New Briefs

So we are soon to start a new term and with that comes a new brief, this section of the course/year we are looking and participating in student awards.

I have been looking firstly at D&AD, an education charity based in london. A not-for-profit organisation, donating all of its generated funds back into the creative community through education and enterprise.


D&AD
- Moving Image Brief : This brief works around the city and its evolution, from its natural progression to our impact on its development. The desired result is an 'adventure in motion', taking the audience on a possible journey through a designed urban platform.

- Animation Brief: This brief is working against Crime, describing the intended outcome as Friendly, expert and concise. It's desired outcome is both simple and able to achieve its goal as to effectively reduce crime.

- Viral Brief: Fred perry are after an 'original' and 'Underground' viral video to 'drive' an audience to there subculture music website, I found this brief initially enticing because of its properties, being the clothing and the music scene(s) involved.


YCN

- Cartoon Network:

- Feel Good Drinks:

- Monster Munch:

- TATA Comm:

- Ted Baker:

Rotoscope

This is a quick rotoscope i did showing the flush used in a normal uk home, in developing countries like africa such basic examples of drainage and sanitation aren't very common. they have to rely on rivers and bodies of water to supply all of thier water.

Africa - Images

Because we get it straight from the tap, it’s sometimes easy to overlook how precious a commodity water can be. But, as recent national flooding, and international drought has taught us, it’s not something we should take for granted.

Africa - The facts.

Water
Clean water is essential for life, but one in eight of the world's population does not have access to it. This, and lack of safe sanitation, result in over two million people dying from water-related diseases every year. The lack of clean water close to people's homes also affects people's time, livelihoods and quality of life.

Sanitation
Sanitation can be defined as access to safe, clean and effective human urine and faeces disposal facilities. Worldwide, 2.5 billion people live without this essential service and the resulting diarrhoeal diseases kill almost 5,000 children a day.

Hygiene education
To gain the full benefits of safe water and sanitation communities also need to know about the links between diseases and unsafe hygiene practices. Hygiene education focuses on issues such as personal hygiene - the simple act of washing hands with soap and water can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by a third.

Disease
Poor sanitation and bad hygiene can result in the contamination of water sources with millions of disease causing micro-organisms. These micro-organisms work in different ways to incapacitate infected individuals.

Poverty
The most obvious benefit of access to safe water and sanitation is a reduction in disease. But the economic position of poor families is often dramatically improved when they gain access to these basic services.

Problems for women
In developing countries poor water and sanitation affects the lives of women and children the most. It impacts on women's time, health, education and family relations.

Problems for children
Without safe water and sanitation, life for children in developing countries can be very hard. They are often at risk from disease and are unable to attend school.

Problems for the elderly
In many of the African countries where WaterAid works life expectancy is frighteningly low. Those who do live into old age face increasing problems as collecting heavy loads of water puts further strains on their health.

Problems for the disabled
The struggle to gain access to clean, safe water and basic sanitation facilities is even greater for those contending with physical disability. Collecting water is so much harder, and often impossible, for those in wheelchairs, the blind or simply frail and infirm as a result of illness or old age.

Bill Viola

This is one of the 'Small Saints', I recorded this using my camera.

Whilst the man is on the other side of the water to the camera he is seen as colourless, desaturated. As he passes through the water he reaches the light path and in turn becomes coloured. Now i thought when watching this piece that Viola had edited his footage so that an exaggerated effect could be achieved by adding this colour after the man passes through the water, but to my surprise i was told that this wasn't done at all and the change happened because of the certain way viola had set up his lighting.

Bill Viola Exhibition NY

These are a few stills from the Bill Viola exhibition we were lucky enough to visit whilst we travelled to New York. The images I have taken show a piece in the exhibit called 'Small Saints', 2008. This consisted of six small LCD screens playing on loop the passing of individual people through water with Viola's play of light.

West-East pipeline route

Manchester Water Network

Drainage pipe animation

I have found this animation of which is similar to certain aspects we would like to feature in our project

Schematic animation Trump tower

This is a schematic animation i found online showing the development of build used to create the Trump tower.

