Zemni Moving Image

Project Type: 3_Animation and Non-Fiction

Assignment 3: Colours of Shingle: Animating in Situ
Documentary

It is a source of fierce academic debate whether terms such as ‘animated’ and ‘documentary’ can be joined together in any meaningful way. The word animation refers to ‘highly mediated and manipulated imagery’ and the word documentary suggests a ‘story based on facts’. In the unit Fact and Fiction the proposition was made that the boundaries between narrative film and documentary film are somewhat blurred. In that unit we explored questions including ‘what, or whose, reality is being referred to, or constructed in a documentary?’. It seems misguided, therefore to believe that documentary somehow ‘captures’ reality. Perhaps, if documentaries are understood as offering analyses of reality, ones that are often highly personalized and constructed, then the seeming contradiction between ‘animated’ and ‘documentary’ is not as obvious as it first appears.
Moving Image 1: Animation course text

Landscape animation

In making any kind of moving image, place is important in how locations and chosen and depicted, and through this, ideas of places can be constructed. This concern has been taken up by so called ‘landscape animators’, a growing trend of large-scale animation that is set in the landscape, cityscape or within the built environment, inspired by landscape artists such as Andy Goldsworthy, Christo and Robert Smithson. These artists normally work with found objects to create site-specific animations, influenced by the location and the natural materials found on the site. The large-scale nature of this work entails the inclusion of the duality of animation and environmental time.
Moving Image 1: Animation course text

TASK:

Make an animation that responds to a place in some way.

Find a particular place or ‘site’ and draw inspiration from it. You could use a personal, shared or a public space. The type of space and your approach to it is entirely up to you.

Make an animation in response to its particular qualities and contexts. You could develop your own ‘landscape animation’ by working directly in and on the space (see further below), or you can respond to the brief by working digitally, drawing attention to the context, history or other aspects of this place.

Once you have chosen your site, do as much research as possible – both visual research and conceptual. Make short animated tests to try out techniques and ideas. Pull together diagrams, writings, rough storyboards and a scratch track. Place all of these into an animatic and work into this animatic making different drafts as you go along.

‘Colours of Shingle’ is an ongoing project about Shingle Street in Suffolk for SYP portfolio ‘Edges in Time’. Informed by discussions in psychogeography and visual storytelling, my work for SYP includes sketchbooks, creative photography, book design.

The aim of this Moving Image project is to explore the contributions of video to my understanding of place that can be enriched by, and contribute to, this wider body of work.

It is also part of a much longer term aim to establish skills in iPhone documentary video. Although the iPhone is not the preferred camera for high end cinema, its portability makes it a very good option for documentary where the aim is to interview local people at their ease, to have accessible equipment that can be taken anywhere and at any time and produce short clips than can be easily and quickly uploaded on-line. It also provides a learning curve within my financial budget that can help me develop skills that I may take forward with more professional equipment at a later date.

The two video experiments developed here are preliminary parts of a work in progress, pending a further visit to Shingle Street Spring 2022 to get more local feedback and input. This local input was delayed by Covid restrictions and the need top protect not only myself, but also many of the potential respondents who are elderly people who have retired to the area.

The material here will be updated, bringing together new footage and brought together as part of MI Assignment 5 and SYP assessment portfolio. I also plan to do some experiments with ‘landscape animation’ of shells and shingle.

See also:

Research 3.2 Animated Documentaries

Research 3.3: Landscape animators

Documentary Video: first iPhone experiments
These first experiments were filmed at the end of October 2021. My first attempts at video on location with my iPhone ProMax 12 mounted on a Hohem gimbal, so a learning process.

As with all video, footage out of the camera even if it is an unedited flow is not some ‘real truth’.

Filming is selected from a wide range of ‘reality’ potential details. Specific focus, framing and perspective convey certain meanings and messages that explicitly or implicitly reflect the photographer’s subjective world view.
Colours are reproduced as digital signals using a specific algorithm that varies between cameras, and may not be ‘accurate’ in terms of how the filmmaker or other people perceive and experience them. Perspectives are altered depending on which lens is used to capture detail and impressions from near, far and medium distance objects.

So a key part of the experimentation was also at the processing stage in Premiere – not just narrative sequencing and layering and audio editing, but also experimenting with tonal and colour balance, scaling and sharpening and film speed.

