Category: Collaboration

After experiencing everything we have been doing during the 4 weeks of collaboration with Fine art i would like to say how i found the experience mixed, there where plenty of good moments but there were also bad moments that left a bad taste in my mouth which i’d like to discuss about now.

Firstly, i feel that having the mix with Animation and Fine Art was a mistake. I feel that both even with the same common interest with art and creating fall short due to how different the both subjects deal with there way of presenting.
Fine Art are more about appearances, metaphors, idealistic views, trying to show off and create a meaning behind whatever it is they create, changing there initial ideas throughout till there final products. Now I’m not saying Animation doesn’t do that as well, but i feel animation care to focus more on how to tell a story, how will this gain emotion, how to pull people into the piece and keep there interest over a long period of time.
Reason why i call this out is because of how during the last weeks work it really showed to me how different each course really handles things.
With the fine artists changing the initial ideas we had come up with as a group to exclude our animations which took hours to create and felt like a slap in the face. I then realised that with fine art they’d rather change ideas throughout there processes and not have a “final” idea over what they’re doing, in a way, always changing the final outcome till its finished. While animation due to how much time it takes to create needs to be planned out and thought over before hand with notes and storyboards before anything animated could happen. In conclusion, Animation is more about planning and building the overall world needed to tell its story, while Fine art has an idea that changes throughout its journey before its completed.

I would like to talk about how collaboration didn’t really feel like we truly were able to “Collaborate”. Id like to bring up the scratch film week because i feel that even though i enjoyed it and would say it was my favourite week, it does come with many problems.
while the other weeks had at least some form of collaboration from working in teams and mixing both animation or fine art together while the scratch film did not achieve this. Because it was heavily animation focused it didn’t feel that as an animation student i was collaborating with the fine art students, it felt more like i was a teacher and they were a student. I had power over them because they didn’t know what they were doing and whenever they had a problem with the software they’d come to me, while if i had a problem they wouldn’t be able to help out due to there lack of knowledge with animation.

After all 4 weeks id say i did enjoy the topics we were looking into as well as trying to work as a team with fine art to create a final product. But due to how different each subject is i would say created tension between the groups. Not to mention how it felt like a second thought for hub D to be Animation and Fine art, having everything seemed rushed and created on the spot without real links between each week really just felt cluttered and uninteresting within the long run.

In conclusion id say that with all my mixed feelings towards collaboration I’d say this was beneficial to see other students point of view, seeing a different view point other than an animators viewpoint was interesting but in the long run hasn’t made me more likely to explore more fine artsy ways of creating artworks or stories. It was also beneficial to chat with people other than animators, seeing there interests and gaining new friends as well as finding ways to create or show stories within my own animations.

 

Monday

In our final groups i was put in with: James Davies, Victoria Bisatt, Ryan Allen And Shannon case.

We could create anything we want but it has to be something that can work in 2D (Flat), 3D (Object) and 4D (Interactive).

We first started thinking about creating a theatre and have a film play within the screen. We decided to disagree with this idea for the fact that it would have taken time to create the theatre.
We instead decided to use the dark room to become the theatre, that way people can interact with the set and watch the movies, almost becoming part of the presentation.

For the movie we wanted to create show puppets but we had to come up with exactly what movie we would show. Me and James wanted to work along with a Disney/Pixar theme having the background of the locations the films were located. Animate the environment and then have the fine art students create a shadow puppet over the light of the selected characters from each movie with the songs from the movies playing over them.

We decided against this because we wanted to push away from the Disney idea and be more original with our ideas.
We worked on the idea of environments having things like forests, beaches, seaside, underwater, and cities.
We would then have an animated background based on those landscapes while having physical objects represents the things that live in those areas.

We liked this idea better since we weren’t going to copy any ideas but we would be creating our own version of those selected environments.
James took control with creating the animations, while Ryan, Shannon and Victoria decided to create the physical objects.
I had the job of creating and locating the environmental sounds for the environments chosen.

The 3 locations we decided to work on were the Jungle, the sea and a city. The reason for these 3 locations is because they’re so different from one another that each would have there own unique and recognisable sounds and look.

Unfortunately it seems we didn’t communicate our ideas as much as we had thought/hoped. Because while me and James were doing our tasks as we were set the fine art students created a tree full of rubbish which to be honest would have worked perfectly within the city environment. But it doesn’t fit with our initial idea of three environments.

 

 

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Reason why i found this an issue was because even though we created a group chat so we could keep each other updated i would say that not once did they mention or ask if they were doing was planned or even if they changed anything they never informed us so we could change accordingly.

I managed to collect all the environmental sounds for each location while James was quickly working on each of the Animations. and as known Animation takes a lot of time to actually complete and keep up to a reasonable standard.

We then got told that we were no longer going to be using the animations since apparently James was not keeping everyone in the loop about how long it would be to finish the animations, even though he kept mentioning how much he has left and that he was almost finished.