It has been made using some kind of 3D software and interested me into creating some kind of family house water system, incorporating the 3D aspect.

Plumbing

Through looking around water and its relation to a standard family I have started to look at plumbing schematics/blueprints, here are a few different examples:

Canada input to CO2 emissions

George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 November 2009 19.30 GMT

Syncrude Oil Sands, Mine and Refinery, the world's largest oil sand operation producing crude oil at Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, October 20, 2001. Photograph: Greg Smith/Corbis

Canada's image lies in tatters. It is now to climate what Japan is to whaling.
The tar barons have held the nation to ransom. This thuggish petro-state is today the greatest obstacle to a deal in Copenhagen.

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world's peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I've broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.

Rest of the article is located at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/nov/30/canada-tar-sands-copenhagen-climate-deal

Waterdrop recorded at 2000 fps

Ste's Weather updates

" Matthew, it's looking rather moist outside! Stick that on the blog" Steven Swanbaruga 27/11/09

Exhibition

Here are some photos of the exhibition we finished earlier on today.


This is where the animation will be displayed onto using the data projector kindly lent to us by graham.

This is where the projector will be positioned on aimed at the door.

This is the awesome organic half to the piece that the rest of the guys made whilst i was in New York and working on the animation.


Again from another angle

Stencils retrieved from the environment

This is an image I retreived from NY, I opened it into photoshop and with a few tweaks of the levels, brightness and contrast was able to convert it into this:

now that I have a clear monochrome image to play with I can print this out and then convert it into a stencil via removing the black letters with a craft knife, always get permission from an adult kids.

now that I have removed the Black from the image a stencil is clearly visible, with this I plan on applying a identical layer on the door using spray paint.

Here are some other images I have taken and edited into stencils:

Exhibition Space

So we all went into the exhibition space today, its looking pretty good. the size is comfy a good 10" x
8.5" floor space is plenty of room for what we intend on doing.

Can't wait to get all set up and ready.

New York - Inspiration

Over the 4 days I spent in New York I gathered quite a large range of urban art/imagery.

I used this collection to help partially design the urban door.



The biggest thing I was looking at was ‘tags’, where as the vandals/artists (depending on your opinion) would sign objects, vehicles, walls. These come in a vast array of sizes, colours and styles, much like that a normal person’s signature.





These appeared almost everywhere in some of the more disadvantaged communities I travelled to whilst visiting the city, and I have to admit I like them.









Along my travels I saw a bike locked to a lamppost on the side of the pavement. The way it incoporated both the organic and urban side as one was brilliant.

Animation

For the urban side of the door we have thought of creating an animation that will simulate the Organic/Natural side breaking through to the urban half. Ive been looking at ways to make this animation after deciding that it will be in a vine form growing/spreading across the door.

as shown here in one of Stephen's illustrations:


here is a test for a method i found where as the snake/vine is made from sections following a 'leader' layer. with this, depending on the texture it is very life like. the movement is just to demonstrate a certain bend, it can be moved in any direction.




I was happy with this animation and wanted to improve it so that the final intended result of the vine growing across the door could be achived, however the scale and time involved in making such an animation made this certain method very time consuming. So I trotted on and after a while found another solution, this time perfectly easy, quick and simple.

This method is called a 'Write-on'. It is an effect performed in Adobe After Effects and is fairly simple.

You get an image, in this instance the urban door with vine. Using the pen tool you draw over the lines made by the vines, making sure multiple animation frames are used for the timing. Once done certain choices can be made to 'reveal the layer behind' - being the image of vines.

here is the tutorial I used incase your interested more
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpqT_bzhiA8

Below is what i came up with:



I wanted my animation to standout and look more visually pleasing as it was just the vines growing out from the letter box, I started to wonder how it could be it better and how i could exaggerate it more.

literally like a flash it came to me, how about after the cameras come out from the vines what if i turn the vines into a neon tube light. As if the organic movement has been taken over by the artificial space and assimilated it.

