Update.. Easter Time!

Its the Easter holidays at the moment so I have returned home for a month. I decided to give myself a little break from editing footage, although I will be starting to work on this again this week. Over the past two weeks I have been designing my creative CV which I hope to be able to upload over the next few days. I have gone for quite a graphic look, similar to some of the work I have been producing for the US+THEM visuals.

I have also been thinking a lot about my innovation project which we were set the brief of just before the easter break. I want to try and tie the work in to my major project, so have decided to look at drug culture within clubbing and the visuals from the 60's and 80's when the rave was really big. If we think about the 60's, most people think about the psychadelic fashion, prints and visuals. During the 80's, people really began to express themselves with differet fashions, but when it came to clubbing neon colours and paints, ra ra skirts and fishnets were the way forward. I want to make at least one visual that could be projected in a nightclub that would sum up the fashion and trends surrounding drug use in the noughties. This will be innovational for me as I plan to use Particular, a plug in for adobe after effects, which I have never used before. I have always wanted to learn more about special effects and computer graphics, but have not pushed myself to learn so this is my opportunity. The noughties have been more glitz and glam, people make effeort to look beautiful when heading for a night out, so I am thinking along the lines of animating glitter effects as a visual.

I will continue my research over the next few weeks.

Editing Footage...

Since the shoot I have been in the studio using Premiere and After Effects to edit the footage. As we were filming all day, there is a massive amount of footage and clips to go through, picking out the best bits to silhouette.

I can't put any of my completed clips online, but here is a preview:

I have silhouetted the dancers black, and placed them on a white background. When put in the vjing software we can delete the white and be left with the dancer on their own which can then be layered on top of abstract graphics.

I will be editing footage for the rest of the term.

Green Screen Shoot...

Yesterday was the big day! Over the past five weeks I have been producing the dance shoot production, meeting people from the university, and sending MILLIONS of emails! But yesterday it finally all came together. Five choreographers from Dartington university travelled to Falmouth for the shoot, and they were AMAZING! I also had a fantastic crew, who without, the day would have been a complete sham! Paddy Jennings from V.I.A, Alex Darabi from Us+Them, and Jackson Tayler and Alex Joliffe from second year animation were all on hand to help set up the green screen, lighting, cameras and music.

We had two P2 cameras, one which was static, and another which we filmed with from alternate angles and also did a couple of interviews for the Us+Them documentary which will also go on the final DVD.

The choreographers were great because they all knew each other well, and there worked well together. Each dancer had their own unique style, from simple and sexy to crazy and contemporary. Although Paddy and I gave some stage direction, they really didn't need much and were fantastic at improvising!


We did experience a problem at the start of the day when one of the dancers tried to spin on the green screen, but as it is a felt drop, it twisted with their foot. This would have made it very difficult to edit the footage in post, but luckily we managed to find a piece of cardboard which we placed on top of the screen and used the camera to zoom in so the cardboard was barely visible. This means some of the clips will need extra editing, or we can cut off the feet. We will have to play with what looks best next week when we start editing the footage.


We will be using keylight in after effects to edit the footage, but first we must go through all the footage with a fine tooth comb to get the very best clips. The plan is to silhouette the dancers and have them o a plain background to be used with other clips when projected.

I have some ideas which I would like to try out using the footage for my innovation project. I spent a small amount of time shooting legs, and the plan is to animate something to replace the body.

BIG BIG THANKYOU's to Alex Darabi, Paddy Jennings, Jackson Tayler, Alex Joliffe, Natalie Mason, Sheri Burt, Rebecca Camilleri, Nicola Rayworth and Bella Miller!!

Online Presence

I OFFICIALLY have my very first web page! It is very much still under construction, but the ad is:

hollydollydesigns.moonfruit.com

The plan is to scan in lots of work from my portfolio over easter, as well as upload animation clips as they are made over the next few weeks.

New Pixel Style

Last week, V.I.A were invited to a charity gig in London to raise money and awareness to the Haiti disaster appeal. As we now have some second year students on board the project, we suggested they make animations for the gig in the theme of 'hope'. Jackson Tayler, a new member to the collective, made a brilliant animation in a pixel style similar to eboy. We have now adopted this style, as we all agreed that it looked fab. A video I particularly like in this style is Junior Senior - Move your Feet:



I have began working on my very own sprite sheet to make simple animations in this style which I will develop over the next few weeks. Here is some ideas I have been working on:

Green Screen Dance Shoot

I have spent the past few weeks organising the dance shoot that I will be producing.

I met up with Leslie-Ann Eaton, performance producer for Falmouth University, who contacted Dartington University to help me get hold of some dancers. Leslie-Ann works for Exeter Animation Festival, as well as working for the university. She was interested in helping me as over summer 2010 she has to organise a number of events around Falmouth to attract people to the place. She has offered the US&THEM team a gig over summer, as it would be a great opportunity for us, as well as something different for her to have on her event listing.

I have managed to attain five female dancers to come to Falmouth on Saturday 27th Feb for a full day in the green room. I have asked for the dancers to bring along costumes and props which would make good silhouettes.

I have also been doing tutorials on After Effects to experiment with motion graphics. I would love to make animations in a similar style to the ipod nano advert.

End Of Term... Future Plans..

I will be going home for the Christmas period on Monday, and over that time I will be concentrating mostly on my dissertation.

Yesterday, Pete, Alex and I handed in our pre-production dvd which holds all the files of art work that we have created over the past ten weeks. It is clear to see we have a strong style, and I am now looking forward to beginning production.

We have eight mini productions to complete, which are being produced between the three of us and have a small crew working on each. Here is a summary
1. Dance shoot - Greenscreen - Producer: Holly
2. Motion Graphics - After Effects - Producer: Pete
3. Experimental Designs - Mix media - Producer: Alex
4. Fashion Photography - Pixellation - Producer: Pete
5. Brand/Club Logo's - After Effects/Maya - Producer: Pete
6. Filmed backgrounds - Film - Producer - Pete
7. 2D Viral - Flash - Alex
8. 2D Illustrated characters - Photoshop/Flash - Producer: Pete


I will be working on a number of these projects but my main task is to produce the dance shoot, where we will film dancers on green screen ready to silhouette and manipulate the footage. I have contacts to organize the shoot, which I would like to take place in January. First I need to find out how to get the dancers on to separate alpha channels so they can be used as we hope. The deadline for all of these productions is March.

Yesterday I also had a tutorial with our lecturer Kathy. She is great for helping find influences from original material, as so far I have been looking at graphic designs created in more recent times.

She advised that I look at 1960's textile design and here is an image that I really liked:

:

I think this era could be quite influential on abstract designs. She also advised me to look at designers such as Ben Nicholson and Miro. For the illustrated 2D characters she sugested we look at fashion design, which is a route we previously discussed going down as it would be great to VJ at fashion shows. Some designers she suggested were Zoltan and Mats Dufastan.

I hope to research these people over Christmas so that I can come back bursting with ideas and start making some abstract loops.