Stuck up- another animated masterpiece

Simple animatic showing the premise of the film

It certainly is getting to the end of the semester because that impending sense of doom is only growing. They’ve become such an encouragement to get all these films and assignments done. Outside of studio work, I am animating a documentary for my “Animation as Documentary” class and I am so excited at what I have undertaken.

My final for this class is a documentary on where people stick stickers. It is a form of ethnography fitted into a poetic documentary illustrating the graffiti-esque nature of sticker application in a public setting. One thing to note in this piece is that it’s about placement, putting stickers on places like street signs, utility poles, crosswalk lights, etc. is a form of rebellion on par with traditional graffiti. The film focuses on these places rather than stickers placed on cars, water bottles and laptops because those are more an expression of the personality of the owner of those objects; granted some of the messages portrayed may be calling for social change or rebellion. The two placements described are different and distinct, and warrant films of their own accord but I will be focusing on the former.

This is an example video of the style of animated work that I am going for

One thing about collecting the assets for this piece is I look like a crazy person as I wander around examing utility poles and signs up and down and up close. BUT what I didn’t expect is the excitement I instill in others as they hear what I am doing and being seeing the world in a new way: the way I am seeing it. “Oh Riley there is another sticker over here”, “This place is covered in stickers!!”, “This one is so funny I am going to get a photo of it for myself”,”Did you capture the stickers I’ve stuck around here?”. This kind of enthusiasm has only grown my excitement for the piece. The complicated part is the framing and precision it will take to get every sticker to smoothly pass on screen humorously to “Overture to the Marriage of Figaro” by Ludwig Von Behtoven. The music and subject matter create an interesting blend of high and low art that I am going to use effectively in this film.

Short and simple motion test. REALLLLLYYYY proud of the precision I got here

Hipped hopped up on styrofoam

My current animation project has entered the (somewhat) intuitive phase! I’ve managed to create audio-reactive animations as well as video switchers all output through projection mapping techniques! It has been a frustrating and enlightening process to accomplish.

But now we are in the process of set building, I have ordered a mess of styrofoam blocks to start sculpting the titular house of hip-hop!

I am also working to generate the audio so I can attach it to visuals

A clip of my audio reactive visuals (These were tied to my microphone input and danced around to my voice!)

Theory, play, & video games

After a spark of inspiration, during a lecture on story structure, I found myself diving into the realm of video games and how interactive media provides a unique opportunity to break down typical narrative story structures. How do we get from A to B? Does getting to B even matter? Did we even start at A? I’ve had the delightful opportunity to play games that have influenced how I tell stories, and taking a deep dive into how they do so has been immensely rewarding. There are many ways in which the story is broken and choice (or the illusion of choice is made) is given. Good story design is not an endless array of choices and possibilities. That’s both exhausting from a developmental and play standpoint, but more creating the illusion of choice that blurs the lines of A to B and creates a more natural form of exploration.

Much of my research has been in the entertaining world of dense academic theory. The kind of stuff that is dense meaty and warps your mind a little. Steve Dixon’s Digital Performance broke down the degrees of interaction artists have used in exhibition design that warps the idea of narrative structure. He gives us four unique forms of performance-based immersion: Navigation, Participation, Conversation, and Collaboration. Without getting too into the nitty-gritty of it, these four are united by the concept of play. Games being a form of play designed for immersive experiences we can see how the four can be interchangeable for many different games and gaming experiences.

The games that I am focusing on in my research are as follows:

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture: A game where the apocalypse begins in a small British countryside. It is an interesting mode of storytelling where you are given free rein of the game world to experience the final moments of its inhabitants in whatever way you want if you want to at all. It is a mystery rather than a puzzle.

The Outer Wilds: You are given the reins to your spaceship to freely explore the solar system. You are only given about 20 minutes before it, and you are destroyed. It is interesting because it gives you the narrative structure on your ship’s computer; a branching web of mysteries on each planet that explore the mysterious past of the inhabitants from before.

