still testing: stuck in France. so trying out sequence on doll.v
Puppet instead of real person:
When I came back to Edinburgh for this second term, I came to realise that my hope of having a real person posing in my installation wasn't going to happen. With the government guideline 'sty at home' no friends or actors could hep me out and my flatmates were all too submerged in their own work to help me out. So I decided to make my own life size human.
I used clothing, stockings and tape to make the outer structure of the puppet and stuffed it with pillow stuffing. I added pieces of wood in her legs and spine to give her more stability. I also added wire in the fingers and the feet to have more flexibility in the poses the puppet would be in (the puppet can grab things, point etc). The facial features are sewn on, made of fabric and painted papier mache.
The life size puppet works because it also adds to the uncanny effect I was trying to create with the living person. The projected animation onto the 'living' person made the viewer surprised with the unusual materiality and texture of the figure giving it an uncanny 'living' cartoon effect.
With the Puppet- we are initially aware of the inertness of the materials, that they are objects and their stillness but the animation projected onto it bring it to life and as we look, we sway between the suspension of disbelief created by the animation and the concrete materials of the real physical objects.
wire structures in toes and fingers to bend:
Testing colour block section of the storyboard on the puppet:
Immediately after testing a storyboard image on the puppet I came across a problem I hadn't thought about.
The life size scale of the puppet (which is the scale I want to use for the installation) is so big that the projector needs to be at a greater height to cover the puppet. The large scale of the puppet also covers most of my bedroom floor, which is difficult to work around for long periods of time without moving it and ruining the projections mapping.
As a solution I decided to test all the scenes with smaller stuffed toys and project from my desk to the ground. For the 'final' installation I will set up the projector at 2.5 to 3 meters high to project onto the lif
Playing with live action and sound:
First draft of 'the falling down trees' animated scene:
After testing the falling down the trees scene, I immediately saw several issues:
1- The figure only really looked like it was falling when the movement of it was falling straight down, not 'swerving'.
2- I need to figure out how to project without the 'side bits' maybe import my animation into a different software or find a way to hide it.
SET UP
Workflow: After a few weeks of uncertainty with the equipment I’d have to animate with, I now have a more permanent set up. I have a projector on my desk facing down to the floor onto a doll to test out each scene I animate, instead of testing the scenes directly onto the life size doll which would be time consuming. I also have a rostrum set up in my cupboard and have borrowed a DSLR camera for the live action sequences as well.
I am behind schedule, as I wanted to finish this installation by the end of February but now, I’m hoping to have all the animation done by the end of the first week of march. I’ve attached a basic scene Plan of the animation needed for this installation.
Important things left to do:
- Find a way to attach the projector high enough so that the life-sized puppet is fully inside the projected screen.
- Make decisions on how to film the installation, do a test and improve it.
- Find a sound designer
Falling down scene amended:
Scene Plan
Filming the installation: test 1
Using my room:
The setting of my room puts the installation into the physical and historic context of the time. It also places the installation in the feeling and mood of the idea behind the installation as well as the atmosphere making it. If we see 'the bedroom' as the representation of one's life translating the mood and feeling of the time, living everyday in the same room, surrounded by domestic objects and activities, then the installation is the literal space and place that animation is in my life, sitting among the other things.
I feel having other people in the room with the installation made the work feel more alive, acting as the extra person in the room. This experiment was quite naturalistic, showed what was happening 'behind the curtain'.
I would like to experiment with something more theatrical next, maybe filming my flatmates in costumes and make up in theatrical lighting posing next to the installation as if they were just another figure in the installation. Making everything in the frame the work.
Opening Scene
How is it made:
Calming textures using After Effects, hand drawn animation, and paper cut out 2D stop motion, some of it is then put into photoshop, also live action of bubbles on the beach.
I thought that the textures were very effective, and worked in the way I wanted to achieve. This is the beginning and end scene because the animation is a loop, and I wanted it to be the calm and tingle of the sensory experience of being, without doing anything.
I need to improve the 'bubble' around the figure, need it to be more striking as well as not too bright so that the light on the puppet isn't soaked in light. I'm thinking of maybe just having a line drawn bubble around the figure that 'breathes' and in one big breath as the bubble swells up the next scene starts.
In the filming of this video I tried out positioning 'Ashley' the life size puppet around the installation, to see what the more 'theatrical' set up would look like. I found that this put the animation in a completely different context and felt like the whole film could be interpreted in whatever way I position the objects surrounding the installation.
Monsters
The monsters come out of the pillows that surround the puppet, their hands grow from the pillows and stroke the puppet 'kindly' trying to help the wounded person. However as they cannot touch the person to help them, because they aren't physically there, they start to lose their humanity and become 'animal' scratching and hurting the person.
On top of my initial meaning from Margaret mead's statement, the monsters gained a different meaning while I was making them. I put on devil horns and makeup and filmed myself in front of a green screen, and then animated over the top with claymation and paint. While I was making them I started to feel like I was creating the digital alter ego of myself or that of the puppet maybe because the make up made me look completely different but with the same face or maybe it was the monster acting that made me feel less recognisable. I felt like the monsters represented the social media versions of ourselves who help us be more connected to others but when we really need them ( the puppet being hurt) the monsters can't help because they aren't physical beings and in the end, they end up hurting us more than helping, maybe not in the physical way I illustrate in this animation, but o our mental health.
Monster 1: I projected the first monster animation onto relief objects, which turned out to be more successful than projecting it onto a flat surface, even though that was what I initially intended to do.
Monster 2: I animated this monster with photoshop and after effects which I think was a mistake. I was trying to reduce the amount of time it took to animate it but it wasn't that much faster and didn't look as good. I think i wanted one to look more digital, but it lacked the textural contrast on the projected object. I will have to work on this one further.
One positive outcome of making this animation, is that i played around with projecting the animation onto moving surfaces, and distorting the projection with physical movement.
After making both monsters I felt a little stuck with the project. I felt like some parts of the animation worked for the installation and some didn't, and even the parts that did didn't stop the whole piece feeling very disjointed. I don't know how to transition through these projections, and whether the overall animation would make sense. Because it was hard to see what was missing, or what was bad for the narrative I decided to do a ROUGH RUN THROUGH. I projected down onto the floor from my table and assembled all the scenes I'd done so far. The projection mapping wasn't clean and the quality wasn't very high because it took too much time to load but it gave me a good overview of the installation and a 'to do list' to improve the installation.
VERY ROUGH RUN THROUGH:
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