Nearing the halfway point on animation

I'm almost half finished with my animation and so far things are going well. I am really enjoying the process for the most part and making steady progress. I am slightly concerned with the length of my project, specifically if it will be the required length. Of course, I can always add more scenes and elaborate on existing ones to make the animation longer if needed. At this point in the animation, I am also excited to add my other main character and my supporting character. Though neither of these will be as developed as the existing woman, they will play a major part in the overall story. Making their roles larger than I first anticipated will be a great way to add length as well.
I also feel that I have learned several valuable skills recently that will help me animate the remainder of the video more quickly. Being able to make progress at an increased rate will also help me to meet the length requirement. Overall, I am still rather assured in my ability to finish the work on time and meet the length requirement.

Blog for April 7th - 9th

So far, the project is going pretty well, even though it seems to be taking a very long time to create.
I often wonder if I've tried to achieve more than I can with my limited skills, but I also feel that if I work long enough and hard enough I will be able to finish. After learning about sound today, I am also very excited to start adding should to my animation. I don't want to include any kind of dialogue, but some ambient noise to make the setting more believable will be really helpful. I also feel like i have a good idea of what I want to do for the rest of the animation and at least some idea as to how to accomplish it. I'm sure there will be many challenges ahead though, as there is always something new to learn about the process of making animations. I hope that production of the animation will become quicker and easier now since I have amassed so many symbols. This will help me meet the time limit and allow me to do less work than i have previously had to do. I am overall very hopeful about completing the animation in total by the due date including sound.

Animation Blog (no subject provided)

Since no subject was provided for this weeks blog, I will explain a bit about my animation and the story behind it. The animation will now be done using mostly vector shapes that have been heavily manipulated to represent various objects. Originally, I wanted to use mostly hand drawing, but the process seems overwhelming and even more time consuming than using all computer animation. The topic of the animation is rather mysterious. The video opens with a view of a rundown apartment or tenement building and quickly shifts to a woman locking her door in said apt building and leaving the building. During her travels, she notices that she is being followed and seeks shelter in an alley. Little does she know, another mysterious character, a man this time, is protecting her. he creates a diversion so that she might escape the pursuer and continue her journey. In the last portion of the video, it is discovered that the person she was going to meet was actually the man who saved her from her pursuers. Neither character's identity is revealed and they never exchange words, only a small piece of red paper. The story behind the animation is much longer and a project I have been considering for some time. The animation I am creating is just the very first part of the story. I do not plan on animating the entire thing, only this portion. I feel that the mysterious circumstances and exciting subject are appropriate for a short animation and will be interesting to viewers.

Animation

One of my overall favorite pieces of animation is the movie Howl's Moving Castle. The film was made by Studio Ghibli and based on a book by Diana Jones also called Howl's Moving Castle. The film contains both hand drawn and computer generated animation to create a world of rich colors and images. The appearance of the film is like many other films made by Studio Ghibli; it is an anime that includes both standard elements of anime as well as sweeping landscapes and beautifully detailed interiors. The amount of detial in Howl's castle and the hat shop is absolutely astonishing, as is the smoothness and grace of the scene transitions and the story framing. There are also many interesting points of views and perspectives in the film, as characters are always moving to new and interesting places, including flying, traveling through a fantasy world, and exploring an enchanted garden.
The story follows much the same format discussed in class, despite the fact that it contains many complex emotions and strong character development, a characteristic that some of the in class examples did not have. The plot follows a generally upward trend as the characters interact and face increasing opposition, which peaks as Sophie (the main female character) must save Howl (the main male character) from outside enimies as well as himself. As is characteristic of a traditional narritive story line, the plot wraps up with the two main characters reuniting and living happily together. As I mentioned, even though the plot is fairly straight forward, the characters are developed in such a way to make them much deeper than most characters in simple plots. Because of this and the visual interest of the film, it can be enjoyed by people of a wide age range, not only children or only adults.




This clip contains one of the most beautiful and expansive landscapes in the film, an enchanted garden Howl makes for Sophie as a gift.

Unsure of the Blog topic

Since I am unsure of the blog topic for this week, I'm basically going to talk about my project idea and what I'm finding difficult, etc. My idea for the web art project is fairly simple, the index of the site is a tree in the form of an animated gif with blowing leaves. The look is very soft in general to mimic the appearance of water colors and more specifically a foggy winter day. So far, I have found it very difficult to manipulate images in dreamweaver and am constantly switching out images for slightly updated versions that I make in photoshop. It seems really time consuming and I find it very frustrating that there is virtually no room for image manipulation in dreamweaver. Anyway, each of the blowing leaves on the tree links to a page with another animated gif (the leaf blowing) layered on top of which is a short poem. The poems, which I wrote, are hardly best poetry ever; I would have used poems from people that could write if I had known if the project allowed for it. Each poem can function as a separate unit, or they can be put together to form one longer work, it is really up to the viewer to interpret. The general theme is connecting the appearance of a lone, mostly bare tree to death (really original, I know). I like being able to make something so interactive, but I overall do not like dreamweaver. This is probably due to the fact that I know nothing about web design and I find it all very cumbersome and confusing.

Web Art

http://www.atomless.com/projects/

The above link is the web art that I found most interesting of the ones I found trough exploring various links. Even from the home page of the site, it is very interesting and interactive. I especially like the crumpling and un-crumpling pieces of paper. It is a very interesting animation and interactive, as each sheet will remain in the stage it occupies when the cursor moves over it. I think that this is a good animation to choose to illustrate the thought process of the artist while creating his/her works. Of the actual works featured on the site, my favorite is "Sketch Pad." This piece of web art changes direction, shape, and density based on the viewers manipulation of the cursor in the designated area. I particularly enjoy that the viewer has so much control over the art that he/she is viewing. As far as the actual art, I like that the swirling shapes often resemble letters, as if they form a word that is only just illegible. Upon using the back function, a gallery of "Sketch Pad" works are revealed, all of which remind me of gesture drawings. Another particularly interesting feature of the site is the "The Source" which begins as a scattering of black pixels on a white field and gradually comes to form a word through stages of reorganization. I found this concept to be particularly interesting, despite the fact that it did not allow for viewer interaction.

Self Portrait

For my self portrait project, I decided to make an image that represents all the beauty and elegance of the 1920's by using costume clothing and some of the great old theatres around Bloomington. To create a 20's feel, I transformed the images to black and white then selectively added color to imitate the look of hand colored photographs. The entire image has been to made to look smooth and luminous to mimic the glamour of the time it represents. I also decided to remove many of the suggestions of a modern city scene by using the clone tool to cover modern cars and restaurant signs. Though I'm sure my image doesn't really represent what Bloomington looked like in the 1920's, it still gives the feeling characteristic of the era.

I wanted to create the appearance of a hand colored photo like these vintage prints: