A Love/Hate Relationship

Contrary to.. well.. just about everyone who meets me on a daily bases' beliefs, I'm actually enjoying making this animation video! Despite it being such a long (and I mean long) process I love nothing more than being able to play back the video and see my progress so far! Also I'm really enjoying making these backgrounds, check out what can be done with some simple materials you probably have lying around:

Some old paper from a Caterpillar shoe box to an underwater world ->

From the same shoe box tissue (and a lot of photoshop) came this:

From some voile, pebbles, glitter + a CD to a spacey dimension (image was also flipped) 

And last example, I used some torn out pages from an old book along with sweet papers and made this:

Granted there was a god lot of heavy photoshop'in done to this images to make them so lovely :)

Making A Scene

You kind of get the idea from my last post how I construct the backgrounds from each scene, its a pretty slow, tedious job. But what is even slower and more tedious is making the scene come alive. With the aid of Photoshop and Premier Pro Editing software I was able to bring each picture together and creating a moving image. Each individual image has a slight movement or difference so that when they are all played back together on Premier Pro it appears as though the scene has come to life. For example, below are 26 still images from my animation and that probably barely covers 1 second of video (this is the stuff heartbreaks are made of):

The Scanning Test

I constructed some test shots to see what would and would not work out when scanned. I like how the candy paper, C.D's and tissue paper looked when scanned.

After doing and learning from these tests I was able to properly start the process of constructing my backgrounds, which look something like this:
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Step 2.

Step 3.

Memoirs of a Scanner by Damon Stea

I love the idea of making a short film about the life of a scanner with the scanner. I like how the whole short film was constructed, short and simple but effective and well executed! We see the short life span of a scanner through the scanning screen, we see documents being scanned, human interaction and banter between co-workers. The video is hilarious and is based on a great concept. See it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jfItCGEOpo

Audrey Fitzgerald - Combined & Mixed Media

The year before last I had a lovely lecturer for our combined and mixed media class, Audrey Fitzgerald. During the year we had to complete various projects and assignments using different and various materials, this was great because it really opened my eyes to what you can create by combining found or made materials. During that year I made this collage of Vincent Van Gogh's 'Starry Starry Night' using sheets I painted and cut up

But anyway, the real reason why I am posting about her in relation to my project is about the work that she creates and how its inspired how I am about to approach my project. Audrey creates these wonderful images using found objects, such as buttons, receipts, colour charts and tissue paper. They are just beautiful!

In 2012 she also wrote and illustrated a book which inspires kids to use their imaginations. It can be seen at this link: http://audreyfitzgerald.me/index.php/portfolio/book/

The 15 Year Old Essay Turned Video

So I had to decide how I was going to approach making my video using the essay as my narrative and I came up with the idea of making an animation. I wanted to make a video that would really connect to the child-like qualities of the essay, and man did I love cartoons as a kid! 

I sketched a little version of 'child me' considering this was to be the main character in my video and here is what came out: 

 

And then, using my scanner I scanned that image on to my laptop so that I could bring it into PhotoShop and proceed with the colouring, which looked a little something like this:

Using PhotoShop's 'Puppet Tool' I was able to move and re-draw some parts of my cartoon body. Instead of re-drawing a different figure each time, it was easier for me to erase and re-draw small sections as needed. 

Finding A Story

So I decided to base my narrative video project on an essay I wrote as a child, the problem was finding such an essay. Lucky for me my mother happens to be a wee bit of a sentimentalist and kept some of my old copy books and whatnot from my childhood! Flicking though these I came across a few possibilities and a lot of funny grammar errors. Here are two I had a good giggle at:

Christmas Story: I love how by the time I had all my thank you's said and was about to write the actual story I was already over half ways down the page haha

The next essay is roughly 15 years old and is the essay I chose to base my narrative video on. Titled "Hello" I can only assume I was a huge fan of greetings as a child!?.. And I can't quite decide if I was a creative genius or insanely lazy to the extent where I took one of the most commonly spoken words in the English language and proceeded to refer to everything and everyone in my story as 'Hello'.. maybe that is genius.. we'll just stick with the first one.

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