Poor portfolio, you haven't been so much as looked at for well over a year. I've decided that maybe it's time I went back and tinkered with, maybe even starting all over. Some things I wanna do with it:
- Replace the black card with a lighter Grey type colour, so the images stand out better. - Get some life drawings in there. it's needs a few at least. - Take some older stuff out. - Get some newer stuff in. - Generally tidy things up, like how everything lines up.
But before I do, I decided to take photos of all the pages in it so far. You know, for memories sake. I've posted all the pages below. I want some recommendations? What stuff from there should I keep in or take out? I'll take any advice you can throw at me, because I want this thing to be good. There's some stuff in there I haven't shown online before, like the cels I made for Rocket Number Nine.
Remember that I said I would list my favorite films of the Norwich Festival? Yeah, I almost forgot myself, so here it is. I even found some of the films on YouTube so you can see them for yourself.
CREATURE COMFORTS 'MONARCHY BUSINESS' Seen it on the telly before, but seeing it in a cinema with an audience was a completely different experience. Made all the more funnier because of that rat that reminded us of that Scottish bloke at that pub the night before, rambling about British anthems.
PLAN B - NO GOOD This music video has a great spontaneous feel to it, a lot like the king of all music promos: Sledgehammer. I sure would love to make stuff like this myself! Found a Youtube of it, posted by Danolboy.
A DAY ON FLAT EARTH A fantastic idea that is made all the sweeter by it's inspiration: a US-based Society who still belie the world is flat. "CAR! IT'S OK!"
RABBIT Saw this film last year, but it was just as wickedly funny the second time. There's a bit of a guilty pleasure in seeing a little boy topple over a horse with a baseball bat. Here's a Youtube copy, as provided by MarianoPR.
FABLE Prooth positive that traditional cel animation, when painted as well as this, can create a incredible sense of actually being there. This film really drags you into it's world.
JONA / TOMBERRY 3D CGI really proved itself to be an amazing tool when placed in the right hands at this year's festival, and this film really pushed he envelope. The voice acting was a little iffy, but it is a truly nightmarish film that has to be seen to be believed, and on the big screen if at all possible. Animation can be scary! Here's a trailer posted by Kolchis.
T.O.M More wicked, dark British comedy here, with a kid that hides all of his clothes in odd places. Not only was it a real crowd pleaser, but it looked the bee's knees too, with fantastic use of colour.
DOG EAT CAT MOUSE Like Rabbit, this one was screened last year, but when a film is as fun as this, who's complaining? Here's a Youtube of it, posted by Equ1nox.
CHRYSALIDE (IKI) Now this sure was a surprise. When it started, I was certain I was going to hate it, but boy was I wrong. Hard to describe, so I really wish I could find a online copy of it that could do all he talking for me.
RENASSANCE This stop motion film by the late Walerian Boroczyk was not only technically wonderful, but also utterly surreal and very funny.
SOME EXERCISES IN PREPARATION FOR INDEPENDENT LIFE Priit Parn's films were undoubtedly my favorite of the entire festival, but if I had to pick just one of his films I saw, it may as well be this one. This one had no dialog and was rather abstract in it's narrative, and yet it was perfectly readable what it was all about, unlike so many of the jumbled 'arty' films screened, which tried to be clever by being nonsense.
90 DEGREES Supinfocom students seem to have magic powers that enable them to make the most stunning CGI short films out there, and this is no exception. Here's a Youtube copy of the film as posted by Miraclemart.
TYGER Holy, holy, wow. This film is simply indescribable, yet awe inspiring and jaw dropping. The film almost got a standing ovation, and rightfully so. Such an ingenious combination of techniques, and so well executed. Best film of show, I reckon. While it won't have quite the same impact as it did on a big screen, here it is on YouTube, thanks to Jbarahona!
Finally, here's a top 5 of the things I wish I didn't miss there:
5: FILMS FOR CHILDREN It was on the Saturday, after we left, and they showed Clik-clak, among with some other interesting looking films. Darn.
4: THE 2ND PRIIT PARN SCREENING The second set of Priit Parn films was screened Saturday morning, so I could have gone to see it, but that would mean I have to exit early to jump on the coach, and I hadn't even really gotten the chance to look about the shops, so I did that instead. Oh well, I did see the first lot of his films, so I'm happy with that.
3: RABBIT DISSECTED We had to leave on the coach at the time this seminar with the guys the created the fantastic 'Rabbit' was on. I would of liked to have seen how they came up with such a mad hatter film.