Going North

My first experiment was filmed on the Coast Path walking North from the Beach Car Park towards Orford. The predominant impressions I had were:

loneliness/solitude (which?) in the vast space with the huge sky and flat landscape with one isolated (holiday) cottage and the separate individuals and couples walking, enjoying the solitude (though there were more such people than I had seen before)
wind – this blew my gimbal repeatedly 180 degrees and made smooth recording very difficult. But something I could maybe experiment with as an ‘experiential effect
geese gathering for winter migration and flying away
autumn reeds and reflections
uneven footpath with many holes and needing to watch carefully where I was walking.

The overall effect I wanted to portray was one of vastness, enjoyment of space and solitude after working from home, and experience of walking in this environment. I kept the wind noise, but toned it down a bit in Audition.

The black and white version really abstracts the bleakness, space and solitude. I really like the overall feel of the video and some of the shots and overlays eg the reed beds, geese and clothes on the washing line. I also do not mind some of the shakiness.

The Gold Rush LUT is a very different feel of the glow of colours at sunset – something that was ‘real’ when the sun comes out but not captured by the iPhone algorithm. But going forward – if I want ‘realism’ – I need to make detailed notes on location about my experience of colours and how they change with changes in light and sky, and apply the LUT in a more nuanced way.

Walking with Skylarks

My second experiment was filmed walking along the houses in Shingle Street from the Martello Tower Car Park towards the Beach Car Park on a sunny but still windy day. The predominant impressions I had were:

sound of skylarks on the wind
play of sun, shadows and reflections on the walls of often empty houses (reminiscent of Maya Deren)
desert-like shingle landscape with tall brown remains of the giant mullein plants that in summer had covered the whole are with yellow.
Going North

My first experiment was filmed on the Coast Path walking North from the Beach Car Park towards Orford. The predominant impressions I had were:

loneliness/solitude (which?) in the vast space with the huge sky and flat landscape with one isolated (holiday) cottage and the separate individuals and couples walking, enjoying the solitude (though there were more such people than I had seen before)
wind – this blew my gimbal repeatedly 180 degrees and made smooth recording very difficult. But something I could maybe experiment with as an ‘experiential effect
geese gathering for winter migration and flying away
autumn reeds and reflections
uneven footpath with many holes and needing to watch carefully where I was walking.

The overall effect I wanted to portray was one of vastness, enjoyment of space and solitude after working from home, and experience of walking in this environment. I kept the wind noise, but toned it down a bit in Audition.

The black and white version really abstracts the bleakness, space and solitude. I really like the overall feel of the video and some of the shots and overlays eg the reed beds, geese and clothes on the washing line. I also do not mind some of the shakiness.

The Gold Rush LUT is a very different feel of the glow of colours at sunset – something that was ‘real’ when the sun comes out but not captured by the iPhone algorithm. But going forward – if I want ‘realism’ – I need to make detailed notes on location about my experience of colours and how they change with changes in light and sky, and apply the LUT in a more nuanced way.
Walking with Skylarks

My second experiment was filmed walking along the houses in Shingle Street from the Martello Tower Car Park towards the Beach Car Park on a sunny but still windy day. The predominant impressions I had were:

sound of skylarks on the wind
play of sun, shadows and reflections on the walls of often empty houses (reminiscent of Maya Deren)
desert-like shingle landscape with tall brown remains of the giant mullein plants that in summer had covered the whole are with yellow.

I edited the audio in Audition, cutting the soundwave to significantly reduce the wind and amplify the skylarks to the level I perceived them at. I left in the clicks and walking that signified my voyeur presence. And added wave sounds that were actually too far away to be heard at low tide when the video was shot.
Exploring Shingle Street: Background Research

Shingle Street is a small remote coastal hamlet at the mouth of Orford Ness, connected via Hollesley village situated between the ancient town of Orford and the small manor town of Bawdsey. My understanding of the place has changed and deepened since my first visit in January 2020 on the eve of Brexit. The subsequent Covid-19 pandemic seriously limited my ability to pursue the sort of documentary work around economic and political views of local people – not only for my protection but because many are retired and older than me.

This project is explicitly subjective, reflecting the ways my own experience of the place has evolved and deepened. My first very bleak impressions in my dark mood of post-Brexit alienation from anything English – heightened by the multiple Union Jacks on the deserted brown grey shingle where the only features were the shrivelled pillars of mullein. But on repeat visits at different times of the year I have come to really feel at home in the constantly changing environment where colours change dramatically with the seasons – flower cycles that transform the landscape, bird migrations and bird song and favourite times for colourful kites as holiday-makers join local people.