Kentuck Route Zero: 5 Dogwood Drive, the address to your final delivery, and an address that doesn’t seem to exist except through a mysterious highway called the zero. This is a fairly straightforward A-to-B narrative presented in the style of a choose-your-own-adventure. The choices you make are used to define the cast of characters in your own eyes. These choices do not change the stories outcome but change you. The game also takes some narrative twists that break the norm of the story a big one being removing the main character before the final act with no real resolution. A risk that plays off so heart-breakingly well.

All these stories are amazing literature and have had such a lasting impact on me. And I have been so satisfied sitting down to see how their gears turn. The paper will explore them further as well as other gaming phenomena like TWITCH plays pokemon amount other interactive experiences that put the choice in the players hands.

The notes are extensive and maddening

3/2 Ambiance on Monstera-in leaf minor

I am so glad I don’t have to be good at drawing to be an animator. I understand that the reading the week was showing the broad and wonderful world animation offers with different ways to make it in the industry and different departments. But what I mean, and what I have learned is that animation goes beyond drawing. And I am SPECIAL! My own work goes beyond the realm of what would be traditional and I love it.

This past week of testing and experimenting was a breakthrough too! I figured out how to set up real honest-to-goodness projection mapping and I’m just :D To really make it an exercise I went and spent an evening with the ever-so-lovely: My Monstera. They played their part beautifully, standing still and stoic as usual as I traced digital lines across as many leaves as I could. Then the magic happened when I overlaid the color-shifting effect on them. It’s cute. It’s gay. It’s a relief to know I can actually do this.

2/24 Breaking the Brand

Dancing Lights on Monstera Leaves

“This weird thing happens when people get familiar with your work. For better or worse, people start seeing you as a kind of brand”

This line from David B. Levy’s Your Career in Animation really resonated with me. How people begin to recognize you for your work is something that surprises me even today. Hearing “Oh yeah I could tell that was yours, it’s so your style” is “For better or worse”. Like there is this sense of flattery that comes from it that you can lean into and prosper with, but also there is this lurking fear of “Am I becoming predictable/stale/boring?”

I tend to stick with trying new things, although I have undoubtedly created a style for myself that I am, at this time, quite proud of. I think the refining of it keeps it from reaching a perceived expiration date. Although with that I find it incredibly fun to break that mold and experiment, like with the animations I did for this blog today. Although incredibly simple, the challenge came in the medium I presented my work on which is my precious Monstera. For one night only they stood in the spotlight as I figured out how to angle my camera just right, to get the most mysterious angles and movements. This only hints at what the animation is being presented on.

I think that trying new things builds on what you know, it helps make the net you are casting wider because you are branching out with what you know, into what you don’t know. It isn’t abandonment, but an addition to your tool belt. An addition that didn’t complicate your life but enriched it with new processes and viewpoints which I find a lot of fun to get into.

The first test I did was just a straight line traveling down space you can see how it highlights, only briefly the sensual curves and delicacy of the plant itself

This test involved putting sound to visual through simple visualization lines. I used a catchy pop song from the Video Game Sayona Wild hearts. The leaves give different screens and fractured pieces to look at that I find so very visually interesting.

This is by far my favorite rendition with a simple burst field traveling along the leaves, it really gives this mysterious nature to the leaves, breaking them out of the norm by giving both light and shadow dancing across it.

2/16 - Revolve, evolve, some third thing that rhymes

Getting into the mess of school brings a certain kind of chaos that I love. After reading a portion of Your Career In Animation by the wonderful David B. Levy it all makes sense why that chaos is there.

From the reading I can see that Animation school is a mass chaos of learning, projects and opportunities that I have the pleasure to dive into and make sense of. All the while experimenting on the work that I want to be creating. I especially like the section where he criticized having a style over using the opportunity to discover who you really are and what you really do is.

For me I learned that lesson early when I was still in school for graphic design. My page layout instructor, Sarah, always encouraged and taught us to look past developing our own style and start creating for the project, client, or demographic in mind. I didn’t like doing that, and it was frustrating but I learned that I am not always going to be doing things in my style. And my own style still needs some work, it’s always evolving. So rather than constantly revolve I can jump and try unexpected things like my cute lil moon I have animated. The weight isn’t perfect but I am happy with what I created and I want to keep developing how to represent objects in believable and delightful ways