2: SUPINFOCOM Quite a few of my favorite films I saw this year came from this French college, but I didn't know this until after it was all over. There was a whole screening of loads more of their films, but it was on at the same time as the Commercial Films/ Films for TV. If I could go back, maybe I would have gone to this instead, and saw the 2nd screening of TV films the next day.
1: KOJI YAMAMURA One of the animators I was most excited about seeing the films of, judging from what I have seen of his work: Mt.Head and...that's it. Again, this screening was on the Saturday afternoon. Darn you Coach and our early-ness!
As you may or may not remember, I have wrote about this movie on here in the past, but Masaaki Yuasa's masterpiece feature film 'Mind Game' still lacks a distributor in the west, so unless you import the DVD from Japan (which has no English subtitles), there isn't much chance of seeing it at the moment. However, a YouTube member by the name of Zak78 has uploaded the entire film, separated into ten parts but also available as a play list, and it's subtitled! While this by no means the best way to see the film; in a tiny compressed internet video, for most people it will have to do until it one day shows itself outside of Japan. Spread the love on this fantastic film, and maybe the distributors will start to listen! Zak also has some other interesting looking anime films and OVA's on his YouTube account as well, which may be worth a look as they don't appear to fall into the usual generic path a lot of anime we see released over here does.
Here we are on the final part of my report on the Norwich Animation Festival. Although I do plan to write some more stuff later as well, like what were my overall favourite films and what ones I can find online for you to see, but for now let's go into the last two days of the event.
FRIDAY 20th
Started the day like we did the one before: got up at 7:30, went off to that little cafe for a English Breakfast, then skittled off to the Playhouse for the first screening, which was for Student Films.
First up, a CGI film called 90 Degrees, from that infamous Supinfocom Uni. It starts with a series of rusty looking blocks that at first seem to be recreating Tetris, but they in fact slowly crumble into a human like body that for the rest of the film chases it's head around a mad abstract landscape. Hard to describe, but an amazing film to say the least, with incredible visuals and sound. A good start to the screening, then.
Next it was Akkad, also from a French student. This film used film footage of a busy city, and cut them out in interesting ways. The best part was at the very start, as a spiral of roads spin around the screen. Over wise, a bit longwinded, but interesting enough.
Ego was up next, yet another CGI French film (I may as well say now that with one exclusion, all the Student films shown were either French of British) from Supinfocom with incredible visuals, and a very clever story in which a man walks through his mirror in which he tries to make contact with his reflection. There was one particular scene in it, where the two characters are running through a city being destroyed, one of them backwards, and then they reverse and repeat themselves but the other way around. Another tour de force for the eyes, there.
Now we get to a British film, from the Edinburgh College of Arts, Solo Duets, a stop motion piece with great models, which has won it's creator Joseph Feltus a lot of awards so far, and is bound to grab many more too. I would need to see this more than once to really get what's going on, however, and the Festival catalogue doesn't really help much with it's description. Thought provoking films often go other my head, because I'm a daft twit.
Ana by Marie Decavel was a beautifully illustrated film a lot like 'Tragic story with happy Ending' the day before, only this one was about a girl was constantly covered in bugs, although it had a lot more to it than that. It looked great, at least.
Speaking of hand drawn films done in pencil, next up was Moments of I Don't Know, which had a nice scribbly style to it that reminded me a bit of My Neighbours the Yamadas. And it was British~!
Comme un Lundi (Cement Shoes) was about as far away from being 'animated' as you can get (In my opinion, at least) but was a least well executed for what it was: a story of a woman who wakes up to find that time is moving incredibly fast, as cars are now nothing more than blurred lights whizzing around. After encountering some mad fluttering birds, she goes to her parents house and yes, even they are whizzing about at 100 miles per hour, until they sit down and talk to her, in which they then begin to slow down to the point where they are almost at a complete standstill. I kind of wish they subtitled it, at least.
The one film in here that was not French or British was Naked Youth, of which came from a Japanese student. It highlighted the boring moments of the life of a high school student, and looked very nice with great lighting and all, but for some odd reason it kept repeating a scene where a boy walks out of the shower and drops his towel, with all to see. First time, fair enough, but FIVE times? Ugh.
