Week 2

I needed to storyboard my idea but I was unsure about the ideas I had for the animation, so I decided to watch a few RSA Shorts and see how their animations look. The style they use wasn't something I wanted to do as it looked primarily like stop-motion but seeing how the visualize the words gave me some inspiration in developing my idea.

The Power of Empathy

Food Rules for Healthy People and Planet

The Power of Quiet

How Cooking Can Change Your Life

After watching these animations I went through the ideas I had gotten from listening to the audio a few times and began to develop them. This led to me deciding to scrap the idea of having a rotoscoped podcast on screen as it seems unnecessary.

I intend to have characters in my animation, although not consistently, but I also want to have them as silhouettes. I want a simple design to my animation so silhouettes fit in nicely rather than trying to create detailed characters. I am thinking of doing rotoscope for human characters but they won't be animated too much so there might not be a need for it.

Critique

I told my peers about my idea for the animation and presented a storyboard and I was suggested that I watch animations from Saul Bass and Lotte Reiniger since they both use silhouettes.

Jack and the Beanstalk

(Lotte Reiniger)

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

(Saul Bass)

After watching Saul Bass's animation it led me too looking at another movie intro that used silhouettes.

Catch Me If You Can 

Something that occurs throughout the animation, which I have taken a liking too, is that the details on the silhouettes are empty and the empty spaces are being filled in by the background colour. I haven't thought too much about colour but after watching the animation I may do something similar.

Using an image found on Google I done this really quick example of what I mentioned above. Colour will hopefully make the animation a bit better too look at rather than a constant black and white scene.

Week 1

"Curiosity is a muscle, use it or lose it!

It’s something that we consciously have to nurture in ourselves, in our families, in classrooms, at work. Sometimes I hear that curiosity and creativity are killed by too many facts, but actually the opposite is true. The more you know, the more you want to know. Not only that but the more you know, the more connections you can make between the different bits of knowledge that you have in your head and therefore the more ideas you have, which is why curiosity is really the wellspring of creativity. Technology is replacing routine work and that’s what technology replaces first and has done throughout history. So intellectually curious people, people who are capable of learning throughout their career, of asking questions — good questions — of adapting and collaborating with others from different disciplines, people who are capable of really thriving in this world of non -routine work, in other words, are the people who are going to do better."

The transcript for the audio that I need to make an animation for. I've listened to the audio a few times and noted down some ideas that have come to mind.

  "in our families, in classrooms, at work"

-Image of a person and more people appearing. E.g. Silhouette of a person on their own, then with their family and then behind a desk.

 "are the people who are going to do better"

-Person or multiple people standing on top of a podium.

 "Curiosity is a muscle, use it or lose it!"

-A arm flexing with the words curiosity written or tattooed across it. The muscles then shrinks and turns the arm skinny.

 "Curiosity and creativity are killed by too many facts"

-The words 'curiosity' and 'creativity' get overlapped by multiple words 'facts'.

 "The more connections you can make between the different bits of knowledge"

-Inside of the brain, multiple wires connecting to different parts of the brain.

As for the style of the animation I am thinking of doing rotoscope and then do hand drawing for the rest of the animation. I want to have a podcast type of scenario going on where a person is talking to another, and the second person has a thought bubble filling the remainder of the screen which has the visuals of the audio.

As for the visuals I want to have the images and words morph into one another to keep the animation fluent.