Gears: The Movie (Radio 4 Final Stop-Motion)

This is my final design for my Radio 4 Project. Firstly, I felt I could have added alot more to the stop-motion but time was heavily afflicted due to all the presentations, essays, and everything else I've been doing over the last two weeks. The project has been slightly neglected, but this is the first animation I have done all year and it does have a nice charm to it.

Without careful planning, animations never go well, same with films, bad directed = bad film. But anyway, enjoy the animation. This was for a segment of a Radio 4 show titled 'Birth of Radio'. I think it goes with the theme, because cogs are old fashion mechanics, and they fit the atmosphere of what is being discussed. But to be honest, I wish I had more time to amend this. 

Creative Review

The Chronicles of Fry

I am really into Stephen Fry's literature at the moment, what's interesting about him is he can rant for days on end and still maintain my attention and at the same time be hilarious. I don't know why I picked this book specifically but Fry has been an inspiration to me for quite some time now. I always used to watch "A Bit of Fry and Laurie", the humor was really smart and quick witted. While I see he isn't everybody's taste, he is a really intelligent person and his quotes are really inspiring, I think he says things that are regarded as quotes without him even realizing it.

"The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest. We are all richer for biodiversity. We may decide that a puma is worth more to us than a caterpillar, but surely we can agree that the habitat is all the better for being able to sustain each" - Stephen Fry This is something Fry said in his book 'The Chronicles of Fry', this makes a lot of sense to me because it is so easy to get bogged down with art being here there and everywhere, even everything else, not just art. We need to be more open-minded to things we turn aside, and things others like that we can't appriciate. Don't get stuck with one favourite, respect everything you may not like as much. There wouldn't be so much competition if it wasn't for the things we overlook, it is far too easy to get locked into a comfort zone.

"I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform." - Stephen Fry This is a quote from 'Moab is my Washpot' and it just stands as a true statement for everyone, that is so easily forgotten. We have as much power as any other human being, it is only our emotions that hold us back from achieving. We have the power to be who we want to be, it's just up to us to get there!

Disney Animations

Since I was very young, I have been watching Disney animations, the very first film I watched of these was 'Toy Story', I suppose because I have been watching them from such a young age, the style relates to me, as from making characters and personas that don't exist in real life into virtual beings, the realism hits me more and I feel more drawn to animated films. With real-life films, you need both good actors and a good director to create a successful film, but with animations, the actors are made from our brains. That's kind of why I find them so astounding to watch, the story, the scenery, the movements, every little tiny piece is perfectly placed and has had attention at some point.

A few of my favorites are A Bug's Life, Tarzan, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, and obviously toy Story. I think it's also nostalgia that makes the bond stronger, as I feel more to these favorites than to say Lion King, a classic regarded as legendary by many. Although I watch it a lot and do appreciate it's work and heart-warming story, I just didn't grow up with Lion King, it just became one of those things I missed out on and didn't get to watch properly until I was older. Had I have watched it when I was younger, I would probably regard it as a favorite now. 

I really like the idea of nostalgia and how it means alot to us, we all have something we grew up with that has caused us to bond with it as we got older. It's just a nice thing.



"Taste"


The other day, me and a couple others gave a presentation about 'Taste'. This led to a very interesting discussion. Karl Pilkington (Actor, and renowned as an 'idiot' or a 'man at the bus stop' if you will) was having an interview with David Shrigley, and Karl asked him why he doesn't draw 'properly', to which Shrigley responed "Just because you can play a guitar, doesn't mean you have to play the guitar properly". This quote stuck with me, as too often today, people outside the art world only think art is perfectly drawn sketches and brightly coloured paintings, when there is so much more being missed. What is 'properly'? There is no properly when the criteria is completely opinion based and there is so much to debate over. I do like it when someone says something like this though, it makes me snigger a little inside to know that there are people that actualy don't understand the art world atall and have no respect for those who approach things in very broad and interesting styles. If everyone drew in the same way, what would seperate us? Everything would be dull and repetative.

The quote itself though just shows that you can do that if you wish, but you don't have to. Mastery comes with everything below it and that includes being playful and exploring anything you like, it's all about being true to yourself. Never think twice about something just because someone else's opinion is different, it's what makes us unique and interesting. Just like Pablo Picasso, he could draw magnificently, yet he started Cubism, a completely different method of working from his previous art. Just because you are good at something doesn't mean you have to do it. Many people will be born to be rocket scientists, but if you don't want anything to do with that profession, there's no point.

We also looked at several pieces of 'underrated' art created by a few artists that were made in the style of Ikea, they ere really basic pieces of shelving stuck together. Is that art? What does it mean to people? Some found it interesting, while others weren't interested at all. It goes to show again, that we all have different opinions.

