Author: adarabi

As of late, sound within Music (particularly electronic), film, voice and the overall tone expressed by an artist’s style has become an increasing fascination for me, and something that I allow to take me on a journey of feeling and imagination. On the other hand, through being introduced to the science of sound design I am also compelled to dissect and critically analyse every aspect of someone’s work, but this also comes with the ability to perhaps understand a little more about what the artist intended as aposed to my own interpretation.

By nature sound and music in particular are extremely subject to the person who is hearing it’s ears and interpretation. Its is also the most penetrating and awe-inspiring of all mediums of art. A scale of notes is only recognisable from the notes that preceed it. But this is only for the means of measuring it. A note/pitch/key is something very consistent, yet the human reaction is infinitly different from person to person and from moment to moment, Timing within music is crucial to its effect on the listener both within the piece and the time at which the person is listening to it.
For me, animation and sound are an awesome combination when they work well together, sound effects however are almost always only there to reinforce what we are seeing and often to go un-noticed, allowing the visual aspect to take the lime-light. Only recently have I been introduced to the idea of animation following the lead of a sound effects. Productions that comprise of script led stories and sketches like Phone Jacker, are examples of how animation is used (literally) to emphasise certain words and points. Another example, and a personal favourite of mine, is the work of Ben (Yahtzee) Crowshaw whos fantastically prolific rants about computer games are backed-up with simple and blunt diagrams of literary anecdotes and idioms which emphaisise his words to great effect. Of course the, animations on their own would seem slightly crude without the diaglogue that they are supporting. Nevertheless this shows how sometimes the visual aspect can take the back-seat and still be very intreguing to the viewer.

In short I guessthat the ultimate aim of the animator is to use both sound and image harmoniously so that they can both spiral up and take the viewer into a believable world of their story. As a viewer/listener we want to be immersed into the plot and loose ourselves in the alternate reality of the story or anecdote. Therefore it is the job of the animator to keep the viewer immersed in their plot.

As a development of my Jester character I came up with last year. I wanted to look further into the idea of live performers as cartoon characters. This would allow me to ground myself into the relative field of stage but with an extraordinary twist.

The acrobatic twins shown above could be one of the acts, performing incredible feats of agility and balance. The oppurtunity to play around with choreographic shapes and effects is also quite exciting. In addition to the performance I have also been developing an arena for them to perform in. Using Maya I knocked up a rough shape of the arena from a sketch I had made previously. The idea of creating a whole environment in 3D is quite daunting but the possibilities for balconies and seating is unlimited, aslong as I do not deviate too much from reality and function.

Having spent alot of time experimenting with a microphone I have come to the conclusion that capturing the actual sound of an environment is near impossible. Numerous times I have tried to record the sound of the sea, but among technical difficulties I found it was extremely difficult to capture sounds in the same way that the human ear does.

In this I realised that the best way to give the impression of the sound you are trying to record is to substitute the sound of other objects then master them. For the sound of the sea I managed to find something to recreate the sound of crashing waves in my bedroom by rustling a sleeping-bag. I then dubbed this over whitenoise to give some depth, and the result I have posted below:

Here is the first mock-up of the graphic parts of the intro which will cut through the placid background:

Aswell as the visual side of the intro, I began recoring sounds using a rifle mic for the atmospheric sounds of the beach. I find the sound of the waves crashing on the sand and rocks extremely refreshing and awe-inspiring. It is also something I think someone in an office might appreciate, being trapped in a dingy office all day. I think sound would be a very worthwhile on the naturalistic side of the project. Here is a rough example of the kind of sound I mean.

It would also be good to have a sound effect for the graphic arrows as they move accross the screen. I am sampling various things at the moment from metal to pipes, but I feel something with a very soft ringing resonance would fit quite well, or possibly a swooshing sound.

By taking a small section of this sound and adding filters/distortion I should be able to get the sound for the arrows.

Aswell as the animated arrows idea, I thought it might be interesting to also have a photographic background in contrast. I felt this would also give some feeling to the animation in the style of Cornwall. This is an idea that I knew Ralph was also developing for the project so we set out for the beach, photographing and sketching the many things you find on the beach, and looking at the possibility of animating them.

Here is the graphic mock-up we sent to MARK:

I took a multitude of shots from the same point in order to make a panoramic, by collaging the photostogether in Photoshop. I think that the end result is quite striking, and give a perception of quite a wide perspective. Also the spherization of the horizon gives alot of depth. From here I began to super-impose objects I had found onto the beach. The form of driftwood, was one I found to be most effective, because of it’s unusual shilouette and texture.

I am constantly looking for ways to develop the beach background further. The idea of having objects you might find on the beach scattered along the sand would provide some interesting forms and perhaps encourage the user’s inquisitiveness.

The objects that I have thought of using are: Driftwood, seaweed, Ice-cream, surf-boards, a bottle (with message), people, dogs, flags, rocks, sand-castles, seaguls, boats, origami boats.

I also thought it might be interesting to develop an interactive element with the objects. Perhaps they could move slightly when the user hovers over them; or perhaps the perspective could change when they click on an object, zooming in on the texture of the object.

From our initial briefing on the project, I understood “Mark” to be a collaborative network of artists and designers in the areas around Cornwall. I was very excited about contributing to an innovative and expanding organisation. With this in mind I drew up some ideas, the strongest of which I thought was moving graphics (arrows) tracing out the outline of the Logo, then fading out. I also considered the idea of having the arrows fill out the negative area, leaving only the logo in place. The meaning behind these simple lines is meant to be individual paths crossing, and branching off of each other to form mark.

Our initial meeting with the client definitely cleared things up, whereby we were informed of the context of the animation i.e. Use as an introduction for their website, and the general style they were looking for. However, I was slightly disconcerted by the nature of the business (furniture production) and what they were actually asking for, which would essentially be the theme for their website, as it had not been designed yet. I was also slightly annoyed that they had decided to change their logo, which meant it was back to the drawingboard with my arrows.

Football
Bowling Ball
Ping-Pong Ball

First off we began making the dancefloor in Flash. The grid was surprisingly tricky to make with individual morphing lights. By repeating four seperate box animations the grid was built up. At this point we considered the idea of animating each cell of the dance floor as if it were a tv screen. i.e. opening with static then flickering into the logo colours, possibly with images. However we decided this would become too complex and busy, drawing attention away from the dancers.

The background crowd was quite a simple idea of animating just two frames in time with the beat. We decided to pull the poses ourselves with a little help from Will, Dan and Ben. We then traced their outlines in flash. In hindsight it may have been interesting to illustrate the figures outselves, contributing abit of stye. We composited these elements into Adobe After Effects, which was I tool I had not really used before. I liked the versatility of the program and the lighting effects you could render. However I soon found out that you cannot render lights from nothing, so by creating coloured circles in flash I found a way to create some spotlights behind the crowd. This turned out quite well, as we could animate the movement of each light.

The final and most important stage of the project was capturing the dancers on the greenscreen, then filling them with a solid colour. We found it difficult to organise some people to dance in an embarrassing way, but we were lucky enough to recruit Sean in exchange for a soundtrack for his ident. Our direction of the dancing was quite laid back, in that we just nudged the style in a direction we wanted and kept the camera rolling. I think that this worked to our advantage, whereby any choreography may have caused an unatural appearance, even though we had a very good idea of the kind of thing we wanted. Implementing the live-action was surprisingly easy, we edited out the background, but found a few difficulties when the figures sometimes overlapped. We created masks in order to resolve this problem then added a slight glow.

The animation of the Logo was intended to swing in, then back abit, in order to give it some weight. I think this came off quite well, along with the shine at the end, which implies the network is full of energy.

Here is the final ident for anyone who has not seen it already:

Having listened to a professional scriptwriter about the structure and techniques of scriptwriting, I was quite excited about putting together my own characters and storyline. The writing technique that most interested me was using opposing ideas for comic effect. Initially I found it very difficult to come up with a story purely from my imagination, without any flaws or inconsistancies. I was also quite concerned about revealing my story to an audience, whereby something very personal to me might be rejected or sneared at by others. This seems to be quite an on going worry with my personal work, when I realise that the more personal a story the more human and genuine it seems, whereby people can relate to it.

I then remembered an experience someone had once told me involving the martial art of Kendo. I thought this was quite an interesting subject, opening up the realms of far Eastern culture. Essentially it involved an unlikely Yorkshireman as a Sensai, giving a class in Kendo. The idea of this character provided the main opposing factor for the story and his undermiming by his pupils. I introduced the idea of using senses when sensai Ray asks his wife to turn out the lights, wich also set up the punchline.

In hindsight I think that the outcome of the events may have been quite obvious given it’s buildup. I also think that I could have payed more attention to detail, having had a specific environment in mind, I could have described this far better, aswell as the characters. All in all I think that my rendition of the story was quite well facilitated, but could have been more concise and detailed.