Shingle Street itself consists of a row of cottages of varying age in a minimalist and haunting shingle landscape. It was established as a community of fishing families and river pilots for the River Ore in the early 19th century. The four Martello towers south of Shingle Street were built in 1808-1809. Coastguard cottages at the North end of the beach housed coastguards who worked as pilots, lifeboatmen and excise men to control the smuggling. In the 1930s it became an important place for remote tourism when several of the houses remaining today were built. During World War II this area of the coast was one of the main lines of defence and several buildings were destroyed, including the Lifeboat Inn, the hamlet’s only pub.

Today many of the cottages are picturesque but quite expensive holiday lets. An important feature is the Shell Line artwork created by two friends who visited during recovery from cancer. It has since been continually maintained as a prominent local landmark. The settlement has also inspired music and poetry. There are also a number of historical and environmental books by local people, and a Facebook page for people who visit regularly – discussing issue like fishing, local developments etc.

The settlement is part of a very fragile and unique coastal strip. The beach is a designated SSI because of its rare vegetated shingle, little terns, saline lagoons and geology. A report from October 2004 suggested that Shingle Street is at risk from the sea and could disappear by 2024 if sea defences are not erected. North Sea windfarms can be seen in the distance on a fine days. Current proposed development of the area around nuclear power at Sizewell and the current Freeport proposals for Felixstowe and Harwich also mean that the whole area will change significantly in the coming years.

‘Colours of Shingle’ is part of a substantial and ongoing long-term comparative body of work about the diverse but interlinked communities and environments along the Suffolk coast between Southwold and Felixstowe, including Orford, Aldeburgh and Dunwich and possibly other locations not yet visited, looking at the multiple interactions between these locations and their distinctive ‘Southfolk’ identity. They are linked by history from prehistoric times and trade with Europe, particularly the Netherlands. The swallowing up of Dunwich by the sea and Orford silting led to the rise of Aldeburgh. The locations are all linked by the Suffolk Coast path and tourist development, the decline of fishing and the work of artists presenting at art and music festivals in Southwold, Aldeburgh and Snape. I started by reading books on the Suffolk coast including Sebald’s Rings of Saturn and sections on Suffolk in Daniel Defoe’s A tour thro’ the whole island of Great Britain (1724–1727) work by Robert MacFarlane and Stanley Donway on Orford and some You Tube surfing on different locations. I chose to start at Shingle Street because that was an area of the coast I had not been before, and the most remote.

For further information and updates on the SYP project as a whole see the blog page links below.

There are a number of themes and You Tube sources that could be adapted including music written about the area, a couple of interviews with local people, videos on wildlife, birds and the events during World War II. But I need to go back and talk to local people myself first, following up on leads I established before COVID.

https://zemniimages.info/portfolio/colours-of-shingle-suffolk/

Shingle Street Back Notes

In addition to the contextual research I also did research on approaches and styles of documentary video narrative and techniques. I looked at the history of editing theory and was particularly interested in continuous shooting techniques in 2017 and immersive video, effects of different types of lens and colour grading. This is still very much a steep learning curve with very many ideas that I have yet to fully think through in relation to my own work.

See also:

https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/art-exhibitions/among-trees?eventId=855751

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/avis-newman-1698

I also looked at techniques and examples of iPhone documentary video to see what is possible with an iPhone, and what sort of other equipment and accessories I might need..
July 1, 2020
E3.6 Fragments Walking: Document a process

Indexicality

The word indexical refers to the existential bond between copy and reality. It is the phenomenon of a sign pointing to (or indexing) some object in the context in which it occurs. It has been defined in terms of the camera producing a “footprint” of the ‘profilmic event’ (reality). Whatever is placed before the camera is recorded and through a chemical process of registering light produces the resulting image. The question that plagues the animated documentary debate is: how far can this indexicality be pushed? In order for a film to be powerful, it seems to gain more power as it plays with our knowing disbelief in what is happening and our belief in the reality of a convincing visually rendered scene (eg using 3D animation software, lighting and editing).
Moving Image 1: Animation course text

Task

Make an animation documenting the different tasks involved in a daily action. Such as baking a cake, cleaning a room, folding the washing etc.
Try to work impressionistically to capture the energy of this process and it’s particular qualities (in other words it need not function as an instruction manual).
Make use of sound, if you want to, but not voice over for this exercise.
Use any animation technique or combination of techniques you choose.
Upload your short film onto your learning log.

‘Fragments Walking in Time’ is a playful exploration of the fragmented experience of walking along a normal road as recorded with an i-phone. I did this regularly for a few days on my daily walk from my home to a local nature reserve, varying my approach each time. The idea came originally from a series of experimental panorama images moving the phone as I walked – resulting in a series of fragmented still traces on one image as in the background image on the padlet below..

