..there's no business like show business..

Ooh a business pack, how professional!

Does this mean I actually have to act like an employable person now? Oh dear.

Righty oh, contents of said business pack must include -

• Business Card Designs
• A Web Portfolio
• Showreel
• A C.V aimed at Art Employment
• A Covering Letter (of sorts)

So from that I now have a somewhat terrifying to do list!

1. Buy website domain - check
2. Buy hosting - too poor as of right now
3. Design several business cards
4. Alter my C.V. to be artistically aimed
5. Put all relevant work on to both deviantart and youtube
6. Write a covering letter
7. Design basic website for portfolio and C.V purposed (when less poor)
8. Add links to aforementioned arty websites
9. Add CV, Bio, Contact Details...

I think that's it for now?

...oh lord vs what the hell..

I've probably mentioned this before but I have two rather large interests - those being

1. Parodical tales with magical, mythological, religious or pop culture references with a humourous bent. In literature this is covered by my favourite authors - Tom Holt, Christopher Moore, Terry Pratchett and Douglass Adams. I enjoy how humour can far more successfully convey a point than anger can, it has a greater scope and audience understanding than many political speeches ever achieve.

and

2. Modernisations of mythological and religious tales and astrological content with a dark, fine art aspect. I was first turned on to this theme after a model scale replica of the 9 levels of hell depicted in Dante's Inferno was used on an episode of 'Rebus' to aid in the capture of a killer who's murders were carried out to reflect each relevant sin in today's society. I really liked the link between the sin and punishment of today and that of the past. Other favourites include the seven deadly sins theme and star signs especially the collections created by Weed Fairy.

I'm hoping that one of these two will form the basis for my Final Major Piece next year as it is finally somewhere I can showcase my true passion in animation. Due to this, I want it to be as close to perfection I can possibly achieve - this is why I've decided to start planning as soon as is sane to after this year ends (obviously a break of some form is required to keep my sanity)...(I also plan to do similar for the dissertation too so watch this space)

Roll on planning!

...baby i was born this way

"By identifying potential themes that may have arisen from this self-reflexive folder and can be developed further, students will outline key concepts and preliminary plans for their final year."

Is it bad to already have a good idea what you plan to do?? I'm not so sure yet. It makes 'idea creating' a little.. complex.

I do know one thing I have decided however.

Next year I plan to go down one of two very clear routes. There will be no deviation from these two very clear routes. There will be no wavering and thinking 'Ooh maybe I should do what's popular and nice'. There is a very good reason for this. If I deviate from these two very clear routes, I will suck. I don't want to get drawn in to doing that which is crowd pleasing, yet makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a pegbar. I want to do that which I will be proud of even if it is hated. Because it won't matter if Mr Public hates it, if I love it. And in a roundabout way, if I love it it will show. And then Mr Public will love it too. Huzzah!

Very Clear Route One - Witty Humour (story lead)

Very Clear Route Two - Dark Gruesome (installation style)

Obviously, I have a clear favourite but I feel I should at least put some trial in to both just for good measure. It can't hurt, right?

...hello my name is bob and i am an animator.. apparently..

Oooh Self Reflexive-ness... pleased to meet you.

Eurgh. Do. Not. Want.

So, the handbook says thus -

"A self-reflective evaluation, both written and visual, of the students’ areas of interest, their strengths and skills, ideas and creative themes. By identifying potential themes that may have arisen from this self-reflexive folder and can be developed further, students will outline key concepts and preliminary plans for their final year."


Well doesn't that sound just peachy?


Obviously I'll go in to all this in more depth but I wanted to at least get something down that I can then build on and work from.. so here goes. I'll be writing incredibly clever and witty things about the second half of the task later.

Areas Of Interest - I came to this course adamant that I wanted to do paper cut out stop-motion animation. This is no longer the case. This seems to be because when you have no knowledge, you tend to be interested in that which you can do. You only need to look at Youtube to see how easy it is to create (an albeit crap by industry standards) stop-motion animation compared to having no hope in hell of being able to achieve anything at all as a teach-yourself Maya user. I have since had the opportunity to experience so many different forms and ways of animation that I had never considered. Now that I have albeit limited knowledge of these other forms, my interests have changed. I've found I'm really drawn to digital art.