The last film, made by two lads from Wales, was a great laugh. t.o.m. was about the journey of a kid every morning with an odd twist, in that every morning he hid all of his clothes in different places, then goes to school naked, where everyone, as you would expect, laughs at him. Not only did this film look great with a strong range of colours, but the dialogue from the kid was priceless. Some examples;
"When I look at my shirt it looks like an invisible ma is wearing it...but that's silly.""The woman at the counter looks dead, but she don't smell too bad."
It was a choice of either another collection of films or the 2nd half of that 'Silicon valley' seminar next, and the one the day before was pretty interesting, so I decided to join the rest to that. This time it was a talk with a group of people that don't like the whole realism thing and try to use computer graphics in different ways. The first guy to talk was a game modder who took the likes of Quake and buggered about with he graphics until it looked like an abstract interactive piece of art (Read: a mess of colours and shapes that mean nothing). He also showed us a game that worked in the same way as the 'Bullet hell' genre does, only with mad colourful shapes instead of space ships and anime characters. Pretty darn cool if you ask me. Make sure to check out his website thinkinggames.co.uk
IGLOO were an odd bunch, they make installations of virtual forests and dress up as camouflage within natural environments. AL + AL were blue screen specialists that made unusual arty films with the technology, pushing it into places that it wasn't "supposed" to do into. They showed us a bit of a film they did, which was pretty odd but looked cool anyway.
There was also this Theory guy who didn't actually have anything of his own to show, but showed us muted clips from Final Fantasy: The Sprits Within and Waking Life then went into a long, long ramble about alcamy, or something. By this point I was almost asleep.
Also there again was Johnny Hardstaff, who went and showed us that "Future of Gaming" film he did that Sony rejected. Oh god, I was really hoping I'd never have to watch that shite again after seeing it when Onedotzero came to our Uni, but he did give them what they wanted; a film that would make the Playstation 2 look like a treat to humanity. He had some really strong views on gaming, saying that it was training everyone into soldiers and simply made to keep us in our place, completely ignoring, you know, everything but the war games we are bombarded with each year, and no, video games don't make me any more violent than Movies and TV do. It seems gaming still has this nasty stigma attached to it, which is a little unfair as it's still a young medium and still has a long way to go.
That seminar went on at least 30 minutes longer than it was supposed to, and hardly anyone actually got to ask any questions. I was so tempted to ask hardstaff if an Atari had been dropped on is head as a baby, but I resisted. =P
After that mostly boring almost-3 hour talk, everyone popped over to that Glass Room rub for something to eat but I really wanted to see thePriit Parnscreening, so I went to that instead, and I'm glad I did. This veteran from Estonia is something of a legend, in very much the same way as Marv Newland is, in that he really knows how to make people laugh, and a good laugh was something this festival needed more of. He was there at the start to introduce his films, and I had grabbed one of the seats near the front row. They showed five of his films, with four more planned for the next morning. Most of these films came to almost half an hour long, but unlike so many other films here, kept your attention the entire time.
Firstly there was Time Out, about a cat/racoon type thing with far too many chores to do, that keeps skipping back and forth to start new ones while defeating the point of others, without any time to rest. The clock is truly his enemy until an animators hand comes down and shuts it off, sending the cat to a dream holiday in which visual gags are thrown at you from every corner rapidly. Great fun.
Breakfast on the Glass looks into the life’s of many different people living under communist rule is the USSR, with plenty of black comedy and in-genius moments. Without a doubt, this guy is nothing short of a genius. The next film, Night of the Carrots, which was actually dubbed in English, only went to prove this even more, with it's truly bizarre and twisted humour. Some Exercises in Preparation for Independent Life actually turned out to be my favourite, looking into how we go from joyful, spontaneous children to repetitive, workaholic adults and then back again when we grow old. See? This is how to get a message across, without just plain confusing your audience!
Karl and Marilyn was another epic, about a famous body builder (Kyle) who grows tired of fame and makes a break for it by having his infamous beard shaved off, so no one could recognise him. Marilyn is the complete opposite, as someone who looks after a crazy old woman that escapes from her fate and looks for fame and fortune by err...becoming Marilyn Monroe, complete with a "Boop-oop-be-doop" and erm...no knickers. Another wicked masterpiece. In the end I had more fun at this screening than everything else put together. A real legend!
After this screening it was 'Short Films', again at the Playhouse (Just about everything worth seeing was there today). Fable was the reason why I would to see more 2D cel animation on the big screen: it just looked beautiful, so much so that you could actually smell and feel the forest scenery, helped by it's 35mm presentation.
