Done (For Now)

Here it is then. Still need to sort some bits out before I send it to festivals and stuff - the sound at the end is a bit shit, and it all needs to be properly compressed. We managed to get the show all set up the other day too, and it's looking pretty good projected in HD, but the colours have somehow become a bit washed out during the compression process which is a bit annoying. Like I say though, I'll sort it out over the next couple of weeks...

You can watch it bigger if you click through to vimeo, and it sounds much better through headphones.


5 from Retchy on Vimeo.

Let me know what you think.

More Sound

Spent a couple of days this week developing the sound and realising how much I need to work on it. A lot, that's how much. Still, made quite a bit of progress today as I chose to ignore all the annoyances of Logic Pro and just stopped moaning and got on with it.


5 - Rough Mix 2 from Retchy on Vimeo.

I'm going to have to spend the majority of my daylight hours in college working on the rest of the sound, and just do the final bit of animation in the evenings - I should have that finished by sunday...

Very Rough Edit

I just spent the last couple of days putting this edit together, with some reeeeeaaally rough sound. I'm quite happy with it though, and I think I needed to do it to get away from my room for a bit and to see what does and doesn't work. I'm struggling a bit with the next part after the phone - I think I'm gonna keep the smell bit really brief and to the point, with the sound of a match striking and sparking up. I've started work on the taste section, with cakes and stuff, but I'm not sure about that either.


5 - Very Rough Edit from Retchy on Vimeo.

3 Weeks to go!

Daisies

Here's another nearly finished shot. I've got a few other bits and pieces too, but haven't uploaded them yet. I'm quite liking this one, but I was a bit worried about how it would fit in with the rest of the film as it's comparatively quite visually rich.


Daisies! from Retchy on Vimeo.

So I put this together to see how the colour flows across the shots I've got so far. It's working, I think, but I'm a bit worried about the phone/cotton wool shot now, as it seems a bit too washed out and pale. I really want to go in and tweak it but I can't afford to spend ages on it at the moment - I've got more important things to worry about.

Cotton Woolage

Here are a couple of clips of what I've been working on this week. Some decent progress, I reckons, despite wednesday being wiped out with stupid after effects problems. All sorted now though...


Cotton Wool from Retchy on Vimeo.


Cotton Wool - Take 2 from Retchy on Vimeo.

The shot's not finished yet, but it's nearly there - just need to sort out the colliding cotton wool movement and tweak the camera move a bit.

New Transition

Just been re-working the transition that I was unhappy with. I've decided to keep the whole film grounded in the hand drawn ink style, with various other medium working alongside it, as opposed to the distinct differences in style I had originally planned for each section.


Better Transition from Retchy on Vimeo.

Rubbishness

I've just wasted a week working on stuff that looks shit. Oh well. I'm referring to the bit, in the clip below, with the string, before it transitions into the phone. It just looks too out of place and breaks the continuity, as well as making the whole sequence too long. I think the transition from hand drawn pigeon to scratched film works pretty well, but the string bit is too detailed, complicated and generally shit looking.


Transitions from Retchy on Vimeo.

The annoying thing is that it's not even a particularly important bit of the film - I should be worrying about other stuff. I think I'll keep it hand drawn and similar to the previous transition now, which should take far less time to sort out.

Frank's Finished

We installed it at the bar last sunday and it's already been taken down. Bit of a short run, but it all seemed to go down quite well, with lots of positive feedback from the bar. Unfortunately the cool balsa wood TV frame that David made was too small and the projector too far away for the image to fit in the screen, so we just had to use the pull down projector screen that was already there. Bit of a shame, cos it would've tied it all together nicely, but these things happen...

Here's another bit of animation from the project, all cut out by hand and animated by David - I just did the speech bubbles.


Frank's Cut Out from Retchy on Vimeo.

I won't bore you with all the other bits, as they're kind of only relevant if you're sitting in the bar they were made for. Don't worry, you're not missing anything particularly amazing.

Proposal Re-Write

Here it is again. It's pretty much completely re-written, which I wasn't really expecting to have to do, but it was probably worth it really - it's much more focused and actually states what I want to do properly this time. I think. I think I thought that about the last one though, until my tutors got hold of it.

