Week 11 - Final week

Final pieces of the puzzle

I planned out the time in this week to evaluate and conclude my theoretical and practical research. Although I recieved information from TECARAT the day before hand in, it was still very useful and I spent a lot of this time embedding it in.

I was happy that this time I managed to get in contact with relevant practitioners and it helped me to understand my case studies a lot more. Another improvement against previous years was also that I typed up my last draft of the essay in Microsoft Word and learned how to make it consistent in a time-efficient manner. I just wish I knew about it sooner than last week. But it is hard to find something if I am not sure what I am looking for.

Doing some reading on building questionnaires helped me to be more confident with getting accurate and topic relevant results. I just wish I have considered the colour of the pictures used in the questionnaire more as this has hugely affected the perception of the question. But even then, the outcome helped me to identify how the interpretation of an abstract structure can be influenced by the use of colour. 

I have been more consistent with keeping Bibliography too, trying harder to not leave it to the last minute, that made writing of the essay a lot easier.

However, my final outcome has changed compared to my Proposal. This was pretty much influenced by the research I have gathered after the proposal. I am still happy with the outcome as it has helped me gain insight into a number of techniques that I hope to apply to my Extended Practice. But it also identified a gap in resources. Some practitioners went around these but I am more of a rule follower, therefore a collection of techniques and materials applicable to animation sets would really help me at times when I tend to overthink pros and cons of techniques in my head instead of finding out what it is like using them in animation sets.

I am happy with the presentation of my final outcome, due to its size it cannot be submitted as a physical model so I made a turn around video. It took me two takes to get it right after I put a piece of cloth underneath the set and marked out key points it had to reach when turning. In its longest dimension it was slightly hanging over the table and so the base is slightly cut off in the video. I animated it frame by frame and edited in Photoshop afterwards. See the difference below.

I have included an example of this. bla blah

Week 10

Word Doc. learning from mistakes and making the practical outcome

Visual representation of the results for my questionnaire. 

This week I have been focusing on finishing up my practical outcome and putting my whole project into a suitable shape.

In the past two years, I have distanced myself from Microsoft Office 365 as Google Drive seemed more convenient. Especially, with my old laptop freezing on many occasions with the installed software. Therefore, I never really took the clue about its usefulness with structured essay writing, which I can imagine made my previous essays suffer.

I have used this guide to help me:

von Courter, G. (2006) ' The Wicked Easy Way to Create a Table of Contents in Word' Linkedin The Learning Blog. Available at:   https://learning.linkedin.com/blog/design-tips/the-wicked-easy-way-to-create-a-table-of-contents-in-word (Accessed 05/12/2019)

Week 9

Limitations of the space and style

I have finally booked the space in stop-motion studio and started looking at dimensions of the final outcome.

It took me one full session to figure out how I will be making this so I can reach all parts of the set comfortably in the making process.

I also build a questionnaire with the help of advice below. 

https://www.simplypsychology.org/qualitative-quantitative.html

https://www.simplypsychology.org/questionnaires.html 


Then shared it out for responses. However soon I have realised a slight mistake that caused misunderstanding across the majority of respondents. The colour affected connotations. I wish I have done the pictures in B&W.

Weeklys

Week 8

Feeling Stuck Again

I felt fairly lost with where my essay and practical investigation are going and so I reached out again to the book - Primer of Visual Literacy. Skim reading through again, I found another topic directly relevant to my research and so I tried to remaking it in my Visual Journal. Breaking down landscape into elements - looking at its visual anatomy.

Week 7

MAF 2019 Week 

Intrigued by film itself, Gon, the little fox (2019) I started searching more about how it was made. I found these videos which reveal how they used real water on their set, rigging, water ripples etc. and many more breathtaking facts. 

Interviews with Takeshi Yashiro:

https://vimeo.com/364255822?ref=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR1JGgfUbo_B_6Hab6zrGy_1a2TybbU3DPtEfRvs2BejzGjfe6_LIznDSBQ (Accessed: 11/11/2019)

https://vimeo.com/360517247 (Accessed: 11/11/2019)

It has been a busy week otherwise and I have attended
12-14/11/2019 Manchester Animation Festival, few things relevant to the research that I carried away with me included:

Cassini, R. (2019) Animated Answers: What Makes the Perfect Showreel. 12th November, Manchester: Manchester Animation Festival 2019 - she was talking about the importance of previous experience with miniature making for candidates who want to get into the Mackinnon & Sounders.

Meeting Aardman - The making of session for Farmageddon. Talking about materials and scale of sets.

Week 6

Weekly

With the desire to explore sustainable sets, yet time running out and I still not having the clearest idea this week's tutorial was really helpful in putting me back on track.

I need to contact the practitioners in my case study as soon as possible as well as define what exactly I am exploring with sustainability.

Therefore, for the rest of the week, I focused on putting what I have researched so far into words in order to narrow down and specify the topic.

