"Logic Tryout" and "Hi-Fiving Exercise" pieces which didn't attach to my original post: "Carousel workshop Strand B: Experimental Sound" so fingers crossed they've worked this time!
Take care,
Joe.
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Carousel workshop Strand B: Experimental Sound
As I said in my previous post, we took part in workshops to help us formulate our ideas into actual possibilities, for example the first Carousel workshop I worked in was Carousel workshop strand A: The Image: Still/Moving.
However, due to large numbers wanting to work in the Carousel I originally chose, the Strand C Workshops on "Digital Cinematics" (where they got to work with the lovely new HD cameras the lucky sods!), I ended up instead taking part in my 3rd choice of workshops which was Carousel workshop Strand B on "Experimental Sound".
Looking back, working in this workshop "B" on sound instead of "C" was the best choice because I learnt a lot about sound and music I didn't have a clue about!
For example, over the summer I made all original music for my animation work because originally I had used copyrighted music, and to do this I used Garageband, the built in music software for Macs.
Now Garageband does the job really well when you're working with small animations as the loops can easily be changed and altered to become more unique, but when we looked into how sound and music works (and especially how to use Logic, Garageband's ridiculously professional older brother) the possibilities to create music and sound were just mind blowing!
I was quite happy plodding along fiddling with effects in Garageband, but the possibilities these workshops and Logic gave us were incredible!
When I look back at these workshops, this is where it became a no-brainer that I HAD to create my "Mechanical Instrument" to fully quench the thirst I had for making music with all this info I'd learnt.
I've always had an intense passion for music but while my original idea had stemmed from this love, these workshops, both strands "A" and "B", were what gave me a whole new world to work and play with.
After these workshops, the ball was really rolling as the ideas for how I could achieve my goals became more and more of a reality.
Working with Amy and Lyndon in a small group and also working with everyone for the bigger projects was really enjoyable and taught me a lot as well.
I noticed from these sessions that I have become more confident when working in big groups, which is great because I have always been quite shy yet wanted to be more assertive than I actually am.
Being assertive has always been a problem for me, most likely because I'm already quite short and so quite insecure over it at times, but now that I'm at University I feel much more confident with who I am and don't feel as insecure about being "vertically challenged". To have realised this positive, personal change I must say that these workshops were much more helpful than I thought! :)
Soon I'll upload the original notes I made before, during and after these workshops, but for now here's the work I made during the Strand "B" workshops as videos because I don't think I can upload them as MP3 files.
The first one is "Logic Tryout" from our third and final workshop. Here we used the clips of audio we'd recorded in workshops 1 and 2 to make music or just sound.
I know it's rubbish but I was trying out using the clips of Lyndon running down the stairs and tapping on the desk as drum parts, whilst Amy Rixon Squeaked and made popping sounds using her finger and mouth. Sadly I ran out of time and so never put them together or in time properly so my apologies for that. :)
Next is the "Hi-Five" exercise we did as a whole group using 5 microphone and speaker set ups in Scott 105.
In this exercise we learnt about spacial awareness in sound and so the whole group walked up and down the room at different times in front of the microphones and Hi-Fived whoever passed us, hence the clapping sound in different places and timings.
This was a great exercise and very helpful for understanding spacial awareness when it comes to making music and sound, although if you weren't sat in the centre of the room it was hard to hear exactly what was meant to be happening.
I think Amy has the rest of the work so when were back to University after the Christmas Break, I'll get it off her hopefully and put it up here soon, but for now here is the link to "Tango" by Zbigniew Rybczyński from my previous post, and the "Toshiba Time Sculpture" Tv Advert which was in a similar vain:
"Tango" by Zbigniew Rybczyński:
http://www.wat.tv/video/tango-zbigniew-rybczynski-2882h_2f1q3_.html
"Toshiba Time Sculpture" TV Advert:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1etBYlrmtg
That's it for tonight as it's pretty late and I've rabbled on a lot. My apologies for that!
Check back soon for the original notes and possibly the extra work Amy has from the Strand "B" workshops.
Take care and Happy New Year,
Joe.
However, due to large numbers wanting to work in the Carousel I originally chose, the Strand C Workshops on "Digital Cinematics" (where they got to work with the lovely new HD cameras the lucky sods!), I ended up instead taking part in my 3rd choice of workshops which was Carousel workshop Strand B on "Experimental Sound".
