Did a Foley sound workshop and learned a lot of new info, thats all written up on the above. But to summarise, I got an introduction to foley sound and learned an abundance of new information. I was shown how everyday objects, for example corn starch and bubble wrap, can be used to mimick the sound of snow or even fire. We got split into groups and I ended up working with Harry. We recreated the foley sound of a scene from the Fantastic Mr Fox with objects in the room.

Week 8, Thursday, 30/11/23.

Made some progress with the mask, I have the base of it finished, I need to make a nose and strap so I can tie it around my head. It looks creepy but at the same time it makes me want to laugh, lots of mixed feelings. It reminds me of a diseased koala. Overall, I think this piece has greatly improved my crochet skills, even looking at the mask I can see the quality of my stitches improving as time goes on.

Hands Progress

I have a total of 40 frames currently, and it will stay like that for a bit. As much as I want to see this finished, its very time consuming and a small bit harmful for my health, so I'll be leaving it aside for now, however I think I'll try put it onto adobe photoshop to get animation, I might come back to it in my last week to try finish it.

I'm happy enough with how its turning out but there's things, I would do differently were I to try this again in the future, such as a better set up like a desk, a ventilated room, wearing a mask, and having another person help me, and honestly a better composition for the mirror, it look a bit odd but laying it down flat was the only way to keep the hands standing up.

I made even more hands!!!!! The process of making these is in a previous post.

Using the knowledge I learned from Chris the technician the previous Friday, I created 4 more plaster casts of my hand using alginate. This time I learned that the ratio to mixing alginate is 2:3, so you multiply the amount of alginate you use by 1.5.

(I still haven't emotionally recovered from carrying this mirror from my place to the college, its very heavy and its 15 minutes on foot, I was both physically and emotionally harmed by this mirror.)

I also brought in the mirror I planned on using and was figuring out how to keep everything in place, and even did some story boarding for what order the hands would start to recede.

This is my very complex story board. I also asked Chris whether I should saw or shave down my casts between frames and he agreed that shaving them down would be easier.

Photoshop Workshop.

This Monday I went to the photography photoshop and I learned a variety of skills on Adobe photoshop. I learned how to use different tools which we practiced on an image of an apple, how to create colour pallets from images, how to change the size of something, and how to do basic animation on the app.

This is the colour pallet I made based off a scenery from my favourite videogame.

Week 2, Tuesday 17/10/2023

So on Tuesday, I wanted to film a reference video that I would use for my painted animation, which evolved into a fully fledged photoshoot with A.J as my model.

Originally, since I only wanted a quick reference video of A.J crawling out of the "frame", so I cut a whole into a A2 page and got A.J to pose to see if I had the dimensions and position of the frame right. But we decided to take it further.

We decided to expand this concept by cutting a hole into a large sheet of grey paper and hanging it on the rack. With the correct lighting and my ancient phone camera, the grey sheet transformed into a lovely shade of slate blue and I was delighted. With a bit of help I experimented with different lighting angles to create a sense of dept in the photos. The shadows in the first two images on the top right are my favourite.

We took a even further step and created a frame by twisting and attaching a sheet onto the grey roll, which gave it a sorta dream like quality to it. I feel like I could have done a better hiding the cello tape, and I think if I were do ever try this again I'd include fairy lights in the sheet to see how it looked.

Week 2: Monday, 16/10/2023

I did the Photography workshop on Monday , and was given an introduction to Studio lighting and set up, and did a few portrait shots as a exercise using different lighting and "filters" to gain different affects and experiment with different out comes.

We started off using the automatic features on our phones and took some normal portraits before experimenting and disrupting these portraits with different poses and coloured lights. We used a red light and pointed it from different angles gaining different interesting results, we also tried putting a piece of red plastic over the camera lense created a red filter.

