Tuesday, 23 October 2012
Tuesday, 16 October 2012
A Galloping Horse
Well
everyone here’s another animation sequence I’ve just put together. It’s a
sequence of a Galloping horse, drawn from Eadweard
Muybridge`s “Galloping Horse” photography (Which is the image below). The
animation has turned out even better than I expected and I feel very pleased
with it. I hope you all like it.
A Walking Little Girl
Here’s an
animation sequence I’ve just recently drawn at the start of my second year in
Uni. I apologise if the animation is rather faint, I forgot to black line the
pencil markings. But still I hope it’s clear enough and I hope you’ll all enjoy
it.
Here`s an
updated version of the little girl. This time I`ve made it more clear by adding
black pen lining to the pencil lines. I feel very pleased with how it`s come
out this time and I hope you all like it.
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
Police fish image.
Here`s the second image I`ve created on the computer software "Maya". It`s a rough image of a Police Fish, a character I created in the summer holidays. For my second attempt at using "Maya" I feel I have done really well and I am hoping to carry on improving my skills for future images I produce.
My Contextual Studies Journal
Week 1: Design Thinking (Thursday
October 4th)
After
attending the first week`s lecture I thought the lecture was quite interesting
but nothing that special. The reason is because I did not fully follow some of
the points that where being shown to us, e.g. the work of “William Morris”
which tries to describe how to add beauty to the work of man. I also dis-agreed
with the testimony of the futurists because I think that getting rid of Museums
and libraries would be a disaster because it is important to look at our past
to see how things have change over time, and it`s wrong to fight against things
like moralism and feminism because everyone is equal to another.On the other hand I thought the manifesto of the Bauhaus was quite interesting because they have some interesting pieces of arts with crafts which they see as both being equal. But despite being equal both arts and crafts have major differences.
When attending this lecture I felt I enjoyed it better than the first one because I was able to understand it`s meaning and I quite agree with what was being discussed in the lecture. The lecture was discussing about the meaning of Design, which is the starting point of every project made by man, e.g. designing the blue prints of buildings, motor cars, trains and ships before doing the actual construction. Also by creating Storyboard designs for films and cartoons before producing the actual film.
The designer “Victor Papanek” states that Design should be about people and it should be made for people, not for its own sake. This makes me think about the sort of audience I would be aiming my cartoons, for example if it`s a child`s cartoon it shouldn`t contain bad language, too much violence nor anything that would scare children. One example of a mixed message cartoon is “The Simpsons” which contains a lot of strong violence and bad language even though it’s supposed to be for children as well as adults, yet the atmosphere writing appears to be more for adults.
I`d say that Design should be ethical as well as functional.
Week 3: Innovation (Thursday October
18th)
In this
lecture we were learning about the process of Innovation in relation to your
own practice. We learned from the lecturer that Innovation is a way of bringing
new ideas into your work and in order to get people to respond to your work in
a positive way.The main purpose of the lecture was to show how theory can link with Innovation and how you can improve your works in future to attract a bigger audience.
I think Innovation works better when individuals collaborate in groups by sharing and developing their own ideas together e.g. different individuals working together to produce films and TV programmes.
There are 3
steps of how innovation works, first we`d need a group of people who have the
best skills to successfully completed our projects. Then we`d need a place for
the project to be viewed by the public and last we`d need a reason for wanting
to do these projects e.g. I do animation because I enjoy doing it and I like to
share it with the public online to get some feedback about their thoughts on
the animations.
I feel that
I have quite understood the lecture and I have learned how I can develop
further with ideas for my future animations.
Week 4: Designers and Ethics
(Thursday October 25th)
In this
lecture we were being lectured about an ethical approach to design. The meaning
of Ethics is how we can design and display our ideas to the public without
exploiting them.
Ethics in
relation to design mainly stands for whether we would participate with certain
companies, and whether or not we would be
happy with working for them on certain projects. Such as if they want you to
produce a commercial advertising Alcohol, cigarettes or something that might
harm people. Another example of ethical design is trying to design something
that is not technically needed by the consumer.
There are
also good examples of Ethics in design such as producing useful items for the
public. Like “Milton Glaser’s” rules for being an ethical graphic designer
which describe how all designers should work and avoid exploiting people.