Looking back, working in this workshop "B" on sound instead of "C" was the best choice because I learnt a lot about sound and music I didn't have a clue about!
For example, over the summer I made all original music for my animation work because originally I had used copyrighted music, and to do this I used Garageband, the built in music software for Macs.
Now Garageband does the job really well when you're working with small animations as the loops can easily be changed and altered to become more unique, but when we looked into how sound and music works (and especially how to use Logic, Garageband's ridiculously professional older brother) the possibilities to create music and sound were just mind blowing!
I was quite happy plodding along fiddling with effects in Garageband, but the possibilities these workshops and Logic gave us were incredible!
When I look back at these workshops, this is where it became a no-brainer that I HAD to create my "Mechanical Instrument" to fully quench the thirst I had for making music with all this info I'd learnt.
I've always had an intense passion for music but while my original idea had stemmed from this love, these workshops, both strands "A" and "B", were what gave me a whole new world to work and play with.
After these workshops, the ball was really rolling as the ideas for how I could achieve my goals became more and more of a reality.
Working with Amy and Lyndon in a small group and also working with everyone for the bigger projects was really enjoyable and taught me a lot as well.
I noticed from these sessions that I have become more confident when working in big groups, which is great because I have always been quite shy yet wanted to be more assertive than I actually am.
Being assertive has always been a problem for me, most likely because I'm already quite short and so quite insecure over it at times, but now that I'm at University I feel much more confident with who I am and don't feel as insecure about being "vertically challenged". To have realised this positive, personal change I must say that these workshops were much more helpful than I thought! :)
Soon I'll upload the original notes I made before, during and after these workshops, but for now here's the work I made during the Strand "B" workshops as videos because I don't think I can upload them as MP3 files.
The first one is "Logic Tryout" from our third and final workshop. Here we used the clips of audio we'd recorded in workshops 1 and 2 to make music or just sound.
I know it's rubbish but I was trying out using the clips of Lyndon running down the stairs and tapping on the desk as drum parts, whilst Amy Rixon Squeaked and made popping sounds using her finger and mouth. Sadly I ran out of time and so never put them together or in time properly so my apologies for that. :)
Next is the "Hi-Five" exercise we did as a whole group using 5 microphone and speaker set ups in Scott 105.
In this exercise we learnt about spacial awareness in sound and so the whole group walked up and down the room at different times in front of the microphones and Hi-Fived whoever passed us, hence the clapping sound in different places and timings.
This was a great exercise and very helpful for understanding spacial awareness when it comes to making music and sound, although if you weren't sat in the centre of the room it was hard to hear exactly what was meant to be happening.
I think Amy has the rest of the work so when were back to University after the Christmas Break, I'll get it off her hopefully and put it up here soon, but for now here is the link to "Tango" by Zbigniew Rybczyński from my previous post, and the "Toshiba Time Sculpture" Tv Advert which was in a similar vain:
"Tango" by Zbigniew Rybczyński:
http://www.wat.tv/video/tango-zbigniew-rybczynski-2882h_2f1q3_.html
"Toshiba Time Sculpture" TV Advert:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1etBYlrmtg
That's it for tonight as it's pretty late and I've rabbled on a lot. My apologies for that!
Check back soon for the original notes and possibly the extra work Amy has from the Strand "B" workshops.
Take care and Happy New Year,
Joe.
Monday, 27 December 2010
Research Photos
Here we have firstly mini versions of Vince where I tried out drawing different styles so save from wasting ink printing the bigger ones and then mucking it up.
Then we have the actual bits of paper I used in the animation.
Check back soon for when I've finally shaved and got my final styled beard!
Take care,
Joe.
Happy Christmas! and Research Animation
Before I begin explaining about how making the research animation went, I thought I should explain how forgot to say I had a breakthrough with Jeff about the Vince animation before we left for Christmas!
As Vince is going to be the introducer to Decembeard, he needs to be speaking a lot but it's going to be very difficult and time consuming to lip sync and animate Vince's mouth to the audio, so instead Jeff said why not just film the actual mouth speaking and map it to the drawn face in After Effects?
This simple idea is absolute genius and hopefully going to save me a lot of time in the long run! I also asked Jeff to be the voice of Vince since he helped make him now and he agreed.
This has led to a running joke which will be that Vince and Jeff are not linked in any way, despite the obvious fact that Jeff is the voice of Vince which viewers will find out from his obvious denial as Vince and then hopefully again when they hear Jeff speak in his interview later on.
