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Me and Sophie walked into the mansion to be welcomed by a foul smell which turned out to be what can only be described as a landfill sight in the ornate kitchen. The walls and floor of the dining room were smeared with hardening industrial white paint which added to the fumes which were attacking our nasal passages. In the hall a large mahogany set of stairs was strewn with bare foot people and a small dog weaving its way through them. Pushing our way through a lively crowd of people  and avoiding a disturbingly friendly asian man at the bottom of said stairs into what must of once been a grand hall, now packed with a sea of diverse people young and old attempting to dance but having to make do with shuffling and bobbing given the sheer density of the crowd. After sliding through the main hall we reached the garden and chose to sit down on the deep grey crazy paving to smoke and decide our next move. 

After some time we met up with a few friends and stayed sitting on a wall. Someone behind me was cautiously sipping vodka out of a half smashed bottle of smirnoff. Deciding not to question anything i would see that night i carried on conversing with interchanging people. A loud ruckus kicks of by the glass panel doors. Two girls are locked in a vicious fight screeching incomprehensible insults and grappling at each others weaves. One girl ends up on the floor and gets stomped on by the other girls friends and they are eventually pulled of by some merciful strangers. After the fight died down a worse for wear girl was left shouting at everyone about the loss of her now missing finger and fighting past her friends to get back at her enemy.

We then took a trip into the bowels of the mansion through a room filled with young men covered in white paint playing a bizarre acid induced game of catch with a stiletto and a selection of choice plant pots. A deranged old man was sat in the corner of the room dividing a two gram line of what was most likely ketamine onto a bible surrounded by loud and obnoxious onlookers. Me and Sophie then walked through a clean white hallway passing a heavily pregnant women dancing in euphoria followed by the small bull terrier dog from before. The next room we entered was a huge greenhouse the length of a bus  

With a half filled swimming pool littered with beer cans and various oddities and ornate furniture we had previously seen elsewhere in the mansion. The side of the pool was lined with hoards of people sitting against the walls making walking through this room a dangerous manoeuvre for fear of the people beside you pushing you into the detritus of the once clean swimming pool. 

Beyond the pool was the garden again, strangely well kept dotted with a border of rough shrubbery, high iron fencing and a makeshift treehouse presumably assembled by the care free inhabitants of the dishevelled mansion. As we sat at the front of the house on a high red brick wall to roll cigarettes we noticed the front gate was barricaded shut and a couple of police officers were talking over their radios. We thought little of it as a police presence tonight was inevitable seeing the circumstances and volume of this party. Heading back in the kitchen we realised how badly the houses state was deteriorating throughout the course of the night, doors were now missing and a good 60% of the windows had now been smashed  for whatever reason. We sat in the clean white room that we had previously seen the hallucinating lads playing catch in and sat down with friends for the remainder of the night.

At roughly 6 o'clock in the morning a loud commotion was heard in the adjacent hallway followed by a wide eyed Rastafarian man busting open the door and belting 'the police are inside get out now', and then ran through towards the pool and shouting the same again and again until we could no longer hear him or he had left. We got caught up in a stampede of people heading out of the pool room out into the garden. Shouting and screaming could be heard inside the main hall and we soon realised there was no way out as the the hoards of riot police and dogs were cascading through the garden gate. We had to act fast and scramble up the high speared metal fence being careful not to impale our behinds in the hurry some of my friends stayed behind to assist some larger ladies in their frantic struggle whilst me and Sophie walked up the clifton road to the front of the squat to see riot van after riot van lined up the affluent street. We stayed for a while to try and help the inhabitants of the mansion see of the police but eventually left out of fatigue after an hour. We later waited for McDonalds to open and dozed off in one of the boofs reminiscing of what turned out to be the best night of our lives.

festival poster

fruit salad mood boards

bloop

Unit 04 Communication Through Art and Design

Unit 53 2D animation

What is animation, how does it work?

    Animation is a series of pictures put together to form movement. The pictures are called frames and the illusion is thought to be caused by the phi phenomenon along with persistence of vision. This phenomenon is the optical illusion of continuous motion between frames seen in quick succession of each other. This idea was brought to light by Max Wertheimer in 1912 alongside the cinema movement.

    Persistence of vision is where an after image is left on the back of the eye when you view an image. Its thought that this stays for a very small fraction of a second and when an image changes you see the image and the afterimage blend, creating the illusion of motion.

    The frame rate of an animation refers to how many images or frames are flashed onto the screen in a second. The more frames the higher the fps (Frames Per Second) This is usually at 24 to 30 fps for most films.