I feel like I want to try working straight in to the computer as the break for scanning and uploading sketched tends to halt the flow of drawing whereas in Photoshop for example, I can sketch on one layer then instantly work over it in another. I also find myself drawn to the polished, clean finish and the fact no one can see your rubbings out!


Strengths, Skills and Weaknesses - I dislike drawing. I think this is mainly because I'm not instantly successful. Instead of see 'trying' as learning I see 'trying' as failing so would rather not try at all. This is something I have got to fix as soon as possible. I'm hoping that my recently discovered interest in digital art will go someway to helping this as the experience of working straight in to a computer will help me persevere with the 'trying' and thus succeeding. 


I think my real skill lies in storytelling. Being on an animation course I find it somewhat awkward to admit this but denying has yet to improve my work so admitting it can hardly make it worse! I'm not entirely sure how to progress with this in terms of animation but I feel that a more story led approach with minimal animation would suit - where the connection to the story and its characters is more important than grand movements every nano-second.


Ideas - Ah hah! Currently there are so many ideas in my head, the problem I have is how to execute them. This has always been my problem, not knowing how to do an idea justice so not doing anything at all. Several of my ideas revolve around installation, something I've enjoyed creating for previous courses and exhibitions but have yet to incorporate an animation theme. This is something I plan to look in to and trial soon. 


I love retelling popular stories from the other side, or in an unusual way. I've found examples of this in the book/musical 'Wicked' as well as several Tom Holt and Christopher Moore books. They, along with Terry Pratchet and victorian/steampunk themes provide the basis for many of my ideas. I like the idea of combining opposing themes such as new and old or childlike and gore. I like statements. I've never really liked the idea of just recycling that which is popular - I am not a Disneyphile. (sorry)


Creative Themes - Hmm, creative themes. From the last year or so I have definitely found my 'creative themes'. While I have yet to find a drawing style, which is apparently the holy grail of the art world, I don't think I care too much anymore. I don't think that drawing in one style, or over-trying to find that one style, is as important as just creating work that embodies 'you'. 


While my work may differ from piece to piece, there are definitely reoccurring styles and themes as these tend to be where I work best - why fight the tide? I love dark humour, especially in art, as well as the clash between the macabre and the overtly cute. I enjoy shocking people, but for a reason. I also love to go down routes that people tend to shy away from. Considering how quiet and reserved I seem to come across, I'm incredibly opinionated, broad-minded and 'quirky'.


I see no point in working against what is really me, it seems to defeat the point entirely. Not to mention, creates second rate work as the passion is gone.


Ta Dah! 

...photoshop, shmotoshop

 Oh for the love of all things holy, where the hell has my post gone?!? I wrote lovely, clever witty things here and they've buggered off.. again.

Right, here goes.. again.

.....

Finally, I've found something to do for the Live Brief section of the module! Huzzah!

The 'Live Brief' section of the module at last makes sense to me. The idea is that you pitch for (and created at least production work) an outside 'Client' as well as obtaining some form of 'work experience' - the work experience part can be covered by helping a 3rd Year with their final Graduation film.

'Client Based'

For the 'Client' based section I have pitched for a health and safety brief proposed by the University. The brief was to come up with an idea for a new interactive way to test both staff and students on relevant health and safety protocol within the University and office environment. This was due to the fact that on the whole, health and safety protocol tests are ridiculously boring. To the point you may actually wish to injure yourself in the process. I liked this so much more than I thought and though I still have quite a few things to do for hand in, I now know exactly what and how.

List!

• Colour palette
• Area designs x 2
• Scoreboard design
• Pop Up Quiz design
• Simple animatic to demonstrate how the interactive part would work

Ideally I'd have liked to have got a basic interactive sample working but unfortunately the Interactive Media students can't help out before hand in (though the brief is ongoing and they will be available to work together before the brief deadline) so the next best thing is to create a simple animatic that will give an idea of how the game play would roll out.

