Georgia Little BA Animation

I was meant to be giving blood the week of this animation. It didn't happen because the appointment was cancelled. I had been psyching myself up for months in preparation because I'm scared of needles. I dedicated this animation to a simplistic little guy running left to right with his arm out holding a needle to illustrate me not having my blood taken.

I went to a show called 'Weird Romance' this week. The first act tells the story of a homeless woman being hired to be the personality behind a beautiful simulacrum designed to advertise products. I loved this concept and made it the inspiration for this week.

As the light shines on Delphi (the simulacrum), Phil, her user, disappears from behind her. This isn't my most successful animation. I like the more detailed characters, the use of spacing, and the fact the two lights on Phil are red and blue and the one on Delphi is Purple but there are errors.

This is the last animation based on 'Labelled' by Joannamation.

I wanted it to look more finished than my first one because the process was finished. I made the shopkeeper less expressive but more stylised by giving him a huge collar and longer arms. I added a spotlight because I wanted to experiment with nodes (blur, gradient, and transparency). Also, all of the movements are done with pegs.

A video explaining why analogue horror works and why it is so effective, especially 14-18 minutes in where there is a very good description and review of a video featured later in this post:

The word analogue is defined as: 'relating to or using signals or information represented by a continuously variable physical quantity such as spatial position, voltage, etc' or 'a person or thing seen as comparable to another.'

Analogue horror is a sub-genre of horror which plays with both of these concepts. It uses the 1950s, VHS-like imagery of videos like emergency broadcasts, propaganda, archival footage, or PSAs to appear familiar whilst adding supernatural and unfamiliar aspects which unsettle a viewer. The techniques are used in video games like 'Discover My Body' 'Assessment Examination' and 'Maple County' but are used in videos also.

This is particularly noticeable in the Mandela Catalogues, a YouTube series created by Alex Kister about doppelgangers called alternates who seek out their human version and kill them to take their place. There is a deeper mystery but the stand-out feature is the feeling of dread, fear, and unsettling familiarity set from the very beginning:

It is an effective means of storytelling because the technology in relation to the modern era is inherently flawed so the jarring cuts and sound disruptions are fitting for the format. Also, the type of video they are emulating is designed to remain in your subconscious by being concise and simple due to the (usually) life-saving knowledge they contain so, by twisting them to scare a viewer, it invokes a far more primal fear because you don't know who to trust.

Another example of this is Local58, which has multiple videos which appear to be being hijacked in an attempt to get people to act against their best interests:

Weather service is especially effective to me. The constant pushing and pulling and the innate feeling that something as normal as the moon is betraying you is very effective. Then, the final shot of the VHS camera being pointed to the moon is genuinely hard to watch because of the implications forced into your mind by the emergency broadcast which preceded it.

A more light-hearted example, not in the horror genre but which I still consider in the analogue subgenre, is OmegaMart, which aims not to scare its viewers but to create abnormal and otherworldly concepts in something as normal as a supermarket advert. Their products and location genuinely exist to visit.

Other examples include:

The first week's animation is based on a Year 3 film I am assisting with. I made the dress for the main character and a suit for another so I thought these were key details to include in the characters I have portrayed here. The characters themselves are mannequins so I tried to reflect this by leaving the circles at the joints and excluding faces. In hindsight, I would have done the animation using white to make this even clearer.

During the animation, the characters dance together and I suggested a lighting change and a ballroom style dip due to the style of dress I made being a ballgown.

Centaurworld revolves around a warhorse manoeuvring her way through a magical and silly world full of centaurs to find her way back to her rider. The longer she stays in the world, the more she starts to resemble it, becoming 'wibbly wobbly', resembling 'two beach balls'. The appearance of Centaurworld is something I would love to translate to elsewhere.

There is also the possibility that, due to their being two distinct art styles in the show, their are two ways to translate one character into the desired art style.

The Clanger's characters were knitted by the wife of Peter Firmin, Joan Firmin. I would love to knit a character as part of this task. I also feel that the round bodies and short, stumpy legs will compliment the style of Centaurworld well. There is also the presence of armour in both shows which will be fun to adapt.

Courage the Cowardly Dog is a horror-comedy created for Cartoon Network. It follows Courage, an easily distressed anthropomorphic beagle-mix, as he endeavours to save his owners Muriel and Eustace from the monsters, aliens, and various threats as they appear, even though they rarely ever notice his efforts. The show uses lots of horror tropes. I like the design of courage, he has a huge head that matches his body in size and tiny feet with one toe constantly pointed so the character always looks like he's tip-toeing. He is quite literally an underdog and his frail and ragged design reflects this.

Tinga Tinga Tales is a show named after Tanzanian Tingatinga Art, which the show's animation is reminiscent of. It was produced in Nairobi, Kenya by a Studio with around 50 people called Homeboyz Animation. Eric Wainaina, a Kenyan singer-songwriter, makes the music for the show. It tells African folk tales about various animals, explaining why they look or behave the way they do. For example, why a giraffe has a long neck or why meerkats are always so observant of their surroundings. The art style immediately caught my eye when I first saw it. The use of bold colour and patterns is very effective.