I looked into this and whilst in NY I managed to take a few images of Times Square, which is renowned for its artificial lighting.


through use of key framing I changed the fill colour to a sharp red and then back to the natural green, I played with this and created several flickers to create the illusion of a real neon light. To accompany this i needed some sound, so i searched on the web and found a suitable noise that i could edit.

This sound was perfect but had one problem, it was just too short. I needed something that would last for around 30 seconds and fluctuate also, so I took the sound and duplicated it looping i on top of itself. With this a minute jump was inevitable but, with the flicker of the neon lighting a bridge was created for this sound to become an advantage.


The finished outcome (turn your speakers up):

Big Draw - My Ident

Big Draw '09 Manchester - Exchange Street

In between the filming and interviews they had our idents playing,
this is the one i created especially.

Handdrawn test.

This is a quick test of a method im going to use in my title sequence
I am using footage and animating to it, this being a rough draft of how
it will look.

Hyperreality

Hyperreality is a concept in post-modern philosophy; Jean Baudrillard is infamous for his investigations into this idiom.  According to him America for use of a better example, has constructed itself into a country of which is more real than ‘real’, people living there are infatuated with perfection and self wellbeing therefore they are rapped up in a false impression of what ‘real’ actually is.

I have been looking at media and its representations of this ‘real’ life. Audiences interact with this through different methods although the outcome is mostly the same, whether it be the internet, video games or the silver screen the viewer is unintentionally transformed into a physical character of the ‘story’ /  ‘scene’. 

“Within academia, this perspective has become known as ‘media effects’ and is associated with ‘hypodermic’ models of audience in which the meanings of media messages are transmitted to audiences in a relatively uncomplicated way offering little or no opportunity for interpretation or resistance. The media, therefore, are credited with an enormous power over society to influence behaviour and thought”. Teaching Videogames (page 48).

In some instances this can warp the mind of some people, stereotypically and ironically  americans are mostly involved in these media evoked massacres. Huge blame and outrage has been put onto the video game industry, with many heated parents holding it personally responsible for these 'happenings' it has been treated as if it where an instructional tool for devastation.

Personally i think with the video games out today its both the manufacturers and the participants liability, the games themselves are hyperreal to a point you can confuse the boundaries between imagination and reality. They allow there 'audience' to carry out behavior and actions that are completely alien, that they wouldn't have thought of in the first place. Games like this give the impression to people that are not all there in the head that its ok to go around and commit these vicious and unthinkable acts.

http://www.davidoreilly.com/

http://vimeo.com/5699275

David and an illustrator named Jon Klassen

Worked together to create the new

U2 video - I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight

http://www.jonklassen.blogspot.com/

http://www.burstofbeaden.com/

The Futureheads - DecentDays and Nights music video

Also downloaded from http://stardust.tv

I have found this futureheads music video

PGA Animation

Downloaded from http://stardust.tv



I found this Video/animation advertising IBM.
the thing that really stands out is obviously the facts,
figures and general information. I really like the way it's
composed and animated. the american sports fans are
obssessed with these figures so the animator has played
along with this, greatly and yet simply.

Pulp Fiction - Kinetic Type

Jarratt Moody



I found this video on youtube, its designed around the famous 'Ezekial' scene from pulp fiction. The creator is Jarratt Moody. http://www.jarrattmoody.com Ive been over his site and found quite a few good animations he has worked on for Stardust design company, most of the projects they have done are extremely high profile and very impressive.

In this piece I liked the personification and attitude he has given the type, not only the way it has a different font and colour based on each character but the movement and identity.
The large white font is dominating and very threatening just like 'jules' the character it is depicted on, where as the small, nervous, panicy light blue is a perfect addition expressing the 'Brett' character who is being verbally attacked.


When the argument gets phsycal and jules shoots brett the type explodes, a spatter effect is added to the type to assist in the violence. When you watch it you feel the imagery without seeing the visual aid of the real footage. The background colour is changed also to fit with the dramatically increased scene, A dark dangerous red has replaced the abusive brown and changed the whole feel to the piece.