Year Overview: Year 3 Blog Content

This post contains links to all my work and is divided into the two categories of my Course Work, Independent Practice and Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner.

A quick warning about this post all the links work but for some reason when no mouse hovers the actual post, the Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner section looks like there are no links and when it does all the links light up and so does the text, just click the links  and it should take you to the desired post. I apologise about this I have gone of the link software several times and I don’t know what is causing this.

Independent Practice:

My Independent Practice process started with me deciding what I would do as my main project. I draw up some brainstorms to help me come up with ideas for my project as well as what I could possibly do within these projects during the process of making them.

Brainstorm 1,

Brainstorm 2

Once all my ideas for this project were presented clearly on a piece of paper, I began to decided which project I wanted to pursue for my final major project as long as it stay within the brief that we were given at the beginning of the year. The project I had chosen for my final major project was Bubble and Squeak, I created these two characters last year, but I wasn’t really happy with the way they had come out last year, so I decided to redesign them and create a new episode of Bubble and Squeak. Since I started a new project had had to come up with some new objectives and aims for said project:

Bubble and Squeak Aims and Targets

I started to then come up with several potential narratives for the animation, these scenarios where simple ideas that popped into my head during this creation process to find a suitable story for Bubble and Squeak to follow in this new animation:

Narrative Idea Inspiration,

Narrative 1,

Narrative 2,

Narrative 3,

Narrative 4,

Narrative 5,

Bubble and Squeak Narrative Ideas Development 1,

Bubble and Squeak Narrative Ideas Development 2,

Bubble and Squeak Narrative Ideas Development 3,

Bubble and Squeak Narrative Ideas Final Ideas 1,

Bubble and Squeak Narrative Ideas Final Ideas 2,

Bubble and Squeak Narrative Synopsis,

Once I found a suitable narrative I began to redesign the characters Bubble and Squeak putting them into various scenarios to see what sort of reactions that they would get involved in and how they would deal and react to them. This includes of course Bubble’s sudden change of species after I began to realise that him been a fish severely stunted the animation and it’s narrative:

Squeak Redesign Ideas,

Squeak Idea’s 2,

Bubbles Character Rethink,

Bubble Species experiment,

Bubbles Character Rethink, Crab vs Snail,

Bubble Redesign 2

Bubble and Squeak Sketches,

Bubble and Squeak Sketches 2,

Bubble and Squeak Animal Motion study,

Bubble and Squeak Sketches 3,

Bubble and Squeak Sketches 4,

Once I chosen the species Bubble would become I began to write up potential story boards to help make the narrative of the story that I had chosen and developed a lot easier to understand. These storyboards went through several different versions of the same story as well as different ones.

Storyboard 1, Storyboard 2, Storyboard 3, Storyboard 4, Storyboard 5,

I began to do tests in Adobe Flash to see if it was suitable for this project, I eventually found out that this was bad idea as it seemed to drain the life out of the story, the characters and the animation.

Flash Test 1,

Flash Test 2,

Flash test 3

I began to experiment with the line reader to create a stopmotion animations with hand made puppets of Bubble and Squeak the first few steps of my project were a little rough as I was still new to stopmotion animation.

Stopmotion Test 1,

Stopmotion Test 2: Bubbles,

Stopmotion Test 3: Colour,

Stopmotion Test 4: Colour 2,

Stopmotion Test 5: Squeak Asleep,

Stopmotion Test 6: Squeak Asleep 2

Once I grew confident enough to use the line reader I decided to use it and stopmotion to produce my final major project since I have never really used any other means of animating other than Flash so it might be a nice road to go down this year:

Bubble and Squeak Early Takes

This was one of my early takes at creating Bubble and Squeak via the line reader and stopmotion animation after my experiments, so their was still a lot of room for improvement, my later work see down below shows that I started to improve both in my understanding of the technology and the animation style.

Bubble and Squeak Opening,

Bubble and Squeak Climbing Prototype,

Bubble and Squeak Climbing Prototype 2,

Bubble and Squeak 3D Background Experiment,

Once I started to get the hang of this new type of animation I also began to compose more complicated scenes with my puppets as well as putting together my older animation clips to see how well the animation came together with some sound effects.

Bubble and Squeak Narrative Experiment,

Squeak Close up Experiment 1,

Bubble Close up Experiment,

Squeak Close up Experiment 2,

Bubble Close up Experiment 2,

Bubble and Squeak Climb Sink Part 1,

Bubble and Squeak Climb Sink Part 2,

Bubble’s Tap Attempt 1,

Leaky Tap Animation,

Bubble’s Solo Climb and Attempt V2,

Bubble and Squeak High Five,

Soaked,

Squeak Solo Climb and Fail,

Look at the Tap,

Soaked V2,

Squeak complains to Bubble,

Once I had done most of my scene I began to realise that I needed to also create my credit and opening sequence so I began to design design the Title Card and Credits in order for me to record this last sequence.