3rd Year Film

For the work experience section I was beginning to get worried as all the 3rd years asking for help wanted things done that I don't know how to do. Luckily I've since been able to find some bits and pieces to do with Rachel Clement, colouring body parts in Photoshop. For her final film she is making photoshop 'body parts' which will then be linked and animated in AfterEffects as though they were puppets. This will save so much work and time as she's only had to create 'dozens' of body parts rather than 'thousands' of fully drawn out frames. I really like this idea as, in the right story style, it can allow more time to concentrate on the design side of things as the more frames you have to do, the less detail they can realistically have.

In doing the colouring on Photoshop it's made me more aware of and appreciative of something a tutor commented upon with regards to software. What she mentioned was even if you want to work more on the producer side of things and delegate, you still need that software knowledge because its all very well saying you want 'this' to move 'there' but you're going to get no where unless you can also tell them you want it done with 'this' filter at 'that' opacity percentage and so on.

It's been fun getting to use Photoshop and relearn some things - also, I've got a lot more comfortable with using it for more than just making people fat and green in Facebook photos. I love the possibilities for actually creating art rather than just using the program for editing pre-drawn art - my current plan is to continue to practice so I can become as comfortable with a tablet pen as with a lead pencil. I also feel I need to give some time to just learning the basics in other software - AfterEffects, Premiere, Maya etc. It's all very well that I've attended the initial workshops but if I don't regularly at least 'play' with the program, I'll never remember enough to actually DO work that is good enough to show other people.

Because of this mini-revelation, I've decided that the still elements of my showreel I'm going to attempt to created digitally. I love the outcome of digital art, I'm more interested in using this style than I realised and I'm surprised I've never been down this route before. Where's my pen!

...don't run you'll fall

Yay, I actually pitched my idea and it wasn't awful! Now I just have to actually make stuff to show next time round!

HEALTH AND SAFETY

The Brief - To come up with an idea for an animation based concept to teach and test both staff and students on relevant health and safety protocol in a new and imaginative way. The idea is to move away from boring lectures and create something entertaining and fun while still being informative. Optional interactivity.

The Idea - The concept I came up with for the client brief was that of an interactive First Person point&click 'Shooter' game. Set in a flash-style 'office' area, the player would move through a rolling world space armed with a 'Safety Ray'. At various points, relevant hazards would appear and the aim of the game is to click and 'shoot' these hazards before they pass the player - similar to spotting hazards in time on the Driving Theory Test.

So as to test knowledge of the player, at varying points in the game a larger hazard would occur. This would cause a pop-up quiz to appear. Several visual options would be shown and the player would need to click the correct answer to progress in the game.

The game would have a scoring system based on that of injuries. For each hazard missed, a relevant scale injury would be added to a tally revealed at the end. For every wrong click on the pop-up quiz, a more severe injury would be added to the score. At the end of the game each injury will have a corresponding score and these would be added up to give the final score to the player. Different levels of 'score' will result in different levels of final injury - these would vary from 'Healthy and Safe' to 'Call an Ambulance' to 'Dead' for example.

I want the overall concept to be very colourful and visuals based as I felt that the main issues with current health and safety information is they are overly bland, long and lecture-like. In the same way that children learn through play, why can't this also apply to adults from time to time.

....hear ebil, see ebil, watch ebil....DO ebil!!

Muhahahaha!

My name is Miss Chaos and I heart lists!! <3

Here, I will share some with you! It's because I care!

Things to Watch

• Family Guy
• Happy Tree Friends
• Ichi The Killer Anime
• Team America
• The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (?)
• A Scanner Darkly
• Adult Swim
• King of the Hill (?)
• South Park
• Futurama (?)
• Simpsons (?)

(?) - These are kind of moving towards what I'm really looking for. They have some bits of moving away from the 'cute'ness of animation yet still pretty conventional by todays standards (in relation to similar ratings of games) but will provide a stop gap in terms of detailing the movement between the two.

...oh the horror!

Well it seems my oh so amazing blog post on my intended dissertation idea has fucked off in to the unknown.. gah! Re-do time methinks.

The proposal is to be around 500-700 words in length, however as far as I'm aware this doesn't have to be full on tidy writing. For example, some bits can be bulletpointed, the reading list is just a list yet counts towards the word count. So really, not all that scary after all.

