Critical Positions on Popular Culture

When looking into Popular Culture you first need to understand Culture itself. It's a particular way of life, a set of ideas. Karl Marx came up with the concept of the Base and Superstructure, he divided society into two, the Base being economic reality, the employer relations that make up society. The Superstructure is the direct result of the Base which would be laws, politics, culture, the way we think of the world is direct result of the Base. All in all, the Base produces the Superstructure however the Superstructure maintains the Base.

Culture is a product of the Base so Popular Culture could be classed as inferior to culture as it is made from the masses for the masses - popularism. Before, it was all shared 'culture' it was and always had been produced by the rich. They would determine and define what culture would be  and this could easily be turned to high and low culture - culture doesn't have politics, anything with an agenda isn't culture - Matthew Arnold 1867. The Frankfurt School however argued that popular culture actually maintained social order and perpetuates it, strengthens. There is an endless stream of popular culture so much so that it promotes a false consciousness, it's very limited. When looking at the  contemporary culture industry there are many things that actively disguises the real world and exploits people below them, such as The X Factor. It teaches us nothing so in the end real world problems never get solved and the radical ideas get dissolved.

The problem with popular culture is that today it is getting mass-produced without a care in the world to try and make it different in any shape or form. The movie industry, mass movies yet only slight alterations between them. The plot becomes predictable and we as viewers have seen it all before - movies recently have been moving towards making adaptations from books which shows in a way that the movie industry are running out of good ideas for plots. The music industry is almost the same, selling exactly the same thing but slightly different. The thing is, it's easy to produce and easy to consume, and endless chain of consumption.

Blocking Animation

In industry, animation is normally blocked out first to put down the key poses and to get a sense of timing. If anything in the script was to change, this would be the ideal time to do it. II thought I would try out this method as before I was just keying the animation using the auto curve and adjusting it from there. Everyone has their own way of working but I thought I may as well try this technique out. Blocking gets across the idea and motion of the character easily, I have showed the rest of my group the below video to get feedback and before I change the curve from stepped to linear I will adjust a few things, such as slowing down the run cycle. I also need to add in some facial expressions, blinks and just general small things that will add to our characters personality.

When I go to change the curves to linear, I will be adding in extra key frames to smooth out the animation and maybe deleting any unnecessary ones. After it has been completed with linear curves, I will then take them to spline curves, this will be the last stage and hopefully the refinement of the animation where I will be adjusting things here and there.

The below video is the blocking animation, not all of it is there as our second character is just being finished off at the moment. To utilise our time the most efficiently, I have begun animating with a non textured model and environment. These are not needed for animation and it means everything is progressing and nothing is on hold. They eye texture is present however as I wasn't able to gauge the eye movement very well without having anything on the eye geometry.


A useful blog I came across awhile ago was, 'Animation Tips and Tricks' where professional animators give their insider tips. It's really helpful and gives you a good insight to the industry practice. One that I found was on blocking animation and why they do it within the industry, Animation Tips and Tricks. It gives the supervisors and directors a clear idea of what you are going to be doing and what is going on in the scene. One thing I haven't done, but will do in future is before I go in to blocking the animation I should really draw out thumbnails of each shot to give my ideas more grounding and stability. Looking at this blog and back at my blocking I realised in some places I could have not included as many key poses as it was clear what the intention was. This was my first go at it so there are still lots of things I can improve on, but at the end of the day it's a learning process.

Reference Videos

In order to achieve a believable animation, we shot some LAV's (Live Action Videos) for reference. I find it really useful to be able to refer to videos when animating as I can be sure that I'm putting down the key poses in the correct way, also by recording these I am able to scrub back and forth through the video and really analyse how the body moves and what parts move when. As I am going to be animating the character I thought it would be best for me to act out the parts as I could get a better feel for it and understand her movements more. Animators are pretty much actors anyway, you need to be able to understand the movements of a specific character and the best way to do that is to act it out yourself.