Ichthys was a very nicely done stop motion film in which a man sails his way to a restaurant in the middle of the sea, and takes an order from the one waiter there. He goes fishing for the meal, and the man ends up waiting there for years, and years, before he starts to hallucinate and go crazy. By the time the waiter finally comes back with the meal, a tiny little fish, the man has died in his seat covered in cobwebs. Great stuff.
Rabbit, which was sown last year for the Channel 4 Animate! thing, was screened again, and it's still as great as the first time I saw it, plus it has won dozens of awards since it's debut last year. If you haven't seen it yet, I recommended you do.
All People is Plastic was a 3D piece of a city full of grey, soulless office workers that all do the same exact thing at the same exact time, and when one of them decides to do something different, he gets run over. Heh. The filmed deliberately used generic Poser models for the characters, which got across the whole uniform look perfectly.
Day of Nose, a Japanese film, was odd to say the least. Animated with simple hand drawn characters, all these identical looking boys lined up on chairs to get their noses honked. The whole film had these characters getting pleasure from nose manipulation. It was very funny, though, and well animated for what it was.
The next film, Flesh, was probably the film that has the most awards to it's name but I personally hated it, and really didn't think it was necessary. New York is recreated with...for some reason...porn plastered all over them, and then the Twin Towers attack are recreated, with big abstract explosions. As if this wasn't bad enough, hundreds of planes come along and blow the entire city up, transforming it into some kind of hell. I'm rarely offended by anything, me, but I just found this film to be disgusting. The explosions looked great and the soundtrack was good, yes, but it just made me feel sick to the stomach, as if the film was saying that the Americans deserve to be blown to pieces for being dirty corrupt bastards. It's almost as if the director was going out of his way to make the most offensive film he could. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if this was flat out banned in the US.
The next film, a full 15 minutes long, didn't do much to cheer me up. Leviathan was another steaming pile of political tripe, featuring hundreds of naked 3D people dancing about for winning a war, or something. There was also a dragged out scene of these heads being repeatedly crushed. Again, it looked great, but it just rubbed me he wrong way and after a few minutes I was just waiting for it to end.
Finally, they cheered me up with some films that were not trying to be some kind of political statement, starting with The Grotlyn, by those lovely chaps at Studio AKA. A sort of children’s horror story, complete with a poem and Tim Burton like visuals, this turned out to be a charming, sweet little film. Finally, The Tale of How followed in a similar way with a folk song about Piranha birds who get the help of a mouse to rid them of a giant octopus. Using 3D characters and stunning illustrations, this film was a real feast for the eyes and ears.
Because it was the last night at Norwich, everyone decided to meet at the Golden Sun for a booze up, and there was nothing on really worth missing out on it for, so I tagged along too, and we basically sang Queen songs all night. It was great fun. Finally stumbled into bed at about 3.
SATURDAY 21st
Woke up about 9 the next morning, and packed my bags ready for later, as sadly the coach was coming for us at 12, which I personally felt was too early, and meant that we would miss out on quite a few things, like the screening of Koji Yamamura's films. There was another set of Priit Parn on at 10 that morning, but because I hadn't had much time to the rest of the time, I decided to spend that morning looking around the shops.
There sure was some odd people about that morning, on one of the streets thee was this old man with some crappy little sock puppets playing what sounded like Jive bunny music from his stereo. I don't know what was weirder, this crazy old git dancing about with puppets, or the fact that people were actually giving him money for doing so. I also bumped into a lady in a huge tomato costume, giving out leaflets. While we do have a our local old clown guy down our high street, he doesn't come close to these weirdoes.
After trailing the shops for a bit, I went back to the Playhouse shop to nab a souvenir, and ended up buying a t-shirt for £10. then is was almost time to leave, so I got all my stuff out of the hotel room and got on the coach, of which we got back home on by 3pm.
To continue from where I left with yesterday's post, here's how Thursday went at the Norwich Animation Festival:
THURSDAY 19th
Woke up at about 7:30 to meet with the guys down in reception, as they knew of somewhere to get a nice brekky. Unfortunly the Glass Room rub didn't open up till 10, and the first screening was at that time, so instead we found a little cafe that did a full English breakfast for £4, which was nice.
The 10am screening we popped over to (at the Playhouse) was "Commercials Films and Films for TV", which did exactly what it says on the tin: screened animations that have been on the telly, such as adverts, music videos, and TV shows, but in a cinema instead. Firstly, the premiere of the video for Sweatmasters' 'Good Looks, Big Deals', which used a combination of CGI and stop motion, with the band as photographed cut outs riding toy cars. Wheee.
