Graeme Daly Computer Animation Arts Rochester: January 2018

Tuesday 30 January 2018

Premise: Online Greenlight Review

OGR Premise by Graeme Daly on Scribd

Monday 29 January 2018

Premise: Proof of Concept Presentation

Proof of Concept Presentation by Graeme Daly on Scribd

Friday 26 January 2018

Toolkit 2: Mudbox Pear

Thursday 25 January 2018

Toolkit 2: Title Sequence Influences

I have decided to do my title sequence infographic on Stranger Things. Below is some inspiration for the Aesthetic that I am going for with red and blue being the prevalent colour scheme. I am thinking about making it look pixelated so that it looks like a retro arcade game. I really wanted the music from the original title sequence as it makes the intro for Stranger things so iconic (I get goosebumps every time) but copyright would be a problem so I found a chiptune version of the song which correlates with the retro arcade feel. I asked the creator Chris if it would be okay to use his version if I give him credit and he enthusiastically agreed :D

Influence Map 1

Influence Map 2

ターボ表現する - Turbo Express from Device on Vimeo.

Premise: Idea Development

After my meeting with Alan I have further developed my idea for the premise animation. I initially had an idea of making a world out of the things that I constantly lose and somehow basing the animation around a world entitled "the land of the lost" having cities made out of lost phones, and cigarette lighters, the world could have been split up into sections with a section being "clumsy quarters" that would be a trip down memory lane into things that I have experienced. I also had another idea which depicts what it feels like to have anxiety. Alan thought it would be a good idea to mesh these two ideas together - having anxiety linked with losing something. There is a couple of scenarios that come to mind.

Scenario 1: Airport 1

After putting his boarding pass though the security tray with his other belongings, the character realises that when his belongings come back out that his boarding pass is nowhere to be seen, his flight is leaving soon, he starts to panic and the sounds around him of the hustle and bustle of the airport start to blur and the figures around him start to morph as his anxiety peaks.

He frantically starts to ask people who work for the airport if they have seen it anywhere, they give him dirty looks and say they will check but only give a few glances around the machine to see if it has fallen, the main characters anxiety starts to build to a climax with the people seeming distorted and the sounds muffled until his bubble of nervousness is popped when a gentleman hands him his boarding pass. This scenario could also be delved comically deeper into a possible longer animation into the Airport Scenario 2.

Scenario 2: Airport 2

A group of friends are getting a flight home, they are already late and as the main characters bag was too heavy to put on the plane he has to take out a lot of his clothes and wear them instead. the character ends up wearing multiple t-shirts, 2 pairs of pants and 2 pairs of sunglasses on his head.

The characters are already going to be late for their flight and after realising that his boarding pass doesn’t come out of the conveyer belt and nobody to ask for help because nobody spoke English, the main character starts to panic and realise that his two friends who were in front of him have ran ahead of him to the boarding gate. His anxiety worsens and things start to blur and distort as he realises he can’t get on the flight without his boarding pass, he can’t ask anyone for help and he doesn’t know where the gate is, his “friends” have left him with people all around gawking at him. He eventually makes it to his friends who are not at the gate but are now at the bar across from the gate after realising they have missed the flight. the 3 characters sit outside the airport in the sun with their multiple whiskeys and coke’s after spending hundreds of euros for another flight.

Scenario 3: Bike

A character has a new bike, he is cycling down a hill with multiple cars behind him when he realises that his shoe lace has come undone - he thinks nothing of it,

As he is going down the hill he notices that his right foot starts to feel tight, he comes to the bottom of the hill as there is traffic lights up ahead, his foot starts to feel really compacted, he looks down at his shoe and realises that his shoe lace has somehow rapped around the right pedal of the bike and has started to pin his foot to the side of it. He is starting to panic, the environment starts to morph and liquefy as he is starting to come to a stop at the traffic lights with his foot now completely stuck the side of the bike, he comes to a stop and with his foot now pinned to the bike he slowly... steadily starts to veer to the right and falls completely flat on his face. He is unable to get back up as he is stuck to the bike, some of the cars behind him are beeping (and laughing) because the lights have gone green,

the character frantically pulls the coil of shoelace from the pedal and limps to the side of the road as he lets the cars pass.

Aesthetic and feel:

I want to use Maya to make it look 2D and abstract with more traditional animation techniques. Alan showed me previous students work such as the animation below that I feel will really fit with the aesthetic of the animation, When the anxiety of the character starts to peak I want it to feel disjointed with the background blurring and distorting into abstract shapes. I want the sound design to mimic this feeling also

In hindsight a lot of these situations are hilarious so I want to show the humour in it but also show the anxiety that was felt in those situations. I also want to show how the character has evolved from these situations and has grown up and learned from them and now as an adult has found his feet.

I’m not sure how the animation is going to play out yet. If it is going to be one scenario or many. The land of the lost idea feels like a half idea at the moment but maybe if I brought in the idea with the land of the lost and had the items that were lost such as the boarding pass or passport trigger the different scenarios that play out?.

Wednesday 24 January 2018

Toolkit 2 // Pipeline 1: Body Modelling Part 5 - Gloved Hands

Monday 22 January 2018

Toolkit: Life Drawing - Session 12

Sunday 21 January 2018

Film Review: Mary and Max

Figure 1: Mary and Max Poster

Mary and Max (2009) is a claymation animation directed by Adam Elliot. The animation tells the story of two very different characters one being Mary who is a school girl (Figure 2) that is constantly ridiculed and ostroctrised for her appearance. Mary who is in desperate need of communication with anyone as her alcoholic mother who guzzles cooking cherry and chain smokes is a terrible mother figure for her, reaches out and decides to start writing to a man named Max (Figure 2). Max is an obese isolated man living in New York that devours chocolate hot dogs all day and has trouble expressing his emotions as he has asperger’s syndrome. Max and Mary are both whacky and whimsical characters with both having debilitating issues and struggle to feel normal.

