A Swan's Tale...

All those blood sweat and tears that went into this final video was totally worth it...

Charles Berquist

For the past 2 years I have had a fascination with multiple exposure photography. This is due to purchasing a Diana film camera, and the wonderful accidental mistake of not winding on the film, and so two images being placed on top of another to create a whole new image. Charles Berquist is an artist among others who has used this process in a few of his images called, ‘Double Vision Series.’ I really enjoy looking at his photographs as they have this real dream like feeling to them. The richness of colour and lighting really emphasises this. I really think his work is incredible and is definitely someone that will influence me to make my work better. From looking at his images I can take his concepts and try and incorporate them more into my own work, as the thought process of planning the images are better constructed. I have mainly based my images on the surrounding areas and the occasional trips I have been on to get a better variety of images. I really enjoy looking at other artists’ work who have used this technique, and not all of them are planned out. But my favourite images, such as Berquist’s work are thought about carefully to create another world.

Knowsley animal photoshoot

I have needed some much sought after practice with taking good shots of animals. I may not be taking photos of them in their natural environments, but we all have to start practising somewhere. I am quite impressed with the results; it's amazing what you can achieve with a telephoto lens. The most challenging was taking photos of the birds of prey whilst in flight. It was hard to take it in focus and at the right time, as I can tell you, they flew very fast! None of the animals want to stick around, so you have to be very quick with taking photographs, hence why it is more of a challenge. None of these photos are edited apart from the 3rd to last photograph of the bird in flight; which I cropped so it would give us a closer look of the bird. I prefer to take zoomed in photographs of the animals as it gets us up close and personal with them. I love being able to see the detail on their faces; like the giraffe's eyelashes. Unfortunately some of my better lion photographs got deleted somehow, which I am a bit gutted about, so I haven't added them on here : (. Also try and ignore the specks on some of the photos as they are just bits of dust that I didn't manage to clean off. I think I might have potential, and I really want to follow this on properly... I just have to keep practising! !

Swans- photo animation of photos

I did another animation with the involvement of using pieces of paper with photos of swans on them to create an animation. I really enjoy this method of animation; it shows that movement is happening on a piece of paper. Just like anything can happen if you dream it enough.

I will draw something and it will come alive...Isn't that the art of animation anyway?

Jan Svankmajer

An artist who I have come across recently whose work has been around since the 60s, is the Czech born Jan Svankmajer. His animations were pretty genius for the time because stop motion wasn't as well known back then. I love surreal art, and his work definitely fits in that bracket. He has done many animations since then and they have really fascinated me, especially his film, 'Alice,' which is a dark animation based on Alice in Wonderland. These books in themselves were a great insight into the world of the surrealist imagination when I was young and made my mind wander further. Looking at his films in the DVDs 'Jan Svankmajer: The Complete Short Films,' there is an acute awareness that he has a very dark sense of humour, for example, in my favourite animation of his, 'Food,' the way to which men got their food would be out of another man's stomach, pulled up on a chain; treated like we are all machines, trying to get what we want. His way of viewing the world in a cynical way actually gets us into thinking differently about what's possible. What I find most fascinating is his ability to create life out of typical objects found about the house. He shows us this vision of what is possible with the use of imagination, bringing something so simple to life and seeing what possibilities it has in its new life. This is something I have always wanted to try. In my animation, 'A Caterpillar's Tale,' I gave a few bits of coloured card to be created into a creature of who would go on a big adventure in its mission to change into a butterfly. The possibilities with animation are endless, that's why I want to continue using animation for as long as possible, with Svankmajer's work in the back of my mind.


http://www.awn.com/heaven_and_hell/svank/svank1.htm
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/dreams-turn-to-reality-for-surrealist-film-director-6291960.html
http://www.rosewoodgraphics.us/jan.html

Another illustrated style

This is a similar simple style I've tried out but with the background kept as the real thing. Now the swan is a cartoon in the real world!

Two more illustrated styles...

I realise for my final piece I need to get the type of illustrated style right, and so I am testing them out on my tablet. I realise I need to get a continuous flow of the same type of illustration to achieve the right affect, so to progress, the style needs to stay similar. I have tried two here... One is more detailed and colourful than the other, as I want to see what each would look like in an animation. The ideas that I mentioned before of the swan joining its real world-- in some ways this would make more sense it being in black and white to show its blandness being in its contained world. When it goes into its dream world, everything could explode into colour, and it could break out of its boundaries. I'm not totally sure if the start of the animation should have the real photograph background and the cartoon swan like in the post previously or if it should be the swan that is just black and white with the real background. I think something that doesn't requires loads of effort on one image as I have a time limit to work with...remember there will be 25 frames to work with per sec, so as it stands, it's already gonna take a long time. The first image idea probably won't come til right at the end, and maybe not as detailed as it took me a couple of hours to create. It's all working on a time limit so I will just have to see what I get done in time. There are lots to think about anyway; lots of ideas to experiment.

More animation experimentation...

Right so here we go! I created a flip book at the book binding workshop at uni to see a different way to animate photos. It was quite an interesting effect because normally we are used to seeing animation on the computer, but this is one of the earliest forms of animation and we have complete control over it, whether we want it to go backwards, upside down, how fast, how slow etc.

