Development of D&AD project

I am progressing well with the project. I have set myself the goal of being firm with myself over making key decisions quickly and not ‘umming’ and ‘arring’ about them for long. This has worked well so far. I developed 3 ideas as required by the brief and logically drew up a pro con list, and did some research into actor movement theories, character design, character theories and writing tips for character development, and then made the final choice based on which idea fitted in well most with the brief.

My final choice of character is a cat which views humans as servants (name unconfirmed) which was inspired by my own cat, and I am going to develop the personality this week in a number of ways (See next post)

As the timescale is quite tight for this project, and there is also the client proposal project to consider, I have developed a colour coded cross project time plan, in which I am recording all meetings dates and major events I need to consider when time planning, and letting me see how much time I have for each project comparatively. It has been really helpful so far, as I can refer to it when time planning each project individually, and then plan which weeks will be more productive for a particular project and which weeks will be more focussed on other projects, so that I can plan out my work load realistically. This has prompted me to set rigid goals in this project, and the main milestones are as follows:

WEEK 18: This week I will be focussing on developing the personality of my character (See next post), and then the appearance. I will at the end of the week draw up a document that has a complete profile of my characters mental state (i.e likes, dislikes, habits, environmental preferences ect) and a list of behavioural mannerisms and personal postures that I can refer to when storyboarding, and also when creating boards to show how the character was created.

WEEK 19: During this week, reading week I am going to be working a lot on the client project, but will ensure I write a treatment for the final animation, produce a detailed storyboard, and begn to make all needed components for the animation, which I will do in After Effects.

WEEK 20: This week will be dedicated to the actual production of the animation

WEEK 21: This week will be focussed on creation of the boards and rendering of the animation

WEEK 22: I will be ensuring my sketchbook is bound and finishing off loose ends.

D&AD Project - Chosen Brief

I have chosen to work to the brief of character animation for this project, because I think it is important for me to choose one brief at the start, fairly quickly and then get started on developing ideas as soon as possible to make my concept and standard of completion stronger and more professional. In the last couple of projects I have become self aware of the fact that I can at time be pretty indecisive, and in this project I am going to start out rigid about making decisions. There were several briefs that interested me, and I will describe why in my sketchbook, but ultimately, now that I have returned from Berlin, I am going to choose one and stick to it. I have chosen character animation because the brief talks about the spirit of a character and attention to bringing it to life. I think that the research I am doing for my dissertation on anthropomorphism will feed into this well. I enjoy using After Effects and feel confident in creating an animation to a good standard with this piece of software, and the challenge of creating a character will require a lot of attention to detail that will help me in future projects and working with clients. Starting inspiration for me is 'Buddy Bears'(see previous post), that I saw in Berlin, because although they are inanimate objects, they seemed to me to have a full, rich life to them that spoke out with emotion about the origins of the city and it's views to the future, whilst also displaying symbols and messages from other countries around the world.

Buddy Bears

Buddy Bears are fibreglass, 6ft tall statues that were created in 2001 and painted with the colours and symbols of different countries world wide, and placed for a short period of time in a circle around the Brandenburg gate before being redistributed around the city, so that spotting them becomes an interactive game in itself. The form of the Bear is a symbol of Berlin, and the colour represents a tolerance of other cultures and the ideas of unification and peace between nations. They tie in the old with the new. The old being the form of the Berlin Bear and their placement around d the Brandenburg Gate (which itself has also been the spot of Nazi Rallies), and the new being the modern colours and the material. They seemed to capture the spirit of the City today, a harmonious look to the future with an acceptance and remorse for the past.

I myself spotted them in fish tanks, fountains, street corners, museums, animal cages, and restaurants.

See image here

Tiffany's Cafe

Tiffany’s café was another highlight for me, it was built so that the seating area was the centre of a fountain, and the edges were lined with plants and the water full of metal sculptures of lily pads. Unfortunately I never managed to have breakfast there, just ice cream. To get to teh cafe you have to walk along wooden bridges over the water. Will post image soon.

