Puppet + Parent Part 1

In the first part of this experiment, i used parenting to animate the line art and used the puppet tool to move subtle parts of the pieces to get it to look closer to traditional animation. Like the first one, i plan to animate the color out of synch with the line to get a watercolor or inked effect.

Read More...

The Puppet Tool

This is a test using the puppet tool and the main character of the story. Here, i used the effect to animate hair and clothing, as well as give the character a subtle facial expression change. The image is separated into a different layer for the face, bangs, hair, eyes, and body as well as the respective outline for each. The method itself, in my opinion, is best used in moderation like any other effect.

Personally, i don't particularly like this effect in the way i've seen it used. Trying to do a full scale animation with the puppet tool isn't the most elegant way to animate anything really. I can't exactly call it cheating since something has to actually be worthwhile to be called cheating in the first place.

However, when used sparingly, the effect is pretty nice. I can have a nicely rendered image animate without having to actually really do anything (except keyframe every single little pin i put in).

The puppet tool is definitely no substitute for parenting, but when used together can probably make for some pretty powerful stuff. Interestingly, the puppet tool can compensate for the gaps when pieces are rotated too far when parenting.

Read More...

Concept Sketches

The following are concept sketches to kinda get the ideas i have out of my head and see where i want to go in terms of color and situation. Above is what i want the city to look like. Instead of it being a flat grid, i decided that i wanted it to be disorganized and reaching higher in order to give it a distinct character. this, i can build with the vanishing point. Check out the rest after the jump...

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE


Here is a shot of the heroine surveying the festival. Again, i was interested in color and the overall ambiance of the city in this festive time. i don't really feel the sketch conveys the chaos of the celebration but i think its still interesting for the heroine to distance herself.


Here is one of the bots stealing the identity of a party-goer and the party-goer's transformation into his respective masked monster. in this case, the patron was wearing a demon mask and has therefore mutated into a demon upon losing his "self".


Finally, this is a shot of the main bad guy. In this drawing i wanted to establish the scale and get the feel of what it may look like. i thought about how i may want the lighting to ass a little drama.

Read More...

Rough Outline #1

I'm interested in trying to look at the role of masking and the effect it has on identity. i created a story that takes away the identity of a character and replaces it with the mask identity. In the story, i chose for it to effect the characters in the background so that it changes how the city interacts with itself. This also places the main character, who is unaffected, outside of the identity crisis, which in turn creates this identity paradox: a masked hero with a dual identity in a city of people with an imposed identity.

SYNOPSIS: Superhero saves citizens from identity stealing robots during a Halloween like festival.

I. Hero Patrols City

A. We open with a shot of the superhero surveying the city from a roof top. She then begens to explore the city from the roofs and makes her way down into the city streets where we can see that is a festival with many people wearing masks, which allows her to blend in.

B. A parade of floats and costumed people moves through the streets as the hero looks on.


II. Bots attack

A. Suddenly one of the floats explodes and several bots run into the crowd. The bots touch a victim to steal that persons identity while the victim takes on the identity of the mask he or she is wearing. The parade and festival goers begin to interact with each other much differently.

B. The hero fights and destroys a few of the bots and the stolen identities are automatically restored to the owner. The remaining bots flee and the hero gives chase.

C. The bots regroup under a radio tower and send out a signal. the ground shakes and the tower rises up revealing a giant robot with many faces emerging from the ground. The robot steps on the smaller bots and attacks the hero.


III. Hero defeats Robot

A. The robot activates a vaccuum like weapon and begins to steal all of the identities of the citizens in the immediate area while physically attacking the hero

B. the hero dodges a punch and gets the robot's hand stuck in the ground. she runs up the robots arm, but it manages to free itself and attempts to shake her off which temporarily stops its identity vacuum.

C. the hero manages to make her way inside and deactivate the robot thereby saving the day. All the citizens' identities return.

D. Elsewhere, a darkened figure broods at his failure

Read More...