I started this project with time experiments comparing SloMo and Hyperlapse clips of my feet, using vertical and horizontal formats and different focal lengths to give different experiences of watching my feet walking. Sometimes the feel is very energetic, sometimes more meditative just through altering these technical features. Some days were crisp autumn sunshine, others with rainy puddles and others with frost.

I also experimented with alternative viewpoints to explore the fragmented nature of our perceptions of self (reference Lacan) because we can never see ourselves whole except in a mirror. As well as footage of my feet, I also tried my hands and body (less successful) and looking forward.

The final videos : ‘Frost’ and ‘The Future is Bright’ at the top of the padlet below used video effects in Premiere. Unfortunately there seemed to be a bug that crept into the project file – and any further saved files with this footage – during multiple Adobe updates. This clipped all the whites and oversaturated the footage – things are fine in the source window but change in the preview window even then all effects are removed. I have not had time to fully identify the cause of this.

My initial ideas was to construct a funky video collage incorporating some of the ideas about indexicality, with multiple offset audio tracks. But this was not only too complex for the time I had here. It also proved impossible on my pc because it needs an upgrade to a faster processor. It would probably be best to do this in After Effects if I have time over the summer.

https://youtu.be/fU99W-ZrIHQ
A nostalgic male voice over and atmospheric music drive this narrative about time and death. High contrast, soft focused and textured black and white still images are sequenced as action footage. There are occasional dissolves and zooms, but mostly cut with movement between black and white shapes in opposing parts of the image. Throughout these images shake very slightly to give the feeling of movement.

Stan Brakhage

Animator Ryan Larkin uses an artist’s sensibility to illustrate the way people walk. He employs a variety of techniques–line drawing, colour wash, etc.–to catch and reproduce the motion of people afoot. The springing gait of youth, the mincing step of the high-heeled female, the doddering amble of the elderly–all are registered with humour and individuality, to the accompaniment of special sound. Without words. Directed by Ryan Larkin – 1968 | 5 min

Tip: Ken Burns and keyframing
Stories can be told using just still images, for example, in Chris Marker’s 1962 film La Jetee. The use of still imagery is particularly prevalent in the documentary form. It is almost a cliché now to have slow zooms and pans of historical photographs accompanied with a narrated voice over. This is partly due to the ease with which such panning and zooming has become with the use of digital editing. American documentary film-maker Ken Burns is synonymous with this approach to documentary film-making. So much so that Apple have named their ‘ease in ease out’ tool after the film-maker “The Ken Burns Effect” (this effect is found in iPhoto, iMovie and Final Cut Pro X but it is also possibly in many professional and home software applications under a different name).

What the “Ken Burns Effect” does is zoom or pan in an ‘ease in, ease out’ way. That is to say, the movement starts smoothly and slowly comes to rest. This smoothing and altering of the pace of an overall movement is normally achieved by manipulating a ‘Bezier Curve’. The Ken Burns Effect does this Bezier work for you. You set the first ‘key frame’ (where you want the movement/zoom to start) and the final ‘key frame’ (where you want the movement/zoom to end). The software then interpolates the inbetween frames.

July 1, 2020
E3.5/3.7: Sparrowhawk Landing: Garbage Mattes, Basic Compositing and Keyframing

Exercise 3.5 Garbage Matte and Basic Compositing

Exercise 3.7 Ken Burns Effect

TASK: Exercise 3.5 Garbage Mattes and Basic Compositing

Returning to one of the first exercises of this unit, the rotating chair, bring this into your editing software to use as the basis of a compositing exercise.

Find a still image from the internet of an animal or object, or photograph your own.
Bring this in to your editing software as a new layer and use the matte function to overlay this image onto your rotating chair.

You can work as simply or as intricately as you like. The result need not be slick or believable. The purpose of the exercise is for you to explore the basics of using matte’s and to gain an understanding of compositing. If you like you can bring in a moving image to apply the matte to, but a still image will suffice.

Bear in mind the matte feature may be called ‘mask’ in your editing software (in iMovie it is often referred to as ‘green screen’ or ‘blue screen’). Almost all editing software will have some level of basic matte or masking that allows you to work with at least two visual layers.

Once you are comfortable using a matte/mask, you can extend this exercise further by exploring other ways of compositing. For example, try bringing in a line drawing and use a ‘multiply’ function to overlay this drawing onto your chair animation. Upload any extra experiments onto your learning log.