Screencaps from catsuka.com
This was followed by films you most likely would have seen by now: Gorillaz' 'El Manana', the 'Petrol Station' ad for Kia Rio and the 'Mayfly' ad for Vodaphone (both by Passion Pictures), the 'Bag of Smiles' National Lottery ad by Studio AKA and the Johnny Walker 'Paintings' ad by Aardman. Next up was a fantastic pixelation film for the song 'No good' by Plan B, which is a lot like the classic 'Sledgehammer' video, in that it all appears to be made up as it goes along. There was another film called 'Thoughts of a Falling glass man' that used photography and what looked like Flash to create funky little mechanical creatures made out of belt buckles and paper clips, that help to re-build their guardian, a huge robot, that is blown to pieces by a group of planes.
Gravenhurst's 'The Velveyt Cell' was a sketchy, angry looking piece with some great techniques being pushed about that fir the song perfectly. Finally, there was Camera's 'Out of the Water', which featured a cute little maggot that escapes from his fish-hook fate and ends up living in the mouth of a whale.
Then it was on to the TV productions. First off, an episode of Bob the Builder. Yeah. It would of been more bearable if it wasn't an entire extended 30-minute episode, although there was one funny moment in it:
Bob: "Can we fix it?" Talking Fork-lift thing: "Why are you shouting?"
Next; an episode of Pingu, which was luckily only 5 minutes. I remember watching this as a kid, so it's interesting to see that after all these years it's still going and hasn't changed much in the process. I'm guessing the voice actors have to get drunk before going into the sound booth for the nutty gobble-de-gook noises the characters make. At least it's still done in stop-motion.
Speaking of re-makes, they then showed an episode of the new series of Willo the Wisp, which is produced by the daughter of the original series' creator. Most of the voices sound the same, and there have only been too slight redesigns: Edna is now a wide screen digital telly, and Willo himself is more Casper like now. Over wise, it's still as funny as it used to be, judging from this episode.
Finally, there was an episode of Creature Comforts, the episode where they talk about the Monarchy. While funny on the TV, watching this in cinema was a completely different experience, as everyone roared with laughter with this one. Also, there was a mouse in it that reminded us of that Scottish bloke we had met the night before! A fun little screening then, although if I had known who they were at the time, I may of gone to the Supinfocom screening instead.
I was going to pop over to the Puppet Theatre next for another screening, but I was convinced to stay at the Playhouse for the Seminar called 'A 3D Scanner darkly', which was all about the 'Silicon valley' effect. The guys at the talk (which was the first of two parts) were all technicians that had produced ultra-realistic computer equipment such as '4D face scanning' and 'natural motion' technologies, which hey demonstrated. There was also a guy talking about Machinma and a game he is working on that will let you make your own machinima movies, and someone who worked for Sony on Playstation games. Quite an interesting argument burst out on wherever or not people actually wanted this technology, and wherever it was expanding our imagination or pushing it back. I just love how the Sony guy finally spurted out "LOCO ROCO!" as everyone was praising every game developer but Sony.
Everyone slipped off to a pub after this, but I wanted to go see the screening of Igor Kovalyov at 3, so I popped there instead. You may know him mainly for his work in cartoons such as Rugrats and Duckman, but here they showed off his short films, which are a lot more dark and acclaimed winning him countless awards. His characters are grotesque and ugly, and his illustration style and use of textures is beautifully done. Only 4 films here, but they were all around 10-15 minutes. Hen his Wife, which I walked into a little late, missing the beginning, was made before Igor worked in America for Klasky Csupo. It featured a odd family featuring a slug and a hen and was, to say the least, a bit odd and confusing, but also funny. This description could be used for all of the films of his they played, but not to say I didn't enjoy them. On the contrary, I love this guy's stuff. They also showed Bird in the Window and Milch, as well as Flying Nansen, probably the funniest of the lot. Well worth it, even though they did show two of them last year.
Next screening was 'Shifting Perceptions' at the Puppet Theatre, which turned out to be a mixed bag of dull to truly incredible films. The first film, 'A Day in Flat Earth' was a great start, with people lying themselves down on a road acting out scenes st up with chalk drawings, that was filmed from the top window of a house. There was a great scene at the end where one of the girls was pretending to be asleep in a chalk drawn bedroom, when somebody shouts "CAR!" and she jumps out of the road as a car trolls pas. Funny stuff!
