KaitlinFollandBA2B

Total Film edition - March 2016 - issue 242

‘Man or puppet‘ page 18/19

2016 - Starburns Industries -  Anomalisa

Charlie Kaufman delivers a motion animated film, about a lonely motivational speaker Michael Stone ( voiced by David Thewlis), who arrives at a Cincinnati hotel to give a keynote speech only to become engulfed by an existential crisis.

Notes -

- “ There was no computer animation in the entire movie. We built that city, we built those buildings, we lit them with individual lights. The clouds are cotton!”

- “With the puppets visible seams to highlight their hand crafted nature, the faces were created via 3d printer”.

- Stop-motion is a technique that perhaps best embodies the subject of craft in animation. It requires degrees of patience. 

Stop-motion animation goes High tech at Laika 

- This was highly intriguing to know in depth of the studios productions and the creations used in the making of there most recent feature films, ‘Kubo and the two strings’.

Notes - Transcripts 

Travis knight - “We always want to challenge ourselves, we always want to try something new, we always want to tell original stories, to dive into new genres to explore different aspects of what it means to be human. And we do it in a kind of a strange way and that we are stylised our execution of the way we make our films is a convergence of art and craft and science and technology”.

Brian Mclean - (Director of rapid prototyping) “We are constantly trying to raise the bar, we’re constantly trying to redefine what we think is possible for the stop-motion medium”.

Brain Mclean - “To achieve the look of some of these characters on Kubo and the two strings, we needed to try a different printing technology. The powder printing technology was not going to afford us what the director wanted out of these characters so we had an opportunity because of our reputation with 3D printing industry to talk to 3D printing companies and start to see if they had anything in development’.

Brian Mclean - “In our RP department is to never allow the technology to dictate what we can do”. 

Oliver Jones - (Animation rigging supervisor) “Rigging has changed immensely since Coraline, it has got a lot more nuances and has gotten deeper into the actual puppetry”. 

Travis Knight - “There are always imperfections and failings and it’s something you have to come to terms with and I think that it is something beautiful about that, I think that it’s one of the things that makes stop-motion so unique is that inherent in what it is, It’s crafted by human hands and so it has that raw human quality. It’s fustrating to work in this medium because of the imperfections, but I think that’s one of the things that is inherently beautiful. So we really embrace that side of it because it makes these things you 

Personal comment - 

Travis knight speaks deeply about the art of stop-motion and it’s involvement and it is his perspective that contradicts this theory of traditional animation becoming a dying art. He mentions a strong point of that even now there are always imperfections within there films but it is of these mistakes that makes the animation beautiful. It shows the human side to it, almost bringing you back into reality when you spot a mistake that you realise that it’s only puppets. 

One quality I love in particular that Aardman intentionally do with there puppets oat that they reframe from smoothing the clay from the puppets and as you watch back on the footage you can see the finger marks pressed into the puppet. It’s a beautiful charm, it makes look deeper, not just watching a moving puppet but fascinated by the animator in control. 

Research - 

Facts about their current productions on ‘Kubo and the two strings’- 

- The Moon Beast, Kubo’s primary antagonist, is Laika’s first entirely 3-D printed character. Laika beta tested a new resin printer from 3D printing company Stratasys in order to build it.

- Laika doesn’t use painted skies anymore — they’re all digital, because the paintings would have to be huge to entirely cover the sets from every angle.

"From each show, we learn new techniques, and we have new groundbreaking things happen. “We're always looking to see what cool new technology is hitting the market. You can get 3D printers that are actually making fabrics at this point. It's just not quite small enough for us yet. We're not afraid of technology. We embrace it. We love doing something new, and making our movies as bright and as bold as we can with whatever's out there."

Travis Knight

Laika's version of stop-motion is particularly strikes me the most. Because its characters and backdrops are rendered in such detail, and move so smoothly, that its films could be mistaken for wholly CGI creations, instead of stop-motion with digital assistance. And its processes are striking because they're all built around the idea that technology has to service art rather than the other way around. Travis Knight appears to be a true believer in the artistic singularity of stop-motion animation. In person, he comes across as a visionary who talks entirely in enthusiastic speeches about Laika, art, creativity, the storytelling tradition.

Research - 

Laika is Revolutionising.

Laika’s business operations as a studio continues to grow, revolutionising  animating techniques and their technology. Since Liaka founded in 2003, based in Portland. The company has produced beautiful, stylised stop motion animation with computer genorated technoligy to produce such unique classics feature films like Coraline, Paranorman and the Boxtrolls.

It’s core principle remains the art of crafting physical puppets and moving them one frame at a time. The studio’s contributions can be seen in everything from the complexity of the stories. As a company they stand for creativity and originality. They thrive on innovative ideas and push the medium above and beyond. The industries ambitions is to make thought-provoking and emotional resonant films that touches the heart of to all ages and cultures. With their collection of artists, technicians and pragmatist creative animators is what made this company unique.

