The Lyre Of Orpheus

I've changed my mind, I'm going to use the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds version of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth for my performance on Thursday - here are the lyrics. I've listened to it a fair few times before, but never really paid the lyrics too much attention - they're quite dark, as you'd expect really, but also quite funny. And I like dark and funny. The story is also completely laid out for me in the lyrics, so I'd imagine that I would come up with something rather different if I used a less literal song, as I was considering, and had to fit my own interpretation of the story around it. Daniel Johnston was a possibility for a while, cos he's got lots of weird love songs (which is essentially what the Orpheus myth is - a love story) and I was thinking about using a similar drawing style to his artwork as well...


...which has ended up bleeding a little bit into the drawings I've made so far for the current idea. I'm keeping the style simple, mainly so the images will be readable, as they will be on and off the screen fairly rapidly I think. Here's one of them, a bunny bashing his brains out!


I'm forgetting about the sand idea, obviously - far too messy and hard to pull off. Instead I'll be using a mixture of drawings, text, string, cut-outs, ink and my big beardy face on an OHP. I think it will be a bit frantic, trying to fit it all into a live performance, but we'll see how it goes.

More Crap

Oh bollocks, it's all gone shit again. I spent two days preparing all the animations and stuff for this idea, and it still took me about seven hours of fucking about and battling tiredness to get this footage. Which is shit - and these are the best parts. Being stuck in the kitchen at the moment is also really pissing me off - I had to stay up 'til 5.30 on Thursday morning to get this done and there just isn't enough space to move with the camera in there.


More Failed Ideas from Retchy on Vimeo.

This stuff is just too complicated, not to mention completely pointless. So I can make drips of ink stop at the edge of a triangle? Big deal, I already knew that, try thinking of something that might actually look interesting instead of attempting to prove how bloody clever it all is. Not that it is. Clever that is... I'll stop now.

The Perfect Space

I spent about seven hours in this place invigilating the SwanQuake installation when I volunteered for the Aurora animation festival last year. I can't believe I didn't think of this place earlier - it's pretty goddamn perfect. Low ceilinged, already blacked out so I can work during the day, projector bracket (hopefully) still in place, and a wall for projecting onto for feedback stuff. And Kelly from Aurora has already put me in touch with the right people, about an hour after I emailed her!


The downside is that I probably won't have such free and easy access as I did at the warehouse, but I'll just have to make the most of it if I manage to get in there...

Oskar Fischinger - Komposition in Blau (1935)

Saw this the other day for the first time. Just goes to show, it's all been thought of already.

Polygon Project? No!

Why polygons? I'm limiting my ideas by calling it this. I'll call it the Projection Tests or something from now on. I'm gonna do some night shifts in the kitchen and come up with a proper sequence by the end of next week. Involving feedback, cos that was fun. I need to stop moping about and move on to better things!

Soundtrack Analysis

I've decided to go for something a bit more conventional in the end, although it's not that conventional. It's a clip from one of my favouritest films eva - Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind! Sound design by Eugene Gearty. I know this film pretty much inside out, so I went straight to the scene I knew would have some interesting sound designy stuff going on - the bit where Joel first starts to have his memories erased, with all the funny technology being introduced. You know the bit...


And there certainly is a lot going on. Weird how I kind of knew that having not consciously ever paid too much attention to the sound tracks in films before. Which in itself sounds rather ignorant considering I'm on an animation and SOUND DESIGN course. Anyway, there's a good mix of diegetic and non-diegetic (fancy words for on and off screen) sounds going on, and a fairly confusing sense of space (although not really that confusing when you watch the film without your analytical hat on and just take it all in naturally, which is interesting), with stuff going on inside Joel's head, inside Joel's head, inside Joel's bed. There's also some nice bits of recurring music that I am choosing to interpret as representing Joel's battle with the process he's being subjected to - the tune becoming less discordant and scrappy as he gains momentary control of the situation. There are moments of counterpoint as well, when he begins to drift off into his memories, before being snapped out of them by the banging down of the next item in front of him.

This all happens within about a four minute period in the film, and it seems like an awful lot to be crammed into such a small amount of time, but it just works and comes together soooo well. It's amazing how much the brain can absorb and understand (news flash, I know), and it'll be interesting to see if I can shovel as many ideas into my own re-design project and still be anything other than an utterly incoherent mess. I doubt I'll be working on something as visually complicated though...

I shall be presenting my analysis, in a much more professional and formal manner of course, to the rest of the class next week.

PS. I realise this will mean very little to you because you can't actually see the clip, but I have to make a record of this stuff for my tutors (Hi guys!).

Polygon Project

This is quite possibly the worst start to the project I could have had. It just looks shit. Simple as that. Three days pissing about to come up with this pap. Here it is, including classic artist tantrum...


Polygon Test 2 - Shite from Retchy on Vimeo

I've had time to think about it in between the frustrations of last night and editing the footage today, and I think I've just made it too big. The spaces involved at the warehouse are too great to get any decent camera angles or quick enough changes in perspective. The projector has to be too far away in order to span the distance between the far left and right shapes, so I can't get in close with the camera without casting shadows. The setup is amateur at best and far too wobbly and fiddly to achieve any kind of accuracy with the placement of the shapes. I'm also crap at making things, as this proves.

There are other more practical excuses I could come up with, like being far too bloody cold up there to be able to animate, or that, having searched the entire warehouse (with the help of another mystified man), the switch to turn those lights off behind the projector remains resolutely hidden. But they would just be excuses, and would be missing the point really. I think the whole idea is flawed. Or at least situating it in the warehouse. Something I probably couldn't have known until I'd tried it out though.

I don't know what to do now. Maybe just a few more things in the kitchen until I can find a more appropriate space...

Sand!

I have a presentation coming up in which I have to do a performance of some sort, depicting one of a selection of classic fairy tales. I think I'm going to go for Little Red Riding Hood as it's the one I'm most familiar with. And it's the darkest of the small selection. It's really up to us how we do it but it needs to be a live performance, so I thought I'd have a go at this technique...



...which is nice and everything, but I reckon that example is a bit too slick for it's own good. Luckily, I'm shit, so my version will be much much less slick and fit in with my aesthetic stylings perfectly! What a happy coincidence.

Scariness

This is where I'm working at the moment. I can feel their stony gaze, even through the walls.


Scary Warehouse from Retchy on Vimeo

Polygon Project

First proper day in the warehouse today and, as you can see from the last picture, I managaed to hang a triangle! I spent most of the time trying out different ways to hang them so that they don't wobble all over the place. Think I've sorted it now, but it'll mean having to re-wire everything for each part of the project I do, which is a bit annoying. I'll have to spend the whole day in there tomorrow until I get something filmed as the camera and projector have to be back on thursday...


It's scary in there on my own in the dark! I had a dream last night that there was a swimming pool full of ghosts on the floor below. Not that there is a floor below. I hope...


I ended up attaching a wire to each corner of the triangle and taping it to the floor as well as the chicken wire. It seemed to work ok, but it did ping off the ground a couple of times because it was tied down too tight. This would have been mildly irritating if I had spent hours animating stuff to it's precise position!


I was planning to do it further from the walls but there's quite a bit of light coming from outside even at night, so the bluescreen absorbs any light there is quite nicely when I'm filming. I think they'll be far enough away to avoid the kind of reflections I was getting in the kitchen.