But moving on from Vince, who is on hold at the moment until I return to Uni and can film Jeff's mouth speaking the script (which I also need to write) I have completed the research animation which shows which beard styles I am going for.
Originally I was going to show each beard style quickly but there are just too many so I have narrowed it down for the viewer but for you reading this blog here is a link to two of the websites I researched from:
The first one is Beards.org which specialises in beard culture and has a heavy influence from Decembeard and growing beards in general:
http://www.beards.org/
Next is a man named John Dyer's Blog which is a documentation of his quest to have every single style of beard that exists! So far he has managed 33 out of the 42 he knows of so far:
http://www.dyers.org/blog/beards/beard-types/
These two websites really helps me to narrow down my search and I have decided on a combination of 3 beard styles, the Sparrow (first photo, made famous by Captain Jack Sparrow of the Pirates of the Caribbean films), The Anchor (second photo) and the Hollywoodian (third photo).
However in the documentary I will not say that I have decided yet as I want the viewer to wonder for a bit longer (if they're even interested that is! It doesn't sound very exciting haha) so that the end result seems more impressive.
Originally the plan with this animation was to have a comic book of famous people all with different styles of beards and then pan over them with the camera until ending on a still image of me which is actually a frame from the final scene. The still would then become the film and the documentary would continue.
To overcome copyright I was going to re-draw each celebrity photo e.g. Mr.T, Chuck Norris etc. and put them into a comic strip.
But as I've just explained I am now going to narrow down the research so that the viewer isn't bored by the sheer amount of beard styles that are out there.
To overcome this boredom problem I have done a small animation with scrumpled up paper which scrumples out and in again to show each drawing. Each drawing is also a picture of Vince's face without a beard and in my next post I'll put some of the animation images up so you can get an idea of how it worked.
Take care,
Joe.
P.s Happy Christmas!
Saturday, 25 December 2010
Carousel workshop strand A: The Image: Still/Moving
To help us develop our initial ideas, we had to choose two Carousel Workshop strands in which to work.
These workshops were on certain styles and mediums of media and art, and really helped me to focus and hone my original idea into what I'm working on right now.
I chose Carousel Strands "A" and "C", Starting with Carousel workshop strand A: "The Image: Still/Moving".
Here for the first weeks of this module along with the monday lectures we looked deeper into how we could use animation and certain software and practices (such as Adobe After Effects and editing skills like the ones used in "Tango" by Zbigniew Rybczyński) for our experiments.
I really enjoyed the hands-on approach with this module and having already had a large passion for animation and been familiar with some of the influences (such as Eadweard Muybridge and Zbigniew Rybczyński) from previous work, I found that this was definitely the area in which I wanted and needed to work.
These workshops also really helped me form ideas for my MEDI 262 work into Experimental Animation as the topics overlapped a lot which was very helpful and productive indeed. :)
Here are some links to my Vimeo page where I've uploaded the work we created during these workshops:
Sofa Stop Motion: http://vimeo.com/15843278
Rotoscoping Riot: http://vimeo.com/15843609
Moon Madness!: http://vimeo.com/16056784
Craig's Crazy Crustacean Carry on!: http://vimeo.com/16056791
Each of these videos were great fun to work on and really helped me to understand the power of moving image to convey emotion and entertainment and also how important team work is. As I progressed through these workshops the quality of my work became that much better when I worked in a team, which was a big eye opener for this project because for me to be able to complete my own experiments, there was no way I could do this on my own.
However, I didn't see this as a curse, but instead saw it as a blessing as now I could fashion a partnership with some of my fellow students and friends and together we could help each other make our projects the very best that they could be.
That's it for this week, tune in next week for my Strand "C" work and my initial notes and ideas I made at the beginning on how I'm going to make my "Mechanical Instrument" or "Marble Run Music" as it's now being fondly called! They're working titles so bear with me on that one! Haha!
Take care and Merry Christmas,
Joe.
These workshops were on certain styles and mediums of media and art, and really helped me to focus and hone my original idea into what I'm working on right now.
I chose Carousel Strands "A" and "C", Starting with Carousel workshop strand A: "The Image: Still/Moving".
Here for the first weeks of this module along with the monday lectures we looked deeper into how we could use animation and certain software and practices (such as Adobe After Effects and editing skills like the ones used in "Tango" by Zbigniew Rybczyński) for our experiments.
