OUAN406: A Tale in The Sting: Informing Style (E4)

OUAN406: Informing Style:

For my E4 ident, I am very, very intent on using an anime (Moe) style for this ident. Anime is my preferred style yet I haven't had the chance to use it once in any of my previous projects. Considering this ident is for E4, what better place to use it than now? The exact style I wanted to aim for (anime is a very broad genre, it reaches way beyond the stereotypical style of schoolgirls and overly-large breasts) was moe. Moe is basically overly-cute, overly-cheesy and usually quite shallow in storyline as in between all the cheeky shots of panties and bras, there usually isn't much to look at as it's usually just a bunch of clumsy girls falling over and acting "cute".

I wanted to create a character with this personality as it would really work as a mic-take of the stereotypical Japanese popular culture. By making her a clumsy warrior, it would add humour and appeal. In terms of style, a mixture of Princess Robot Bubblegum from GTA IV, Sailor Moon, elements of Panty & Stocking With Garter Belt, Cardcaptor Sakura, Tokyo Mew Mew, Madoka Magica and Senpai Club.

Moe as a subgenre is the stereotypical anime style you see plastered all over Japanese billboards and subway posters, usually aimed at older men as a style as it's purely eyecandy and fanservice for seedy men who love looking at women that take the form of younger girls. "Lolicon" is very similar in style and morals. Here is an example of both Moe and Lolicon.

Found on silverparfait.blogspot.com
The idea of a cute girl with a weapon fighting off giant monsters is a very popular and overly-used storyline in Japan of which I want to use as a parody for my ident.

In terms of character personality, I was thinking of conforming to the "Lolicon" subgenre of anime, which is very similar to Moe in the sense of art style and narratives, as Lolicon anime usually features older girls with very young personalities, often relating to the clumsiness and cutesy-cutesy stereotype.

Note the incredibly cheesy opening title sequence, this is also a parody and one I hold close in terms of reference as I want achieve something similar to this. 

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Matt Groening's "The Simpsons"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Although it's been a while since I last watched this amazing satirical TV show, I still remember the good ol' first season like it was yesterday. I remember the hype about how good The Simpsons was back in primary school when I was around the age of five or six. I remember how unlike South Park (a very similar show in terms of humour, albeit a lot stronger and edgier!) there wasn't a massive divide in who liked The Simpsons and who didn't; we all simply loved it!

Although it first aired in 1989, it was the talk on most of our lips for a good few years as it was just so popular! From the way the characters looked - it was extremely unique in the Noughties (2000's) to see these bright yellow characters with blue, green and goodness-knows-what-else coloured hair - all the way down to their extravagant personalities, all of us remember The Simpsons.

The Simpsons' family consisted of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie. (Santa's Little Helper and Snowball (the family pets) came later on in the show) and were introduced slowly). Looking back, I liked how Groening slowly drip-fed his audience the hundreds of characters he had created over many seasons to keep his audience interested instead of simply throwing them all in your face right at the start. for a good few of the first episodes, I just remember getting to know the family and their individual personality traits and habits. This then slowly moved onto showing us their neighbours (the Flanders) and so forth.

Unlike a lot of animations, the opening sequence for each Simpsons episode was always different, and with my experience in watching these episodes, I'm fairly positive I could tell you exactly what episode was going to be shown just by the opening sequence. This kept the audience hooked right from the start and I understand that Groening must have thought about how dreary and repetitive most opening sequences were. He wanted to give us something different, something unexpected and because of that, I'll never forget the impact and joy The Simpsons had on/gave my childhood.

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Trey Parker & Matt Stone's "South Park"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Following onto something completely different that isn't all sweet, cute and fuzzy around the edges, here's my childhood favourite of South Park! Created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, this animation was originally created using cutout animation as this was the only form of animation that the team could afford to express their bitter yet comical views on the world and society.