'A Rainy day' was a very well illustrated film, and 'Adjustment' had a very good story and a great use of flipbooks. 'Birchbeer' was far too sor to really judge, 'Jar' was a great abstract 2D animation, and 'Utotique' was a very nice abstract piece of a stripped black and white world and the creatures that peer of from within it. 'Dream Grammer' was again a traditional 2D piece which was also great fun. 'Jona / Tomberry', which a huge crew of staff behind it that used all sorts of live action and CGI techniques, was very creepy and very slick, a truly epic film which was made all the more spectacular thanks to it being run on a 35mm.
s if those films weren’t great enough, nothing prepared me for 'Tyger', (Click he link to view it yourself) a Brazilian film inspired by a poem by William Blake. This film used so many techniques so well that it literally left me speechless. There was a huge, puppet Tiger in it controlled by 3 men in black shadow puppet costumes, walking around a CGI city transforming very well drawn 2D characters into animals. The end shot of the film was breathtaking. Without a doubt one of the best films I saw the whole festival.
'Generation' looked very good, especially for a CGI piece, but it went on for far too long. Black Day to Freedom was also very well excuted, if not my cuppa tea. 'Fever Dream' was another film of flipbooks, only this time they were photo flipbooks. 'Look for me' was made at Slinky Pictures (which our Uni has contacts with) by laura Heit, and told he story of a girl who one day wakes up invisable, enjoys it for a while but soon misses her normal life, hat used a cute digital 2D style. Finally; 'Rose Darling', which was possibly the longest 3 minutes of my life as a image of a girl forms from what looked like a bunch of hair floating in a toliet. Hmm.
After a quick curry at the Glass Room pub, went to the next screening, 'Transfigured, Transformed', another collection of recently made short films from all over the world, and another mixed bag. 'Line Dance' was a short mambo dance animation made in acrylic on glass, and 'Taste the World' used some good illustration techniques to explore tourism. 'Surface for Surface' was, well, stop motion paintings that layer over each other for 5 minutes (yawn). 'Oh Deer' was also simply a lengthy waste of space, like watching a bunch of Hello Kitty images that barely move for 6 minutes, and 'Little Skipper'? t was a bunch of Butterfly prints flickering about. I sometimes wonder how some of these films, which look like nothing more than little times wasters on a lunchbox, get through to these festivals. 'Sing', really took the biscuit in terms of "how the hell did that get picked?', although it did turn out to be the most funny films of the whole festival. Imagine this if you will; a guy draws a face on a Lollipop stick and wiggles it in front of a fuzzy B&W camera for 2 minutes, puts some odd music to it, then sends it to a festival, you know, for a laugh. Well, here I was, watching a Lollipop wobble across the screen. Yep. At least it made us all cry laughing at the sheer stupidity of it all, especially when it faded out, then after making us think it was over, popped back up again.
EDIT: I found the 'Sing' online at the creators blog! Here!
There was also a film I almost slept through, as it was a whole 16 minutes long and just about nothing happened in it. The only thing keeping me awake through 'Un, Deux, Trois, Crepuscule' was all the little stickmen running about the screen. Over wise, it was pretty darn boring.
There was some good films with stories in this screening too, though. 'Sproling' featured a woman who grows a baby in a flower pot thanks to a 'Instant-Baby' kit, that turns out to have some bizarre side effects. 'Tragic Story with Happy Ending' was a very well drawn story of a girl who's heart beat too load. 'Sinistra Dextra', also illustrated entirely in Black and White, was about a puppeteer who's right arm gets a mind of it's own and causes him all sorts of trouble. 'Eat Dog Cat Mouse' was a great laugh with a Mouse, cat, Dog and man who all try to eat each other (not as gruesome as it sounds, thanks to it's cute 3D style and wicked sense of humour), and 'The Magic Gloves', a surely drug-influenced film, starred a mouse that finds a pair of magic gloves (that look just like those gloves Michael Jackson used to wear) that uses them to stop an owl and weasel from eating him by err...making them happy with colourful magic rays? Yeah, it was sweet, though. There was also a film called 'Flighty', also by Slinky Pictures, starring butterflies made out of collage pieces on a speed date. Speedy it was, as it was over as suddenly as it began.