Laika - Process  of early 3D printing at Laika

Through the technique of stop motion animation traced through the early days of cinema. No other company has used this technoilgy more than Laika.

‘The advancement in technology using face replacement faces for coraline bridged the gap between modern computer animation and bringing the precision it offered into physical stop motion.

The process begins with 2D animations the design changes of lip sync and facial expression of a character. The key poses were sculpted as clay maquettes and scanned into the computer.

CG animators would then animate the in-between positions. Once it has been passed through and accepted by the director the animate is then exported as an STL (Sterolithography) file and printed out onto an object using the 3D printer.

Research - 

-Online - http://www.indiewire.com/article/how-laika-is-revolutionizing-animation-20140923 .[Accessed] 10/05/17

Completed Animation 

(With audio) 

- Overall I am very satisfied with the outcome I like the performances of the character and the morphing that takes place. The improvements I have made throughout has really enhanced my skills and my self awareness of strategising my work and finding solutions. 

Evaluation - Animation Collaboration.

Start date - 10/03/17 Submission - 12/05/17

For this project I have been collaborating within a team to build and bring to life a series of facts or quotes about the process of animation, interpreting quotes of our choice, creating individual sequences that we have brought together to create a series of anthology of short films. This has relied on my collective research, thoughts and understanding of the concept of art form in animation.

Collaboration:

Within our group we have diverse, creative animators working in the medium of 2D and 3D animations, all unique and stylised in there own way. It has been a great for us to come together and create these animations of different backgrounds and yet convey the same likeness as to what the art of animation means. That said there has been a few highs and low points during this project. that of keeping up with communication and meeting up for group discussions. Never the less we have all come together and pulled through and have successfully produced a series of anthology of short films.

Animation:

As a result of the animation I am very pleased with the outcome. The changes I have made throughout this project has really improved the quality of my work and has enhanced the level of my skills. It has been these obstacles that has pushed me to find other strategies and resolve theses issues to produce better content. It has made me become a better animator and evidence is shown throughout my progress.

Advantages:

The style of the animation is consistent throughout. My research and time spent developing the character and it’s environment has worked out to be successful and visually appealing in the animation.

Maintain to a minimum of four colour schemes. The colours I have decided to use has complimented the animation very nicely, although in some sequences the character was against a white backdrop this was intentional so that the pure focus was on the performance of the character.  

Disadvantages:

There where some sequences of the characters performance that could have been improved on, that of incorporating more in-betweens and making the key frames more bold and strong within the poses.

process - Refining animation 

- I am in the process of refining the animation, adjusting certain key frames to create a pause. Also I have been refining the colours, incorporating shadows and filling in the background with a decorative piece of imagery.

Credit sequence 

The credit will placed at the end of the footage. it will state the quote I have used form the artist. i.e (Glen Keane) This time the still has colour and design, very much like the one I have used in the animation. I thought this was a feature to close the animation. The concept of the animation starting of bare then ending with colour and so it continues towards the end of the title sequence. 

Process -Movement and colour 

- The animation is coming together The next sequence I have been working on the the characters realisation of the audience. The girl feels ecstatic and I have shown the emotions through her body, visually we can see her excitement it gives personality to the character and seem life like.

Colour scheme- 

I have intentionally used simplistic, flat colours for the animation to emphasise a stylised theme, inspired by Hanna Barber, colour and mark making. 

Process - Animation 

- I have been working onto SketchBook Pro to produce my animation It isa software I am highly experienced with and feel very cormfortable using. In this beginning sequence I introduce the character, morphed as a ...

Key Frames 

Reference Footage 

10/05/17

Tittle sequence

08/05/17

Title sequence - 

- As a group we had organised a day where we could come together and negotiate about our title sequence. Out of the five of us three attended, we intended to continue forward. We all took the time to share and discuss or animations progression and from our various quotes we can begin forming a title sequence. 

- It was apparent that all of our quotes are related towards the process of animation and the inner meanings of what animation can convey meaning, wether it is based on the visuals, the artists and the connection towards an audience. This was fantastic news to hear that all of our quotes portrayed similar meanings of the beauty of animation. As a result we had all come to an agreement and decided that our title sequence will be, “The beauty of Animation”. The title is broad, great to give our group freedom to play around yet still have similar a connection of our quotes. Not only the title fits with the groups meanings it also highlights the meaning of what animation can do that just moving pictures.  

Software - 

- For our title sequence we have decided to work into Adobe After Effects, This way we can create an animated, gripping title adequate with all of our animations. Myself and Elle will be experimenting various title sequences and as a group deciding what is in our favour. 

Colour scheme - 

- We have been customising colours from Adobe colour, an online colour generator. Here we have been selecting colours within our favour that best suits the colour scheme of the groups animations and are visually complimentary. 

As a result these are the colours that where in our favour (these may vary as we  develop later on in the project). 

Group order - 

Test 1: Transitions