The pilot episode was actually the first and only episode to be created using cutout animation and thereafter, software was used to emulate that of the cutout techniques as they were finally able to afford such software.

Our protagonists Eric Cartman, Kyle Brovlowski, Stan Marsh and of course Kenny, are set in the small yet snowy town of South Park in Colorado state. It is here that they go on many wild and wacky adventures to figure out conspiracies, myths and so forth in a very tongue in cheek sort of fashion. The animation themes itself are very controversial as within the group of boys, there is Kyle: a strong Jewish believer (based on Stone), Kenny: a boy from a poor family, Stan: the everyman who keeps himself to himself (based on Parker), and of course Cartman: an obnoxious racist who is seen as the leader of the group.

Personally, I find this animation so appealing and entertaining to watch as i find myself reflected in this show as i am a very controversial and outspoken person who believes that anything is funny if it's created for a laugh and a laugh alone. Although there has been much criticism over this show, (there certainly was criticism of my parents for my letting me watch this when I was five!) there is no hurtful intent as it so garishly states at the beginning of the opening sequence:

"All characters and events in this show-–even those based on real people–-are entirely fictional. All celebrity voices are impersonated.....poorly. The following program contains coarse language and due to its content it should not be viewed by anyone." - Fagin Barry S. (May 2000) "Goin' Down to South Park: How kids can learn from 'vile trash'"

So, albeit the obscene taboo language, racist remarks (that are obviously jokes), and general criticism and poking fun at other sub cultures, trends and popular culture, I find that it's a perfect show for those who have an open mind and a great sense of humour!

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Pendleton Ward's "Bravest Warriors"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Created by Pendleton Ward, also the creator of Adventure Time, Bravest Warriors is yet another fun-filled action-packed animation telling a story of a group of teenagers who have been trapped in secluded dimensions and strange parts of the universe. Their goal is to save cute aliens and the habitats and worlds belonging to such aliens by using the power of their emotions.

This adorably entertaining animation uses the same art style - Ward's signature style - as Adventure Time and is similar in story and morals as it is aimed at children to teach them that being kind and helping others no matter how different they are always results in great things! By using cute characters and creatures to represent the aliens/teenagers, this attracts children more in comparison to grotesque-looking ones. This animation focuses on feelings, emotions and empathy.

The protagonists, Beth, Chris, Wallow and Danny have all been given very outrageous and "poles apart from each other" personalities. I think that this is to appeal to a wide range of children who are maybe borderline teenagers as their emotions and personalities might want someone to relate to. The characters come across as very "cool" and "hip" in the way they talk to each other. They all use slang to communicate with each other which would be appealing to teenagers and children and it would indeed seem "awesome" to them.

I think the message of this animation is that no matter how different we all are, whatever we are (be that alien or human!), we can all get along and work together because together we're greater than being alone. Pendleton Ward uses this moral in Adventure Time too as you never see the protagonist (Finn) alone. He also has his friends to help him through his adventures.

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: John R. Dilworth's "Courage the Cowardly Dog"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

My mother often used to sit and watch TV with me whenever she had the free time. Mainly we sat and watched cartoons - even today, we still sit and watch cartoons! - featured on either Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Jetix or Nicktoons/Nickelodeon. However, one that she just could not stand was Courage the Cowardly Dog...

As frightening as it was back then, (too much so to be a child's TV programme!) I absolutely loved it for all it's gore, jumpy action and madness! Courage, the protagonist is almost a metaphor for the target audience; young, innocent children who are expected to be frightened of almost anything! Courage is often shown in scenes where there is nobody there to help him get over his fear of just about everything and thus he has to learn on his own.

Not only did I enjoy the animation itself, the metaphor and story behind the animation was more intriguing as you felt like you were part of that scene and you were just as scared as he was. Courage and his two carers, Muriel and Eustace Bagge, live in a rustic-looking farm house in a fictional place called the "Middle of Nowhere" in Kansas. This alone is enough to set the atmosphere and as pastoral and idyllic we assume "Middle of Nowhere" will be, is it in fact far from that.