The best film in this show to me, though, was actually the kind of film I normally wouldn't even like. Chrysalide 'Iki' had a motion-captured (so it seemed) low Polygon 3D man performing the Japanese dance of Buto in extremely slow motion, with what sounded like the worst arthritis I've ever heard. It stated at a standstill, but slowly the character stretches himself into all kinds of positions before, without warning, within the last minute, the man explodes into a mess of spikes and polygons that really just has to be seen to be believed. One of the festivals real surprises, as I normally know when I'm going to like or hate something as soon as it starts, but this one proved me wrong.
I was going to go to the Puppet Theatre for the last screening of more Boroczyk, but ended up losing my bearings and found myself back at the pub that my mates were hanging out at, The Golden Star, which was very much next door to the hotel we stayed at, so I gave up on the idea and stayed there instead for the rest of the night.
So that was Thursday, a very busy day of screening indeed: barely got time to do anything else! Come back tomorrow for the third and final part of this long, long report.
Well, actually I got back yesterday at 3pm, but that's besides the point. Had a great time watching loads of good (and bad) films of all sorts, then heading over to the many pubs or shops around here afterwards. Like I did last year, I will summarize the best and worst of what I saw each day for you all.
WEDNSDAY 18th
Left on the coach about 9am, and arrived in Norwich about 11-ish. After booking into the Travel Inn hotel (the same one we went to last year, as they were the only place to take "Essex people" in!) we popped over to the Playhouse where we got our pass, which was just the one card this year, rather than a pile of tickets. For some reason they put my name down on mine as "Foster Foster".
Just as we got these, the doors opened to the cinema room for something or other. Some of us ran in, not really knowing (or caring) what it was going to be). Not a good idea, as it turned out to be a Seminar with a pair of blokes drinking Pimm's, one of which had wrote a book about animation. What the hell they were talking about wasn't made easy by the fact that every other word was a "Err" or a "Erm", and he screened a film he made with, what he actually described in the film itself, was just a live action light that he took into a editing program and slapped some filters on. There was also a very brief shot ripped from Bambi in there for some reason, too. I soon left half way through this rubbish.After killing some time, I went searching for one of the other locations were they were doing screenings, the Norwich Puppet Theatre, located in a Medieval Church. This place was great: it had old raggedy puppets dangling from all of the walls and ceilings, and an animatronic donation creature that did a crazy jig every time you plopped a coin in it. Here's some photos I took there.
At 3 there was a screening here of films by the recently deceased Walerian Borowczyk. You know, one of those animators from a country that genrally has next to no animation to it's name, that started out doing funny, crude little animations, and ended up making dull films that weren’t really animated at all. His first film, Byl Sobie Raz, was surely an inspiration to Terry Gilliam. Szkola was a funny little film about a solider using the pixelation technique to create comic timing that just wouldn't be possible in live action, Les Jeux des Anges had angels' getting their heads cut off, and Dom (screened last year) featured a stop-motion wig that ate things. Nice. There was also a live action film with nothing but flowers and a kitten in it, although I can't which one that is from the festival's cataloque, with it's complex descirptions of most of the films.
The best film they showed of his, however, was Renaissance. This incredible stop motion film of a bombed out room that re builds its self piece by piece. Wallpaper peels back into place, a stuffed owl is formed back together feather by feather, paper untears itself back into a book, and much more. Once the room is back to normal, a little clock guy comes along with a grenade and blows it all again! Fantastic.
After that screening I went looking for the Glass Room pub I remember getting good meals from last time, with no such luck. I must of walked most of the town! Bumping into some of the other lot, we went over to the Lord Mayor's Reception at the city hall, where I finally got something to eat, even if it was just a load of nibbles.
Next up, I decided to go over to the Arts Centre, which was also a Church once (they have a lot of those here) to see a performance by the Light Surgeons, a Video DJ duo who once I did a project on in my Multimedia course. These guys take footage of just about anything, from their own footage to stuff on the telly, and ash them up into music live, with a huge screen in front of them displaying the footage. Watching the mixer guy at the front wiggle those dials about to make the footage jump was fun, and overall it was a very interesting show, and certianly something you have to see live to really get the feel of it, although I didn't stay about for the entire thing.
By now it was about 11:30 and I followed the guys from the animation course third year to a rather unusual pub one of them was drawn to called the Plow. As soon as you walked it was as if we had walked into another era: a time when everyone would sit around the fireplace and sing songs together, before technology had took over our lives. For quite some time we had this crazy but loveable old Scotsman ramble on to us about utter nonsense, which was a good laugh. We left there about 1, and that was Wednesday!
