Collaborative Practice: Week 3 - Experimentation on mixed media and story brainstorm

 I started to experiment by putting thin tissue paper onto my character doodles. It gives a nice texture and looks good as an overlay to the line drawings. I did this while trying to roughly find the right shape for king character as well. The bravado pose is definitely a thing to go for, but I am not really sure how to incorporate it into the character in cut-outs animation that we will be doing for the project. 

We discussed about the storyline this week, and also some other artist inspirations that we can use as a reference material to come up with the aesthetics. It was great talking to Alicja and Galuh because they are more knowledgeable in terms of stylistic-illustration than I do. Out of all the mixed media illustrator, Joanna Neborsky stood out the most for us. Her style are heavily influenced b y the mid 20-Centuries style, flat and heavily shape-based imagery. Some of her work reminds me of Saul Bass who does cut out title sequences for David Hitchcock's movies. They are flat and simple but effective, and the use of textures made her illustrations interesting. Neborsky's gravitates towards narrative-based artwork, and she did some animation work as well.

The one below is an animation that she made for a title sequence of a book. I think the aesthetic suits the cover of the book being advertised, and because of the composition and textures the minimal movement of the different objects suits the style. I think this should be something to keep in mind when animating so that we don't over-animate. 

UNDERMAJORDOMO MINOR by Patrick deWitt (animation by Joanna Neborsky) from Joanna Neborsky on Vimeo.

We were thinking of combining different parts of human and animal bodies to make the characters. Here are something similar to what we are thinking of making:

Jan Svanknajer's Chicken

Bojack Horsem

For the following week, I have to storyboard the story that we have, while illustrators will design the characters.We decided to adapt Hans Christian Andersen's story the Emperor's New Clothes, and the narrative will be set in a kingdom when humans and animals live together in harmony. The first three seconds will start off with 'Once Upon a Time' on the screen and visual that can grasp the audience, and there will be an establishing shot of the kingdom. For this, we plan to use signs to cut down the work on details. The camera will then zooms into the king's dressing room in his palace, and shows the king is busy getting ready for the parade. There are two creepy looking guys (the swindlers) that suggest him what to wear, and he wore them. Then, the scene change to the crowd coming down to the town square to watch the parade and when the king arrives, all the animals shrieks and run away frightened by the king. I was thinking of trimming the audio from this video (1:36 to 1:41) because it just hit the right level of intensity that we are looking for.

The animation will end with an image of trimmed fur and our tagline with sound effect of hair trimming in the background.

On a side note, I found Commes Des Garscons Spring/Summer 2017 menswear catwalk adapting The Emperor's New Clothes story into their designs. The materials used for the design are quite interesting, the plastic material conveys the sense of 'invisibility' and the fact that the model wearing underwear symbolise an anti-fashion message. The use of calligraphy lettering on the plastic poncho also adds more to the anarchic feel of the catwalk. The choice of material and typography are some other important consideration to our animation because it will help enhance the aesthetic of the final outcome.