Mr. Pigeon

I've been putting this together today, just thought I'd post it to prove that I have actually been working. It's not the finished shot yet, but I reckon it's looking ok - just need to sort out the previous scene so I can work on the transition, which will involve trees and something or other happening with the negative spaces in between the wires...


Pigeon Test from Retchy on Vimeo.

Got to re-write bits of my proposal now. Oh happy joy joy.

16mm Film and Sound Test

Just put together a test for the telegraph wire abstract bit of my film. I just did a bunch of different tests with various inks and pens and stuff and combined a few of them in After Effects to see which ones would work best. I think the sections where there are more clearly defined lines, where I used a comb to scratch away the ink, work best with the twangy sounds I recorded today - a Slinky stretching and dangling in front of the mic.


16mm Ink Test from Retchy on Vimeo.

The final version will have the film going horizontally from left to right in HD format, which will involve scanning the film at about 1800 dpi, as opposed to projecting and filming it like I did here. I'm working (very slowly) on this at the moment, and I'll also put some more controlled hand drawn animation over the top.

CCTVs In Love

Another little bit for Frank's TV. I'll probably add a title to clarify it a bit more. We're definitely getting there now. David's sorting out all the wiring for the buttons - Tim ended up lending us his dvd player that is already wired up, which makes things a lot easier.


CCTVs In Love from Retchy on Vimeo.

My Masters Proposal

Here it is. A few more adjustments may need to be made, but this is the general idea. I'm working on a script as well to clarify exactly what happens, and then I'll move on to storyboarding, animatics and stuff. Here's a rough, unfinished version of the script too. I'll update it once it's finished.

Pooing Birds

Just uploaded another bit for Frank's TV. Some birds pooing. It may seem a bit random, but these are pictures they have hanging around the bar so it'll make a bit more sense when you're sitting there watching. Hopefully.


Birds. Pooing from Retchy on Vimeo.

We're meeting Tim Hunkin tomorrow to talk about technical stuff. You may have heard of him - he used to do stuff on telly and cartoons for the Gaurdian or Observer a while ago I think, and also some crazy arcade animation simulator type things that are on Southwold peer which he gave us a talk about. Tomorrow's meeting will hopefully clarify what needs to be done on the technical side of things for this project, as up until now I have been fairly clueless.

MA Project

I could spend forever looking at other people's stuff and never actually make any decisions about my own bloody film. Everything I see, I want to emulate. One minute it's Robert Breer or Stuart Hilton, then it's Blu, then it's Tim Webb, then it's some music video or other, then it's Semiconductor blah blah blah, so it goes on. One minute I feel like giving up on my own ideas and using some poem or something as a starting point, then I feel like that would be cheating and that I've already started on my own ideas and it would all be wasted time if I gave up now. I wish someone would just tell me what to do!

Anyway, I started off thinking the soundtrack would be leading the ideas for this film, but it turns out not to quite work like that. Ideas just tend to come from all directions, feeding into each other - with that test below, for example, I recorded the sound of the rice crispies first, thinking it would have a nice textural quality, but I didn't intend to use actual rice crispies to represent the photons, or whatever they're supposed to be. Is this the wrong way to work? I dunno, it's probably ok if you've got time to piss about, but I don't. I'm gonna have to make certain assumptions about sound/image relationships I think, and just trust my judgement where I have to.

More ideas have started pushing the old ones out of my tiny mind again. I think these new ones might be the way to go this time though, as they kind of naturally hold everything together. Sticking with the sciencey stuff, I'm "going to" take certain theories, like the quantum electro dynamics stuff, and just kind of take the piss a bit and let my imagination run with the ideas. For instance, I think my opening scene will be a pigeon choking on a rice crispie light particle. Or maybe I'll have little monsters deciding whether to let photons through, or send them reflecting on their way. Maybe there could be a big battle between monsters affiliated to each colour, deciding what colour certain things are.

I'm rambling, this probably makes very little sense to anyone outside my face. Ignore me.

MA Project

This is the very first test for the final film, nothing finished, just getting some audio visual ideas down. It's all a bit aimless at the moment, and I've finally come to realise that I need to properly plan out a structure for this, or it'll end up a complete mess. So that's what I'm gonna do.