Hoo hoo! What a day! It all started with me waking up almost too late for Uni, and for many hours from then on, forgetting just about everything and anything, which led to me climbing flights of stairs or waiting eons for lifts over and over, so by midday I was pretty frustrated with myself. Pretty bog horrid day to date, then.
Well, at 2:30, we were all due to meet up with the Sci-Fi staff who had popped down for the day. I know, I said I'd shut up about them, but what else have I got to talk about? Anyway, they were here to show the other animation/multimedia groups the animations we did, where we had to briefly talk about our films. This was to convince these other groups to also make animations for the channel, so they will start airing them on TV once they have around 20 (currently, as you can see on the website, there is just the 10 so far).
Now when we first went to into live project, there wasn't really a "prize" for making an animation, except the fact that our films could be aired on TV, which is great in it's own right, but today they revealed that they had changed their minds, and had set a poll with all the staff on the Universal floors of the Oxford Street building. Rachel was the "Honourable Mention" and got a video iPod, which was nice. The winning place was in fact a draw between three people, so all 3 got a winning prize of a Archos AV 500: Joe, David and...me!
The prize came in this funky wrapping paper that reminds me of wallpaper we had in my house back when I was a kid (only it wasn't sliver), and had this cute little tag.
Once all this had taken place, we had our photos done (both the lot of us that did animations and the four of us who won prizes), which will be in the Local newspaper! Hoo hoo!
Now what is this AV 500 thingy then? Well, it's a 'Mobile Digital Video Recorder' that can be used as an MP3 player, photo viewer, movie clip viewer, and it can even rip video off of a telly! I remember Luke (AKA Surreal 8 on the interwebs) showing me something a lot like it, and looking it up this appears to be worth around £300. Holy hell!
Now if it wasn't something I would of got much use out of, I would have sold it off, with the money going towards a Nintendo Wii, but there's no way I'm getting of this. For starters, all of my animations and my showreel are going straight onto it for when I leave for Norwich tomorrow, just in case I bump into any animation guys I could maybe get a job or work placement out of! I've also found out it can be pretty handy for reading comics...
So overall a rather sweet day in the end! Now I just need to pack my stuff ready for tomorrow, and I'll see you lot when I get back Saturday!
You're probably all getting tired with me yammering on about my latest animation, but now it's online, I can finally un-earth all the making of it, and what not, because I like to share with you guys. This will be the last topic I make about it until I hear anything more about what they are doing with it, with any luck!
First, here's the (very small) amount of research and sketching work I did before making the film. When I first came up with the idea, I was going to show shots of the bikes in full, and even the characters that drive the bikes, but I ended up going with the much more abstract, less obvious (and easier to animate!) coloured lines.
Next is a storyboard, which I never actually finished. I had the whole idea mapped out in my head, and I felt that I should just get straight to the animation.
I actually animated the ending twice, as I think I may of pointed out before. The first one was, the say the least, a bit rubbish. I had the shoe flying into shot, with the paper in the distance. What really ruined this scene was the fact that I animated it in twos instead of ones, like the rest of the film, because this shot was rather tiresome to do, the way I was doing it. Also, the way I had timed the red line driving along the cardboard, it ended up near the end of it long before I wanted it too, so it started fast then slowed down as it got near the card. Also, in this version the line doesn't blow up, and you hear it (in the rough soundtrack) drive off. Here's some screenshots of that first cut.
When I had shown the animation to the studio, and they had given me their useful critique, more flaws shone through. Not only were the timing and angles bad on the previous ending, but the sudden appearance of a shoe in the film didn't make sense, and thered lines fate wasn't really clear, so when I re-animated it second time, as you saw in the final film, I animated my arm pulling the shoe off, setting up the shot, and showed the arm holding the shoe, rather than it appearing to be floating. This time I also had the red line blow up, to wrap it up better. I animated this scene about 20 times before I was satified with it, unlike the previous one which I rushed together. Compare this to the scene on which I based it vaguely on.
This time, they also recommended us all to add intro and end cards of some sort. The first cut did have a end card, but it was just a static image, which I've posted below. I couldn't use this anyway, because it had a link to MY website on it. Bah, it was worth a try! =P
Finally, here's some screen cap comparisons between the original scene in Tron, and the animation. The references are even more obvious when you listen to the animation in relation to this scene.
