Seminar 6: Animation in the commercial realm

‘The word “advertising”, like “commercial art”, makes graphic designers cringe.  It signifies all that sophisticated contemporary graphic design, or rather visual communications, is not supposed to be.  Advertising is the tool of capitalism, a con that persuades an unwitting public to consume and consume again.  Graphic design, by contrast, is an aesthetic and philosophical pursuit that communicates ideas.  Advertising is cultural exploitation that transforms creative expression into crass propaganda.  Graphic design is a cultural force that incorporates parallel world views.  Advertising is hypnotically invasive.  Graphic design makes no such claim’The issue with the commerical realm is when we compare it to auteur theory. It is seen as the exact opposite and therefore a bad thing, however there are many advertisments that though they are advertising a product, they are pushing the boundaries of style and what can be done to simply advertise a product. Advertisments can often be more create than feature animation films because the goal of advertising a product also has to be achieved aswell therefor making an animation deeper.

Seminar 5: Gender in animation

Today we talked about gender in animation. Women in history have always been second place to men, wrongly so, and in art continued through to the beginning of animation. Things such as portraying beauty at an unachievable level and portraying women to be weak, though despite what you may assume there was still evidence of strong women in art such as the painting Judith beheading holofernes, showing two women killing a corrupt man.
The depiction of women is seen as a huge problem in animation, particularly digital animation and video games. I feel that this will take a turn in a similar way to the depiction of women in art in the past, that it will improve, though it may not seem as bad as people make it out to be now, with plenty of strong women portrayed in video games and animation.

Seminar 4: Politics and propaganda

in this seminar we were told about the use of animation for politics and propaganda, we were shown examples such as Disney in the 1940s and the Sinking of the Lusitania in 1918. Animation had been around before this time but it was only used to advertise products rather than world views and opinions. The most successful animations are the funny ones, the ones that made light of hitler and made fun of him despite the fact he was killing thousands of people daily.

Seminar 3: Auteurship and the Avantgarde

Auteur theory (Auteur meaning author in french) is a theory in film production that the director is seen as the major creative force in the production of film, deriving from the theory of “Camera Stylo” that the director is an artist and that the film is simply a canvas for the director to “paint”. The theory of the auteur started in france with Andre Bazin and writers for Cahiers du Cinema in the 1950s due to the influx of imported American Hollywood films, to which Bazin stated that “American films are anonymous products of the studio system and the culture industry” to which François Truffaut replied in A Certain Tendency in French Cinema a few years later, that the french film industries over use of literature to adapt into films and directors just adding their own images to a previously existing scenario.

When applying the auteur theory to animation, quite a few problems arise, Animation companies are often huge groups of people working together without someone taking a leading auteur role, however the processes for creating animation is so cost effective and the requirement for manpower is only necessary if the animation needs to be done in a short space of time, meaning that one person can produce their creative vision with relying on anyone but themselves and the media they are working with, meaning that animation can give auteurs the power to create something a lot closer to their exact vision without relying on budgetary, acting, or even scientific restraints, if a director wants to create a feature length film in space, it becomes a lot easier and a lot cheaper to create on a computer rather than fly into space with a camera crew and actors.

Seminar 2: Genre 21/10/14

In this seminar James talked about Genre. Genre is a way to categorize film according to visual style, setting, and structure. We discussed how Genre is a way of coding certain films, and even constricts certain films into boundaries. We also were told about the 6 usual ways a film comes about, these were 

• Maturation (coming of age/rites of passage)
• Redemption (transition of main character from bad to good)
• Punitive (main, ostensibly good character behaves badly and is punished)
• Testing (willpower versus temptation)
• Education (main character moves from negative to positive perception of the world
• Disillusionment (reverse of Education)

Applied COP 5: Character design

I decided to cut out Hitchcock, simply because i didn't know how to represent him visually, however now i am down to 5 i can focus on them. I created these characters to show my idea doe the design for each one, i mostly stuck with what characters in their films usually wear, the blue and red cap from the life aquatic, a plain pub goers outfit, a bloodstained suit and so on. I am quite proud of these character sketches and i definitely think they will stay this style.

