Manchester

Went to Manchester on Saturday, was good :) saw the family, and had a massive mooch in town, seriously forgot how big it is, was walking around about 5 streets for the best part of three hours, was good :) gave me some ideas for stuff I might want to do in the future. I went to an exhibition about uk hip hop, which I didn't really read the info, so u know, can't start reviewing it, but it had some nice design work and also some good eg's of multimedia, with massive screens showing documentaries and touch screens with head phones that you could sit and listen to music to add another dimention to the exhibition, as well as tv screens dotted about with stuff on, I dunno what cause I got bored and couldn't be bothered to sit and listen cause I was more interested in the displays ha. Went to the northern quarter in town too, which is like.. I dunno its a mish mash of all 2nd hand shops (lets say vintage ;) ) and art shops and its like the studenty part of town. Really nice area, bit grungey but lots of creative people around there. Was plastered in graffiti which I took a few photos of. Picked up loads of leaflets too which were interesting. Got a free newspaper which is just all music, has some really good design in it too, I need to scan them all.. Will do it after I think and do a seperate post, but anyway. Photos from my day -

GOOF TROOP

GOOF TROOP, originally uploaded by richt....

I missed the introduction to one shot (gutter!) so gonna have to catch up this week, to be honest this is the one I was least looking forward to so a bit annoyed I missed the first one to give me something to like about the work ahead, but ah well! Off to Manchester for the day tomorrow which I'm looking forward to, I'm gonna go around the northern quarter and see what I can find inspiration wise which should be good. Also doing some browsing for exhibits going on in town tomorrow I found a few artists work I like. This is a piece by artist RichT who is a street artist. I really like his work and use of space/colour.

One shot, inspiration

This was also by Barry Pilling, I thought if there was a way to do something like this in one shot it would look so good!

Animation

I found this through flickr which had a link to the youtube video, I thought it was a really nice way of tying together type, illustration and animation together. I may do something like this myself to further experiment with stop motion.



 



really like this one! It's by Barry Pilling I've had a look at his youtube channel and he has some really good work on there so have a look if you get the chance.

Essay initial thoughts

I started thinking about the essay the other day, and since I'm kind of wrapping up animation at the moment I'm going to start with that and ignore flash for now. The other week in tutorial Andy mentioned how different companies use different design processes for example Sony is less adventurous than say Pixar, who create more  films such as Ratatouille, and concentrate on creating a new, interesting stories as well as creative ways to animate. Where Sony takes stories which are successful, like in the case of Cloudy with a chance of meatballs, that story is successful in America, so the company can afford to throw money at it knowing they will make a large return. Sony are also planning to release an animated feature film of The Smurfs which again backs this.

Animation

Wellllllllll, I bought some materials for my animation yesterday, different coloured A3 paper, in blue, pink, green, yellow and orange. Hopefully today one of my flatmates will stick around for the full day so I can build my contraption around them, I had more ideas of someone on the phone and the conversation floating out in speech bubbles, or at least one saying "blah blah blah" so as the paper is worming around them they're "wrapped up in coversation" I'm unsure of which way I'm gonna go with this, hopefully i'll have enough paper left to create a paper mural on the wall too cause I really like that idea. I created a white board animation the other day too, which I'll try to upload but I need to edit it in premiere first before I can.

More inspiration, pixilation

This illustration was created by Kaws, -------------- i'll write about him later

I really want my stop motion to have a feel like this, with the bright colours and background interacting with a person, I love the back image where it looks as if the lines are wrapping around West and might try to recreate this using paper or material as part of my stop motion :)

Research, paper

Bathroom Oops, originally uploaded by matt makes stuff.

I found this photo on flickr, I really like this idea of having paper interact with surroundings and I would love to create a stop motion using this as a starting point. An idea I've had is to create a mural on a blank wall then cut up the paper and take a photo after each edit, then run it backwards so that it grows from the wall.. I could also include human interactions with this and have music which suits the motion. I'm going to begin making sketches of what can be included on my mural :)

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Animation, initial ideas

Well I've been really looking forward to my animation project, and I've had a few different ideas about what I want to do for it. Mainly I want to do something relating to music, wether it be a music video or just moving in time to the beat of a song. As far as what I want to do within the video I want to do something quite elaborate, at the moment I've mostly been focusing on ideas and in the next two weeks I'd like to start making mini animations. I found this music video for Simian Mobile Disco - 10000 Horses can't be wrong



which although I don't really like the song, I think that the way the lights used move with the music. So with that as kind of a starting point it gave me a few ideas to use whiteboards and have something morph with the music like this video...



but again I would like to use photography in my work too to include the interaction with people, so I'm thinking that I might do some animations on both whiteboard and using photo's then morph them together using photoshop to get some interesting effects, cause like the Nabil Elderkin video I've included before in which the pictures mash together I think that this could be easy and interesting to use in my stop motion cause I could have two narratives going on at the same time and working together.