Where did animation start, what is the history? (Technical and Social)

    Animation has its roots even in primitive art from around the dawn of civilization. Cave drawings depicted movement through use of blurring and silhouettes to capture movement from the animals they were trying to bring to life. This shows that even early in our development, humans had recognized the possibility that art allows us to capture what we see around us. This technique has carried into modern times in some more abstract art. Next, the Egyptians developed sequences of wall paintings that show instructions for movement in the spirit world. These images were very similar to frames and showed the subjects moving very slightly each time as if the painter was capturing a sequence they had seen. 

    After many more centuries the Victorians developed the thaumotrope in 1824. A small circular disc of card with two different pictures each side had string running through the centre and it was spun quickly until the two pictures combined. This theory was used to demonstrate persistence of vision to the royal society of medicine. Next it was turned into the phenakistoscope in 1831 which was a circular disc with slits cut into it through which a user would peer down through onto a mirror which displayed images printed on the underside of the card. Because the slits were moving they created a shutter effect making it look as if the mirror image was moving. The design of the phenakistoscope was improved eventually to become
the Zoetrope which was on a strip, removing the need for the mirror. 

    Flip books came along in 1868 and the first was made by John Barnes Linett which featured a booklet of pictures that when flicked form an animated sequence. Finally with the emergence of film the first animation appeared in 1900 called enchated drawing which was followed by the first entirely animated film by J.Stuart Blackton who is considered the father of American animation. This began the silent era of animation with gertie the dinosaur and felix the cat.

What sorts of animation are there.

    The original type of animation used in the entertainment industry was cel animation. This is a method of animation that involves animators first creating the animation on very thin paper called layout paper first. When the layout pad animation is complete and the director is happy to let the animation move to the next step it is inked onto clear transparencies called cels (because the original sheets where made with clear plant cellulose, they are now more often a synthetic material like acetate or polythene). The cels are then coloured in on the reverse of the sheet and placed over the background (because the cels are transparent they can be placed over one background that can be used over and over again, only needing to be changed when the camera angle or scene changes.) and photographed in the correct animated sequence. The film this creates can then be played back at the correct framerate or fps to create the illusion of motion.

    Another type of animation used today is 3d digital animation. This begins with a 3d model created in a program and rigged with a 'skeleton' that the animator can move that has been created by a modeler in a CAD program. The model is then moved into an animation program that can be used to program the model to carry out a sequence of movements. This is then exported (or "rendered") into a type of video file, translating the programmed movements into a series of images that can be viewed in quick succession. This creates the animated illusion of movement.

    Stop frame animation is a physical method of animating character models. This method is used by directors and studios such as Tim Burton and Aardman animations. The character model is created from designs by a modeler and team of artists out of plasticine or in the form of a puppet with some kind of polyurethane facial features. The model is placed on a set with a camera and the animator moves the model a fraction at a time, taking a picture every move, to build up a sequence of images that creates an animation. The animator makes sure that he observes the correct frame rate, matching the time it should take for the characters to move in seconds to the amount of frames the movement takes.

    One last type of animation is Rotoscoping, this is where a live video is taken and drawn over by an animator frame by frame. Very time consuming, this method creates unique visuals and bold imagery. This effect isn't often used on a large scale because of how difficult and time consuming it is but it can be used to draw objects into a video or to add effects that give the film a feeling of mysticism and magic.

What modern styles are you inspired by and why do you like them.


Many types of animation inspire my and my art but none more than old style anthropomorphic cartoons, disney princess films and anime but mostly anime. Instead of aiming for young audiences like the majority of modern western animation it often caters towards more adult themes and demographics which I think could tie in well with our brief

Storyboarding 

frame 1: long shot, tom walking through  forest. Ambient woodland sounds.
frame 2: long shot, tom stumbles upon Yallery's slab. Muffled voice cries for help.
frame 3: long shot, Tom lifts the stone. He  grunts.
frame 4: Close up, Yallery is sat down. Yawning and stretching. Dialogue between Yallery and Tom. Tom's wish is granted.
frame 5: Long shot, Yallery disappears. Ambient forest sounds.
frame 6: Long shot of all Tom's unfinished work. Farmyard noises.
frame 7: Tom's work is magically completed, popping  noises as work is done.
frame 8: Tom is driven out of the farm, shouting and running noises. Tom calls for Yallery and he appears. Tom is dragged under the stone, scraping noises. Yallery is left singing his song.