My group has decided to use collage for our animation. We planned to do it together instead of just me by myself doing the animating. So, I proposed to them that we can do it by using stop motion which is a straightforward process. We think that the process of stop-motion will work better than animating the assets of After Effects because we can control the assets easily by hand, and ultimately have fun in the process. Stop-motion is a more spontaneous process as well, although it requires thorough preparation of the assets, changes on them can be done on the spot. It will be good exposure for my two other groupmates as they are keen to try doing stop-motion animation.
Story Ideas
I had a group discussion just with Galuh because Alicja went back to Poland for the hole interview week, we talked about the issue of fur trade and got an epiphany that it is closely related to Hans Christian Andersen's story The Emperor's New Clothes. We decided to go back to the story to remind ourselves what happens in between the start and the ending. From this discussion, I realised how important it is to make an impactful start and end because those will be the ones that will stick to our audience's head, and that's going to be how the story is going to be communicated by spoken words.
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| illustrated sequence of the story |
I have broken down my analysis on the character's role in the narrative and contextualised them accordingly. The people who buy fur are symbolised by the king. The swindlers are the advertisers and the traders who give reasons for the consumers to buy fur for fashion, status and class. The general public are the other supporting characters who comes in between being confused or indifferent towards the issue in fur trade. They are mostly remote from the cruel reality because they have not seen them in real life or probably just pretend that fur trade is not doing these unethical practices, and we identified these people are our target audience because they are the most susceptible to be swayed by fashion advertisement.
We want to convey to fur buyers that snobbery and pursuit of status through buying fur are foolish. Hans Christian Andersen's story is widely used because of its straightforwardness to convey morals. Galuh and I also liked the idea of using fairy tale narrative format to mock glamour: fur buying being a vulgar statement against ethics. We want to sham fur buyers by juxtaposing fur fashion and fear from the animal's side.
Whenever I met up with my groupmates for discussion, we always exchanged knowledge. This time I showed Galuh and sent the link to Alicja this animation so that we can decide what we will do for out animation. They told me that we can do something colourful but with white background because we do not have the luxury of time. I think the animation My Dad Says could be used as a reference because it does not involve much filling up of the white space. Instead, most of the scenes are mainly bold coloured outlines that works effectively with the tone of voice the animation.
Collage
The medium that we are going to use for our animation is collage. The basic principle of collage is to interact with existing materials; just rip up or cut out, then reassemble. A good collage material would be something that exists in our surroundings or some cheap old-school magazines to be taken out and placed with some materials. From this description, making collage sounds experimental and spontaneous. The most important thing is to get the right balance, so it is important to take note of collage as a giant jigsaw puzzle.Hannah Hoch, who is a member of the Berlin Dada Movement, created collage which are intensely political and anti-war. Her works brought the radical potential of cut out materials from magazines and encyclopaedias which are re-appropriated and re-contextulised to protest against the war and the system. The endlessness and potential to create ridiculous scenarios is characteristic of collage which is quite similar to animation, and so I think it is worth to give collage a go for this project because of its protest nature.
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