first animation experiment

For my first experiment in animation, I took inspiration from a sketch book I've been working on, which centres around a collection of objects I bought while working abroad. One of these was a papier machie box, painted with flower shapes. I cut out each petal and let them fall slowly from the page. I was quite pleased with how the animation looked when finished, but realized the importance of using a tripod to ensure the photographs are taken from the same angle throughout.

links for animation inspiration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT2uECRxepo Innocence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Et7UQh1tg The pen story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAO0-dBxaw8 You picked me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poec4cGr0g4 Swiss air- feeling at home at 10,000 m

animation research

While researching stop motion animations for a college project, I was particularly inspired by several, all using different techniques. One was based on the lyrics of a pop song called 'You Picked Me' by A Fine Frenzy, and was made using paper cuts and painting. This was simple but very effective, and inspired my forst animation which I based on the lyrics of a Richard Hawley song called 'Open Up Your Door'.
Another animation called 'Innocence' featured a barbie type doll, tossing restlessly in bed in a darkened room. As she tries to sleep, the door slowly opens and a sinister looking doll constructed from mis-matched arms, legs and household implements, enters and begins to perform some kind of surgery on barbie. The action is not seen, but suggested by the cutting and sawing sounds in the background and the occasional flash of scissors opening and closing. The film ends with the barbie, who is now a pretty head atop a grusome collection of spare parts, entering another darkened room to perform the same destruction on another innocent. A dark and disturbing little piece.
The pen story, is an animation made to advertise a type of camera, and begins with a black and white photo of a family group outside a house. A boy then detaches himself and rides off to begin the journey of his life. This film is made entirely of photographs featuring the boy growing through adulthood, having family and siliding into middle age, the photos showing him in various stages and places and ends with him rejoining the same group, now all aged, in front of the same house. I thought this was a very effective way to suggest the power of photographs to recored and remember the journey of a life.
Another animation I was impressed with was one advertising the comforts of flying with Swiss Air, and features a man, sitting in a comfy chair, being provided with all the comforts of home, by an unseen hand. drinks appearing suddenly in hand, footrests, dvd screens, slippers and so on appearing as if by magic, all suggest an extremely luxurious and comfortable flying experience.

transformations

For my final animation, I drew again on my time working in the Middle East, but this time thinking about the experiences of arabic women. In many Islamic countries, women are not permitted to expose their flesh in public, and are expected to completely cover themselves in a shapeless length of black fabric known as a chador. They are also forbidden to attend public gatherings, musical performances etc. This inspired me to make an animation about the female experience of living in a patriarchial society. I began by cutting women out of arabic text, then painted them black to suggest the gradual covering of the girl as she reaches adulthood. I used a beautiful handmade wooden box I had bought in Oman, slowly opening, then had the black clad women rising from the box, as if escaping the confines and constraints of Islamic society. As they rise, they begin to transform into, firstly moths, and then beautiful butterflies as they become lighter and freer.

call to prayer animation

For my second animation, I drew on my experiences of working in the Middle East in the 1980's. This was a facinating distinctly foreign experience, where I was woken at sunrise every day by the mullahs singing the call to prayer from the minarets of the abundant mosques. For this animation, I used photographic images of minarets which i had taken myself, laid on top of torn paper collage of arabic text. I added typed words which relate to islam, eg muezzin, mosque Allah akbar etc, and added an authentic mullah singing the call to prayer which I downloaded from the internet.

annimation

While researching stop motion animations for a college project, i was inspired by one which was produced using painting and paper cut-outs, and used the lyrics of a pop song. This gave me the idea to build my own animation around a song i liked. This gave me the chance to try various animation techniques. The song title is 'Open up your door' by Richard Hawley, and I used a combination of household props, cut paper collage and painting. I put the film together on windows movie maker and used special features to zoom in at certain places and to add titles. I had some problems once i added the music, as I found once the music was on I needed to edit the film, but the computer kept freezing, so the final result is not as smooth as I would have liked.