I personally believe that we should aim for our own targets, not the people around us, if you want to be successful  be successful  but through your own eyes, and own hands... If that makes sense...

Thinking With Gears...

While researching old radios and old mechanical items, I found a common field was gears, gears are used in old mechanical devices and are quite useful forgotten objects. I think I want to use gears as a main part of the animation, so I have started drawing out some of them. I am thinking maybe they can intersect with one another and this could possible turn into some sort of stop motion.

Just been playing about with some text that could maybe somehow get into the animation. Sorry if some of the images look a little confusing, but inserting small images together on blogger is more difficult than trying to dissect a cow.

It would read "The great machines of the industrial revolution were in full swing, producing 'things' for the empire."

Lego Animations

I have been recently looking at animations made by people on Youtube, and a big interesting trend that I have noticed is the abundance of Lego animations. A very interesting one that I have seen is a Gears of War lego animation, this one stood out to me from the others because clearly a lot of time has been spent with the set-creation, the stop-motion animation(, and probably lego collecting!) and the ideas processed throughout. If you have ever played or seen any videos of the actual game Gears of War, you can see how accurately they kept the style to fit with it. Even when the monsters jump out, it must have been very difficult to keep everything perfect to fit with the whole animation.

I think it is mostly the effort that I spot, and how it makes you "wow" when you see it, just because it is unbelievable to see the things that appear, you instantly see the amount of time that must have been put in to create the sequence.

Bricks of War - Lego Animation

For the BBC project I am currently doing, I am to make an animation for a voice-over from the BBC4 radio, I thought this was relevant for me. Obviously I'm not about to make anything out of Lego, but I think the purpose and skill can be taken from this and applied to something else. The idea of stop-motion and thinking outside the box could be used in a similar sort of way if I decide to create my own stop-motion based animation.

Zero Punctuation

For an initial starting point, I have looked at work by Ben Croshaw, he is part of a section of a Magazine Company called "Zero Punctuation". As I am currently doing a project for BBC, to create a background animation, I thought this was very appropriate. I like the way he illustrates over what he is talking about in a very literal way. Even when he speaks in metaphors, he creates imagery in a literal respect to this, which is quite hilarious.

Ben or 'Yahtzee' as he is sometimes known, does gaming reviews for this internet-based magazine, he has really gone beyond the depths of simplicity, because all his animations have the same characters, same background and you can instantly spot that the work was done by him. He has made 100+ videos, and makes them on a weekly basis, so they are constantly being made even now, and aren't losing any repetition value.

Example video:

Zero Punctuation reviews Halo 3

I thought it would be interesting to do something similar for the animation for the BBC voice-over. It really inspires me to do something in this style, combining the humour with a literal awareness, making a parody-like animation in response to the voice-over, but keeping in line with enough respect to make it not a parody.

This is the first thing that instantly hit me when I decided to take up this brief, so I really think it is a great starting point.

Radio 4 - Animating

For my latest project, I am going to animate a "rant" as I like to say, from Radio 4. You hear alot of interesting and informative talks over Radio 4. I have decided to use an extract from a talk about 'The birth of Radio'. I think it's a pretty good talk that goes into how radio was invented and created, talks about the mechanics of it and how it changed into a revolution. I feel most connected to this conversation and want to make a short animation to go behind the extract. This may be a looped stop-motion or maybe something completely different. We'll have to see!

Exciting.

Summer Project Sketches

Did these sketches over summer, they are of a film called 'War of the Worlds'. I chose a couple of scenes from the beginning of the film and drew them. I did these because I was planning to create an animation and I thought it would give me an idea of sequencing peripherals. (This has obviously changed since I am now making a scarf, my bad for forgetting to upload these earlier!)

David Firth

I have been watching videos from an animator called David Firth, he is well know for his 'Salad Fingers' series, but he has made many other random spin-offs and other ranges of animations. He draws the characters and backdrops by hand, then scans them into a computer and edits using Macromedia Director

Most of his animations have a very dark and sorrowing feel to them, and I find this to be interesting because you can really feel the eeriness straight away from either the colours or music. Some of his work even seems scary from how random and weird he makes his characters and what they say, in a recent David Firth interview, he says he likes to work when he is really tired because it helps him to think of more weird and wonderful ideas, he also likes to use dreams as they are generated randomly.

Salad Fingers - Episode 3 - Nettles

This is an episode of Salad fingers, probably his most renowned work. It's strange how something so random and spooky is so good to watch, most of his work makes absolutely no sense but has a really interesting deep flavour and they are addictive to watch! Some of his work reminds me of my own, he uses random scribbles, simple shapes, quickly drawn art, but together they have a low-quality feel that works and is really humorous. It shows that you don't need to be the finest artist to create amazing things!