Title and Credits Cards Design,

Opening and Credits Animations,

Eventually I posted up my combine all my clips and sound affects to produce my first final version of Bubble and Squeak:

Bubble and Squeak V1,

Although after watching the completed video I realised their was still corrections to be made.

Bubble and Squeak Final Blog,

Bubble and Squeak Final Youtube,

During the process of creating Bubble and Squeak I also researched several different animation technologies, visited sites of exhibits from Hull City of Culture and done several sketches to help improve my overall art skills. As well as Develop my image in the art industry with creating my own business cards.

Animation Technology Research 1,

Animation Technology Research 2,

Animation Technology Research 3,

Animation Technology Research 4,

Google Web Designer 1,

Google Web Designer 2,

Independent Practice: Adobe Photoshop Practice 1: Line Work Notes,

Logo Ideas 1,

Logo Ideas 2,

Logo Ideas 3,

Logo Ideas 4,

Business Card Idea 1,

Business Card Idea 2,

Independent Practice: Lines of Thought Workshop,

Hull City of Culture: Opening Exhibits 1,

Hull City of Culture: Opening Exhibits 2,

Hull City of Culture: Opening Exhibits 3,

Hull City of Culture: The Propeller,

Hull City of Culture: Poppies Waving and Weeping Window

Independent Practice: Drawing Practice,

Independent Practice: Drawing Practice 2,

Independent Practice: Random Sketches 1,

Independent Practice: Random Sketches 2,

Independent Practice: Random Sketches 3,

Independent Practice: Random Sketches 4,

Independent Practice: Random Sketches 5,

Independent Practice: Random Sketches 6,

Independent Practice: Random Sketches 7,

Independent Practice Human Anatomy Research and Practise,

Independent Practice: Human Anatomy,

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner

My Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner project started with me trying to decide what I could do for a potential client project and who I could find as a client for said project or in another way a client who would provide me with a project for the third year course.

Client Project: Ideas,

Client Project: Women of the World or WOW!,

Now that I had decided what project I doing for a client of my choosing was, I was going to have to understand more about the women of Hull that were famous and I decided that 10 women would be a good number to help keep the length of the animation decent and interesting.

Women of the World or WOW! Women of Hull Research 1,

Women of the World or WOW! Women of Hull Research 2,

Women of the World or WOW! Women of Hull Research 3,

Women of the World or WOW! Women of Hull Research 4,

Women of the World or WOW! Women of Hull Research 5,

Once the women were chosen I began to draw up story boards of idea for potential narratives for this project. The ideas that I first created for these storyboard were only basic and I would later come back to design or develop new ones later on, some of the later on storyboards are after I started to do all animation redesigns for the women. These redesigns of these animations toke place after story board 3.

Women of the World or WOW! Women of Hull: Storyboard 1,

Women of the World or WOW! Women of Hull: Storyboard 2,

Women of the World or WOW! Storyboard 3,

Women of the World or WOW! Storyboard 4,

Women of the World or WOW! Storyboard 5,

WOW Storyboard 6,

The links below are my different ideas for the new animations, as well as some of the inspirations for them included:

Women of the World or WOW! Design Ideas 1,

Women of the World or WOW! Design Ideas 2,

Women of the World or WOW!: Phone Research,

Women of the World Maureen Lipman/Phone Sketches,

Hull City of Culture: Opening Exhibits 2,

From here I began to animate my project:

WOW Animation V1,

Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 5,

Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 11,

Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 17,

Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 24,

Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 30,

Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 35,

Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 41,

WOW Animation Changes,

WOW Animation Changes 2,

Once my main animation was finished I began to look for a potential client who would be willing to show my work to the public:

WOW potential clients for my project,

WOW potential clients for my project: Maritime Museum,

WOW potential clients for my project: Kadromah94,

WOW potential clients for my project: Kadromah94 part 2,

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner: Client Project WOW potential clients for my project: Kadromah94

One of the other locations I investigated for my client project was the media cafe the Kadromah94 located at 94 Alfred Gelder Street Hull, I went to investigate this as a potential client that would be able to host my project since it host a wide range of Media based events. When I visited the cafe, I asked a member of staff if I could talk to the manager of the establishment. I was asked why and I told them that I was a third year Animation student at Hull School of Art and Design and that I was looking for someone who could host one of my works to public as it is part of my course.  I was given a email address that the manger prefers to be emailed and that he is all ways busy so this is the best way to reach him. I email the manger of the Kardomjah94 once I got back:

I received a response two days later requesting that I send a MP4 format of the file and that I should try Humberfilm. Once I received this email I began to trying to find a way to converted my file for famous women of Hull into a MP4 unfortunately SWF files and FLA files can’t be tranfered into these formats without loosing actionscript3 which is a key component to my Famous Women of Hull Project, so my Tutor Gareth suggested that I do a screen recording of it and send my client that instead.