At least I have got the idea that I want to research landscapes -the countryside & underground as that will then inform my Extended Practice with the methods explored last week. Weeklys slides

Proposal

Current version of my CoP3 Proposal. I still need to reference several bits, although without it I like to think the idea of my research is clear, my case studies need a tweak. This will be looked into when writing the essay.

Week 5

Weekly Summary

This week I did further research into Yashiro, T.'s works.

It is interesting to see the difference in materials between Making of Norman the Snowman (2014) and previously looked at Gon, The Little Fox (2019)

Was this intentional change or just an influence of props on the set?

I also explored more the ideas from A Primer Of Visual Literacy and landscapes:

                                     

COP3 - Online Reading 2

Just some of the online resources that caught my interest

Margett, T. (2019) 'Using Animation as a Playground for My Memories', animationstudies 2.0, 7 January. Available at: https://blog.animationstudies.org/?p=2830 (Accessed: 30/10/2019)

Maselli, V. (2018) 'The Invisible Memories of Animated Puppets' Materiality: An Interdisciplinary Overview', animationstudies 2.0, 12 February. Available at: https://blog.animationstudies.org/?p=2358 (Accessed: 30/10/2019)

Detheux, J. (2016) 'Black & white, the most direct way to making the visible visible', animationstudies 2.0, 15 July. Available at: https://blog.animationstudies.org/?p=1515 (Accessed: 30/10/2019)

https://animateddocs.wordpress.com/2014/02/22/just-a-mess-by-laura-stewart/ how simple can you go?

Week 4

Case Study

Feeling a bit stuck, I stumbled upon the Gon the Little Fox by TECARAT in my research.


Action for next week: to contact TECARAT

This opened up more options of rigging and use of dressing materials for sets.

I got to see the full film at the World Animation Social 24/10/2019 at LAU as well. 

Week 3

Group Tutorial

Group tutorials helped me to see what interpretation my peers have when I pitched the developed idea to them for the first time. It is an excellent way to collect fresh thoughts and ideas. Acting as a test of clarity for the chosen research question.

At this point, I needed more research so I skim-viewed articles containing keyword 'set' at the following website https://stopmotionmagazine.com/ and did more research on other pages. All links that got my attention in some way or another can be found on the link below. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-PrHpM0ci5NsSP2QnsjmR7HYz6oHPHHpYgfrIRoyxxg/edit?usp=sharing

The ones, directly connected to my research are:

Wallace, J. (2017) Hand Carving. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/BTSI740Blq2/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link (Accessed: 19/10/2019)
Savage, A. (2018) 'Designing the Stop-Motion Sets of Aardman Animation's Early Man!', Adam Savage's Tested, 13 February. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBdOPgsfdGA (Accessed: 17/10/2019)

Dondis, D. A. (1974) A Primer of Visual Literacy. Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Week 2

Solidifying the Topic

After further brain-storming into areas of interest in set building and my first 1-2-1 tutorial, I have chosen a substantial topic. Sustainable stop-motion set structures — oomph so many Ss.

Discussion with my tutor has highlighted that my research question is still somewhat broad and that I need to define 'sustainable'. Also, bullet point what other aspects am I looking at when evaluating existing sets. What would the set designer take into consideration? How does budget, ease of use, durability etc. inform their decisions.

Next, I need to think about my practical investigation and the actual outcome. I am building a set, the theoretical research will support that, yet I need to clarify how I will test the success of this product.

Week 1

The briefing, Initial ideas and Presentation

The chosen topic for the dissertation - related to Sign Language Animation, was changed the day before presentations. By sudden realisation that the area of research in CoP1 and CoP2 no longer seem to connect to the techniques of animation that are going to be researched and used in other modules this year. That being stop-motion. Whereas, looking into character animation in Sign Language leans towards CGI and 2D Digital techniques. Previous CoP projects have proven SL Animation requires a vast amount of planning, preparation and collaboration. All necessary for such project to come to light — therefore locking it away in a trunk to be kept as a personal side project or better, for MA studies. Instead, this module will focus on exploring the underground of stop-motion sets.

Presentation Material

Evaluating the areas of interest, talks and books that can leave any stop-motion enthusiast speechless:

Wilford, L. and Stevenson, R. (2018) Isle of Dogs. New York: Abrams. This book is describing some of the thought processes of building the sets. Dondis, D. A. (1974) A Primer of Visual Literacy. Massachusetts: The MIT Press. One of my favourite books, which explores breaking art down into simple elements, will be useful in breaking the sets down to understand how they are built.
I want to learn more about sets. The fact is, I am not sure how I would approach building a set if I were to do it again. I do not feel as such there is a formula for building sets from the stop-motion books I have seen. At the moment I am interested in the two:
1. Adaptation of sets for special effects and elements such as fog, steam, lights. 2. Being opposed to styrofoam carving, I hope to learn what sustainable and functional ways of a set building are practical. Thorough research into building sets will be more than useful in the attempt to get to know my options and alternatives, and it will inform my EP.