Inspiration

In my head i have all these ideas of what i want my piece to look like and i'm still searching for new ideas. i looked back at a few things from other artists that i saw in the past and felt were really awesome. I found Kevin Dart's trailer for the fictional Yuki 7 movie "A Kiss From Tokyo" and thought that the use of camera and film grain was really dope. i also looked back at the film Tekkon Kinkreet and looked at its use of 3D environments that resemble the vanishing point as well as its bizarre plot. Examples after the jump...


In the summer of 2009, one of my favorite illustrators, Kevin Dart, rolled out his Yuki 7 campaign centering around a trailer for a series of 1960's espionage films that doesn't actually exist. Seductive Espionage: The World of Yuki 7 is the book that builds an entire world around the Yuki 7 character including movie posters, storyboards, and even information on the fictional actress that plays Agent Yuki. The trailer serves to authenticate this world Dart has created.

Dart fashioned together a ragtag team of his friends in order to make his concept a reality. Two of which, animator Stephane Coedel and composer Cyrille Marchesseau, helped him get his trailer together. All the work was done using After Effects. Coedel composed the film using layered illustrations from Dart and put them together based on her memories of old movies from the era, specifically the imperfections.

i find a lot of things pretty interesting about this movie: the characters are bright and designed very well, the music is enriched and very authentic, but most of all, the way the camera and layering was filtered makes it really look like it was from 1964. i really want my films to have interesting depth of field and focus tricks and feel that this trailer is an example of my intention.

Art Of The Title gives us a rundown with the makers of the trailer from pre-production to post.


After working with the vanishing point, i thought back to one of my favorite movies that i remember being immensely impressed with a few years ago. Tekkonkinkreet is a story about two orphaned street urchins, the rough and tough Black and innocent White. Together they are know as the Cats and must fight the Yakuza from taking over Treasure Town. Tekkonkinkreet is a play on Japanese words meaning "a concrete structure with an iron frame," and it suggests the opposing images of concrete cities against the strength of imagination.

The story takes on many themes. The names Black and White aren't just a description of personality, but tell the audience what kind of force the character symbolizes in the movie. This becomes apparent when the boys are separated by the police: White becomes lonely and begins to sink in to depression while Black becomes darker and more violent. Its also interesting how the groups of characters symbolize an animal and the interactions between these groups is somewhat based on the animalistic relationships.

The opening sequence for the movie sets the stage quickly and successfully. The crow flying through the congested city is visually stunning and gives the city a distinctive character.

PingMag.jp writes a fantastic article on how director Michael Arias turned Taiyo Matsumoto’s masterpiece into such an outstanding film.
Art of The Title gives us a bit of audio from the DVD commentary on the scene.

Read More...

Ideas

Ideally, from a technical standpoint, i'd like to continue to work with the above project which i started on over the summer. I experimented with using mask interpolation as animation as i did in the previous class, but this time i integrated a 3D environment. I ran into a few problems but luckily i seem to have figured some of them out after the Vanishing Point assignment.

i'm not interested in trying to continue this specific video, but i want to use the some of the techniques and find an easier way to make the environment while maintaining my aesthetic.


Conceptually, i'm interested in masking and concealing. Do we hide our true selves behind facades or are those masks very much a part of our true identity. We masquerade to protect our vulnerabilities, or our pasts. Sometimes, we deceive others to shy away or perhaps even join them. These guises are as fragile as the idea of identity in itself, yet we still choose to conceal ourselves.

Jacques Derrida theorizes that our identities are not self contained, but constructed from language, culture, and history, and are therefore composites of experience and circumstance. I submit that masking, by proxy, is that manifested identity constructed totally outside of circumstance shaped by the other.

Read More...

Vanishing Point

Evidently the vanishing point tool in Photoshop can be imported in to After Effects, which is great because now i can easily turn some 2D shit into some 3D shit and impress my friends with my visual prowess. I just used a photo of an old wood mill for the wall, a picture of the oceans and some mountains and a photograph of a building from the Forbidden City.

Read More...