*A still from the animatic that was created this week.*
Approach: For this previous week, I dedicated my time to creating an abstract for the animation that I would like to work on more, and put it to a storyboard. I'll record myself to add some audio, as the timing of the shots may be off for the moment. I also went through my notes and picked out sections of supportive material that would help with the script and my explanations of animated content. This week I really just wanted to focus on creating. I still don't feel completely ready with the amount of information I found, but I think more is to come as refinement will also happen eventually. I also spent more time with Maya and figuring out how to superimpose "Chuck" into the different scenes. As it would turn out, you must render with the Alpha-Channel in a TIF sequence to get it to work. Although I figure I should be able to put the two separate animation types together in After Effects, I think knowing how to utilize this technique for the future when using Maya will make it for the better. I've had a few times where it does not render out correctly, or it just won't show up at all. I ended up doing some small tests this week with chuck regarding rotation parameters near the hip sections, seeing what range of motion was possible with the current set-up. Choices Made: I have used the week for creating rather than waiting for an idea to come to me. Although I am aware that I had been creating the idea in the back of my mind, it still would have benefited me to continue forward with some sort of creating EARLIER as determined in my proposal versus later. For the animation, it is a juxtaposition of the two studies that I went through these past 4 weeks based on Existentialism and Humor. I found that there is a specific name for the type of humor that regards death an life as a joke, which would be called "black humor". I didn't happen to mention this type of humor in the actual abstract for the animation, but this could inevitably be used for some sort of supporting evidence of process. I also didn't explicitly mention it because I am not necessarily attempting to "laugh" directly at death, but as mentioned before: to juxtapose the two together. I used Photoshop for the storyboards, and I used
Relevant Sources:
I didn't Have much for relevant sources this week either than the creation of the animatic and story narrative. But I did find an article about non-linear narrative: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/01/linear-storytelling-psychology/431529/ It was good to read that even though some non-linear stories or films aren't appreciated by the masses, an aspect that they do have is this: suspense, curiosity, surprise. After reading about the 3 aspects of non-linear films, I felt more secure with the what I had recently created. It made more sense the more I worked with the problems and the images being shown. It was definitely a necessity to create along the way rather than towards the end. You gain different information about the project early on rather than finding out later. It may include re-arranging the time devoted to other aspects such as research through reading, but it shouldn't be seen as a caveat to learning in general. A general balance between the two is good for productivity, but everyone inevitably chooses a different path each time they begin a project. I was just my fault that I began taking too much time to read, but I have learned from my mistakes and will utilize this reasoning in the future for a more efficient use of my time. Questions Raised & Needs:
Next Steps: For the next steps of this week I imagine our gears will be shifted more towards Human Tech. I am not sure what to expect at the moment, but assume it will be something with interactive technology that is geared more towards the betterment of mankind/people. Regardless, if I were to continue with more steps toward this project, I would designate more of my time utilizing the programs to create more of the scenes in a fully realized 2D and 3D format. I would also like to build more of a foundation for myself by refining the animatic and story when necessary. I only did about 3 passes on the story, I got rid of different scenes, but it almost feels a little too short for the moment based on the amount of "rooms" shown to the audience. -Taylor Olsen *A visual example of what kind of environment a possible shot will utilize for the animation* Approach: During my time for research this week, I became more in depth with my readings and utilizing the Ohio State University article search. I began by compiling more notes based on readings from the French philosopher Sartre's book "Existentialism and Humanism". Many of the findings regarding humor were absent, but some articles from online with similar philosophers were helpful in creating a connection between the two subjects. I also went back through and renamed most of the parts of my Chuck rig as I couldn't figure out how to change image assets without having to re-rig most of the character from the beginning. My initial idea for storyboards have started to be realized, and I began with questioning how I would address a possible research question: "How can the animation medium bridge the gap of humor and existentialism?" I am a little more hopeful now that I have decided to stick with this project and make something meaningful out of it. As well as this questions, I will include others later in my 'Questions Raised and Needs' snippet. Choices Made: I have still decided that I overloaded my week with readings again, but there is something that feels good about myself in doing these readings. Growing up I didn't actually finish many books in my teenage to young adult years, but this semester has proven to me that I have the will that I once did when I was young. I have completed many readings and feel good about the information and the notes I retained. This week I also investigated some experimental narrative storytelling. I watched some Youtube videos pertained to life. I have investigated Escher's "impossible shapes" idea and imagine my animation using these to represent the repetitive nature of life and the immeasurable and/or unstable emotional exhaustion it employs to consider our existence. *A gorgeous animation from Adam Beckett that observes the balance, confusion, and repetitive nature of motion in life cycles in life that seem to endlessly disrupt and contradict time.