As luck would have it...

I just got this email today saying that I was allowed to use the song 'Exploration' in my clip.

It was very kind of them to reply but I'm afraid it's too late for me to use it now.

The Clip

Here is the link to my final clip in HD:  https://vimeo.com/44190801

Here is the video embedded:

DSDN 101 -Hand in HD from Ash King on Vimeo.

Here is a back up link if the first one doesn't work for some reason.
This link is not in HD though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmAU2HBRpMI

Work In Progress 6

I've been over and over the last section getting the drawing to go smoother.
I finally put it at 15fps which seemed to do the trick.

I was very worried about the time limit because of the warning 'no videos will be accepted outside of this range' on the brief. But I've managed to fit my clip to exactly 40 seconds.


Here is my finished clip, it is more pixelated than I am happy with.
I'm going to try re-uploading it to get it into HD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmAU2HBRpMI&feature=youtube_gdata

Work In Progress 5

I've just realised that I forgot to take the printer out of the shots where she's painting the blue on the wall.
I'll need to go back over those nine photos and take it out.

I have also decided to take out the feet swinging, it was a waste of time and just disjointed my clip.

Work In Progress 4

As you can see in the layers I have been cutting the girl out and placing her on this background. This is because the photos that I took where far too jittery, by cutting her out this takes away that jitter.

Also, because I could not get permission to use the song that I had intended to my sister is writing the score for my clip.

The Joint -Process

 Here are the tools and the pieces of pine I used. you can see the power drill, the tenon saw, the hack saw and the hole cutter.

I cut circles out of the pine and then used the tenon saw to cut them into quarters and cut sections out of 4 of the 8 slices. Then I used the 3mm drill bit to drill holes through all 8 pieces for the elastic to go through. I cut slots in 4 out of the 8 pieces. 

Here are the slices after I lined all of them up. As you can see there was a lot of sanding to be done. I took a photo of all the different degrees of sand paper that I used. Even after hours and hours of sanding there were still gaps that weren't going away so I used wood filler as seen below.

I tested out different stains for the wood but I didn't like the appearance of any of them. I finally found an oil based stain that I liked the shade of.

Work In Progress 3

I've improved on my clip that I had at the interim hand in. I originally just had the butterfly being drawn on the screen but now I have it actually being shown on a monitor.

I also realised that there was a lot of jittering with the colour tabs on the wall, I've made sure that they line up between each frame so that they don't appear to flicker or jump around any more.

Here is my clip so far with the improvements.

Work In Progress 2

I found the perfect song for my clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxs2vS2gJ-c

Unfortunately they (focus features) aren't replying to my emails so I'll have to find/ write another song.

I'm about 3/4 through the 'plot' of my video and it's already 25 seconds, so I'm a bit worried about staying within the time limit.

Work In Progress 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOl2Huuo5eU&feature=youtube_gdata
I'm continuing to work on the clip
I need to get my transitions smoother



You can see the printer in this 'scene' where the girl is drawing herself a dress. Rather than photoshop it out of every picture I decided to just cut out the girl and put her onto the same background for each shot. That way will also get rid of the change of lighting/ alignment between shots.

Interim Hand-In

Interim hand-in of my stop motion film to date.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPMJJoV8KU4&feature=youtube_gdata

Design Stand-Point

I believe Media Design is pure creation. Because things can be created in a digital world, creativity is not limited by physical laws or material availability. This is why I have taken inspiration from the quote “This world is but a canvas to our imaginations” from Thoreau (1980.) This also links to ‘a new way of seeing.’ My clip will show the viewer the world as seen through another person’s imagination.

When planning my stop motion clip I thought about where I started in design_­. I went back to the first design lecture I ever attended and saw the quote “students must attain an innocence of eye, a sort of childish perception…” (Ruskin, 1883.) I think this quote fits very well with my inspiration from Thoreau and both of these quotes helped me to decide that the subject of my clip will be a little girl.

I want to focus on the creative aspect of Media Design and I believe having a young girl as my subject is the best way to achieve this, an older subject may consider fame or financial gain as drives for designing rather than simply for the love of it. I believe creativity is inherent in all human beings, that it is universal and cannot be contained.

Another aspect of Media Design that I want to show is the interaction between the digital and the physical world. I was inspired by this stop-motion animation showing the creator interacting with the creation.

My stop-motion clip will show a new way of seeing, through the imagination of a child as she brings her digital creations into the real world and interacts with them.

Reference List

Thoreau, H. (1980). A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Ruskin, J. (1883). Elements of Drawing. London: Dent.

Yoshida, K. (2011.) Sketchbook Stopmotion Animation. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9qhdknYGQE

Storyboard

I had planned to redraw my storyboard neater, but I decided that I like the dynamic creativity of the ripped paper edges.

Locovisual

The Embassy Theatre built in 1924 is an iconic piece of Wellingtonian architecture. Though it has undergone a series of restorations you can see in the comparison above that the structure of it has remained the same since its construction. The pillars on the front appear to be flattened ionic columns and above them we see embedded plates and urns. The face is topped with a Greek pediment and the detailing below the pediment is a meander border

 commonly used in classical art it can be compared to the detailing on St Catherine’s Church (Foulston, 1823.)

In the documentary Civilisation Lord Kenneth Clark discusses the Greek struggle towards an ideal perfection and imposing upon this upon the physical world. He speaks about their architecture as being “so satisfying to the mind and eye that it lasted relatively unchanged for 600 years,”(1969.) He paints classicism as the style of unwavering reliability and neoclassicism as a means of evoking that same sturdy authority.

New Zealand’s population would have contained many people who emigrated from Europe bringing with them this restrained order. This choice of style for The Embassy Theatre could be seen as a means of recreating ‘the motherland’ by conforming to the style universally recognised, especially across Europe, as the embodiment of prestige and good taste. In his book Doremus discusses the “Dissociation between the material reality of a building and one’s perception of that reality,”(1994) This could be taken to mean that more than just seeing the columns or details that make this building neoclassical we also see the ideals that it stands for.

New Zealand, being a relatively young country, did not have the rich, sophisticated or well-known history of many other countries. The architecture of the time had to rebuff the misconceptions that other nations may have had about the country being primitive or unremarkable.

Even recently eyes from all over the world have been drawn to the Embassy Theatre which played host to the world premieres of films such as Lord of the Rings and King Kong. It stands as a magnificent monument to Wellington’s rich and diverse architectural culture.

Reference List

Mordaunt, J. (1972). The Greek Revival. London: J Murray ltd.

Gill, M.(Producer), & Montagon, P.(Producer). (1969). Civilisation [Documentary]. United Kingdom: BBC.

Doremus, T. (1994). Classical Styles in Modern Architecture. New York : Van Nostrand Reinhold.