) drawings on there faces and bodies. Derek suggested that if I produced something like this then it would be something that could be seen as marketable/ transferable or of interest to employers or clients. Well... at first I don't think I was too interested in this, I only used these images because I liked the line quality and shading in the Biro drawings and also to inform others that I was open to Ideas outside of just my drawings and drawing style. All though in all honesty I was not particularly interested in pursuing this particular combination of techniques or "selling out" my artistic ideals as Derek put it in order to present myself as more employable.


Although, I did have a slight interest in adding effects to live action, I had seen Ashley Connely working on these techniques the previous year and decided it would be worth going through the video co-pilot tutorial and give it a shot.


However the very next day I saw something that influenced me and pushed me a little further in this direction. James Flemming (a previous student that I knew during my second year) visited the university to give a presentation on Double Negatives work (the company he now works for down in Soho) and what exactly they do. A large portion of his talk was dedicated to Match Moving, he even recommended this book: Match Moving (the invisible art of camera tracking) to all in attendance. The process described is of tracking special affects to live footage, He stated that adding an out of focus object between you and your background with plenty of motion blur would help with the tracking and increasing the depth of field. I just need to remember that! Although this book will apparently provide all of the information required.


Anyways, I acknowledged that during the talk I probably wondered how I could use this but I still don't think that the Idea of using live actors to capture a performance had set in.


The next day (Saturday) I watched Black Swan, I enjoyed it thoroughly. There was a key scene, where Natalie Portmans character finally makes her transition into the black Swan, she appears on stage, almost manic with blood red eyes hidden under a veil which gives her skin an unnatural appearance. She is charged, excited and short ob breath riding the adrenalin rush, believing that she had just killed her rival. For her this is a powerful transition and although it is generated through negative actions, this is the kind of high point in ones existence that I wish I could capture or express, however this is also throughout the contrast in Natalie Portmans performance of the duality of her character Nina.

I actually related to this in my own way and was charged and empowered by it. It reminded me of my summer, I have always viewed myself as meek and anti social, however during the summer for reasons outside of my control, for a few months I was incredibly outgoing, bold, perceptive, aggressive and seductive even. It was outside of my control a little rabid in nature and completely effortless (god knows why I actually went to the effort of stopping and controlling myself) but this transformation in the character, her achieving the transformation or gaining the abilities that she desired reminded me of this and how effortless some of the actions listed above were whilst I was in that state and how I felt truly on edge, Alive and engaged with my surroundings at all times bordering on feeling lethal by comparison to the people around me.

Anyways, what I'm saying is at the dramatic height of the film I became quite excited and my pulse raced, it reminded me of feeling a certain way and brought it back and I'm talking about Nina's transition, not the sex scenes. :P

So anyways, I went to sleep and the next day whilst trying to focus on work but recalling the film a few things just seemed to fall into place inside my mind.

I would use a previously conceived narrative or Idea (someone elses' work) which Derek had already suggested that we use as a starting point. I would look at dances that already exist and through which the movement suggests the Ideas and feelings that I wanted to express.
For this I would have to do a great deal of research into dancing.
In addition I would record a live performance of dancers performing someone else's dance and use the image tracking techniques (I decided that ti was fate that provided 3-4 sources suggesting it to me) in order to impose my drawing techniques over the live footage. That is one possibility anyways. I also liked that as soon as I had decided to do this I walked over to the book shelf in my room, picking up a large book on ballet that I had brought over the summer in a sale (£1.50) At the time I bought it I told myself that it would be of use to me at some point.

Now even though I used the word fate, it is not something in particular that I believe in, but I just find it interesting that all these things have fallen into place, and possibly just in time at that.
I also like that looking through all the images on fashion and models etc that I found over the course of my research they are all tied in/ useful or will come in handy as subjects of either study or inspiration.

Stuff from Le On

Here are some links my friend Leon sent me of some interesting and funny animations, they arent perticularly relevent to my work, but they are fun or interesting non the less.

There is Harry Partridges YouTube page.
And this interesting projection instellation on the side of a building.

Thought of You

My friend Ash Bonner found this animation online, It is called "Thought of you" by Ryan Woodward. Im not sure if it is a good thing for me to have come across his work right now having decided that dance was a possible avenue for me to explore, given the methods that I wanted to use (which appear to be very similar to what Ryan has done here) it raises the question, what would be the point of me doing this if it has allready been done?

