Week 6: Reading Week (27th - 31st October)

Monday 27th October

Got the Rotary Club Bursary application submitted today! The deadline was changed to today and not tomorrow but I managed to do it quickly enough. I'm optimistic about my chances, since it's only across four small classes I don't know how many applicants there are. I won't be able to apply for the MAKE Thesis Film Fund anymore, applications close on the 4th of November (I am nowhere near ready with a pitch deck) and it'll be extremely competitive for less funding than the bursary


Tuesday 28th October

Working on my contextual review, I finally selected a paper. "Future Unscripted: The Impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Entertainment Industry Jobs" by CVL Economics. It's extremely interesting but it is also 58 PAGES LONG so I am starting to regret it as I only have 500 words. Sad. It was hard too hard to find anything academic related to stop motion animation but this was quite closely related to my topic anyway (Generative AI in Animation). Very fascinating though, highly recommend: https://animationguild.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Future-Unscripted-The-Impact-of-Generative-Artificial-Intelligence-on-Entertainment-Industry-Jobs-pages-1.pdf


Wednesday 29th October 

I'd been communicating with Susan Ball over email about department management for the indie project I've been working on outside of university as a concept lead, as I've been really struggling to manage the concept department due to mismanagement from the producer and lack of communication. We decided to have a big meeting in person. 

I need to take more of a lead and set tasks for people and doing regular check-ins and communication to generate excitement over new work; have a ROUTINE, and establish working time boundaries. Get in contact with the director again to get him to keep an accurate track of the artists, and I will have to keep telling him what to do; talk to the new producer as she is more likely to help. Ask for more specific feedback, eg "do these colours work?", to prompt more engagement. Show examples with any feedback, eg "can we try this?". Suggested looking at music videos in a similar style. Remember the 80:20 rule in design, look at more colour/texture/saturation variations. Think of how the city designs come together as a whole, such as the skyline, look at imperfections in cities as inspiration

Susan thinks my role at the moment is much more similar to an art director than a concept lead, as I have mostly been in charge of the visuals up until now. The art director oversees the concept department as a whole, whereas a concept lead is more in charge of a specific area such as character design. Art director comes up with solutions, sets tasks ("I'd like to see more of this"), getting a concept and questioning the details ("oh someone has a mic, someone needs to design it"). The art director calls the shots, sets the visuals as a whole and guides everyone to that final vision. So perhaps I should discuss this with the director/producer at some point; it's basically the role I'm doing and it would be a crazy credit to have on my first external industry project. Does professional competency get marked in Masters? 

Aside from this, I wrote a first draft of my abstract and started analysing the chosen report. I also started planning a small Halloween project in the evening, even though realistically I've left it too late to get it done in time


Thursday 30th October

Went to life drawing class at Freebird aerial studio, I’ve been before but the sessions are always really fun. Tons of quick poses with more unique poses than you can get in a standard room

Working away through the evening and night building for my stop motion project

I ended up working through the evening and night building the design of this coffin for my little Halloween stop motion project (see Week 2). The original plan was to sculpt a whole mini mansion with walls crumbling to show the interior and gardens. I have decided to simplify this project all the way down as I only have two days to do it; it is now just a simple shack in the forest, but ghosts still come flying out and roast marshmallows over a campfire. The tree is wire covered in plasticine so it can still be animated, clay ground spreads out from the woods and the logs roll out to make a campfire. I used felt for the fire and for a cobweb effect; I had to be very careful not to overdo it and cover the entire sculpt. Perhaps I can do the full mansion next year and make this coffin project an annual series.


Friday 31st October

Spent all day animating, in my bedroom with the curtains shut on a black cloak on my table. Filmed 8 seconds worth and that took about two hours (including a reshoot at the start): good to keep in mind. Tried to keep it fairly simple, I wasn’t good at tracking multiple moving parts in one shot. Was trying to be ambitious and have the tree subtly swaying in the background but it just looked like mistakes, not animated enough to be consistent. The coffin itself kept jittering about between shots, but if I have a set bolted down this shouldn’t be too much of a problem later. I'm especially happy with the felt fire effect (inspired by The House and other stop motion productions), very simple but effective, even though I had to add the colour back in in post with the glow as the lighting washed it all out

I was using Stop Motion Studio on my iPad with my phone on a ring light as a remote camera, meaning I could control the animation without messing with the screen/camera (someone at Clanimation told me about this). However it was SO LAGGY, I can’t tell if this was because of bad wifi or because I was trying to shoot in 4K but it took about 10 seconds per frame and sometimes struggled to sync with the current camera view. It’s good for a free program but it is a bit limited in this regard

This was a good exercise to see how long it takes to shoot and what problems need to be solved 

The plan is to now 2D animate some ghosts and fire glow (the lighting took away the fire colour). I’ll be doing this in Procreate Dreams so I can just keep it all on my iPad. But this means I won’t be finished by Halloween :(


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