Lija recorded a wide range of videos, the main actions / movements such as creeping, running, turning around etc, but we also did close up of the feet so I am able to really study these and make sure that the way our character walks is correct to how it is in real life. I quite enjoyed acting out the different parts but still need to get in the habit of doing this all the time with any animation I do. If I had more time as well I would have liked to break down the video into key shots where I could just refer to these when blocking out the animation, rather than scrubbing the video the whole time. Scrubbing the video is useful to see how the the poses move from one to another, but with the blocking stage of animation this isn't too necessary at the minute. I have uploaded a couple of videos with the links below.

Creeping Walk

Sitting Up

Bradford Animation Festival - Day 4

The last day of Bradford Animation Festival, I only made it for the Aardman talk and the screening of The Pirates film but even just those 2 was worth the trip. Will Beecher was a character lead animator for the Aardman film 'The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists'. I decided to go along to this as even though it is stop motion, Will Beecher is still an animator and any advice or experience from an animator will be very useful, and I was not disappointed.

Will showed us his student film which got him into the industry and highlighted the fact that even though his character did not move around, the interaction between the two characters is key. This is an important thing to show and this is something I will keep in mind when it comes to animating my two characters together.

What I really enjoyed about this talk was the fact that Will gave us a demonstration on how he would go about changing the faces on the Pirate Captain and moving the rest of the body for animation. It was great to see how the faces were changed as this was something I was never sure about, for Aardman the faces are held on with magnets so it's easy to swap them in and out. There were all these small pieces to the character that you could alter such as the Captains beard; when changing the mouth shapes the beard needs to move with it or else it would break away from the believability of it all. In order to do this there was a small allen key that cold be insert into his beard and depending on which way you turn it, the beard would either move up or down. This was great to see as for myself, I would have never have thought about this. It makes me realise that I really need to understand and breakdown a character before it comes to animating. I need to work out what parts of them will move and how much they should be moved. There will be some things that only need to be moved subtly, however if it is not moved at all, that one small thing could be quite obvious. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and informative talk and once again just as LAIKA did, we got to see the puppets up close.

I watched the film itself after the talk and really enjoyed it, I had never got round to watching it when it came out so this was the prime opportunity to watch the film. It was interesting to see how even though both LAIKA and Aardman used the replacement animation technique, their style was still different and obvious in each. Unfortunately after the film was over I left Bradford as I had work that needed to be done. I was disappointed that I wasn't able to make it to the closing award ceremony and after party, however I think that is something I will be definitely attending next year. It's something not to be missed, another opportunity to get a chance to talk to more people in a relaxed setting and it would have been a great way to end an amazing week.

This whole week has been enjoyable, informative and inspirational. It has opened my eyes to new things and got me thinking about techniques and processes. Bradford Animation Festival is something that I shall be attending for quite some time from now on, even after university. It has given me so much motivation right now to be the best that I can be and to push myself further in my animations. I'm planning to book my Animex tickets soon and hopefully it will be just a inspirational and motivational as Bradford, if not more.

Bradford Animation Festival - Day 3

Friday was the busiest day of the festival, lots of talks to attend and I planned to go to a networking event that All Animated had organised. The day began with a talk from Jason Theaker a freelance animator and tutor from Bradford Uni. He spoke about how at Bradford Uni they have a programme where students, along side tutors work on a professional brief. This gives the student more experience, skills and knowledge about working with a real client. The short that was shown had been nominated for a national prize so this would have given the students a lot of exposure. James Thompson, a student who worked on the short film was there to give us his point of view on working on it. He took us through the process and spoke about a few things that I had never really thought about before. If you're working in a group as long as the rigger has a rough model (all proportions should be correct) even if it's not completely finished, they can get started on the rigging process while the character is still being completed. Once it has been finished it can be passed onto the rigger who can then just apply the rig and send it on to the animators. This is a good way of using time, especially if there is a strict time scale on the project. After this talk, it really got me thinking about possibly doing a masters after my 3 years.