Maters Project First Test from Retchy on Vimeo.

Frank's Bar

Here's the pretty much finished menu screen type thing that will be looping whenever nobody's using or wants to ignore it. The button pushing bit is supposed to be a subtle hint to the audience that they should push the buttons on their table to make stuff happen.


Frank's TV from Retchy on Vimeo.

We've had quite a few tutorials about this project now, and have come up with quite a few ideas for the animations and their level of interactivity - it's just a case of narrowing down which ideas we actually want to use and deciding on the structure fairly soon so we can start planing our time properly. We were talking about possibly upping the level of interactivity a bit by somehow introducing multiple endings to some of the mini narratives we've come up with. David filmed one of his ideas the other day about two security cameras finding each other and falling in love - maybe we could have a tragic ending or something as well, and have the audience decide which one they want to see. Or if there are lots of people, have a vote? I dunno. Even these simple ideas are introducing much more technical problems that I wouldn't have a clue how to solve, and they might also intrude too much on the audience.

Frank's Bar

The final taught unit of the MA is all about audience and location - we have to produce 30 seconds of animation with a specific audience and location in mind, and then exhibit the animation in the chosen location. David and I have decided to work together again, and after a bit of brainstorming we came up with a decent idea I think. It's hard to explainf without it sounding a bit rubbish though.

We're basically doing a (non-pretentious, silly) installation for Frank's Bar in Norwich, kind of taking the piss out of those trendy bar visuals you get in horrible clubs. The idea is that lots of little pieces of animation will be unified under the theme of 'Frank's TV', and the audience will be able to change the channels with a little remote control that will be on each of the tables. So far, we've filmed the menu screen which I'm putting together at the moment, and David is filming some people for the staff profiles, which will be Top Trumps style.

Here are some pictures of the bar...



The upstairs bit already has a projector screen and bracket, so setting that up should be fairly straight forward and should pass our health and safety test wot we have to do.

MA Project

Right, it's about time I got back into the habit of posting on here again. I have been doing stuff, honest, just not much to show or write about until recently. I've mostly been trying to figure out what the hell I'm going to do for the final masters project - reading stuff, watching stuff and generally getting a bit worried. I eventually came to the conclusion that I want to make a film consisting of a series of small, interlinked pieces of animation using various techniques (hopefully making me employable) that are unified by a theme of some sort.

The theme I've chosen has kind of been at the back of my mind for a while now, but I haven't really had the time or the opportunity to think it through properly until recently. I read a book called "The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out", a collection of essays, lectures and stuff by the quantum physicist Richard Feynman a year or so ago, and some of the articles got me thinking. I'm no scientist, but reading this and other such books like Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and "The Blind Watchmaker", have opened my eyes to how FUCKING AMAZING the sub-cellular world is. I've always loved watching natural history programmes on TV, and been fascinated by insects (especially Ants) and their behaviour, but those shows tend to cover fairly similar, familiar (to humans) ground. The way these authors write and speak about their subjects just really inspires me and sets my mind wandering, trying to figure out visual ways of conveying the absurdity and wonder of the theories they communicate.

So that is what I plan to attempt. I am in no way pretending to fully understand many of the concepts and theories that I'll be using, and I will in no way be trying to accurately represent them - they are merely starting points, something to come back to for inspiration when I get lost, and to spark my thoughts off - I will follow them on whatever tangent they choose to take. Feynman's theory of quantum electro-dynamics, for instance, has lead me to animate some Rice Krispies. That's how my head works.


People have done this before of course (the excellent Semiconductor for example) but I think I can bring something new to the subject. Ignorance, perhaps, or just complete misunderstanding. This post has gone on too long already - I'll explain myself better next time, but I'm probably just as confused as you are at the moment...

Frankenjizz

Here's a music vid I threw together now I've got a bit of spare time, with stuff I did last year before the MA. Music is by my mates Tom and Will - Tom is talking about re-jigging the track a bit, so there may be an updated version later...and the animation flash compression / conversion is a bit shit, annoyingly. Watch it in HD here if you want, it looks much better...


Frankenjizz from Retchy on Vimeo.