I've had tooooooo many ideas really and I can't jot them fast enough haha..

Was also thinking of using cardboard and telling a story using illustration on cardboard then crushing the card and taking photos as I do that, then running it backwards and have it rebuild into something else.

Another thing I would like to experiment with in this project is viewpoints, there are so many interesting things you can do with having a strange angle, or moving around as the subject you're photographing is moving.

Also colour, I want to include lots of colour in my work, and possibly editing over images in photoshop by drawing on them.

Lots of ideas, hopefully I'll get an end result that I'm happy with. I need to start thinking about what I want to photograph, the stop motion we did in the first week was good cause we worked in groups and everyone had a bit of a say which gave really random, quirky ideas. Thats the way I enjoy getting ideas for stuff like this cause you can get other peoples opinions in the early stages and it helps you to develop your own from there.

Inspiration.

Pixilation

Practice pixilation from Leigh Harrison on Vimeo.

This was my groups first attempt at a pixilation piece, I really liked doing this although it was like... FREEZZZZZZZZZZZING outside :( but ah well, came out ok for a short practice run I reckon :)

Flash project - completed

This is my first flash project finally completed (buzzingggg)


finished flash project by ~holleighwood on deviantART

I'm quite happy with it, to improve I think I could make the "start" at the end of the chosen frames go back to the image the user is actually on, and maybe give a brief introduction. I would have also liked to have moving images like clouds etc, but ah well, it came out ok. Might do another one of these if I get the time and explore flash a bit more, but got the new brief now which is animation, I really can't wait to get stuck in to this, at the moment its what I'm leaning towards, we did a mini one the other day and it came out well.. I'll try and upload it but I can't get the frame rate to play at 12 per second.. pfft :( ah well, all a learning curve ;)

Research, exisiting stop motion

Intervelometer from Kunal Sen on Vimeo.
I found this stop motion through another art blog and really liked the way that they used different times of day and perspex to create interaction between characters and the surroundings. The group which created this posted this statement about what inspired them -

We picked ‘Human’, ‘Wild Card’ (which gave us freedom to do what we wanted!) and a music track (which we had to use somewhere in the film).
‘Intervelometer’ attempts to explore the essence of animation (for us!)- Persistence of vision, light, human form and time. The film also pays tribute to Eadweard Muybridge, an iconic figure in both- Photography and Animation.

I also looked into Eadweard Muybridge to find that he was the creator of the zoopraxiscope, and also a pioneer in stop motion, his techniques are still being used today.

Also found this -



which when I watched at first I thought that the guy had just run it backwards, then I realised that you can see each wet line from the previous drawing, so I'm guessing he actually wiped it down each time..which then made me think EFFORRRRRRRT but it does give a really good effect

Last project..

We were asked to bulletpoint our last creative projects ... this is mine for my FMP from college last year, although I do something along these lines with most of my work..

• Began the project with the idea of music but was unsure what I wanted to do with it.
• Ended up deciding that I wanted to portray music through visual means, primarily a poster
• Explored different uses for this kind of work, for example advertising for a musical event
• Looked at different artists, illustrators, directors, designers, photographers etc to get inspiration for my own ideas. Appraised their work, what I liked/disliked, what had inspired me how this would relate to my work
• Took photographs which related to my work and used these throughout as references
  
• Tried out different techniques, digital and practical
• Began to work towards a final piece drawing out different ones, did approx 30 sketches and developed 5 further
• Developed one final piece and evaluated the whole project

Research, Star skies/galaxies

Saw this banner on a website and I really like it. I think that the whole look of it works well, with the pixel text, the use of colour and the sky background, I really want to get a clear picture of a starry sky so that I can use it in my work rather than use someone elses cause I think they look so nice just as components to work like this example -This was done by Louise Lynn a young illustrator/graphic artist I'm really inspired by.

Just a random collection of inspiring pictures too -















all taken from fauxbeau

Ha!

How amazing is this, I came across it on a random blog





as well as the fact is between Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger (!?) I like the use of colour/font in the header. It's really of its time.