Characters

These are some characters that I sat and drew while listening to the music and bearing in mind all the things I noted down when I first heard it.

 

I really like the idea of using a rabbit as a character, it seems to really sum up the music for me, but I will look into others before I make a decision.

Rayograms

This is the first time I have ever used a darkroom, so the experience was very new, like a lot of this project is! I tested the exposure first and then produced a rayogram at the best level. There wasn't really enough time to experiment so I decided to come back to the drop in session the week after to look at more techniques.

What springs to mind...

When I listened to the track I thought of a few different things so I decided to produce a mind map of what came to mind when I heard it. I listened to it quite a few times so I could get the most out of it, also focussing in on specific parts of it.

 

The above selection of images, words, and colours are what most summed up the piece of music in my head. It feels very sporty, and the beat reminds me of repetitive motion which ties in with that. The bright colours also make me think of warm weather and exercise.

Response to Music Video Research

After looking at the video by Junior Senior, I had a little play around using MS Paint (lol) to achieve a pixelated look to some basic characters and text. The effect is either really good or really bad, I can't quite decide!

  I also used Illustrator to see if the result was any better using individual pixels to build up an image, but there wasn't really a difference.

One the one hand it looks very simple, but bright and cheerful, and on the other it looks really bad quality and not very original...

After this dilemma I think the best thing to do would be to leave this idea aside for now.

Research - Music Video

This is the video for Junior Senior's Move Your Feet, recorded in 2002, the graphics for which were produced using Deluxe Paint, a program for the Commodore Amiga. This gives the characters a pixel-art effect, and combined with the bright colours makes the video looks like it's straight from a vintage video game.

I really like how the animation links with the beats in the music, emphasising key points in the song and enhancing the rhythm. I want to emulate this in my animation, by making sure the motion links in with the music. Also I would like to look into producing characters in a similar pixelated way with block colour.

Project Kick Off: Music

I have been allocated a piece of music to base my animation on, which is 5mins 40secs long, and I need to choose an area of it which will come to around 20-30secs. After listening to it a fair few times I have noticed quite a number of parts of the song that could all mean different things and conjure up different ideas. I think I will look into each one and narrow down the stronger ideas and develop them.

Above is he track that I will be working with, which I think is a really versatile piece, so I should have plenty of ideas. In theory!

New Project: PRINT TO PIXEL

A new module has now started, involving various types of animation techniques and new skills. This is ENTIRELY alien to me, apart from a brief stint in Flash for A Level ICT (wasn't great). So I'm very new to the whole process of making things move.

During the project I will be looking at some of the different ways I can make images come to life, through stop motion, cell animation, and photography; and also learning how to use software like After Effects to support this.

So here we go...