I want to draw a character from Miraculous Ladybug in the style of Madoka Magica.

Miraculous Ladybug is a show which, for its first season, introduced one new villain every episode. The format is a Parisian feels a negative emotion like fear, anger, or sadness, and the main antagonist, Hawkmoth, takes advantage of this, using his ability to grant superpowers to others to transform them into supervillains, promising they can now fix whatever is upsetting them in exchange for the defeat of the heroes. The show has incredibly questionable character designs considering it's focus on fashion but I find the concept endearing.

Madoka Magica, on the other hand, is an anime meant for an adult audience. An alternative look at the concept of magical girls like Sailor Moon, it has a deceptively cute art style that hides the dark subject matter. There is a twist at the end which reveals the one granting the girls magical powers in exchange for a wish, Kyubey, feeds from them when they eventually become the horrific monsters the girls have been fighting throughout the show.

This is essentially the final product but with some cleaning up to do i.e. the overlay of slides at the end.

I changed her ears due to time constraints the flowing nature of her ears would have taken far longer to track. Instead of rabbit ears, they were now based on German Shepherd and bat ears.

I'm happy with the lip-sync aspect of this task, I think it was successful.

My next focus was on the body and the legs.

With the legs, I animated the steps and spin first. I think the spin is effective but in hindsight, it should have been faster. There was a 7-second gap between the feet being still and the spin. I initially thought this was too long so I thought her swaying her leg back and forth would be a good filler of the time. However, I think now it would have been a more effective end if the leg swaying weren't there.

This was the first video of the WIP lip sync. The audio clip is taken from a film called 'Arsenic and Old Lace,' a film where two old ladies are revealed to be murdering people. I thought it was fitting because the character is very dainty and looks as if she wouldn't talk at all, let alone ramble about the recipe for a deadly poison.

I focused on the arms first because I knew I wanted her to gesticulate as she spoke. They were animated in 1's but I changed this to 2's later because I felt it more fitting because I had animated everything else in 2's.

The puppet lives on an island. To further consolidate their personality I thought this shot of her watching the tide come in/out would convey the tranquillity in which she spends the majority of her days. She is sitting on her tail feathers. She would collect things that washed up on her shore, shown by the pinecones being present in the water.

I love the idea of the character living on a moving island of unused materials like the garbage mound in the pacific ocean. If I were to develop the idea to be broadcastable, I would create an episodic show with a similar format to the clangers, where the bird would pull something from the ocean and search to give it a proper home/recycle it. Because the island is floating, it could explore different environments and cultures.

The ocean is denim taken from old pairs of pants. the shoreline is a picked apart cork and cut-up plastic chocolate tray. The white in the scene is polystyrene and ripped up receipts. The far-right is cardboard.

This is the most fun. This was the first animation I did with the puppet and I think it is the one that displays the most personality. The flexing of the fingers and hyper-fixated stare in preparation, the curiosity as she lifts and places the first block, the primal and animal-like instinct to grab all the cubes as they go past, and the logical way she holds one with her tail to stop it from running away. Finally, the completionist's desire to grab the last block and the deflation of the tail feathers when she falls convey disappointment are all conveyed clearly.

My initial idea of their personality was that she loves order, and is calm when everything is in order but will fix anything that isn't. I think this and the pot plant video convey this. If boxes aren't stacked or if there is a stray branch on her tree, she will remove it. She is incredibly focused and enjoys her home being orderly. I think this attitude and the muscular build make for a very intimidating character.

This is my second and favourite of the recorded pieces. I feel I have very effectively portrayed the force behind the puppet's movements and actions. I also feel the timing works well. My only concern is it appears after the fourth yank on the rope, I walked in front of the camera and am only just noticing this as I'm typing. If I had more time I would correct this.

The leaf stitch used on the arms, whilst looking like feathers, also bulges while the arms move like muscles. It works well with this particular recording because of the strain as he pulls.

This is the third animation done with my puppet. The purpose of doing the walk cycle later in the process is to get to know the puppet and put some personality into the walk. Despite this, I feel like the walk I chose for the character was fitting. It is simple because from the beginning the character was meant to be poised yet powerful. One change is that the original concept for the character was incredibly stoic. Through the process, I learn it was more fitting for her to be chipper and curious, hence the slight sway in the upper body to convey she is content (in hindsight, I would have liked this to be more prominent, addressing both the subtlety and the fact she only sways left and not right). If the waist were sturdier, I would have lowered her body and raised her face to make her look more primal and focused.

It was useful to do this later in the process because I learned the right leg was problematic, with both the hip and ankle joint being loose. The waist joint was also loosened over the course of the animating. For some of the poses, I couldn't put weight onto this leg without the puppet's pose being compromised in some way. Therefore, I used the middle tail feather piece as an anchor which stayed still during the process. It meant the puppet could stand more effectively and maintain its posture. Having 3 tail pieces had the added benefit of still having movement as the other 2 pieces swayed with the body.