It's up to Courage to save his new home which is a moral that many children could learn from. This animated cartoon teaches children not to be afraid of everything they encounter, despite how lonely they may be. The bright, colourful and energetic feel to this cartoon should not be taken too literally, as something creepy is always sure to happen!

Below, YouTube user "WatcherOfThe2000s" shows us some of the scariest moment from this series...

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Satoshi Tajiri's "Pokémon"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

At around the age of 6, I was treated to a top of the range invention that had only just hit the shops. My mother gifted me with a Gameboy Colour which was the height of gaming technology at the time. I will never part with this beautiful device as it has brung me much joy over the years despite the many other contraptions that have come and gone. Despite collecting many great games for the Gameboy, my all time favourite was Pokémon: Leaf Green. With it's pixelated graphics and catchy computer-generated music, I simply wouldn't put that game down!

Soon afterwards, Pokémon had become a popular television show. I was certainly one of the first of my friends to become addicted to this fun and inspiring animation and because of it's imaginatively created creatures - which are simply adorable! - and overly exaggerated facial expressions and so forth, I knew that was what I wanted to get involved with when I grew up.

I researched everything to do with how Pokémon was created, the story behind it's creation and even looked into character designs and concept art for the creatures themselves. I soon became immensely involved in the Anime and Manga animation style and since then have never given up on the dream of wanting to animate something as wonderful and as inspirational as Pokémon.

 Pokémon: Leaf Green (1996) from Gamatoes.com

Pokémon: X and Y (2013/14) from Gengame.net

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Roger Hargreaves' "Mr Men & Little Miss"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

A popular animation that has recently been produced from the original books came to mind yesterday when thinking about how I show motion in still sketches of objects, people or animals. When I was as young as maybe 4 or 5, I would endlessly read Roger Hargreaves' "Mr Men" and "Little Miss" books. Although the story for me - despite being approximately 5 years of age - was rather simple and not as complex as I wished for, I couldn't help but fall for a certain appealing charm of his illustrations.

Hargreaves' illustrations were simple yet full of charisma and energy albeit being still characters on a small, poky page. I often went back to the same images over and over and again and some of his techniques often featured in my own childish doodles! I realised yesterday that even to this day, a part of Roger's work has stayed with me since childhood...

Hargreaves creates the illusion of movement through his use of "speed lines" as I like to call them. To some they may seem childish and overly exaggerated at times, but after creating my flipbooks and experimenting with ways to show movement I felt that speed lines made my work look fun, energetic and appealing to the eye. I can only thank Mr Hargreaves for that skill! Below is a small example found on Google of Hargreaves' way of depicting movement and energy in his characters...

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Zealouscreative's "The Maker"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

We recently watched this in the studio with the rest of the animation crew and I instantly fell in love with this piece of beautiful animation. The Maker has a very unique, historical look to it which immediately appealed to me as I am a huge fan of all things Victorian-like! Lots of sepia tones and earthy colours made this piece feel warm and homely, like your grandmother's fireplace. However, this piece was far from joyful and comforting. In fact quite the opposite...

To begin with, the scene is set with the protagonist standing in a warm, poorly lit room with nothing but books, ancient-looking artefacts, cloth and textiles equipment and of course a sand timer. We think nothing of this at first as we see him racing against the timer to try and create what appears to be a female rabbit to accompany him. The narrative gets more sinister as when he eventually does finish his masterpiece just before the timer runs out, she doesn't awaken until he plays the most catchy yet spooky of melodies on his violin, his trademark (note the insignia on his face is that of a violin's carved out holes on its body).

Eventually, the female rabbit awakens and embraces him warmly. This drew me in and really tugged at the heart strings - so to speak! Suddenly the timer runs out and our protagonist passes his manual - of which he's been working from to create her - onto our new protagonist as he slowly slips away to his death in a cloud of dust and the timer starts all over again.