Using different phone cameras resulted in different quality photos, some of my photos were taken with my own phone and the photos me with red light were taken on A.J's phone. These photos of A.J were taken with their phone (which is brand new with a high quality camera) , and the quality was way better than my phone as you can see. With A.J, we also started with a basic portrait and then experimented with some slightly different poses, and then by reflecting light onto a golden reflective material from their side and then from behind them.

These were also taken with A.J's phone, and we tried using a large translucent sheet of plastic and shined a bright light behind it while one of us posed. We used different coloured pieces of clear plastic in front of the camera, and interestingly enough the orange plastic would turn into a light warm grey (top left picture), we had to reposition and refocus the camera many times before it settled on orange, we had similar problems with the red plastics at times.

After being shown how to use the DSLR camera we continued the to take a variety of different portraits using different methods once more but with the DSLR. I had a bit of difficulty adjusting to using it but managed to somewhat grasp it in the end. Here we experimented with the light projector and placed coloured plastic over it, and projected it onto the wall. I'm realising now that we used mainly red in this exercise and I think it suits the theme of disruption. I feel like red is a very disruptive colour, maybe its because red is often used as a warning colour, both in everyday life and in the wild.

For our Project : Disrupt, an idea I had for my security camera concept was that while the p.o.v was switching cameras, in between switches a "normal" portrait in the background would change and become disrupted, distorted even, and switch back. But shown long enough to have the viewer second guessing themselves. As a reference for this I posed with this baby I found lying around and shot a impromptu Madonna and child. ( left image normal, right image disrupted)

"Baby in a frame, I know, I know it's serious~" - The smiths (probably)

It's a framed baby, in a frame, with a lizard. If I had another frame I would've tripple framed it. This was completely self indulgent.

These are some of the different artists I was looking at during the week.

This is Stuart Blackton, the first person to use pixilation and the creator of the "the enchanted mirror". He would "interact" with the drawing, even "removing" parts of the drawing and making them "reappear" as real objects, and would make the face "react". He would stop the recording, make his changes, and continue as before.

This here is Windsor McCay, american cartoonist who created "Gertie the dinosaur", the earliest cartoon to ever feature a dinosaur. This was also the first film to ever use Keyframes, Registration marks, Tracing paper, Animation loops, and Mutoscope action viewer. He would similarly interact with the animation, "throwing" an apple onto the screen and pocketing it when no one looked while an "apple" would appear on the screen, or he would walk behind the stage and "reappear" on screen and ride Gertie.

Georges meileis "trip to the moon (1902)", the first film to use Double exposure, Stop motion, and Slow motion. He was a illusionist film maker and a magician. The film took 3 months to make and was filmed in a greenhouse like building to get as much light as possible.

"Loving Vincent" directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, the worlds first fully painted film with over 65,000 frames. The they would record the actors dressed as their characters , and would use a projector to project the frames from the video onto the canvases and the animators would paint each frame in Van Gogh's art style.

I briefly looked at Jan Svankmajers "Darkness light Darkness", its a very peculiar piece of media, and it is a 7 minute clay stop motion animation. Its just a body reconstructing itself in a miniature house and figuring out where everything goes.

How does this relate to my project?

Well my idea is to create a mixed media short film based in a haunted art gallery/museum ( some place with a lot of artwork) with a security guard monitoring the building and the strange occurrences within its walls. The main focus will be the different security cameras, which will be changing perspectives a lot, and even the p.o.v of the guard. The centerpiece will be an an animation of a portrait crawling out of the frame, but the first part of the animation will be painted like in "Loving Vincent", but as the creature begins to leave the frame it transforms into stop motion animation with clay. I was thinking that since the creature is made of paint it would make a wet sound when it moves, which is where I want to incorporate foley sound, and leave traces of itself around the building. In the background I want to create other spooky visuals like other paintings distorting or objects from paintings disapearing and showing up in the wrong places like in "The enchanted mirror". I want to experiment with different Camera trick to create different visuals and create suspense like the dutch tilt. I want to slowly unnerve the viewer, using different visual affects and changes in each camera.