* Relevant Sources: More notes (some incomplete) from my research based on humor and existentialism:
A short instance from an academic article relating humor to existentialism: https://search-credoreference-com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/content/entry/gwexist/humor/0 Questions Raised & Needs: I have finally found a path for this research that I have been conducting. But I am still wary of how I want it to come across to the audience. I have decided to investigate actually having the audience 'say back' phrases they are told, and have them in a more interactive setting. From this idea:
Next Steps: Create a rough animatic and a list of hard statements for an audience to feel comfortable saying. Finish up Chuck to a comfortable point, make use of recording software and After Effects to lay out the storyboard and script timing. Investigate the impossible shape creation and how this can be realized in 3D forms. -Taylor Olsen *A still from the animation "Joy Street" by Suzan Pitt*
*Revised concept file* Approach: This week I began to consider why I am spending so much time on researching the idea of existentialism involving humor, to create an animation from such, and the consideration of how we choose to live compared to others. I also questioned why my project was important to myself or to anyone around me. In the progress towards understanding humor more, I realized that humor (from my readings) was often just a coping device to hold ourselves together in a tangled world of emotional distress. It's a release of chemicals that we need to balance, but is also an abusive relationship between our own chemical balance and feeling secure with our minds. I feel lost with this project, I feel like my own sense of humor has now dissipated exponentially based on my readings. As I had found before, having knowledge can correlate to having less of a sense of humor, but this could also be a change in what I determinedly find funny in the first place. I didn't get as much work done as I'd hoped (aimed more towards my creation of a solid script and animatic), and some books that I wanted to investigate were either checked out, or were too 'rare' for the library to lend to me. But, seeing as what these initial readings have caused, I don't feel like I should go any further just yet with my research, and focus more on creating. Other classes have definitely helped with creating more and finding a calming atmosphere in the realm of animation and modeling, but don't feel as rewarding as doing my own work and exploring the connections that I could be making to my creative output and myself. Choices Made: I've decided that I overloaded myself with the amount of readings, and have some apprehension reading more into the topics I have decided to explore. I think the current mental state of our beings is often conducive to the quality/the type of work that is created. Being in the correct mindset makes all the difference when attempting to convey mood, acquiring the 'zenith' and immersion of our technical skill, and abdicating ourselves completely to the mundane/archaic routines that may be holding back our process. My professor suggested some short films for me to watch. Many of the films included dark themes associated with death, life, personal tragedy, hallucinogenic happenstances, and ludicrous actions that revolved around the ignorant nature of humanistic actions and the caveats associated with our own self-preservation. Many of them were beautifully animated, making them all the better to analyze and extrapolate the necessary elements needed to cobble together a reasonable/completely ridiculous theme behind the actions. Something that stood out to me, was the loss of others versus myself. I've had many relationships between friends and family gone due to death, suicide, and distancing ourselves altogether. Something that always came back to my mind was my Grandfather, Wayne. When he died, I found only one aspect to remember him by: a single silver coin that had been rubbed down till it was smooth...abnormally smooth, like someone had been holding it for years and years. I asked my grandmother if it was his, and she hadn't a clue whether or not it was. I didn't care, it reminded me of him. I want to take that coin and find the largest frame possible and place it right in the center, just to give some sort of feeling of wholeness and closure to a memory. Something larger than myself and what I could hope to understand; relating back to my topic: something existential and humorously small that it still holds a large emotional impact on myself. Relevant Sources: Below are the [completed] notes that I compiled from the readings of Stephen Leacock, articles relating to finding humor in animation, and some quick notes on the animations that I found relating to darker themes in animation.