The next talk was given by Amanita Designs and Red Kite Games. They spoke about animation and games for new platforms and why they chose to produce mobile games. Jaromir Plachy who is an animator and graphic artist, showed some of his work that led up to him creating Botanicula for Amanita. I really enjoyed the animations that he created, they were so simple in terms of design but his humour translated through the characters and created a thoroughly enjoyable watch. It goes to show that even something so sim sole can really engage with the audience. Simon Iwaniszak, Managing Director of Red Kite Games previously had worked at Rockstar Leeds but decided this was the right time to go ahead and set up his own company. By being an indie studio you have more of a creative say with what goes on and with mobile gaming becoming ever more popular; you have the ability to create a game that you want to make.

The big talk of today was from Mark Shapiro of LAIKA, the independent animation studio that created Coraline and ParaNorman. I was really excited to see this as I saw ParaNorman when it came out and was blown away at the technical side and also the versatility of the characters. Mark showed a wide range of videos that explained how they achieved the look of ParaNorman and the process they used for creating the faces using 3D colour printing. Some of these videos I had seen before, after researching into it once I had seen the film. There were a couple videos though that really broke down the process of the animation, and it really makes you appreciate and gain a new found respect for the animated that work in the stop motion industry. There is so much accuracy and dedication needed to create a stop motion film, objects and characters have to be moved a tiny fraction each frame and if it isn't accurate that one frame could cause quite a lot of problems. As Mark is the head of entertainment, brand marketing he also spoke about how they marketed the film to get people interested and excited about it. They created lots of short videos explaining the making of ParaNorman and placed these on the web with the hash tag 'WeirdWins'. This got people tweeting about the film and spreading the word. What was really interesting was that someone I know in America was really hyped up about this film, before I spoke to him I knew nothing about it but I had seen all his tweets and it got me intrigued about ParaNorman. I think because he ended up being a big promoter of the film by using twitter, LAIKA actually sent him merchandise from the film in appreciation, which I think is really lovely of them to reward the fans out there. It's really interesting to see how social media can affect the promotion of a film and how they use it to get more attention.

Even though I had previously seen ParaNorman, I saw it again but this time in 3D. After having the talk from Mark I found that I ended up paying attention to all the small details he spoke about and really concentrating on the faces. I noticed things I never did the first time I watched it and it made me appreciate the film more for what it was, now knowing more of the process behind it. I am normally not a big fan of 3D films, as I feel that sometimes it is a bit distracting and I find myself not being able to be fully immersed within the film. This was different however, I found that there were some areas that really benefitted from being 3D and made me feel more of a part of the film. I also got a chance to take a few pictures of the puppets themselves after the talk, it was great to see them up close and see all the detail that was put into them, for example for each character their clothing was individually hand made and sew on to them.

After the film I hopped on along to a networking event that All Animated had organised. Seeing as I missed the previous one in Leeds I knew I wanted to take advantage of this one. Whilst there I met the lovely Aaron Wood, Managing Director of Slurpy Studios and Billy Allison who gave me some really useful advice within animation and also a bit more confidence as I always worry that my way of working isn't the 'right' way. I spoke to Aaron about the Animex conference up in Teeside and he said it is definitely worth going as it would suit me very well what with wanting to go into CG, so I think this is the way to go and hopefully I will be able to catch up with Aaron again up there.

The last thing of the day for me was attending the animation pub quiz, this was a first for me as I had never even been to a pub quiz before and I was worried my lack of animation knowledge would fail me! Myself and Alex ended up teaming with Kath and Kim from All Animated, it was a good laugh and I learnt new things about animation I didn't know previously. There were prizes at the end, but seeing as we didn't come first we missed out on the art books, however I got myself a Rango Cactus Cup that I was pretty chuffed about! This is something I definitely want to attend again as it brings everyone together in a relaxed and fun setting and it's just something enjoyable to do.