Applied Cop 6: Backgrounds

These are some sketches for the settings of each of my 5 characters, for tarantino i wanted to show his gore and action style so i wanted it to be a plain but bloody corridor with mangled corpses along the floor, not only would this be funny because of the contrast with the cheerful music but it would also give an idea of Tarantino's style.

The Second scene for tim burton i wanted to show his gothic and wonky style, so i decided to show wonky buildings and street lamps, with harsh shadows and a lot of darkness to emphasise the darkness in his work.

For Bay i wanted to keep it plain, to show how plain his style is, but i also want to include some explosions to show how often he uses cheap effects as visual stimuli for viewers.

For Anderson i wanted to show his camera movement style with the pan, his visual style with the bright coloured boat and people, and character interaction with the two people arguing in the front. 

And finally for Wright i chose a pub, since drinking and general englishness follows with his works regardless of setting.

Applied Cop 4: Audio Consideration

For the audio i wanted something happy go lucky for the characters to walk to, at first i had Lesley Gore's Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows, but i feel like this would be too obvious a choice, i haven't outright decided i won't use it but i've researched some other songs anyway. Using youtube Playlists i've found a number of considerable songs i could use, these include;

Hall and Oates - You make my Dreams come True

E.L.O. - Mr Blue Sky

Stevie Wonder - Superstition

Pigeon John - The Bomb

Ken Ashcorp - Absolute Territory

I am still unsure of which to use however they are all of a similar style so i can work with any of them for now, though i would like there to be some kind of movement to the beat, perhaps a step or an arm raise.

Applied Cop 3: Storyboard Plan

This is my initial plan for the animation, i plan on actually using cut outs of the actors faces, in a stop motion Terry Gilliam style, as i have done this before and it makes a light hearted funny animation and also requires less effort on my part. However this may be a little jarring for the Hitchcock section and the Tarantino section, furthermore i don't have as much of an understanding for these two directors than the other four, so perhaps i ought to cut them out... I will consider this more later on, before i actually create a substantial piece of work.

Applied COP 2: Idea Refinement (The Walk)

I put some further consideration into what i wanted to make, and i thought it'd be cool to have characters in the style of each Auteur walking towards the character with cuts in scene and character but no break in stride. I researched some happy go lucky walk cycles and filmed myself doing some happy walks, these were however not very useful as it wasn't exaggerated enough, furthermore because i wanted to film the character walking front on and i didn't have any access to some kind of treadmill i couldn't film myself moving forward but staying in shot very well, so i had to settle with some walk cycles on youtube.

Applied COP 1: Idea generation

For the first part of my applied COP i decided i needed to generate some ideas, one that stood out to me was an idea of showing a few auteurs and their different styles. I want to do this in as lighthearted way as possible, and perhaps make it a funny animation. On this page you can see some of the ideas i had, and i also started noting down some directors i thought i could use, in order for me to be able to use a director i set a few different rules, they had to be a director that i knew, a director that had a very obvious visual style and that style had to be easy to show in a short animation.

I ended up with 6 directors; Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Alfred Hitchcock, Tim Burton, Edgar Wright and Michael Bay. I wanted to put Michael Bay in as a sort of joke, though he is an auteur, his films do lack quality and are flushed out with a lot of explosion effects and i thought i could have fun ending on a director familiar to a large audience as a joke.

Lecture 10: Post Modernism

in this lecture, we were told about post modernism... i think... i didn't understand any of it, but from my personal research i believe postmodernism to include skeptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, history, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism. It is often associated with deconstruction and post-structuralism because its usage as a term gained significant popularity at the same time as twentieth-century post-structural thought. 

Lecture 9: Modernism

In this lecture we were told about modernism. Modernism is a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from huge transformations in Western society in the victorian era in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the factors that shaped Modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by World War I. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief and began Anti-historicism - a belief that there was no need to look backward to older styles.

Lecture 8:Animation

Mike took us through the history of animation, which started with two or more images being repeated in order to create the illusion of movement. This started with cave paintings and moved through till around the victorian era with toys for children such as flip books and zoetropes. we then discussed the golden age of animation with Walt Disney, through to modern 3D CGI animation with Pixar.