Questions Raised & Needs:
My next steps include really hammering down a script, getting Chuck to a comfortable point of where I feel like he can be utilized in my 2D/3D crossover, and pushing towards feeling okay with how this animation is going to look. I need to drop my reservations about how this animation will turn out and being to create. I think having the drive to create and analyze after it has been done, but also reflect on an in-progress bias is the way to go at this point. I'm not necessarily sure how I want to proceed now, but that shouldn't stop me. -Taylor Olsen *A photo of young Stephen Leacock, Canada's beloved Humorist - Circa 1915*
Approach:
This week began with showing our completed explanation videos to the class, and completing my "Final" proposal for my class regarding the project I would work on for the next 4 weeks. I thought that the rest of the class made good videos, and mine was not necessarily the best one of them. I regarded most of them as situational depending on the format. Most were more whimsical in their approach, and some were serious. I think it would benefit my classmates and myself to help them with video-editing software if they want their videos to have more impact, but only if they deem necessary. I also read one of the books on my list of research regarding Humor & Existentialism. "Humor and Humanity" but Stephen Leacock. I also happened to be a subject of testing for Abby Ayers and Victoria Campbell on their project based on learning from interactive experience. I dressed up in a Motion Capture suit and they attempted (with the help of a peer) to integrate moCap software directly into Unity. Choices Made: A hard decision to make was how to lay out the rest of my schedule for the remainder of the 4 weeks. It seems like a lot to handle based on the work for my other classes. But I have a feeling that once I get rolling with the script and the storyboard that relate back to my notes. I wasn't sure where to start with all of the readings that I could implore, but I decided on the book that was the oldest as to have a solid base on my research; that way I could see the change through history and how it affected and was also simulated in recent humorous works. Even though the actual reading wasn't dealing with the term "existentialism", it actually made use of it's "Humanity" in the title and had some interesting points on living, dying, how we perceive ourselves and others, and as well how others have become accustomed to accept anything that may be given to them in a "neat package". I feel like because of the time period of this book, many of the findings may not be true, but it is interesting to see a comparison to present day and how many views of humor were shown and portrayed previously. Relevant Sources: Some quotes from "Humor and Humanity" [Stephen Leacock - 1938] with page number included: 13-It squares exactly with the remarks of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, of the seventeenth century, who expressed his incisive thought with a point and brilliance given to few. "The passion of laughter," he says, "is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminence in ourselves, by comparison with the inferiority of others, or with our own formerly." 13-It thus appears that our sense of humor, like so much else about us, sprang from lowly and even discreditable origins. With certain races of mankind, humor never seems to have got beyond this primitive brutal stage of cruel exultation. 17-Humor, in other words, has changed from a basis of injury or destruction, to what one may describe as a basis of ‘incongruity’ or ‘maladjustment’. 34-[Punsters] Common observation shows that his activity is a menace to society. It runs easily to a sort of mental degeneration in which the unhappy victim tries to make puns all the time, hears only sounds and not ideas, his mind as vacant as a bell waiting for its clapper. Many people hate the idea of drinking because of drunkards-and so do many hate puns because of punsters. Poetic justice therefore warns them in time. 46-But this is only in the same way as a person may be sentimental without sorrow, pious without religion and didactic without learning. It is this possibility of replacing true with with imitation, gold with dross, that has led to a tendency to degrade wit as the crackling of thorns under a pot. 53-This lack of proper terms to designate their art, as felt by humorists, has been felt and remedied in other branches...But the humorist still has no better terms than to ‘write a take-off’, or ‘make up a parody’, or to ‘give an imitation’, and so on. This cheapens his whole art in the literary sense. 57-The boy stood on the burning deck Eating peanuts by the peck. The flames rolled on, he would not go Because he loved the peanuts so. 60-Those who try to make people laugh, necessarily get afraid that they may not see the point and won’t laugh, or won’t laugh enough. Hence the tendency to make the point sharper and the angle of vision wider, to respond to the cruel demand, ‘louder and funnier’. ...And so on. A quote that really stood out to me from Leacock: "The price paid for knowledge is the loss of the eye of innocence. Very likely we enjoy things better if we don’t know too much about them. I have often noticed that music seems to give great pain to people really musical and that an art gallery irritates the artist." How this is related to humor is interesting in itself. Having an eye for intelligent conversation may lead to an individual not seeing the full picture of the situation, but having little to no regard for anything intellectual may lead a person to laugh at anything and not think of the consequences from finding it humorous. This isn't necessarily true, based on the idea that mood should be a factor, but is something I wonder about testing for my animated sequence I plan to create. Questions Raised & Needs: This week I had many doubts about my ability to convey my ideas. But a reading from our professor expressed that having no clue about a study is necessary to explore and "play" with the tools around us. According to a reading assignment from a writer Rachel Philpott, "I believe that practice-led research that uses ludic (showing spontaneous and undirected playfulness) research methods must achieve a fine balance between methods of playful diverse exploration and analytical specific exploration in order to be successful." From this statement my questions began:
Next Steps: For my steps for this week I plan to get my rigged-character Chuck to a point where I feel comfortable animating him in a short narrative story. I also would like to determine whether or not to explore 3D or Live-Action backgrounds and see if they strengthen the narrative altogether. I want to read more books regarding humor, and find books that are about existentialism and ontology (branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of "being" [alive]). As for the research from the readings, I believe I can use them as a stepping stone for my script and a basis of support for my explanations to peers or an audience that may choose to watch the short that I create. -Taylor Olsen |
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