Experiment Animation Proposal

For our first assignment in Animation Principles, we have to create two pieces of experimental animation, the first is 30 seconds long set to one of five pieces of music, and the other is a 10 second long E4 sting for the TV channel, both of which produced using similar techniques. I will produce both pieces of animation at 25 fps as this is the UK TV standard which is necessary for E4, however I will shoot it on two’s effectively halving the amount of images I will have to produce as each image will be held for two frames.

For my 30 second piece I have chosen track 4 Mind Control as this piece it what gave me the most inspiration. The piece starts off saying “Take a look at the world around you,” which in turn made me think of a camera panning and seeing all around you, because of this I started to look at different kinds of backgrounds. Traditionally backgrounds are painted on white, and darker areas are simply achieved with dark paints, however for Batman: The Animated Series, show creator Erik Radomski came up with the idea of painting light colours on black paper to give the show its overall darker mood. I thought this would be a good technique to try out, and but rather than having heavily detailed static backgrounds, I would go for a more simplistic look and have the backgrounds move. The actual music itself has quite a fast tempo which is why I want the backgrounds to move, as well as being ideal for an experimental animation, as I don’t want to plan out the entire animation, but rather allow myself to be spontaneous and let the actions change as I animate it straight ahead.

I know that I want my animation to start with the buildings being drawn so I will take pictures of the background being drawn as I go along so that when they are played back, the buildings will seem to grow on the paper. I will then have a character walking down the road and zoom in on his face as we see the world around him. The character in my animation will be very blocky and be completely in black and white. In keeping with the backgrounds, the world of my animation will be very dark and set at night, so the character will only be half in light and half in shadow, with additional animation coming from the shadows he casts. It will all be kept very sketchy as I like the quality of a sketchy line, as when I draw I sometimes prefer the drawing with all the guidelines on them rather than in the finished cleaned up colour. A particular piece of animation that showcases sketchy quality well is that of Glen Keane’s Duet, which is also experimental for its interactive software. The character will then proceed to bounce around the page in a similar way to comic book characters, very bouncy but keeping the lines nice and loose.

For my E4 sting I am going to use the same technique, but rather than using mainly white on black, this will mainly be purple on black to match the E4 logo. The logo will be the feature of the animation rather than the person and I am planning on animating it much like a bouncy ball featuring a heavy use of squash and stretch. Preliminarily I will be using the rock track provided, however I may change my mind between animating the first piece and this one.