I really enjoyed the hands-on approach with this module and having already had a large passion for animation and been familiar with some of the influences (such as Eadweard Muybridge and Zbigniew Rybczyński) from previous work, I found that this was definitely the area in which I wanted and needed to work.
These workshops also really helped me form ideas for my MEDI 262 work into Experimental Animation as the topics overlapped a lot which was very helpful and productive indeed. :)
Here are some links to my Vimeo page where I've uploaded the work we created during these workshops:
Sofa Stop Motion: http://vimeo.com/15843278
Rotoscoping Riot: http://vimeo.com/15843609
Moon Madness!: http://vimeo.com/16056784
Craig's Crazy Crustacean Carry on!: http://vimeo.com/16056791
Each of these videos were great fun to work on and really helped me to understand the power of moving image to convey emotion and entertainment and also how important team work is. As I progressed through these workshops the quality of my work became that much better when I worked in a team, which was a big eye opener for this project because for me to be able to complete my own experiments, there was no way I could do this on my own.
However, I didn't see this as a curse, but instead saw it as a blessing as now I could fashion a partnership with some of my fellow students and friends and together we could help each other make our projects the very best that they could be.
That's it for this week, tune in next week for my Strand "C" work and my initial notes and ideas I made at the beginning on how I'm going to make my "Mechanical Instrument" or "Marble Run Music" as it's now being fondly called! They're working titles so bear with me on that one! Haha!
Take care and Merry Christmas,
Joe.
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
Intial Ideas, Link to Diet Coke and Mentos Experiment
Tuesday, 21 December 2010
Initial Ideas
With the focus of this project being on finding ourselves as Experimental Practitioners, the area in which we're able to explore and express ourselves is quite a big one!
After our initial lectures and introduction to this module, I already had a few ideas evolving from these sessions (along with a few others I still had knocking around from the summer holidays which I thought of elaborating on) but overall there was one idea which kept on shining through from way beyond the summer and these lectures.
I remembered it first after viewing this Youtube video of experiments with Diet Coke and Mentos: and also after one lecture we had on "Time and Space" how we could experiment with it.
This video and the connection it had to the "Time and Space" lecture later on really got the ball rolling for me and helped me to realise that finally I could work on an idea I've had for years, which is to create a chain reaction of 'A' affecting 'B' to create music.
What I mean by this is that with the help of Marble Runs, Cogs, Motors and whatever else I can think of to help, I will create a machine I guess which will create music by certain objects affecting others, but with the use of the motors, this machine will be continuous in making music, instead of it just being a lucky one off run through.
I know this is going to be a massive project with a lot of room for error and problems, but I've wanted to do this idea for years now, (ever since I first looked at Wallace and Gromit's inventions in "The Wrong Trousers" when I was 10 and thought, that is so clever I want to try that too if I'm honest haha) and now I can finally do it with the help and support I need to make it a reality. :)
That's all for now but check back soon for the next part on the Carousel Workshops which helped us to figure out ways in which we can realise our ideas :)
Take care,
Joe.
After our initial lectures and introduction to this module, I already had a few ideas evolving from these sessions (along with a few others I still had knocking around from the summer holidays which I thought of elaborating on) but overall there was one idea which kept on shining through from way beyond the summer and these lectures.
I remembered it first after viewing this Youtube video of experiments with Diet Coke and Mentos: and also after one lecture we had on "Time and Space" how we could experiment with it.
This video and the connection it had to the "Time and Space" lecture later on really got the ball rolling for me and helped me to realise that finally I could work on an idea I've had for years, which is to create a chain reaction of 'A' affecting 'B' to create music.
What I mean by this is that with the help of Marble Runs, Cogs, Motors and whatever else I can think of to help, I will create a machine I guess which will create music by certain objects affecting others, but with the use of the motors, this machine will be continuous in making music, instead of it just being a lucky one off run through.
I know this is going to be a massive project with a lot of room for error and problems, but I've wanted to do this idea for years now, (ever since I first looked at Wallace and Gromit's inventions in "The Wrong Trousers" when I was 10 and thought, that is so clever I want to try that too if I'm honest haha) and now I can finally do it with the help and support I need to make it a reality. :)
That's all for now but check back soon for the next part on the Carousel Workshops which helped us to figure out ways in which we can realise our ideas :)
Take care,
Joe.
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