Conceiving my 12 Frame Proposal (OUAN401)

I knew that I wanted to do something a little abstract, with a subjective meaning, for my 12 frame proposal. I mean, not TOTALLY abstract. Lord knows I haven't done enough MIND BENDING DRUGS to venture into that territory yet. The topic of how the social elite run the world has been covered a lot across all art forms, and I wasn't keen on making anything with a blatant message of how we should be all out fighting the revolution or something like that. Firstly, it would be hypocritical of me as I'm currently doing naff all to aid in the revolution, even though I probably should be out firebombing the post office or something.

Secondly, I want to make mine light hearted. I ended up going with an concept about cheeky cartoon apes and while it does have a deeper subtext, it can be fun on MULTIPLE LEVELS. That's what I meant by wanting to to be subjective.

Just like how Watership Down can be interpreted as a wacky comedy where the joke is that the animals can talk. HOW CAN THEY TALK LOL?

Anyway, I experimented a teeny bit with colour earlier, which is where I got this idea. I began with the VERY BASIC concept that RED = underclass and BLUE = social elite. That is what those colours represent on the French flag. It looks pretty ugly because I only just slapped some colours on it, but the THING TO NOTICE is that I made everything sort of an amorphous blob with slight details, so the colour and expressiveness are the most important parts of these drawings, which I want to convey in my final 12 frame proposal. It's a teeny bit abstract.

Colour should play an important role in my final thing as it's very emotive and it has a bunch of SYMBOLISM behind it. Red is so often associated with wild revolutionary firebrands, while the colour blue reminds us of, well, blue-bloods. The lame aristos and stuff.

Lecture - Semiotics (OUAN401)

Boy, this lecture was a bloody brain boozler. No wonder film students are all depressed weird nerds when they’re forced to analyse every aspect of every prop, set, sound effect and line in a scene of a film.

Semiotics – the study of signs. Every sign consists of the signified and the signifier. The signified is the concept, the meaning, the thing being represented by the signifier.

For instance, if the concept is good and evil, the signified in this case, we would signify that with a signifier, such as a dichotomy like white and black. This kind of stuff is taken into consideration all the time in films. What is the best way to convey a mood or a theme by signifying it with colours, sounds, props or dialogue to give it the best dramatic impact?

It’s relevant to animation because animation is just filmmaking for people who are too shy to ask for real life filming location permits. Also we never learnt how to use boom microphones.
It’s important because every prop used in an animation needs to be carefully considered, otherwise what’s the point mate? What’s the bloody point in anything? In LIFE? One of my biggest fears in life aside from dying alone and dying with someone is my fear that I will go on to design really generic looking film sets.

Well, it’s not one of my greatest fears. It’s one of my moderate fears.

Well, it’s something I occasionally consider

Well, it’s something I’ve never given any thought to until the writing of this blog post

What I mean is that unless every prop and background in a scene is considered from a semiotic perspective, it can look bland. If I had to design a spooky castle I could just throw in bats, cobwebs, wall sconces and suits of armour, but it’s not thought through and it’s boring!

I'm sure that there are well thought out design choices behind both of these spooky castles, but it would be wrong of me to just copy them

I would have to consider stuff like:

What’s living in the spooky castle? What kind of marks would they leave?

How long has the spooky castle been abandoned/ inhabited for?

When was it built? What era?

How often do strangers visit the spooky castle? What happens to them?

If I consider all this and more, then I can use my props and background design to help build up a story behind the location. Every prop should tell a story, everything is in the place that it’s in for a reason.

That's the main lesson I took away from this lecture. Semiotics give things PURPOSE.

Ditching my Old Sketchbook (OUAN401)

A few weeks back I decided to completely restart the sketchbook I'm developing themed around Marx and Engels' belief that the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas. I realised that this was a tad RISKY. What prompted such a crazy and far out decision? Well, I dropped my first sketchbook down a storm drain and couldn't get it out so I had to get another.

Nah, that's not true.

I felt that I hadn't realised the full potential of the sketchbook and that, had I submitted my first sketchbook, I would have wasted an opportunity to really explore the concept with various design choices and abstract stuff and things like that. I felt that my last sketchbook was too cartoony without really delving into the meat and two veg of the quote. And cartoons are for kids, man! If I were a real artist I would draw a picture of Karl Marx on acid using my own blood or something like that.

ONLY JOKING BECAUSE cartoons are fine I suppose, but my biggest problem before was that I was very aware that the issue of the social elite dictating the thoughts of society has been commented on by, I dunno, about FIFTY BILLION ARTISTS in the past. I didn't want to make the same points that had been repeated so many times before, so I took the route of commenting on the issue in a snarky, ironic manner so as to distance myself from the other people.

At first I found it hard to make a statement about the ruling class without resorting to these kind of clichéd tropes

And these really blatant, patronising metaphors

But after a while all the snarky ironicness made me annoy even myself. I'm going to transfer some ideas from the previous sketchbook to the new sketchbook, but I want to start thinking more about what I'm really trying to say. I'll use the power of SEMIOTICS.

What am I signifying? What colours do I use to signify it? What objects? Quotes? The possibilities are limitless. I'm far more optimistic about the new sketchbook.

Modernism in Animation - Laszlo Moholy Nagy (OUAN401)

The lecture programme is cool because it shows me a whole bunch of stuff that I'd never normally find out about of my own accord, such as the Hungarian modernist animator and artist Laszlo Moholy Nagy. His middle name is "Moholy", which sounds a little like "holy moly".

Nagy experimented with loads of different mediums and was a massive modernist modern man, advocating for the use of technology to improve art.

I'm not quite sure what his films mean. They're very abstract. His film "Ein Lichtspiel Schwarz Weiss Grau", or "A Light Play Black and White Gray" according to Goog trans, uses a lot of light tricks, shadows and steady camera movements to create an entrancing effect.

I like the film because it's completely off the wall, detached from reality but with a sense of familiarity. The strong silhouettes and the occasional hint of something recognisable flashing up on screen, like curtain blinds or shiny metal, combines with the bright light that makes the animation feel dreamlike. It's like recalling a memory from early childhood.

I wonder how on earth Nagy was influenced to create it. The shadows blend into each other wonderfully seamlessly, and I'd love to try something inspired by this medium, purely to experiment with camera techniques and what kind of atmosphere can be achieved with light, shade and contrast alone. I think it's bloody brilliant!

Modernist animation is designed to be for everyone. It's universally understandable and stripped down, which I really appreciate.

A light shining through a board with holes in it