Story Boards

At first I was stuck on my general concept but I couldn't figure out how to translate my vague ideas into actual sequences of action. Getting out of photoshop and sketching the storyboard by hand helped me think of concrete ideas.

IDEA #1:

This is my original storyboard based on the concept of a journal being erased as I described in my last few blogs.























IDEA #2: I came up with another idea while I was doodling during Art History class. This idea is also based on the journal being erased, but it is more interesting because it has sketches of the two characters running away as the journal is erased. It will be easier for people to identify with, and it will also emphasize typography more because I'll have them running through the pages of words and hiding in the letters, etc. I also moved the title to the end in this one, and It's obliterated by dripping ink that eventually makes the whole screen black, which I think is kind of cool and goes with the concept. It plays off the storyline of the movie a bit more literally than my other idea, but I think its abstracted enough that its not going to spoil the plot.

Possible Music Choices

I spent a lot of time looking at music for my title sequence. I feel like the song choice is one of the most important decisions I have to make because It will set the pace and flow of the sequence, and also contribute a lot to establishing mood.

From the Soundtrack:
I noticed that the soundtrack has a lot of very simple music. A lot of waltz rhythms or songs where the main music is just a steady stream of arpegios. This made it a bit difficult because, although this type of music has great flow, it tends to sound a little too happy. It feels like positive/forward motion, and I want the backward motion of erasure and going back in time with memories. I definitely steared clear of the main love theme from the movie, even though its a beautiful song. There were some songs on the soundtrack that seemed like they'd work though:

Change Your Heart
I like the rhythm in theis song. It would establish a good pace for the title sequence. It goes well with the movie theme as well.

Collecting Things
This one might be a little too happy sounding, but again I like the rhythm. It would give the title sequence a nice flow.

Sidewalk Flight
The slightly creepy sound is perfect for my journal concept, and I like the fast pace of it. It is only a 30-second track but I could repeat it.

Showtime
The overlapping of strange sounds would go well with the surreal/dreamlike concept I'm going for. I'd have to establish my own rhythm with this one though, because the song itself doesn't have one. I think this might be the best choice for setting the tone of the rest of the movie.

There are a few similar ones from the soundtrack that I'm also considering, maybe using several togehter.


From My Music:
I also looked through my iTunes library to see if I had anything that would work. It would make it more unique if I could find something that wasn't actually used in the movie. I tried to find songs that had a similar musical style to the movie or fit with the theme I'm going for.

The Ocean
The waltz beat in this song reminds me of the simple rhythms used in the Eternal Sunshine soundtrack. The music style is a little different but I think the words still fit the theme.

Nude
The feel of this song goes perfect with the movie. I think a lot of Radiohead would go with the feel of the movie, actually. I'm not sure how well it would work with my journal concept though. But the song definitely has a personal feel, like your getting into someones head.

9 Crimes
Consistent with the arpegio-style music of the movie, and has the emotional feel of the movie. Less surreal than my concept, but I think it would still work. I like that It's a male-female duet as well.

Because
Yup. Classic Beatles. When I tried to think of a surreal/dreamlike song this is what came to my mind first. And the music is actually very consistent with the movie. It might be too recognisable and dated, though. I don't want it to be distracting because of it's associations.

Derelict
The words don't go well, but the background music is so perfect. I wish I could get rid of the voice track, or find something else that's very similar to the instrumental part.

Converting Vegetarians Track 13
The first minute or so of the song is less techno-y, and has a surreal/creepy feel that would go great with my concept.

The Grand Plan

After talking with Krista about my concepts, she suggested that I go with the journal idea because it goes best with the concept of the movie, but also throw in some quirky elements like the heart-shaped potato and some surreal elements from my "surreal" concept palette to add color and interest to the journal.

I'm pretty happy with this plan, I just wish I knew how I could animate it...? On to more after effects tutorials I s'pose :(

I want the journal to become more and more deterriorated as time goes on. I dunno if it'll end up completely blank, or maybe the edges of the pages start to disintegrate? Something like that...

I want holes to rip in the pages to reveal words on the pages below, but I don't know how to animate a rip? Maybe take a bunch of frame by frame photos? Here's an example of what I'm thinking:


















It might be cool if aftereffects had some pre-programmed animations I could use to make the journal more dream-like. Maybe a page of the journal could start to ripple like water or something...? That would kinda go well with the Surreal/dreamlike atmosphere I'm going for. But might be really cheesy...