Independent Practice: Lines of Thought Workshop

This post is explain and show what I did during the Lines of Thought Workshop, this exhibit was to show pieces of work from various artists from across time, some of these works included Michelangelo, Leonardo and Picasso. The exhibit will remain at Hull University’s Brynmor Jones Library till 28th February 2017 before the exhibit is moved to one of the other two locations before it is returned to the National History Museum in London.

We start the workshop by talking with the exhibit managers before she set us a task of looking around the exhibit and looking at the art pieces that drew our attention without looking at information and trying to work out why we found it interesting for an hour. Afterwards we then went went round the gallery with the manger visiting each piece discussing why we found them interesting. I found several of these pieces very interesting as they not only showed what the artists were thinking at the time, as most of the works there were actually prototype sketches or idea that the artists had drawn down so they wouldn’t forget or wanted to try something out. An excellent example of this is Michelangelo’s sketches of the design for the Madonna and Child.

The works that were shown at the Lines of thought exhibit were incredible and truly inspiring, it showed me that regardless of ones art style you can still portray your own ideas effectively and clearly. This has not only inspired but also encouraged me to keep going at with my projects and developing my art skills and not matter what others think about my skills don’t let put me down or make me over confident.

Eventually we left the exhibit and went to another room were we were given photocopies of the art pieces and told to sketch over some of the photo copies with tracing paper. Then with a piece of card we used a pen on the other side of the tracing paper to trace the drawings onto the card to create our own piece of art. With this done we could either keep the art pieces we had created or give them for a collaboration pieces that all the art workshops were putting together.

These three images are of me comparing the traces on the piece of card against the original drawings to see how well I had trace from the photocopies, several other students at the Lines of thought workshop also did this at the suggestion of our guide. We did this not only to see how well our own attempts at tracing the art were but to show how even when coping someone else’s style it will never be exactly the same and will always have your own creative flair to it. Next we returned to the small room that we were using for our drawings and were told that we were going to use the photocopies now to make a collage that all the workshop was putting together. The rule were simple we could do what ever we wanted with the photocopies from cutting fragments out to covering so much of the photo copies with tipex and felt tip as long as we kept all the work connected in someway when we stuck them on the wall.

This is the trace art that we put together using tracing paper, a pencil and a pen.

The pieces above are the main bits that I contributed to Collaboration in the Lines of Thought exhibit. Please note that no all of the cut offs in the images are my own, their are also done by the same people who were in my group. Examples of my contributions are brick road above, The Big Smile, the hanging mace above the and the explosive, the turtle shell helmet, etc.

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner: Client Project WOW potential clients for my project:

Since this is my client project I need to find a suitable client who is willing to show my animation to the public, as I have already failed to see my first client I had chosen and organise to show my project at the Women of the World event, I have to find I new client. The other day I went around hull trying to find suitable locations and clients to allow me to show my interactive animation, unfortunately the downfall with such a project is that I need to find some where that is suitable for this sort of animation.

Hull and East Riding Museum:

One of Hulls major museums that has a wide range of art exhibits form across different time periods that are both interactive and attract a wide range of tourists mainly children which is a plus in this as that is one of my main target audiences.

The Maritime Museum:

Another good example as the Maritime Museum has a section dedicated to the public to allow artists to show their work to public but you have to put your name forward first and state what you want to show to the public. One of the Hull New Media Students has already held and exhibit here called Lou in Games design.