The revolving chair at 24FPS. Initially I tried a slower framerate, but this gave too much jumping between frames for the masked bird to follow. I put one layer above, and one layer below the sparrowhawk so that the chair showed over the top when it was in back view.

The Sparrowhawk: I masked this out using a pen tool, and overlaid this on top of the chair as a 3D layer, adjusting its position and orientation to try to fit the movement of the chair.

Mirror background from Lockdown Haircut. I removed the vignette and increased the size to include only the mirror, as if the bird is looking into it. And put this as the background layer, with the chair layer set to multiply.

Exercise 3.5 Garbage Matte and Basic Compositing

Project 3.7 Ken Burns and keyframing

American documentary film-maker Ken Burns is synonymous with an approach to documentaries using still images with a narrated voice-over where images are slow panned and zoomed using an ease-in and ease-out. That is to say, the movement starts smoothly and slowly comes to rest. Apple in fact named their ‘ease in ease out’ tool after the film-maker “The Ken Burns Effect”. You set the first ‘key frame’ (where you want the movement/zoom to start) and the final ‘key frame’ (where you want the movement/zoom to end). The software then interpolates the in-between frames.

Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere allow very fine control over this movement with graph editors. But I really needed to use different images than indicated by the task to really explore this technique – see Assignment 3.

TASK: Exercise 3.7 Keyframing and Ken Burns Effect

Do some research about what keyframing ability your editing software has available (including the ‘ken burns effect’ if you have it).
● Explore this technique adding key framed movement to a single still image.
Once you have mastered this, return to the editing project of exercise 5 (garbage mattes and basic compositing).
● Can you apply a key-framed move to one of the layers (either the chair or the object that you introduced as a new layer)?
Explore Bezier curves and direct movement if your software offers this.
Upload a short experiment demonstrating that you have come to grips with basic digital keyframed movement to your learning log along with any notes on how easy or difficult you found this process and what resources you used to help you.

Animated fly in of Sparrowhawk with Ease-in Ease-out to the chair in freeze frame. The chair animation was reversed so that started facing the mirror ready for the Sparrowhawk to land. This was a bit tricky because of the multiple pre-compositions and blend modes. And the rather complicated movement meant I had to put in a keyframe in the middle.

July 1, 2020
E3.4: The Squirrel: Rotoscoping
Skateboarder: Watercolour Grunge effect

Red Squirrel: Textile Effect
This project only scratches a bit more of the surface, pending much more in-depth study of After Effects in Assignments 4 and 5. Here I take my own low resolution video and (building on E3.2 Sparrowhawk) looks at how to manipulate this as the basis for line animation and After Effects Creative Effects. As a preliminary to developing a longer and more complex rotoscoped animated narrative of different garden wildlife for SYP and also MI Assignment 5. And building on my sketchbook work to improve my initial drawing.

This project is in two parts:

Skateboarder: Rotoscoping directly onto my own action video footage of Skateboarding shot on an old compact camera and experimenting with Creative Effects templates in After Effects.

Squirrel: Digital frame by frame rotoscoping onto manipulated iPhone video footage in Rough animator on my iPad

Different effects were effective in the two cases, based on styles suggested by the subject matter and also differences in the form of the source footage.

The ultimate aim will be to produce much more dynamic and engaging animation than in ‘Pig Tales’ for Visual Research – with more in-depth consideration of Disney Principles – but in an RSI-friendly way that does not take months of digital drawing. I will further develop this work into a narrative with more garden wildlife as part of Moving Image Assignment 5. I also plan to experimenting with a wider range of hand drawn (drawing on top of printouts from the rough rotoscopes from Creation FX??) and digital rotoscope styles (in AE and TVPaint) and approaches from other artists viewed in Research 3.1.

About Creation Effects

Creation Effects are customisable After Effects Template files created by Noel Powell (https://creationeffects.com/index.html). These can be used to stylise footage in much more natural ways, using complex combinations of AE filters and expressions to produce some very organic-looking effects.

Footage is imported into these files, normally at 10FPS, and each of the template effect layers can be animated and adjusted to produce a wide range of effects, including different papers. Other AE effects can also be added and stacked in different ways for full customisation. I am only just beginning to explore all the different options.
TASK

Find a short piece of found copyright free footage from video sites such as archive.org ( https://archive.org/ ) or use your own footage as the basis of a short rotoscoped animation. The duration of your sequence is up to you. Choose a rotoscoping technique you would like to try such as: using a projector, drawing by observing footage frame by frame, tracing paper over a screen, printing out frames and drawing on them or digitally drawing directly on each frame using computer software. Work fast and loose and be playful – see how far you can depart from the source footage and where the process can lead you.