Lecture 7: Photography

Photography is an important art form, particularly as documentation. Before the creation of the camera in the late 1880s documentary pictures were extremely difficult to produce and often the only form of documentation in picture format where painted portraiture, however with the introduction of the camera, producing an image in any environment because an almost instantaneous process. Thus the form of documentary photography began.
From the 1940s onwards photographers were often present in war situations and from the 1940s and a drastic negative effect on propaganda, with the truth being produced through images, the people could not be lied to through mass media advertising and propaganda, and arguably made us begin to question the way advertising was produced.

Lecture 6: Advertising

Is advertising prostitution?
Advertising is often considered a tool of capitalism to change established views within society, but it is also considered an important tool in changing our views about what we need and want, thus driving our economy and culture, for example with the campbells green pea soup paintings and the ipod adverts. However we also discussed how companies often use sexism or racism and play on peoples emotions or weaknesses to sell a product.
The powerful nature of advertising is also evident with its ability to inspire or question and raise social awareness

Lecture 5: Communication and the Mass Media

In this lecture we were told about communication and mass media, this is usually a means where some information/entertainment reaches a large audience with very little effort on the creators side of things. On a more art based level this includes; Visual Communication, Communication design and Graphic Design.

The importance in mass media lies in the careful nature you have to take when transmitting to such a large audience. ‘Whatever the information transmitted, it must, ethically and culturally, reflect its responsibility to society’. - Josef Muller-Brockman Furthermore the difficulty of mass media is that often it is very hard to control once it is out in the world, it is very difficult to take back something that has been handed to thousands or millions of people.

Lecture 4: Illustration

Illustrations are tools to show meaning of a concept in context to the text provided. The best illustrations are those that get a completely even mix of the reason it is needed, the meaning behind it, and its visual prettiness. We were told that it is more than just a pretty picture, but a method of communication. We were also shown a lot of evidence of good illustration. Personally i don't see a huge importance of illustration and though i saw some fantastic images and have an admiration for some of the work created i find other pathways such as advertising and animation to be much more important.

Lecture 3: History of Print 29/10/14

Print has existed since the very beginning of art history as cave paintings, and ever since print as been a method of mass communication, reaching a large amount of people in an efficient way.

In the west we didn't start properly printing until around 1500s but in asia printing began with carved wood blocks onto cloth in 200 BC. The printing press in europe was created in 1450 by Johannes Gutenberg in germany and by the 1800s printing was a regular normality in society. This was also when printing for mass communication began. Once something is printed it can be immortalized, this was presented to us through an image of an advertisement for the moulin rouge which was founded in 1889 but can still be bought in IKEA today. We then began seeing propaganda during the two world wars, this was because an idea had formed; "If it is print it is seen to be true. It is correct, it is factual." Which only recently has our idea of this changed and we have began to question whether everything we are told is true...

Lecture 2: The History of Letters (SLABS) 15/10/14

In this lecture, Richard took us through a brief history of type which, like i said i would in my previous blog post, i enjoyed very much. He opened the lecture by showing us the aims of the lecture, he then showed us a different version of the aims where he had changed the font (to a humanist serif font, this we learned later in the lecture), he then put the title in a box to show how something so simple can make such a difference. After this he put up the slide in some other variations, and basically showed us how important and how effective using the right fonts can communicate on another level that is not present from the initial word itself, generally Richard just got extremely excited over how important font was.

  Once the actual proper subject of the lecture got underway we got a vague understanding of the history of type, i did have to look up some more of the information myself but i think the general gist of the history of typography was this;

  The first evidence of some form of written language was in Mesopotamia in 3200 BCE, but they were essentially just scratches in stones so font's didn't really change, however the concept of writing spread from old Mes to the roman empire, and in 113AD Trajan's Column was inscribed with font as we know it today. When the Roman empire fell apart and we moved into the dark ages most writing was forgotten apart from a few elite monks who documented very little over this time and a lot of what was written was pillaged, but during this time handwriting became what we know as gothic fonts.

In the 1450s the Gutenberg press was invented and the age of print began, with the invention of the printing press books could be mass produced and it became a lot easier for the populous to get books and so the population began to get smarter. The first official font was called Gutenberg Gothic Script, a font designed to look like the handwriting of the time, however in the lecture we were shown a slide of the default font throughout the years and it seems that we transitioned away from gothic style fonts to a lot simpler and easier to read fonts.

Type is very important and should be a consideration in any work, it can make or break a piece, and the most important rule of all; never EVER use comic sans