It's a bit rubbish that we don't actually get assigned our dissertation lecturer untill next year as we have to put in all this work (not huge amounts but bare with me) in to coming up with a title, idea and year long plan when we actually have yet to have any kind of confirmation that our 'idea' is even suitable fullstop! In which case we may have to fully re-do the whole lot over the summer, again with no tutor input and may then face the same issue upon restarting in September which will in turn eat in to our real dissertation writing time before first draft submission at Christmas... Basically, it's a bitch and seems to be really badly planned.

THE IDEA(ish)

• Horror
• Animation for adults
• Games are approaching 18 rating, why aren't animations?
• Family Guy/American Dad - why so few?
• Children in animation/horror
• Animation has greater 'impossible scope' than live action, yet so much more limited in terms of content variety. Remains childlike and 'cute'
• Ichi the Killer prequel animation - why not more like this?
• Zombies, Zombies, Zombies - Animated Romero please?

Time for a list!

...storyline, storyline, wherefore art thou storyline?

To tell a story, you need a storyline, right?

RECODING CONVENTIONS

So apparently the idea of this is to in a round about way, take an overused convention of animated media and essentially turn it on its head.

The convention we went for was thus -

Original 'Stuff'-

• Pied Piper of Hamlyn - Nice story, kills rats, steals children
• Generally drawn animation for 'fairytales'
• Child-friendly
• Pastely and cute

New 'Stuff' -

• Pied Piper - Gruesome story, kills zombies, murders children, paedophilic tendancies
• Puppetry - puppets as 'living'  but playing dead (zombies) humans as 'puppets' but playing living (children)
• 18+ script - cliched then overridden by talking back puppets
• Dark and adult

The inspiration for all this came from various places. Originally, we looked at how 'Disney-fied' todays fairytales have become - i.e. the good always wins, prince gets princess, no one dies, not scary for children - when originally fairytales were intended to scare children. They were created as lessons to frighten children from succumbing to the dangers portrayed in the tales (getting lost in the woods, drowning etc) We wanted to remove all the fancy niceness and return to the originals.

The idea for puppets came from looking at adult animation today and what came up as 'almost-animation' was Team America. From this we looked back to, again, past and original methods - Captain Scarlet for example, Punch and Judy - all these were around far longer and far earlier than todays 2D animation yet are so underused even though they have so much potential.

From this we created a basic storyline.

1)Townpeople wander about
2)zombie growl, town people panic and strings get tangled
3)Untangled townpeople leave
4)Zombies descend on tangled people
-END-
5)Piper strolls into town, Mayor says 'who are you?'
6)Mayor - we'll give you a fucking amazing reward if you sort out this shit out for us
7)Ok, where are the kids... hey kiddies, grooming voice
8) Back to normal, talks to mayor
-END-
9)zombie attacks, healthy kids run... disabled kid gets mangled.
10)zombie, piper, ninja fight
11)boy=grateful, piper=horny, wheels him off...
-END-
12)piper walks back into FULL attack, sometown splatted on stage, somehiding behind props.
13) whips out fiddle, zombies scream and huddle
14) hand of god sets zombies alight
-END-
15) pay me! no! hype hype hype
-END-
16) Oi look at me! Pissy sweary OTT speech
17) whips out fiddle
18) children get hypnotised, dragged off.
19) piper on rock, playing fiddle, one by one child headbutt oral sex then knocked into river.
(20) piper puts down fiddle.. picks up cigarette and lights it off burning zombie.)
-ENDEND-

Now for the wonderful job of editing! Yay!

...blogaholics anonymous...

Oh fuck!

Well it looks like I have lost all powers of organisation, oops.

Hello, my name's Miss Chaos and I'm (unfortunately for coursework purposes!) a recovering blogaholic. It's been two months since my last post. But now I have fallen off the wagon and am about to make up for my severe lack of posts with one giant binge! Huzzah!

So, what has been happening I hear you ask? Well I shall tell you, you lucky lucky thing. Though they'll all be posted on the same day, I'm going to separate my work progress in to individual posts so it makes more sense (To me, maybe. To you, I doubt any of my posts make sense to the normal ones)

Right, on with the show.