Luckily i was still able to keep some of but not all of my soundbites. We are now only using my city music since that seems to suit the situation much better than the other sounds i gathered.

Here are the animations James created with my audio creating the atmosphere for the pieces.

When we shown off our presentations me and James decided we wanted to show off our animations and sounds since this was really important to us and it felt bad to basically be pushed aside due to thinking our piece didn’t need animation when it clearly said in the brief to have 2D elements in our final piece.

We managed to complete this and show if off in the stop motion room after we shown off the tree sculpture the fine art students created.

Afterwords we where told it would have been better to have both the animation and the physical tree shown at the same time. I couldn’t have agreed more. We then got told to take our animations and sound and mix it with the fine artists tree.
Its almost like that’s what we should have done to begin with and i honestly dont understand why this was such a hassle for the fine artists to add this to our final. But i felt a huge satisfaction knowing that having to record the animation and the tree really annoyed them which was really fun to witness.

Thoughts?

I thought this project was very unorganised, i thought we would be fine on Monday since we sat down and chatted about what both Fine Art and Animation students could do together to create something we all could be happy with. I didn’t see that while The animation students (me and James) were off following the plan and keeping with our initial idea that the fine art students went ahead and changed without letting us know before hand. I feel it would have been better for if i had to redo this would be instead of having Monday has the main talking and deciding point every day we set aside maybe an hour to meet up, show what we had done and keep everyone inline so we all have an idea on the final product and not stray away from our initial idea.

 

Monday

So today we were creating an object that would be able to animate on Tuesday. I thought the creation process to be pretty fun. Randomly coming up with ideas on how to link them together helped me think in the moment as well as being creative to come up with a way to be able to movie this object later during our animation piece.

While we were building other people were commenting on how the object reminded them of a boat, maybe it was due to the string we used to hold up some of the objects or maybe due to the size of it. But we stuck with that idea and used that within our animation.

What i thought?

i thought this was honestly the best mix for our groups, fine art were able to create an object that had some type of meaning or look to it that caught there fancy while the animation students were able to thing about how to take this object and animate with it.
Even then both groups mixed ideas together to make sure the object looked interesting and was able to be animated with. making sure both students were able to be happy with the final product and not have one person taking over while the others learn or watch.

Monday

This week we were in the animation rooms. We were working with Film strips that were about 10 seconds long each. We took these Strips and started to essentially mess with the footage with paint and pens as well as just cutting into the film.
It was fun experimenting with ideas and seeing actual film other than what you’d see on TV Paint or Flash/Adobe Animate.

 

 

After we all finished messing with the Film Tom clipped them all together and we managed to see our outcomes.

 

During this project i found it interesting to seeing physical film and just looking through all the frames individually and seeing how they were able to create movement.
Also being able to see the film and noticing the paint used will always come out as black while pens or pencils would have a hint on colour changing the film.

Tuesday  

So today we have to take the films we made and put them on TV Paint. We then had to animate on top of the already existing scratch film. This for me was a fun exercise back into animating again.
i decided to use the colours Yellow and blue since both colours within the animation dont get  overshadowed with the background.
I thought if i should link my animation to what i was seeing within the already existing animation, but i decided against that because i wouldn’t have been able to fully be creative with my animation which i am glad i stuck with.

So now i managed to create 2 different animations that are able to work side by side each other to show 2 different animation styles as well as showing 2 different stories.

What i thought?

As much as i did enjoy animating and being able to learn how film strips were used i found the collaborative element to be very lacking. The only collaborative moments i could recall was that the animation students were asked by the fine artists how to animate, while this was fun trying to help out some students to teach them how timing and spacing works and how to use paint tool sai. Id rebuttal this by saying that it never felt like the fine artist taught us animators anything during this task. which really felt one sided and didn’t feel like we somewhat collaborated but more like looked after the fine artists while they tried to animate.

Monday

First thing we did was create creatures but we only got to draw certain bits of the creature, so head then body then legs. it was an alright experience and was a good way to get the animation and Fine art Students to feel more relaxed while working together.

Our second task was to continuously write our name without taking our pen off the paper for 10 minutes, this wasn’t a fun exercise and i didn’t really see a point to it So after a few writing my name i then decided to draw me drawing my name on a smaller paper and i found that way more creative and interesting.

We were put into small groups of 5 or 6 were we would have to come up with a video about anything we wanted but it had to do with light.
I was in a group with Mc Corey Harris, Rosie levy, Anabel Fry, Theo and Mike Jones.
We decided to  work on the idea of story’s such as fairy tales and Religious stories because these story’s are very recognisable and we wanted to put our own spin on it.

As you can see, we created shadow puppets with Little Red Riding Hood. We decided this was the right story to create because we found that this was the most recognisable and told story that many people would have heard of.
The style really makes it seem way more ominous due to the story always being a more uplifting and colourful, while our work used dark and harsh colours and lighting. This makes the scene more impactful than if it was colourful.