Rotoscoping is a key part of my practice that I want to develop in depth. This project is part of a project ‘Garden of (Eternal) Mindfulness for SYP. This develops preliminary ideas for a longer term cross-media body of work taking a tragi-comic view of the joys and challenges of wildlife gardening. This build build on MI Assignment 2 Summer Synaesthesia, and also a sketchbook that develops my wildlife sketching skills.

The rotoscoping project here builds on experiments with rotoscoping in TVPaint line and shape animation from found video for Visual Research Module. Since that project I need to change my pc animation system because my old laptop is now too slow to use TVPaint.

It also builds on my research in Moving Image Research Project 3.1 Evaluating Rotoscoping.

Rotoscoping Styles and Methods

Research 3.1: Evaluating Rotoscoping
Skateboarder: Action Video Creation Effects

These were my first experiments with Creation Effects – before I developed skills in line animation in Visual Research module. After watching videos about approaches to rotoscoping techniques on Linked In Learning and You Tube, I was interested in potential approaches that could minimise drawing and hence RSI risk.

These effects are templates with multiple adjustable and customisable layers. But these require a good understanding of After Effects to really get the best effects. Nevertheless, even when used as they are given in the template, they do provide interesting ways of stylising even pretty bad and low resolution footage. If the style is selected based on the meaning and purpose of the footage.

Original video shortened with enhanced colour and contrast in Premiere.

Pencil 1: I find this pencil sketch effective as a stylised documentary version of the footage.

Coloured Pencil: I find this coloured pencil rendering interesting as a cartoon style. I like the softness of the colours and outlines and the boil effects.

Coloured Ink: This is a much darker and fractured type of image that might be effective for political or darker subject matter – it reminds me of the animation of Catherine Anyango. The small image export was unintentional, but adding a black or coloured frame outside the frame produced by the effect itself could add to the impression of watching something unfolding on a screen.

Half tone patterns: this posterises the colours but there would need to be a reason to use this style. It might be more effective just in black and white.

Textiles: this was the first time I have used this effect. It is interesting, but the textiles used seem to be very sensitive to changes in tone. Would need to have a good reason to use this effect, and also the figure would need to be in a constant tone and colour.

Watercolour Grunge: This is one of my favourite effects. On this footage I like the addition of the colour and modern/retro? (depends on one’s age I expect) feel.

Squirrels: grey or red

The effects also work well on digital line and shape rotoscoping.. As well as the featured Red Squirrel textile animation above, the sketch and monochrome watercolour grunge effects also significantly enhance the original flat animation, adding markmaking and textural interest.

But again, to get the best effects the original templates need to be customised – animating the strength of the effects as well as altering the parameters – so that excessive ‘boil’ is more controlled. The animations can also be further manipulated in After Effects for colour controll, image stabilisation etc.

Pencil Rough Sketch Effect

Watercolour Grunge Monochrome effect.
July 1, 2020
E3.3: Edges in Time: Accumulation, destruction or trace

Conceptual abstract exploration of the ways that our perceptions of past present and future change over the life cycle from beginning of life when the past starts gradually to be known, and the future looks long, large and bright to the final shortening of a future that looks increasingly dark, and memories slowly erase and possibly even our sense of ‘now’.

Visible Animators: Material Accumulation, Erosion and Trace

“Great care is normally taken to hide the animation process and presence of the animator to avoid distracting from the continuity of the movement. In stop-frame, shots including the shadow of the animator are deleted and re-shot. When the audience notices the presence of the animator through, for example, the tactile fact of a drawing on paper, this is a distancing effect. The viewer is made aware of the animator through production time; the build-up of layers of a substance or through the life and durability of the material itself.”

TASK: Make a quick 30-90 second animation exploring one of the following three animation techniques: accumulation, destruction/erosion or trace.
To start, you may want to restrict the materials you work with, so your animation can explore the possibilities of accumulation, destruction or trace by experimenting with mark-making, objects, or physical materials. Alternatively, you may want to explore these themes through image-making and metaphor by drawing, photographing or using found materials. Either way, be playful in your approach, and log all of your experiments on your learning log as well as your final piece.

Animation in physical media using build-up, erasure and trace techniques with both dry and wet physical media produces beautiful results. Media include sand art, charcoal, painting and mixed drawing and painting. Animation can be recorded with video and/or Stop Motion with different effects. Similar effects can also be reproduced digitally in software like TVPaint and Procreate on the iPad.