Figure 2: Max and Mary

Adam Elliot calls his claymations clayographys (clay biography) in which all of the characters in any of his films are based on real people with real issues with Max even being related to Elliots own pen pall that he has been writing to for over twenty years. Elliot explains about his characters - "My aim is to highlight and celebrate people’s imperfections and to emphasize that no one is pure or perfect. I base my characters on the people around me and have befriended so many people who get labelled “different.” I feel their stories need to be told; people need to learn about these people, have their lives shared and understood" (Elliot 2009)

Figure 3: Adam Elliot

Elliot has never had any desire of translating his stories into CGI explaining that although stopmation is cumbersome it is always worth the blood, sweat and tears in the end when it hits a nerve with viewers. Elliot attended the Victorian College of the arts in Melbourne where he was planning his first 2D animation entitled "Uncle" where his lecturers advised him that producing the film in stop motion would be more visually pleasing and it was through the advice of his mentors where his love for stop motion and claymation launched. Elliot has produced six films in total comprising of the titles - Uncle (1996), Cousin (1998), Brother (1999), Harvie Krumpet (2003), Mary and Max (2009) and Ernie Biscuit (2015) with Mary and Max being his first feature film. The Director of photographer Gerald Thompson is responsible for brining Elliots vivid vision of Mary and Max to life which cost a total of 8.3 million Australian dollars with a mere 6 animators working around the clock to produce the film from script to screen, taking five years in total.

The core premise of Mary and Max is that friendship can be between two people no matter how different they are to each other, its also about dealing with difficult adult themes such as alcoholism isolation, depression and suicide with many of these themes also having a hint of humour. claymation films are usually lighthearted and non cynical with many being children cartoons and one would assume at the start of Mary and Max that it is no exception, however The juxtaposition of having a claymation film which delves deep into very intense adult themes and topics is what separates Mary and Max from other claymations.

The Mise-en-scène also boils down the colour scheme (figure 4) with Mary's world living in Australia having many hues of brown while Max's world of New York has a monochromatic tone with Black and white being the main colour palette. Speaking of his style of animation Elliot describes "I wanted to push the boundaries of feature animation, provide audiences with something new, something with a balance of light and dark, something Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks wouldn't dare touch. All my films are deeply personal and based on the people around me. I try to make films with depth, substance; films that deeply engage, move and make the audience think." (Elliot 2009) It feels strange to watch a claymation that uproots these issues in the characters, however that goes with the whole theme and look of the eerie setting and is something that Elliot perpetuates in all his creations.

Figure 4: Colour scheme

Elliots world of Mary and Max is something that critics and audiences fell in love with. The film was premiered at the Sundance Film festival, Elliot describes "The most exhilarating moment would easily be standing backstage with Robert Redford in Sundance about to show the opening night audience a film that had taken my crew and I five painful years to make. We were the first animated and first Australian film to ever open the festival in its 25- year history Thankfully, they all loved the film and we survived!" (Elliot 2009) Mary and Max won countless awards some of which include the Australian Directors Guild Award for Best Direction in a Feature Film, Ottawa International Animation Festival Grand Prize, and the Annecy International Animated Film Festival Cristal Award for Best Feature.

Bibliography

Desowitz, B. (2009). 'Mary and Max': Elliot and Clayography. [online] Animation World Network. Available at: https://www.awn.com/animationworld/mary-and-max-elliot-and-clayography
[Accessed 19 Jan. 2018].

IndieWire. (2009). Adam Elliot, “Mary and Max”: Flaws, Limitations, and Possibilities. [online] Available at: http://www.indiewire.com/2009/01/adam-elliot-mary-and-max-flaws-limitations-and-possibilities-71006/
[Accessed 19 Jan. 2018].

Illustration list

Elliot, (2009). "Figure 2: Max and Mary " [image] Available at: https://roosterillusionreviews.com/2016/05/14/saturday-morning-cartoons-mary-and-max-2009/
[Accessed 19 Jan. 2018].

Elliot, (2018)."Figure 4: Colour Scheme" [image] Available at: http://absenceofalternatives.com/mary-and-max/
[Accessed 19 Jan. 2018].

Elliot, (2009). "Figure 1: Mary and Max Poster" [image] Available at: https://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/mary-and-max-a-film-by-adam-elliott/ [Accessed 19 Jan. 2018].

Elliot, (2009). "Figure 3: Adam Elliot" [image] Available at: http://screenanarchy.com/2015/07/interview-adam-elliot-on-being-an-animator-winning-an-oscar-and-feeling-like-an-outsider.html

[Accessed 19 Jan. 2018].

Toolkit 2 // Pipeline 1: Body Modelling Part 4 - Legs & Boots

Saturday 20 January 2018

Toolkit 2 // Pipeline 1: Body Modelling Part 3 - Legs & Pelvis

Friday 19 January 2018

Toolkit 2: Mudbox - Chalice

Wednesday 17 January 2018

Life Drawing - Session 11

Monday 15 January 2018

Why Disney is Good

Why Disney is Good by Graeme Daly on Scribd

Sunday 14 January 2018

Toolkit: Character Design - Raptile Design

In the final class of Character Design we were tasked with being given a random animation that we had to base characters off of and fit the characters into that world, Our team consisted of Annabel, Karolina, Michaela, Anastasia and myself and the animation we were given was danger mouse. My character is Raptile, a 90's hip hop rapping turtle who works for the multi millionaire music mogul -Chameleonaire