Tuesday

We were put in the same groups as we were Monday and this time we had to create a beginning or an end to a video created from another group and we have to create a photo based on it.
We got given a clip of people eating food and drinking, things we spotted was things like pizza and straws, alcohol and or fizzy drinks.  (unfortunately i cant show you the video since i cant put videos on this and they haven’t uploaded it on YouTube).

With our ideas we came up with the idea of waste and how the products they were drinking and eating soon leaves to littering and destroying our own environment.

 

 

These pictures were taken from Campus all the way to the end of the bridge leading up to Tesco. As you can see there is a lot of rubbish that is just lying on the ground were no one has been bothered to collect or even put in bins.
We also decided to collect everything we took a photo of because we felt since we were there we might as well clean it up.

This is a collage of all the photos showing off how much we’re polluting our planet with all our products of fast food as well as drinks and plastic.
Its also surprising how the colours of our products are remarkably easy to spot, due to the unnatural colour schemes our products take.

Thursday and Friday

Within these two day’s we had to create an installation combining the new video and Picture we collected from other groups to create something physical to be shown on Monday.
The new video we have was of a person lying on the floor while behind them there were shadows of hands coming out of them and eerily start moving closer to the persons face. It was Dark and used shadows to show that this was something going on through the persons mind while they were sleeping, like a nightmare but it became real.
The Picture we got from another group was with a person looking behind them while a shadowy figure is seen behind them. The shadowy figure appears to look to have been inspired by Nosferatu with how the shadow is shown with its hands down. The person is also shown to be visually scared and upset.

My group had decided to follow an idea popularised by Winston Churchill called the Black Dog.

“I think this man might be useful to me – if my black dog returns. He seems quite away from me now – it is such a relief. All the colours come back into the picture.” – Winston Churchill

We also had a book titled “I hand a Black Dog” written and illustrated by Matthew Johnstone explaining in detail what depression is like and how they managed to over come the Dog, which heavily imply’s depression.

With this idea we decided to bring in items that can link to depression, let it be body image problems with food rappers, fitness magazines or fashion clothes and news Papers were interesting items to collect.

We then used them to create a shadow of a dog to represent the Black dog, using all the different items that when collected together creates Depression, “the black dog” was a really fun idea, and trying to link all the items to accurately show a dog shadow was a fun exorcise to figure out.

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What I Thought?

I found the work to be interesting and i actually didn’t mind creating the video, picture and mini sculpture. they all had different reasons for liking them. and being collaborative so everyone in the group were able to  voice there own opinion on where this project would be heading was still fun and i was able to see how others were able to think up ideas which was a great way to get all the information on paper.

But there were a few parts of this work i did not care for or felt like it insulted my intelligence that i over all had mixed feelings during this project.
First things first the writing my name over and over again was pointless and a waste of time, why couldn’t that time be used for things like the actual collaborative work we were meant to be doing. Im pretty sure righting my name over and over again doesn’t involve working with someone or being collaborative so it honestly was a waste of time.

There was also moments where we had to sit and watch videos for about an hour and a half which contributed little to nothing to what we were trying to achieve. This work honestly if we were given the freedom would have been completed on the Tuesday. But due to what i assume is just poor management and timekeeping that my group had to come in or stay behind after uni just to be able to finish our work.

Subject 1 – Light (what is light?)

So we got given work to take photos of light sources, things like natural lights, harsh lights, man made lights, and show off it effecting it’s environment.

 

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Im not going to go through each photo and explain why i like them but i will gloss over them to give an example of what type of light i wish to try out in our next task.
Having the lights shine of objects to project shadows, having bright almost blinding light pushing itself through the darkness, the lens flare bouncing off the camera to create a light slash down its side. The puddle bouncing the light from the floor and the light giving off a dim light unlike the others shows off that not all lights shine the same way. some are brighter.

light (Creating a city) 

So the idea we are meant to do is to build a building each and then use those buildings to create a city. We used card, cardboard and glue to create the buildings. We then added X’s to the sides of each building to be able to mark out where windows or posters would be able to be shown on the buildings.

 

 

During the project i found it more enjoyable to work on the buildings themselves. It was fun working in 3D creating actual objects that could be held.
We then went onto After Effects where me, James and Kiara would create our video with the buildings the class created.

 

 

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unfortunately, me and James’s computers would always crash when we tried to run After Effects, so we decided to leave Kiara with the job of editing all our posters together.
Me and James instead created posters and lights to be used on the buildings. Some would be animated with words popping up and flashing while others were just bland.

 

(Couldn’t collect the final videos but when i get chance they will be added here) 

 

My Final thoughts on this project was i enjoyed working in 3D, its a really fun time to physically create an object rather than to just draw one.
I wished i could have learned how to edit in After Effects but I’m sure i’ll have time to create with that.
Other than that i found this project enjoyable, i liked working in groups and being able to gain ideas from everyone and not just my own.