Reflective Post: Creative Decisions
The title of the Song I am making a video for is called Iâm Ready and it is by an artist called Vincent Augustus. The song is about an artist who is suicidal regarding the acceptance/success of his music which is also influenced by the artistâs drug and alcohol use. This story line influenced the narrative which I used for the video. I made a narrative to show Vincent introduced to his demons after getting âhighâ, have an encounter with them, and eventually become victorious.  I watched foo fighterâs latest video, Chasing birds (2021) which was also about a drug trip to see how they constructed the narrative from the lyrics.
A key choice I had to make for this video was to decide if to use traditional hand drawn animation or rigged/pegged animation. At the end, I decided to go with hand drawn animation as I feel despite it taking longer to make, there is am certain appeal it gives to animations.
A lot of the inspiration for my video was taken from Pinched (Vandervoot, 2015). The inspiration from Pinched ranged from character designs, FX to compositing. Pinched looked like a rough animation with the lines all over the place, but the composition and shots were really good all through. Vandervoot animated a lot in z axis and used the blur effect when necessary to create a sense of depth and to direct the eye where to look at. I also did similar working a lot in z axis and using the same blur effect. I was going for a bit of a 3D feel and I believe these techniques worked well for that purpose.
He also used FX and overplayed a glowing colored effect when trying to show what was going on in the main characters head. I took direct inspiration for this as my character was often âin his headâ when he encountered in alter ego.
I also got some inspiration from Robert Valleyâs designs for textures. Robert Valley who directed Ice (2020) and Zima Blue (2019) for Netflixâs Love death and robots has a distinctive style in his character designs and textures. So I decided to add some lighting and cross hatching textures to my characters to make it unique just like Robert Valley does.
Key animations were taking from a variety of films. For the audience movement I took inspiration from Daft Punkâs one more time (Takenouchi, k & Matsumoto, L., 2000) as I believed it showed how to animate a large number of people in a concert moving to a particular rhythm.
For the camera movement in the backgrounds, I looked at Alex Widdoswonâs Music and Clowns (2020) video to see how he did this in his video. from minute 3.50, we can see the camera rotations.Â
More than half of the movie was in the concert hall and for that I got inspiration for the hall and its lightening design from an episode of Boondocks (2005) where an artist was also performing on stage. It was helpful to see how the constructed the scene, making the stage light interact with character and background and I proceeded to create mine in a similar way.
Chasing birds (2021). Directed by Emliyn Davis for Bomper studios. Youtube [Online] April 4th 2021. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qYI-RtmYNI [Accessed 20th May 2021].
Ice (2021). Directed by Robert Valley Love, Death and Robots. Netflix. 9th May 2021.
Music and Clowns (2020). Directed by Alex Widdowson. The New York Times [Online] 23rd July 2020. Available from: https://vimeo.com/387733360 [Accessed March 16th 2021].
One more Time (2000). Directed by Takenouchi, k & Matsumoto, L. Daft Punk. Released 13th November 2000. Daft Trax. Virgin Records. (Viewed 27th November 2020).
The Boondocks (2005). Animated Series. Directed by Aron McGruder. United States: Adult Swim.
Vandervoot, D. (2015) Pinched. Vimeo [Online] 21st October 2015. Available from: https://vimeo.com/122104110 [Accessed April 11th, 2021].
Zima Blue. (2019). Directed by Robert Valley. Love, Death and Robots. Netflix. 15th March 2019.