Graduation film: update

This is roughly the halfway stage of my final year at eca, so here is an update on my graduation film.

I have been animating for 2 weeks and drawn about 20 out of 100 shots, but only about 5 are fully coloured/etched/drawn (however you may want to describe the final look of the film).

I am trying to animate at least one shot a day, and my most recent estimate for the finishing date is April 14th.

I've not yet decided what to do with the soundtrack, and although I still really want to use Finnish dialogue, I don't think dialogue will add much to the story...

Finally, here is a short clip displaying what my animation currently looks like:

The shots with the dog are more or less complete, but the shots of the woman are still to be fully drawn/coloured, and none of these shots have the final backgrounds.

Influences part 15: Paul Cezanne

I first discovered Cezanne's work when I started high school almost 10 years ago after my art teacher assigned to everyone in the class a random painting to write a critical analysis about. The Cezanne painting that I received seemed pretty abstract (which I wasn't keen on) and was very different to anything I had previously been familiar with, but I quickly began to appreciate his style, and Cezanne has remained a key influence on my work ever since... Below are a couple of my paintings from March 2008 influenced primarily by the work of Cezanne.


I feel that Cezanne's brushwork creates two completely seperate fields of study in his work: the subject of the painting, and the painting technique.
Cezanne's work uses a loose/slightly abstract painting technique that creates a stimulating aesthetic. His finished paintings are fairly recognisable, however the brushstrokes that make up the overall image are very obvious and not at all reminiscent of their subject in reality. This is similar to Impressionist painting techniques, and I am using this theory to develop the animation process/aesthetics for my graduation film.

For my graduation film I am interpreting live-action video footage, which should create a life-like motion within the animation. This means that I can be more abstract with the visual style of my animation drawings because regardless of how the individual drawings look, the motion created when the sequential drawings are displayed at film speed should create a clear illusion of realistic motion.

Influences part 14: Rembrandt

I appreciate the realism of Rembrandt's paintings, and it was a style that I always wanted to achieve with my own work, but while writing my final college essay (in December 2008) I decided that realist painting styles are never as satisfying as the real object, therefore artistic interpretations of reality (such as Impressionism) should provide a more satisfying aesthetic in any visual medium.
Despite this resolution to my essay (which can be applied to all visual mediums including painting, animation, sculpture, computer game graphics...) I still greatly appreciate the realism of Rembrandt's paintings, but it is a different aspect of his work that I have found so influential over the past year - the lighting and colouring.
My favourite element of Rembrandt's work is the strong dark and light contrast in his paintings, which it is something I began incorporating into my own paintings last March. Below is a painting of Scarlett Johansson in Lost In Translation that I made in March 2008. After that painting I tried to incorporate my influences from Rembrandt's work into my animation work, but it never got as far as I would have liked... After creating the painting of Scarlett Johansson I began work on my first major Paint on Glass animation sequence for Johanna Wagner's Masters film The Inner Shape. Below is a still from my Paint on Glass sequence for the film, which I created in black and white over a coloured background. This sequence is not particularly influenced by Rembrandt, but there was going to be a second Paint on Glass sequence showing a close-up of a woman talking to the camera, which I had hoped to create in the style of Rembrandt - however that shot was cancelled during the storyboard stage...

Despite not being able to incorporate my influences from Rembrandt deeper into my animation work, I think that there are a few shots in the storyboards for my graduation film that utilise strong light and dark contrast (which were initially influenced more by The Old Masters than by Film Noir), and which I am trying to keep in the final animation.

Influences part 13: music videos

Music videos are quite possibly my favourite film genre because they have less demands than commercial filmmaking, so they offer lots of opportunites for experimentation, parody, narrative (of any kind), and general showing-off... Here are some of my favourite music videos:

Incubus - Drive
I like this video purely for the clever rotoscoping (all created by the band) which is based on the drawings of M.C. Escher.


The Killers - Bones
Directed by Tim Burton (Corpse Bride, Nightmare Before Christmas) with a nod to Ray Harryhausen ( Jason And The Argonauts, King Kong), this video sees live-action actors turning into skeletons and vice-versa. The CGI is really effective, and creates a completely different look from the 3D stopmotion work of Harryhausen. I think it works brilliantly (just take a look at my essays to see how much I usually dislike CGI and modern animation).


The Presets - Girl And The Sea
A homage to Yuri Norstein's Tale of Tales, and directed by Lee Lennox. It copies a lot from what has twice been voted the greatest animated film of all time, which removes some of the spectacle, but it is one of the few CGI works that I have found interesting in recent months.


Chemicals Brothers - Let Forever Be
Directed by Michel Gondry (Be Kind Rewind, The Science of Sleep), this video is full of strange effects.


White Stripes - Hardest Button To Button
Another of Gondry's masterpieces, this video was shot with pixelation (animating living people like puppets with other objects like stopmotion) and is unlike any other mainstream music video.


White Stripes - Fell In Love With Girl
Yet another Gondry work, this video is made by animating Lego blocks to imitate the band playing.


Queens of The Stone Age - Go With The Flow
A simple CGI music video with great visuals.


Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer
Crazy stopmotion video created by the wonderful folks at Aardman (Wallace & Gromit, Creature Comforts) with those bizarre Quay Brothers (Streets of Crocodiles)


Johnny Cash - Hurt
An emotional song with beautiful visuals. I really like the golden lighting within all the blackness, which I think is similar to Rembrandt paintings and the recent Kings of Leon music video for Sex On Fire.


Foo Fighters - Long Road To Ruin
Really silly parody of 70s TV shows as is typical from the Foo Fighters... All their videos are worth watching, but this is my favourite of recent years.


Foo Fighters - My Hero
I like it simply for trying to create the illusion that the whole ridiculous story was filmed with just one single continuous shot (like Alfred Hitchcock's ROPE).

Busted - Crashed The Wedding
The full video is shot in the 'single shot' style of Alfred Hitchcock's ROPE and Foo Fighters My Hero, but this video is full of realtime impossibilities (like numerous ridiculous costume changes) and the 'cuts' are almost seamless, which I have to give it extra credit for!

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Can't Stop
This silly video is based upon the 1 Minute Sculptures of Erwin Wurm, which in themselves are worth looking at

Blink 182 - Always
This video, directed by Joseph Kahn, uses a split-screen to tell three simultaneous stories. I think it looks awesome, and has stuck with me all these years (which is probably only 5 or 6 years - but it's still awesome!)
I did a test of this for my 2nd Year music video project, which I found really interesting, but I should probably have developed something new from it - there's always next time...

Def Leppard - Let's Get Rocked
Basic CGI, but I like it because it isn't trying to look too realistic (as I often cite as the problem with modern animation)

The Bravery - Honest Mistake
A chain-reaction similar to Rube Goldberg, the Honda Accord Cog advert, and Der Lauf Der Dinge by Fischli & Weiss.
I made a short video called Die Skateboard at college for a 1st Year sculpture project based upon this style, and although my video didn't work as well as I had hoped, I really enjoyed the challanges associated with it, and would relish the chance to try it again.


I'm surprised I can't think of anything more bizarre, but if I remember then I'll add them to this list later...