This may have a underlying message behind it. Maybe that everyone should accomplish one life-changing thing before they die, something to pass onto the next generation before life starts all over again. I love this strikingly romantic yet frightening look on life as an animation. This piece is incredibly beautiful!

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: National Media Museum

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

On Wednesday the 2nd of October 2013, the Animation crew took some well-needed time out and decided to go on an adventure to Bradford's National Media Museum! Although it was indeed a fun trip, I can safely say that it was rather educational too. Not only did we visit for the Media Museum alone, we also had the opportunity to visit the "Moving Stories" exhibition - which was aimed at young children, but who said animators had to grow up?

We had an immense amount of fun and took plenty of photographs - myself being the David Bailey of the group as always! We learned lots of interesting techniques revolving around animation, played some good old retro arcade games and learned about the history of animation, television and video games.

An exciting moment for me was seeing the original cel paintings on acetate from the creator of Tom & Jerry! With cel, being my favoured style of animation despite the hard work and lengthy process, it was most definitely a worthwhile experience!

(Obviously none of the images of work above belongs to me and belongs solely to the artists who created them.)

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Storyboarding: The Prologue...

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

As you may or may not know, I have recently had the joy of storyboarding the children's nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty" as part of my brief "Telling Stories". You may have seen the recent updates of my digitally rendered sketches for a few of my frames. Here's a post to inform you of what happened beforehand...

The process of storyboarding can be very long and complex in order to achieve the correct angels, dialogue, timing and camera shot etc. I didn't simply pick an idea out of thin air (albeit possible with my wandering imagination!) - it took a good dozen sticky notes to map out exactly how the story would work...

Here are a few images of my storyboard in the making:

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Storyboarding

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

After a long and tiresome day in the studio putting together our rough ideas on garishly yellow sticky notes, I trudged back home and whipped out my Wacom to begin the long and brain-tangling process of creating a fully rendered masterpiece of a storyboard.

We had to choose a childrens' nursery rhyme to draft out using technical terms for angles, shots, etc. We had to then map out what would move at what time, when the dialogue or sound would overlap with what parts of animation and so forth.

I chose the good old nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty". As soon it was mentioned, my mind immediately thought of the comical edge to it, and how Humpty could fall off the wall and crack his egg-like head on the floor and make an omelette-like mess on the path next to the "toast soldiers" of which would "dip" themselves into Humpty's mess and be eaten by the horses.

Although this probably isn't child-friendly in some respects, I was aiming more for the humour, exaggerated facial expressions and entertainment side of things. So in that context, it would appeal to my target audience of children. Which child doesn't love a bit of gore in their cartoons!?

So far so good. 3 frames down, roughly 17 to go!

                                                                 

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: The Cgbros' "Brain Divided" CGI Animated Short

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

I came across this short CGI animated film whilst on YouTube (once again) by the name "Brains Divided". I instantly noticed straight away that the style was very very similar to that of Pixar's and Dreamworks' as the characters looked extremely similar with their flawless skin, shimmering hair and huge glowing eyes.

Although I'm not a massive fan of that style of character design and CGI, I decided to give it a whirl and watch all 5 minutes of it. I actually really enjoyed it as the story was humourous and featured two characters inside the protagonists' brain - Left and Right - of which controlled his every action during a date with a rather pretty young lady.

It showed the difference in his two personalities and how the woman responded to them. The left side was geeky, techy and approached every move with caution and consideration, whereas the right side was laid back, suave and very cool towards her. The two personalities of the protagonist were shown by whether he was wearing his glasses or not and how his hair was styles. This was very easy to pick up on.

I particularly enjoyed the way facial expressions were used - I'm a fan of over exaggerated expressions as I often find it difficult to read human expressions, so animations with this feature make it very clear to me how the characters are feeling.