5 Concepts

My 5 concept pallettes:

Plain
Quirky
Rip
Journal
Surreal

I turned My two favorite concept palettes into compositions:

















This one would be based on his journal in the movie where he wrote his thoughts and memories and made sketches. In the movie, after he has his memory erased, the pages of his journal with memories of clementine have been ripped out. I want to play with the concept of memory loss by making the words and images on the pages disappear in different ways. They could be erased, the ink could bleed, parts could be ripped away, etc. The would be interesting sketches that might be warped or erased as well. I would use a handwriting font or my own handwriting.

















This concept is based on the box of mementos that people would bring to the doctor when they had their memories erased. It would be a collection of objects that might have significance to the couple's relationship. It would have quirky intersting items like the potatoes they dressed up, old photos, cards, etc. It would have a brighter color paletter and A comic font similar to this one (International Superhero) combines with a more plain font (like Helvetica).

Possible Fonts

If I go with a handwritten journal look I might just handwrite my own, but heres some possible fonts I could use as inspiration:








The general goal is for it to look like handwriting but NOT be too cutesy like comic sans, or anything like this:





Also I might have a sort of back-and forth thing between the two sets of memories of the guy and the girl in which case I'd also need a more feminine script that has a noticeably different look to it than the other script without loosing the feel, maybe something like this:

Creative Brief

So far I've been collecting imagery, writing my creative brief, and slowly learning After Effects.

Here's my Creative Brief

PROJECT 2: MOVIE CHOICE

After watching several of the movies on the list, I think I'll most likely go with Eternal Sunshine. As I watched each movie, I thought of ideas for title Sequence animations. I had decent ideas for several of the movies, but after I considered my limited animation skills I decided that my ideas for Eternal Sunshine seem most practical. I'd like to do something related to the concept of erasing, using imagery similar to his journal, such as sketches and handwriting.

Reflections On Project 1

What I learned:
1. You have to put stuff in tn the library or you can't really use it.
2. Basic flash animation techniques. I need to learn how to work flash better.
3. Adding sound can make an animation a lot more interesting and believable (the punches wouldn't feel like they really even hit the knight in my referential animation without the sound)
4. Time is weird. Sometimes a few seconds seems like way too long, and at othertimes I feel like I'm having to squeeze way too much into a really short time, depending on the pace I'm trying to achieve.

Good Stuff:
1. I learned how to make something in flash! Yay! :D
2. I like my referential animation because I think the sound is kinda interesting with the images I chose.
3. I like the rumbly O's in my type-based animation. I think I did a good job of taking my original sketches, which weren't type-based, and translating the visual ideas into type.

Bad Stuff:
1. I don't like my abstract animation because I couldn't make what I wanted with my limited flash skills.
2. My limitations aren't very visible in my projects. For me personally, this is fine because I feel like the limitations are really there as a jumping off point to give us parameters to work in. But hopefully they're not supposed to be super-obvious, because I don't feel like you'd know what mine were if you watched my animations before reading my blog.
3. I am on the computer so many hours a day with this class, work, and all my other classes that my right wrist is in constant pain and I think I should get a brace or something! :(

Final Animations

So here are my 3 final animations (unless anyone gives me some feedback or I get some bright ideas to spiff them up a bit:

Animation # 1 (Abstract)
Sound: Crowded Restaurant
Extra limitation: Man-made objects
(This was originally supposed to be 'something I observed' (sparklers) but unfortunately I had to change my animation as explained in my previous post)

Animation # 2 (Type-Based)
Sound: Car Ignition
Extra Limitation: Climate
(Its hard to tell from my actual animation, but when I did my mind-mapping for this sound I came up with references to ghost-towns and desert climates. I think this might have been because the sound of the car driving away made me think of feeling lonely and deserted.)

Animation # 3 (Referential)
Sound: Gong (or bell?)
Extra Limitation: Using only found objects or drawing as subject

Abstract Animation

I found it really difficult to translate my original idea for this animation from my imagination to flash format. I wanted to have single points of color moving across the screen leaving ovelapping trails (kind of like seeing kids running around the yard playing with sparklers at night) The different colors would overlap and combine to create new colors, just like the voices overlapped to create new sounds in the "busy restaurant" sound clip. My initial drawing shows this idea.

But once I attempted to animate this, i realized that what I wanted to create was beyond my skill level in flash. The closest I could come to making lines run across the page was this trial animation.

