EXTENDED: Critical Evaluation

The lifting tower project seemed like a bit of a throwaway brief to me initially and I don't think me or Ewan really poured much heart and soul into the ideas, but we came up with some pretty decent short clips. Sadly I was in bed with a hot water bottle and a cup of lemsip the night they were actually projected, so I never got to see them in action.

It was really great to create the projection visuals for Garde Dog, and to see them projected behind and over the top of the band during their set at Wharf Chambers. The animation itself was based around very basic loops superimposed over dog videos, all in lurid bright colours, which worked perfectly when projected. I was very happy with the outcome, and it was nice that Cinnamon, the group putting the event on, got in contact with the Beefy Squarms collective out of the blue about working with them.
This year's batch of YCN and D&AD briefs were far less inspiring than the previous set in which I had found it quite hard to decide which projects to work on. Action On Hearing Loss did not immediately jump out at me, but actually I think I managed to find a smart and simple outcome to the brief, albeit executed in a quite clinical and dull way due to my quick turnaround of the project, wanting to get started on my work with Brenda.

None out of my YCN, Lifting Tower, or Garde Dog animations really stretched me technically - all of which were made entirely on Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects. But for Loop-de-Loop "Myth" I decided to use paper cutout stop motion for the first time in years, (not counting my ident in first year which used much more basic puppets and was far simpler to execute.) The puppet I made was an assembly of 16 individual pieces of car (including two different 'states' for each hand). Often, because of the way all the tiny limbs were laid over the top of each other it was easier to take the whole puppet apart and re-pose him from the feet upwards rather than try and move one or two pieces without disturbing the rest. It really tested my patience as an animator used to having an undo button. Altogether I actually really enjoyed the challenge, and for a week's work, it is maybe one of my favourite creations.

Working with Brenda again on our final project was a joy. We have a really good working relationship, with space to play and experiment, and a confidence in each others ability to get work done to a high standard. We also share lots of ideas in politics and philosophy, and about art in general so there was a level of trust when tackling some of the more sensitive or subjective elements in our project that we were coming at things from the same angle. Aesthetically I allowed Brenda to set the tone of the animation - the collage style that much of the film is based on is something that she has more experience of working in than I do, but from a technical point of view (if not necessarily an artistic one) I was able to keep pace with her, and I think the film does work as a contiguous whole even though we worked on individual scenes independently. There was always input, advice and suggestion when we needed it, or when a scene was nearly done and ready for tweaking. Despite our annoyance when Walter, the music student we were meant to work with, ending up being a total tool, I actually really enjoyed the process of building up the soundtrack with relevant samples and sound effects. It is clearly the work of someone who doesn't really know what they are doing - and if I'd had more time I would have made the effort to clean up the muddier clips and prepare our samples properly in Audition before adding them to the Logic project. The only real negative I have about not collaborating with someone for the audio is that we had intended to have a back and forth sort of relationship, in which the sound would affect what we animated, and vice versa - which probably would have tied in the audio and visuals more tightly. What ended up happening is that by the time we ended up cutting all ties with Walter the vast majority of the animation was done, and it seemed to make more sense to get it all finished and then focus on making the soundtrack.

EXTENDED: Completed!

Yesterday Brenda and I decided we were satisfied with the soundtrack that we had made, which means that the film is complete!

We now need to decide how best to display it at the exhibition. Ben suggested having it printed onto 16mm film and projecting it, but when me and Brenda looked into it it doesn't seem practical;
Firstly, we couldnt find anywhere in Britain that still offers that service, which would mean having to get the reel shipped to us from a studio overseas and in order to have it ready for the show we will probably have to pay through the teeth for express shipping.
Secondly, due to how little in demand this service is it would cost us over £100 each, plus shipping costs, which seems like an unaffordable extravagance really.

EXTENDED: Music progress

Our soundtrack is really coming together. I have been in the soundbooth for a few days now hacking away at the newsreel clips and public service announcements that we had collected for Walter. Brenda has been doing a really good job of finding relevant samples for me to use at the same time as her other jobs so there is a lot for me to work with, and the film is still coming together.