This has made matters difficult for me, not only has something similar to what I want to do been done, but it has been done so amazingly well, I need to figure out what I could do differently. To begin with I must recognize that there are 3 key elements that are different with what I want to achieve. My line work will be very different as I still intend to use a very free method of drawing by not observing the page, second of all I may be using video footage of the dancers and using image tracking and match moving to add my animation to the footage. Finlay my approach to narrative will be a little different, his narrative seems to be about love and a loose interpretation of "the complexities of intimate relationships". This initially touched upon what I wanted to express as it is a universal way of expressing the high points of your existence that I believe many people could relate or aspire to. So now I feel I will have to lean away from it somewhat, I had already been thinking that I may need to do this but now I feel it is necessary in order to make my work stand on its own. The key themes that I have been gravitating towards were the high pints of life, or how they feel when you feel truly alive such as escaping from your limitations, being on edge and constantly excited and feeling of quickening!
Something along those lines anyways as I still struggle to express what it is.

The final difference I have highlighted draws attention to what is (to me) the most interesting elemental ideas in Ryan's work. The way in which he adds to the dancers performance with elements such as wind (woman turning into flowing wisps) watery (her collapsing into a puddle) fire (silhouetted on the mans legs) and particularly the three that excite me the most, the surge of electricity between there hands, the bubbles of light and the most powerful being the woman exploding. I think these are excellent at expressing the allmost inexpressible feelings contained within the characters. This comes together through the excellent dance choreography to express and these emotions and the sense of a relationship. I feel that these elements added at the end of the expressions work to heighten them. I feel I will have to look again at the use of these and how I could create a similar form of expression (whilst staying original). I think I could write an essay on this piece of work.

I also like the simple format the animation is presented in, on a 2D stage, also the soundtrack and use of two dancers, but I may need take a different approach rather than sticking with what I have in my mind now.

Here is his YouTube Profile and in addition his own site where a greater variety of his work including his story board work and his illustrations. The official site for Thought of you features a preview of the making of which is quite insightful. Similar information and visuals can be found here in blog form.

Bellow is the Animation and here is the making of preview. It is important to view this as I intended to approach a dance school (or many) and form a collaboration.

Taylor James

Here is a link to a creative studio that was recommended to me by Karen Dennis, my dissertation lecturer. I believe they presented there work or a short film at an event she visited. The studio specialises in the production of high end CGI as well as photography and cinematography, seamlessly blending the two for both video and print.

History of Gaming

Le On sent me this

Ink Blot/ Water Colour

Great Little Tutorial

Lamp Shade

Well spent a bit of the morning thinking about lamps as I want a new lamp for my bedside table, a nice one at that. Anyways I found this and figured that it might eventualy be of some use, I should easily be able to modify the design to better suit my own tastes.

Raghava KK

I found this TED talk incredibly inspirational. Proof that I'm not doing enough with my life or my time. Not so much advice to be taken for my work but more for the way that I live my life.

Alice in Wonderland

OK, this is the third link on this kind of subject so I guess its official, I am a pervert. But still more artwork inspired by children's fairy tales. :P


















Next, another collection of dolls, this time sad Emo dolls, no info on artist as of yet.



















Artist Levi van Velum uses his head as a canvas, drawing and adhering various substances and patterns too his own head. I found his work here first. Also, for all the Tron fans out there at the moment check out these experiments of his!

Random Stuff

First is some cool concept art of motorcycles which caught my eye.












This led me to a page covering a variety of crazy modified motorcycles. Awesome.














Next some bizarre products and gadgets that inspire the imagination.





















Some awesome Lego creations.



















A Master Chief hat and visor which is quite cool.



















Finally, some intensely beautiful buildings (all Libraries) that I need to see with my own eyes.

Pages of Drawings

First up is a page of Disney Esq characters (all hot chicks) but for a more adult audience. The art work was created by Jeffrey Scott Campbell, an American Comic book Artist. Bellow is the image that first caught my attention.



















In addition I found these works (more Disney Princesses) by Jeffrey Thomas which I also think are quite awesome.



















Next are a series of artworks inspired by Escher's self drawing hands.













Then a page of works by Mark Fredrikson, most famous for his work on Mad Magazine.



















Work by TortilloN, an 18 year old artist from the Ukraine with some bad ass pencil skills.



















Finlay for this post a page of unique and interesting sand witches, yummy!

Random Images

Here are three random Images I found, no information on there authors but I thought they were either awesome, funny or hot so worth saving.