These are approaches that I want to explore in a lot more depth in Assignment 5, and also my animation work for SYP. My work in this project only starts to look at issues involved in complexities of planning, layering and performance that are different between physical and digital techniques.

Inspiration

Animation in physical media using build-up, erasure and trace techniques with both dry and wet media produces beautiful results.
I started by compiling a padlet of different potential media, styles and approaches including sand art, charcoal, painting and mixed drawing and painting.
Some of the activities are recorded with video, others using Stop Motion.

Charcoal Doodles

I started by experimenting with Charcoal Stop Motion, just doodling and experimenting with spontaneous drawing. Capturing in Stop Motion Studio on my iPhone using a uniform capture setting and varying the size of strokes each time to get differences in speed of build up and erasure.

Different effects can be achieved through using different types of charcoal, different rubbers and smearing tools and on different paper.

Narrative needs quite a lot of planning.

The resulting videos can then be further edited with audio in TVPaint (most versatile for frame by frame) and/or Premiere and/or After Effects (for standard video effects) to vary the speed of build up, tone/colours, layering etc.

Charcoal Stop Motion: first Doodle

Charcoal Stop Motion: Tree and Wind animation

Edges in Time:
iPad timelapse in Procreate

The second set of animations were experiments in conceptual abstraction for SYP ‘Edges in Time’ starting to think about the ways that our perceptions of past present and future change over the life cycle from beginning of life when the past starts gradually to be known, and the future looks long, large and bright to the final shortening of a future that looks increasingly dark, and memories slowly erase and possibly even our sense of ‘now’.

This series was produced in Procreate Timelapse video on my iPad using charcoal paint, smear and erase brushes in different sizes and opacities. Unlike charcoal animation, Procreate allows different layers to be altered and manipulated. But it is very difficult to control brush strokes – normally this is achieved through experimentation and undo/redo that is fiddly when all this is recorded with minimal editing capacity. It is also extremely difficult to control speed and relative pacing of animation – it is not always clear what will record as a slow process or as a single frame jump.

This was an interesting and quick way of conceptual experiment to see how things might work. But obviously needs a lot of refinement, probably in a combination of physical media and more professional pc software.

Edges in Time abstracted concept animation will be an important part of SYP, even if the end result is not professional. And further developments will be included as part of MI A5 Presentation.

Edges in Time 1: vertical timer: this did not record many of the brush strokes, even when they were done in separate small strokes and selecting and moving cut elements does not show as a separate frame unless combined with brush strokes.

Edges in Time 2: Horizontal Timer this is longer with more brush strokes recorded. I quite like the horizontal format. I could experiment with trying to show the past pushing the present or the future pulling the past, and a rather stuttering present. I could also make a lot more of the boundaries between the time and environment. Presumably the cones are ‘me’. I could experiment more with the relative tones and colour. But this is too complex for the software and would need to be done in TVPaint.

Edges in Time 3: Vertical Timer with audio. this is longer with more brush strokes recorded. I like the addition of the ticking – I offset two tracks at slightly different speed so that they are out of sync. But this would be more effective if I play a sound track and use physical stop motion techniques where the animation in drawn in sync with the audio. Then composite the video with a clean audio track and any additional effects or editing in TVPaint or Premiere/AE. This was useful as a quick experiment to give me some ideas though – and point to what does not work as well as what might.

July 1, 2020
E3.2: Sparrowhawk: Gestures

TASK:

Choose a simple gesture that you or another subject can perform. For example, a hand movement, pose, or facial expression.

Represent the same gesture through static and moving media: for example a photograph or drawing, and moving image or a short animation.

Compare the results. Are there different aspects of the gesture that you are able to capture in each of these media?

Write a short caption for each that tries to capture these differences.

For this project I wanted to use some footage that relates to my SYP body of work about wildlife in my garden, and to see what the different technical as well as visual challenges are in using low resolution clips from my old iPhone.

The original footage for this project was video of a Sparrowhawk ripping up and eating a pigeon on the roof of our bicycle shed. This was taken on an old iPhone 5s at quite some distance through a window – as my prime aim was to record the movement for animation I did not want the Sparrowhawk to notice me and fly away.

From the original unedited video I also captured some ‘keyframes’ and processed these in Photoshop using Topaz AI sharpening and other tonal and colour adjustments.