The Aqua Dom

“The AquaDom is a 25 meter tall cylindrical acrylic glass aquarium with built-in transparent elevator. The Aquadom is the largest acrylic glass cylinder in the world, with a diameter of over 11 meters, built on a 9 meters tall concrete foundation. Filled with about 900,000 liters of seawater, it contains some 2600 fish of 56 species. The feeding of the fish and the cleaning of the fish tank is performed daily by a pair of full-time divers.” - Wikipedia

Visiting the Aqua Dom and taking a ride in the lift was an amazing experience, it felt quite magical, as if I was travelling on Willie Wonkas Glass Elevator, or had gone through Alice’s Looking Glass. The design of the lift was also unique, as it was the only lift with a staircase I have ever seen.

Take a look here

Berlin

I learnt a lot in Berlin. Not from the festival alone, but from the trip and the city itself as a whole. In my time there I attended several events at Transmediale (see post Transmediale’) and also visited the Cathedral, old Berlin, Charlottensburg Palace, the TV Tower, the Aquarium and the Aqua Dom, took a boat ride, went to the Zoo (the famous one, not the new one), walked around beautifully built buildings with unique architecture, explored several markets, went to the Reichstag twice, the Brandenburg Gate, the Sony Center, Checkpoint Charlie, La Fayette, William Echhart Memorial Church, the Europe Center, The Jewish museum, the Jewish Memorial, took a walk from Alexandraplatz through to Tiergarden station along Unter Den Linden, and generated over an hour and a half of film and 785 photographs.

I found the city itself to be breathtaking and ever so interesting. Walking through Mitte I thought it was so unique to be able to really see what existed pre war, what had survived the war, and how the city itself has been re-developed to still present it’s past whilst making way for a more unified and culturally excepting culture. Buddy Bears were a great symbol of this, and were to me extremely inspiring products of design. The Berlin Wall itself (the postcards and remaining slab on Unter Den Linden illustrated) I thought was also remarkable in the sense that although the wall itself was a badly formed and ugly construct, it had been repainted over the years by the public, and really expressed the city’s dislike for it. To see these postcards lining the streets of Unter Den Lindin, and to see the way that the whole City has been re-developed since it’s demise, I could really get a taste for the feeling and the spirit of the city, and the strong emotions the city has been privy to over the past century were so strongly present in it’s design. Walking along the river near the Cathedral I stumbled upon old cobbled streets and the original monument of the Berlin Bear, a beautiful statue that looked so lifelike, and as if it were real, and weary of the past. The Sony Centre at Potsdam was another amazing example of this. To see the way it has been developed from an urban wasteland in the 1960’s, to the eye-catching new commercial haven was astonishing to me, and I left the city with the feeling that it is an undiscovered gem that will continue to develop further until it receives as much tourist attention as places like Rome or New York. I could write about so much, but am picking out just three highlights to post about that have all inspired me and however I can see myself creating work this year that is influenced by so much of what I saw on the trip.

Transmediale

I did not feel that this festival was quite as good as it could have been. I found the exhibition quite dry, and the videos in the main hall rather dull. Below is a list of some of the things I saw and my thoughts on them:

Chop-Bot

I could not find a link between this machine and the theme Conspire. I did however think it seemed to be a bit of a health and safety issue.


Breeding Fear

This talk started out well, it was about the affect that the internet and terrorism has had on fear personal identity, and I thought that some of the points one of the speakers made about airport security being performance art to be interesting. The idea of the worker going through the motions of making things look secure, and the traveller going through the motions of trying to look innocent was quite interesting to me. However, I did feel that this talk centred to much on just the idea of terrorism, when the whole ideas of ‘conspire’ and ‘breeding fear’ could have also gone into a discussion about intent filtering and counties that censor areas of the internet for control and to breed fear of stepping over the lines in totalitarian countries.

Faceless

This was a talk by an artist about her inspiration from Busby Berkley, the pioneer of top-shots, and her attempts to create similar works with CCTV footage. She focussed a lot on her research and the legislation that allows people to use CCTV footage within certain boundaries, leading to the facelessness of her characters. The legislation ruined the result of her work really, and I think she did not fully think out ways to get around this or making the piece as artistic as Berkley’s. I really liked her influences, but not her work. I think it would have been interesting to place a CCTV camera directly above rather than at an angle, and control the lighting to play with the shadows of people, rather than the people themselves.

The Cubic Viewing Stations In The Exhibition

I did not think these were very disabled people friendly, not very interactive. I would have liked to see more interactive installations in the gallery rather than just static objects and computer screens.