Kickstarter: Development 1

Among all the little pieces that has to go in to making a Kickstarter campaign, the video has without a doubt taken the longest to complete. Dividing our work so that some people focused on setting up the page, some focused on getting some explanatory graphics in there etc- we all had at some point lend a hand to the making of the video.

Starting out with the stop motion part of it, what we thought was going to be quick and painful dragged out to three whole days of work with first taking the images, realising they were unusable as the lighting changed from picture to picture, re doing the process with a different setup (which took several tests and creativity to figure out) to then fine tuning it in after effects in terms of colour, speed of the sequence and pauses.

Stop motion images

The second part

Google Engage: Development 6

It’s time to do my explainer video for this project. A video summarising everything from research, development and finally outcome- kind of like a pitch, the information can’t be too heavy and the message needs to come through quickly. After doing some research on explainer videos and different styles before I start my own I have come to the conclusion that I want to mix digital with handmade as that is exactly what I have done as my DOOH mockup so it fits. At first I thought about stop motion but as I want my white background to be stark white, that’s not a good idea (it’s crazy difficult to achieve) so that’s where the digital comes in and the wonders of AE. But to not lose the handmade bit I have decided to make small figures out of paper as my actors for the video so I get that stop motion vibe with out actually doing it as a stop motion.

Hopefully it will merge well with my mockup because I am having that in the video as well and have to think of how I can balance this so it doesn’t look bad.

Pastiche 1560: Development 2

When researching videos of Calder and his mobiles I always seem to end up watching the same one where a boy walks into Calder’s workshop and is amazed by everything that moves by its own. (video here) He stares at the mobiles hanging from the ceiling, living their own sort of life of there, creating their own universe. He looks at this play for a long time, eventually finding it hard to differ between dream and reality as he is more and more mesmerised by them. Every time I watch this I want to make mobiles.

Last time I thought about this project I was really into doing a stop motion animation. Today I ended up giving the mobiles another go and made another one.

Pastiche 1560: Alexander calder research 1

Alexander Calder, originator of the mobile, was an American sculptor that managed the art of combining elegant with quirky. His mobiles are both adult and childish at the same time, every one of them having a personality of their own – making them easy to love for a wide range of people.

In my pastiche of him I will aim to capture his playfulness and simply the way in which he had fun when making his mobiles and his art, enjoying his work. The technique I will be using is either stop motion or purely digital. Or maybe filming his mobiles and how it moves, maybe placing it in different environments to see how it changes. Pretty undecided basically! I will have to see where this project takes me.

The one think I do know though is that my colours for this will be blue, red, black and white. Think lots of circles and plenty of black lines moving about. Up and away!

Pastiche 1560: Wayfinding excersize, La Jetée and the Kuleshov Effect

Making a film through still images is an easy way to create a video sequence and until today- wasn’t really a technique I’d used before. It is actually an interesting way to create narrative and story.  The Kuleshov Effect explains why putting  images together in a certain sequence is the base for film making and how powerful a tool editing is. “Through the choices in how shots are organized and sequenced, filmmakers can create new meaning by juxtaposing unrelated images.

Utterly moving finished

Moving words project is officially finished. Even though stop motion is such a long process and really tests my patience, I like doing it as you can create movement that isn’t possible in real life to give things a sense of being alive. It’s just so cute.

Back to stop motion

Moving words- not moving forward. What do you do when you don’t get any ideas? Yesterday was spent working with After Effects, making a little test only to realize I didn’t like what I was coming up with.

It’s just too all over the place and at the same time too static. Meh. Just, no. 

Collection of lines completed

My line project is finished and it took a 180 turn! I tried to develop a snake fold thing that would have my images of lines folding out in the order I would see them on my way to uni from home but the craftsmanship of it all wouldn’t come together. It looked sloppy, unfinished and very much not what I was going for. So I ended up with boxes which I kind of touched upon in my brainstorming for this project but discarded. Here is the process!

Head buzz

At my first ever try at stop motion animation this week I’m transforming paper planes into flowers. I’ll post the result as soon as I’m done with it but for now I’m having too much trouble getting the animation to the right kind of feel. Whatever I do, it just looks too dainty and delicate. I need to rough it up but my head is full of airplanes making it hard to think.