All in all, The Ringling College of Art and Design (producers of this animation) did a brilliant job and brought a moral to the story right at the end: You don't have to pretend to be something you're not, just be yourself and people will find you attractive.

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: TomSka's "ASDF Movies"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

While searching my internet history for entertaining animations to watch, I remembered a short series of animations by a fellow named TomSka that I used to watch back in high school. Albeit simple in terms of artistic ability, these cute little sketches lasting merely a couple of minutes each never fail to make me smile.

The ASDF movies are an animated Adobe Flash series created from several small skits consisting of occasional dialogue and garishly "in your face" stick characters. They originated from the ASDF comic strips that Tom originally posted on a website called "Sheezyart" of which became viral very quickly...

(Above) ASDF comic strip by Thomas Ridgewell (TomSka)

The very first ASDF movie was uploaded in 2008. In the space of just three years he had over 19 million views on Youtube! 

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: NHK's "Domo Kun"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Recently this evening I was researching my least favoured of the "genres" - so to speak - of animation: Stop-motion (or known by others as stop-action).

A few years back I vaguely remember being obsessed with a cute, brown, monster-looking Japanese mascot that went by the name of "Domo-kun". After scouring the internet for some short Domo animations, I came across this interesting little jewel on YouTube. This was an advertisement for the popular American supermarket chain, Target. I instantly fell in love with this as it has a lot of comical qualities such as exaggerated expressions, comedic sound effects and extremely animated characters!

In terms of history and context, Domo kun is the official mascot of Japan's television channel NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai - Japan Broadcasting Corporation). Domo first appeared as a mascot for NHK in short sketches lasting roughly 30 seconds each. Tsuneo Goda is the stop-motion genius director that works his magic from behind the camera to create these fun, quirky episodes!

Domo has recently broadened his publicity and name into Manga (Japanese comic books and graphic novels) and video games which makes him more accessible for his target audience - children.

I absolutely love this style of stop-motion as it seems clean and more consistent than most others I have seen and most of all... It's refreshingly fun and cheerful! What's not to love about these adorable little characters?

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Pendleton Ward's "Adventure Time"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Here's a beautiful animated series created by Pendleton Ward that goes by the name of Adventure Time! Starting out as a short for the well-known kids' channel Nicktoons, it soon became viral via the internet and very quickly gained a large audience thus allowing Cartoon Network to snatch it from the hands of Nicktoons and create a full length animated series.

Each episode lasts roughly 10/11 minutes and are usually shown in pairs to fill half-hour slots. This is very a much a storyboard-driven animation series as the producers rely heavily on storyboards to draft out the dialogue and action sequences in a scene. We are currently learning the precise and time-consuming art of storyboarding in our course and I know only too well how difficult it must be to use a storyboard template to draft out both dialogue and action!

Relying heavily on animatics, this show cleverly creates "conflicting emotions" with the intent to make the audience both happy and frightened simultaneously...

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Cyriak's "Baa"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

After watching Cyriak's animations in our course studio room, I instantly became fond of this little animation titled "Baa". Not only did it bring an immediate smile to my face and plenty of chuckles amongst the class, I became quite attached to the way Cyriak uses a lot of repetition in his shorts.

According to "http://www.fastcompany.com"'s article: "The Cyriak Method", Cyriak Harris uses Adobe After Effects software to manipulate imported videos and photographs in different ways across different layers, thus building up a very strange, very beautiful and very subliminal piece of humourous animation.

However humourous it may to some - including myself - I notice a number of important messages that Cyriak brings through in his work. In Baa, the message that came through to me was the concept of what our world would look like and how animals would evolve if genetic cloning was popularised. The idea of the sheep is also relevant to this theory as this could relate to "Dolly", the first genetically cloned animal of whom was in fact a sheep.

Cyriak's quirky entertainment mixed with almost deadly and frightening messages both add up to make great animation in my opinion.