Both video and still images can have a variety of styles and purpose. But often:

Moving image has transitory focus on an individual moment in time, or sequence of moments, but can show more clearly before and after events. They can also show process and change: gesture, strength, weight, pulling etc. Even if each frame is blurred, the viewer can get the sense of the whole. Alternatively clips and clip sequences can be selected to purposely highlight ambiguity.

Still images can leave before and after ambiguous. They can capture and emphasise the ‘decisive moment’ of drama, leaving cause and/or effect open for the viewer to think about. But they can also blur movement or use framing, composition and juxtaposition to creat a narrative of a process over time.

Boundaries may be technologically blurred in contemporary digital processes. Digital composites, collage and sequences of still images can create narrative. Very short moving image sequences can loop to focus on one event and leave before and after open to interpretation.

Sparrowhawk: iPhone video

Moving image has transitory focus on an individual moment or narrative sequence of moments in time, but (if this is intended) can show clearly before and after events, causes and consequences and the ways in which postures, expressions and moods change over time.

The original video is quite blurred. Processing in Premiere : sharpening, increasing colour and tone contrast, cropping and vignetting gives a much clearer view of what is happening as a basis for eg rotoscoping.

Visually the resulting video enables a study of the movement over time – gesture, strength, weight, pulling etc.- as the carcass is ripped up, the ways in which the talons are moved and force with which they push the body up to tear off bits of flesh, and the beak as it tosses the bits into the mouth. Even if each image is blurred, the viewer can get the sense of the whole.

But technically there is no way in which I could make the original iPhone video into an acceptable clip of wildlife video footage – except as a good basis for rotoscoping, or as a dark eerie layer for a composite video.

I captioned this ‘the carcass’ because this is the most blurred, blow out and unclear element in the footage, to highlight what the more obvious Sparrowhawk is doing.

The Carcass

Sparrowhawk: still frame export processed in Photoshop

Still images may attempt to capture a ‘decisive moment’ of drama which can either imply or leave ambiguous what happens before and/or after. Depending on the purpose the image may be informative and illustrative of a particular common or unusual feature. They may clearly indicate eg through juxtaposition and leading composition lines the cause and/or effect of an action, or leave this open for the viewer to think about.

The gallery on the left shows a series of frames captured from the edited video – none of them are sharp, but some of the movement blurring is quite interesting.

The best result (below) was edited from one of the sharpest images the original video adding Topaz AI sharpening and tonal and colour e]adjustments in Photoshop. This captures the fierce look in the Sparrowhawk’s eye as it checks what is happening around it. It is still not completely sharp – and cannot be made so. But I could process it further as an interesting more impressionistic image to bring up the feathers scattered around and the leftovers of the carcass under its talons.

This one of many possible ‘decisive moments’ could be titled something like ‘Guilty’, ‘Caught in the Act’, or ‘Suspicious’.

July 1, 2020
E3.1: Shadow Wall: Animation Light Study
Some of the most beautiful sights in my own life are simple but mesmerising plays of light filtered through shadows that dance on flat surfaces or water and change from moment to moment – one of the nearest (frequent) experiences my life gets to spirituality.

‘Shadow Wall’ is an experimental timelapse animation of light dancing on the wall of our front room. Exploring the effects of speeding up and slowing down and introducing animated mirror and kaleidoscope edges in Adobe Premiere and After Effects and colour grading.
All moving image involves different types of time:

‘narrative time’ – the amount of time that is spanned within the story or piece
‘discourse’ or ‘viewing time’ – the amount of time it takes to experience a story through reading or watching it unfold
‘production time’ – the time it took to produce the piece.

When included in the frame of an animation, natural light highlights the difference between production time and viewing time. This is most often seen through the flicker in time-lapse video. Unlike time-lapse video, animation is not constrained by strictly set intervals of time between shots. The duration between each shot can be manipulated so that time can be seen to slow down or speed up. Using basic principles of animation, shadows can be made to hesitate or race, reflections made to boil or linger.

TASK:

Observe the passing of natural light in a room. Think about how you might photograph aspects of this light. Setup a camera and take repeated time-lapse-like photographs of shadows and reflections of this light over the course of a day (the earlier you wake, and the longer you stick at it, the more interesting the colours).
You can approach this exercise in several ways; recording subtle shifts in colour, tone and shape or by interfering with the light, manipulating reflections and casting shadows. The purpose of the exercise is to employ the animation principles you have learned such as ‘ease in ease out’, looping, eye trace and anticipation to manipulate the time conveyed by the natural light in the room.

Sound-track optional.
Shadow Wall

Inspiration

Anne Harild, Taking Time (2014)

Jane Cheadle, Swimmer (2012)
July 1, 2020