I  tried to use a similar process but with actually handling the photos myself and taking photos of the photos so it looked like it was in a still life but it was moving. I like the idea that something comes to life on a piece of paper when everything around it is just still. I used to dream that if you drew something on a piece of paper when I was young, that it would come to life, and in some ways I'm using the same idea. It's as if the same ideas I had as a kid have the same magical mystery to them.

I think the effect of the photo animation is much more effective than the video idea I tried out, using the same idea. I could catch everything in stills, whereas when I tried to speed up the video, it missed out quite a bit and still went at quite a slow speed. I've added both of the videos up showing the different experiments. As I said in a previous post, I always get nervous showing anyone anything unfinished or an experiment gone wrong, but this is all part of the process. This next video I only sped it up by 6x because it cut off some at the end, and it was particularly slow at the beginning because I was putting down the pieces of photos myself, and as I was getting used to it, I became a lot faster. I haven't added any music to this one as just to show it was a bit of an experimentation that didn't flow quite the way I wanted it to:

Final Degree Show ideas

Through doing this year, I realised that tutorials aren't to check up how much you have done, but to get help with your work, and give you a bit of direction. I wish I had known this last year or the year before, because now I'm a little bit addicted. It's great the amount of direction can be put right in your mind if you are unsure about something. This really helped when I had done the multiple exposure photography of the swans. I knew I wanted to continue this but wasn't sure how. I've been going down the animation route particularly this year and knew I wanted to continue with this further... So my tutor suggested something quite obvious to me; to do an animation WITH the swans. I realised that was it. I've always been interested in wildlife photography and so to incorporate animation into it sounded like a new challenge. However I'm not just gonna do an animation with photos. I want to draw over them and create an animation. I spoke to the genius about all computer software that is Johnny, and he explained the whole process behind rotoscoping. The idea of importing 25 frame per sec of video and then drawing over it with a tablet seems quite daunting. I am using a process though. First I am drawing over photographs I have done of just simple stop motion videos of swans, so the process is less complicated and I can get used to the idea. I have recently just received a late birthday present from my sister of which I chose a graphics tablet, which is going to come in great use. My first step is having to scope out the swans and it's not as easy as it seems. I went back to Knutsford and found some Canadian geese and did a tester on them. Then a weekend after that, I went to London and discovered loads of them hiding in Hyde park. So I took this perfect opportunity and took loads of continuous shots of them. What I'm most gutted about is not having my Diana camera with me as I could've taken the chance to taken some sweet double exposure shots. And a major drawback for me at the moment is not having a video camera. I rented one out from our university but there is a time limit on these things, as well as a time limit on having to find more swans to film as well as a time limit on when this work needs to be done. However I am up for a challenge and I want to show I can make the most of what I have and show I can learn quickly and create something new. 

As much as the presentation about our final ideas scared me, (seeing as I am crap at presenting my work,) it helped be more certain about my ideas and everyone was generally quite supportive. (It's always scary showing your ideas to people as the idea of them judging your work is also enough.) 

I've researched a bit into animation techniques and there are plenty I've seen in videos from all over the place. I need to come up with ideas for a storyline. I have drawn up storyboards for the double exposure photographs I took of swans, but I feel for the video I need to have a solid story behind it, otherwise it seems like it has no purpose in my opinion. 

I have uploaded the research videos of the Canadian geese and swans in stop motion mode, just to get a feel for how it will look like. This is a big deal uploading something that is so incomplete, but this is a stage to getting better I feel. There's so much I need to work on. 

Below is a quick first 20 minute test with the drawing tablet. I would like my illustrations to be similar to this, and also the idea of a swan being in a not so natural environment and then disappearing into the cartoon swan dream world.

David Shrigley at The Hayward Gallery London.

Before I even got to the exhibition, I was extremely excited in my geeky little self in the idea of seeing a David Shrigley exhibition. I had seen his work before and loved the awkward cartoons he projects. I suppose one could say you either love or hate him, but being interested in anything a little bizarre; his work is my kind of cup of tea. 

His works were titled under the themes of, 'Death,' 'Misery,' 'Characters,' and 'Misshapen things,' and not in that particular order. In fact they weren't even shown around the gallery space as those groups either. Each piece of work was unique which ended up getting you to beg for more when you had finished walking through the artist's mind of wonderment. I found that I laughed through the exhibition, and to hear other people's laughs was quite refreshing in a gallery space because normally people are so serious in these type of spaces, which in some ways puts me off! What I liked most is his unusual perception of the world through dark humour shown through illustrations, animations, taxidermy models, sculptures, and photographs. My favourites were the animations and cartoons he drew. I think if you can remind people how things are pretty crappy in the world but show it in a way that it makes people laugh, then you've got it spot on. We are learning to accept the bad, but not necessarily support it. The taxidermy models were really interesting to look at, as they were very sinister but had this great sense of mystery around them. Everything has a story in my opinion and we wonder why they became a stuffed animal. 

I think his work connects into mine quite a bit with the way he uses his odd views of the world and creates art out of it. He, just like me, aims for the same audience reaction, " The response I would like are laughter, intrigued confusion and disquiet." When Creative Transit started up last year I described my work to provoke reaction in the same way. We also similarly use a lot of illustrations in our work as well as animation. This is the first time I have seen a great likeness of my work to another artist's work without having done any prior research. Great minds think alike? Always questioning and never accepting.