I had to simplify my idea down to something I could handle with my limited flash skills. But the animation still retains the same basic concept of overlapping voices/colors as my original sketches:

Animation 3

In Progress Animations

I'd love to get some feedback on what to change before monday!

Referential Animation (Gong Sound)

Type-Based Animation (Car Ignition)

No Flash For Me :(

Just got home from an 11 hour workathon in the computer lab, preceded by the same yesterday. All for my other classes and my internship (huge deadline rapidly approaching) So I definitely will not be doing anyflash until this weekend... sad....

Also my blog is under suspicion of being a spam blog so I dunno if anyone can read this and I have to do all this verifying that I'm a real human... somehow the letters i am typing in arent the ones they are showing...grrrrrrrr.......

Reflections on Project Guidelines

I didn't read the project guidelines before I did my explorations. I chose this strategy on purpose so that I would think about the sound without immediately jumping to ideas for my animation. This strategy definitely helped me explore the sounds more freely, but now its making it harder to narrow down my ideas, because some of them don't fit into the project parameters. I did a lot of abstract drawings but it's going to be hard to come up with the type-based and a referential animations. Right now I can't even decide on which sound to use for which.

ANIMATION # 1 Abstract Animation
...Content limitation 1 = form is abstract (shape, line, texture, mark, etc.)
...Content limitation 2 = sound is referential
...Sound determines structure
In addition you must choose one more media limitation from the list.

ANIMATION # 2 Type-based Animation
...Content limitation 1 = must use only one typeface - this typeface is the only visual
...Sound is added to reflect typeface qualities
...Sound still determines structure
In addition you must choose one more content or one more media limitation from the list.

ANIMATION # 3 Referential Animation (based in video or referential images)
...Content limitation 1 = Must use image that is recognizable
...Sound still determines structure
In addition you must choose one more content or one more media limitation from the list.

DONT FORGET TO FIND OUT WHEN PROJECTS ARE DUE !!!!!!!

PROJ 1 is DUE MONDAY (13th)

Next proj will be due about 3 weeks after that... schedule to be posted soon?

HW 2: MIND MAPPING, DRAWINGS, CONCEPTS

1. Crowded Restaurant-



I want to focus on the overlapping and interweaving of the different voices and conversations. In "Drawing 2" I used different colors to represent different voices/conversations and their different tones. The colors all overlap to create new colors, and get muddled up into brown, just like the overlapping voices come together to make new sounds and become unintelligible. The clinking of glasses punctuates the dull roar of the conversations and adds variety. "Drawing 3" is a more in depth look at the shapes inspired by the clinking of glasses and silverware. In "Drawing 4" I used scale-like shapes to represent the overlapping of different voices.

Mind Map
Drawing 1
Drawing 2
Drawing 3
Drawing 4

2. Car Starting-




My drawings for the car starting look similar to graphs because when I mind mapped the sound I came up with words like "up, down, decline, upward, slanted, etc..." This is probably because there are several points where the sound makes obvious transitions between low and high pitch. I'm especially interested in the rumbling of the engine and how it could be animated with some sort of ripple-like effect. I also noticed when I mind mapped that as the car drives away I came up with a lot of words like "empty, lonely, left behind, ghost town, etc..." So I want to try to have a sense of fullness at the beginning and contrast it with an emptiness at the end of the animation.

Mind Map
Drawing 1
Drawing 2
Drawing 3
Drawing 4

3. Gong-


It was hard to get away from visually representing sound waves with this one. I would like to work with the repetition and overlapping of sound in this animation because as I was drawing I noticed that the sound from the first gong is still going when the gong is struck again.

Mind Map
Drawing 1
Drawing 2
Drawing 3
Drawing 4

HW 2

Mind map exploring formal elements for each sound
Sketches- make visual explorations of these fromal elements (3-5 for each of the 3 chosen sounds)
Concepts- begin thinking about how your visual from will change based on your sound
Tutorials Ch 1-6 of flash CS3

HW 1: SOUND EFFECTS

Here are links to 6 sound files:

1. Multiple Sounds
(this one is good because it has lots of different sounds that could be repeated individually, like a baby crying, dogs barking, squeeky swing, etc)

2. Awesome Dr. Seuss Sound Effect

3. Machine Gun

4. Flintstones Style Skid Noise

5. Speedy Gonzales

6. Bla Bla Bla

And last but not least- PINK PANTHER :)