I feel that I have learned some important
notices from this lecture on how I ought to be approaching design in an ethical
way.
Week 5: A discussion of Ethics
(Thursday November 8th)
In this lecture
we identified the full meaning of Ethics. Ethics have many relationships to our
lives and work, for example it has barriers, social guidelines, beliefs and
differences between how we all behave. We therefore have choices for how we can
produce our works, just as long as don`t exploit or harm other people.
Ethics seems
like a personal choice e.g. we all chose different ways to spend our lives.
Ethics could also be a matter of intuition rather than a set of rules that we
are supposed to follow because often there are no rules to fit our particular
situation, for example there are no fixed rules on the internet and people have
to make their own decisions to what they think is right. I think there ought to
be some set of rules to show what you can and cannot do because that way you
can see what is right and wrong and you can find your way of using your own
personal code of Ethics. Although there is one problem, who is going to make up
the rules and who is going to enforce them? For example I want to be an
animator and I hope that my animated films will provide some useful messages to
show adults and children the differences between right and wrong.
Week 6: Presentation of 3 dynamo
model professionals (Thursday November 22nd)
In this
lecture we discussed 3 artists who were examples of dynamic role models.
The first
artist was “Tricia Jones” who is a mosaic artist who works extensively
throughout England and Wales. She reveals that mosaic is an attractive art form
to children, due to their simplicity and colourful styles. She works from her
own studio at home, running mosaic workshops.
The second
artist was “Huw Davies” who is a self-employed, creative artist. He does many
forms of art, including sculpture and photography. He advises that any art
students should not be fake with their careers and should do what they want to
do.
The third
artist was “Nicola Farrell” who is a web designer. She views that enthusiasm
and motivation counts a great deal and will get you where you want to be. She
also believes that your skills can help you achieve your goals in life and
career.
I think that
role models can be important for some people who are un-sure what they want in
life or they don`t know which directions their careers should follow. At the
moment I`m un-sure for which direction my animation career is going to go. On
my recent trip to Bradford Animation Festival I saw a lot of professional
animators who are working in areas of animation that I`m hoping to work in.
Week 7: “Moving beyond the limits of
Language” - Autobiographical narrative in animation shorts (Thursday November
29th).
In this
lecture we were watching some animation shorts which all contained narratives that
were Autobiographical. Although each one was animated differently, all featured
a personal narrative that told a story. Each of the animations were analysed
through Autobiographical themes, Narrative structure, Visualisation and
Motivation.
I felt I
quite enjoyed the animations that where shown, although I was finding some of
them hard to follow because some like “The
Runt” by Andreas Hykade where not that clear in their animation qualities
and I felt they weren’t very convincing in their narrative structures.
I feel that
this way of analysing an animation is a good way of breaking down the structure
in order to simplify how a film works. At the present time I`m not making
animations which are driven by narrative storylines, but I think this way of
looking at the autobiographical structure of a film may help me to develop
character narratives in my future animations.
Week 8: The sustainable lie-Green
wash (Thursday December 6th).
In this
week`s lecture we discussed about the environmental problems in the world, due
to the overconsumption of resources by the developed world. We talked about how
costly recycling can be in environmental terms, for example although glass can
be recycled it requires energy and transport to achieve the recycling. Although
metal is recycled, things like aerosols release gases into the environment during
the recycling process.
“Paper makes up 50% (by volume) of our domestic
waste”.
We designers
also play a key role in these environmental problems, this is because it is our
job to design and make consumers want new things, even though they may not be
needed. As an animator I mainly produce hand-drawn animations by using lots of
papers. This has a small impact on the environment, but since hundreds or
thousands of papers would be required for certain animation films or cartoons,
this could be resolved by possibly getting these animation studios to require the
planting of lots of trees to offset the environmental cost of using so much
paper.
I think it
is important to recycle certain things so that more of the same materials can
be re-produced. But we ought to be more careful about what we use to recycle
because of all the costs and issues involved in recycling. While recycling is
worth while it may be better just to reduce our consumption.
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
Year 2
I have now began my second year at university where I shall be progressing further with my animation skills and knowledge. I will be developing most of my animations with the computer software "Maya". It`s quite a hard software to use but I've had a first try and I've produced an image of a chair, which you can see here above. I feel it`s a good first attempt.
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