 

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner: Client Project WOW Animation Changes 2

This next post came up when my project of Women of Hull or WOW! as it was originally known as, had to have few more modifications, according to my tutor Sally the project wasn’t quite their yet so she suggested that I make it interactive to the target audience. Wen I asked Sally how I could go about this she suggested that since I was using Adobe Anime/Flash I should install buttons that the audience could click or press in this case on an interactive board or tablet of some sort. I began to look up to how install these button or at least create them for this project, while I did find the way how to do it on the official Adobe Website Help Page and several other websites and youtube videos, the way it was explained still made it very difficult to understand as well as some of the video qualities been quite horrendous. I eventually learned how to stop the animation on Animate/Flash but after that you could do nothing unless you had a button or another command in to tell it to play after so long. The basic command to stop Animate/Flash on Action Script 3 is to type in the actions command box on the desired lay and frame is stop(); . That took me about an hour to get right and finally understand, after words I started to create buttons for the animation, this took me at least two hours to learn how program correctly before I managed to set them all up correctly through out my Women of Hull Animation (The coding I couldn’t hand type, fortunately both Animate/Flash comes with instant commands that can be tweaked ever so slightly to change which frame the button jumps to. This can be seen in the images  below:

This first image is of the button that allows the target audience to start the animation, it will also change into a different shade of orange when hovered over when or pressed and then vanishes.

These two buttons allows the user to jump back to the introduction of the animation and to the animation associated with the introduction of the women that the button is linked too.

 This button is at the end of the animation and allows the user to jump back to the introduction animation.

The names on the intro have also been turned into buttons and allow the user to jump to the women who name has been clicked.

This makes the animation not only a lot more user friendly but also fun as it has become interactive and makes the educational aspect of it a lot more effective to the target audience and hope they will begin to learn more about the city of Culture and who has originated or been educated here.

Hull City of Culture: Opening Exhibits 3

Here are some more photos from the Hull City of Culture:

An art exhibit dedicated the lives lost in sailing incidents in waters around Hull.

One of the Moths spread around Hull that is designed around Amy Johnson.

People a exhibit of stone people sat on people on benches in different poses from having a conversation to just feeding the birds.

Hull City of Culture: Opening Exhibits 2

Photos from the open exhibits at the City of Culture:

The Land of Green Ginger, which inspired the title of Winifred Holtby’s Land of Green Ginger.

An old shop that has been converted to show news paper articles, adverts and posters from various decades in Hull.

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner, Client Project: WOW Storyboard 6

This post is another storyboard attempt for Famous Women of the World project done in Pen:

I haven’t change the first storyboard panel that much since the previous one the only change to this original one is that I tried the protest banners for Lillian Billoca. Unfortunately the idea didn’t work as I planned once I sketched it down, not many people saw the connection to Lillian or recognised it what the image was.

No change in this version apart from more frames introduced to make the scenes last longer.

Sweet face was introduce on the end frames but no one saw the connection to the Norma Waterson, so I should maybe go with another one of her songs maybe Dirty old town, since that is a more recognised song that she wrote.

These last three frames before the ending frame are based on Tracey Thorns Plain Sailing, unfortunately not many people recognised her via this maybe I should try another idea such as showing the entire boat sailing across the ocean. This would not only make the animation more recognisable to Tracey thorn but also allow the target audience time to look at it to work out what it actually is.

I have posted a better version of this storyboard that is a lot more clearer to see on my first animated attempt of this project. where I have talked about all the changes that I will be begin to make to improve this project for the better.

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner, Client Project: Women of the World or WOW!: Phone Research

Here are photos of old phones, for the symbol for the hull actress Maureen Lipman:

Freaking News.Com owners this picture not me.

http://www.makeuseof.com own this image not me

Shelterific owns this not me.

www.abdyantiques.co.uk owns this image

www.antiquetelephones.co.uk owns this image.

I have decided that the best way create an animated scene that my target audience will recognise with my Famous Women of the World Client Project for Maureen Lipman is to use an old fashion version of the telephones hence why I have several different old fashion styled telephones on this post because it allows me to not only find them later for my work but also use them to design a new animation for maureen Lipman. Also because i have a wide range of different telephone designs I can pick parts from the various styles to create my own version or at least a close representation of one.

Creative Context: Client Response

I eventually got a response back from Dr Mulcahy-Parker stating:

Dear Luke

We currently have no means of showing film in the gallery, however, we plan to remedy this as part of our preparations for an exhibition in 2017.  

Best wishes

Gerardine

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a place for my work to be displayed to the public due to the next exhibit at the Library/Treasure House/Art Gallery wasn’t until 2017 most likely because of the City of Culture happening in Hull next year and Beverley is most likely preparing for it’s self since both Hull and Beverley are right next to each other.

What I have learned from this experience is that it is possible for your work to be displayed in the public but what you need to do is to have the confidence to ask a client. If you don’t have the confidence in your work or yourself you won’t be able gain a client who will provide you with work or the ability to display their work in the future. So from now on after this experience I will try to be more confident when I approach or am approach by people who could be a potential client. There may be a possibility next year to get my work displayed to the public for the Beverley Art Gallery so I might look into that.