Bradford Animation Festival - Day 2

Day 2, I was quite looking forward to as Vanessa Boyce from Double Negative would be doing a talk in the afternoon. Before this there was a couple more things to be seen, the first one being Professional 2, it was similar to the screening on the previous day however these shorts were created by professionals. Again there were 8 films shown in total, however due to me arriving a bit late I missed out on two of these shorts. I may see if I can find these online or on their sit as I caught the ending for one of them 'Bendito Machine IV' (Spain) and it seemed very intriguing and the animation was all done with silhouettes. There was an interesting short called 'Father' that was directed by a handful of people all from different countries. They used a combination of 3D and 2D which produced a hybrid of styles. The characters differed from one another quite drastically, some being quite stylised whereas another looked more realistic compared to the others. The story itself was quite haunting and really immersed me into the whole story about a dialogue between father and child that never happens. 'Edmond was a Donkey' was probably my most favourite one as not only did it include a lot of 3D elements, but the story itself was something different and really made you feel for the character. There was dialogue during this film however the main character it revolved around never spoke a work. I find that no dialogue is such a strong thing sometimes and more emotion can be shown just through their actions and expression. I really liked the lighting in this film as well, the majority of it was mainly a grey scale however when it switched it was really beautiful, especially seeing it contrasting against the grey.

I attended a talk after this about creating virtual urban environments. Vanessa Boyce from Double Negative, Martin Walker a lecturer in 3D computer graphics and animation, Ben Hall from Criterion Games and Jonathan Gales founding member of Factory Fifteen were bought together to talk about creating photorealistic urban environments. It was interesting to see the different approaches and what was produced from people who were coming from different areas of the industry. A recurring thing that came up with each speaker was the fact that because these environments are created virtual, 3D programmes have the tendency to make everything perfect and this is not how it is in real life. If they left it now it was, the environments wouldn't be believable and would distract the viewer from the overall experience. To get over this, they would go in and physically make it 'imperfect' adding in little details, textures, making sure lines are not dead straight etc. I had never really thought about this before but it is a very good point that I will keep in mind when I create photorealistic environments in the future.

The next talk was by Vanessa Boyce again but this time going into more detail about Double Negative's newest film 'Total Recall'. VFX is something that has caught my attention for awhile now, I love how companies are able to create vast environments that are so realistic, it really amazes me. Double Negative only had about a year to create pretty much everything from scratch so that was a massive job in itself. It was quite impressive how much was achieved in that time and the overall outcome of it. In my notes it explains the process they took when creating the environments. Vanessa is the CG supervisor and made the point that in the film they had 2 different types of vfx to do, putting the filmed shot into the modelled environments but also putting modelled characters into already filmed shots. Both of these ways, even though similar had to be approached in different ways. Seeing this talk it really makes me want to explore the industry of vfx and create some photorealistic work that I could put in my portfolio. I have been looking into internships this year and Framestore a vfx company in London normally do summer internships each year so I may apply for this and see how it goes.

The last talk of the day was from Valerie Kausen, the granddaughter of Chuck Jones. It was lovely to hear what it was like to have an amazing animator like her grandfather in her life and influencing the things she did. We got to see some of his shorts which was really inspirational and really makes me want to study 2D animation more for the principles and take that into my 3D work. I think this will be something I explore further as at the end of the day the principles of animation are the foundations to any good animation. Without a good understanding of them you can't get your animation to achieve it's fullest potential.

Bradford Animation Festival - Day 1

This year I attended the whole of Bradford Animation Festival and was very much looking forward to it as for me, it would be more relevant than the game side of BAF and though I would get more out of it. I had attended a single day at BAF the previous year and was disappointed that I didn't think to go for the whole week, so when I found out that this year I would be attending the whole week I was very much looking forward to it.

The first day consisted of a couple of screenings and a panel talk. The first screening I went to was the Official Selection: Student 2. 8 films were shown in total, all of which were created by students and was up for a possible award at the end of the week. There was a range of different styles and techniques over the 8 films and the stories ranged quite differently. As for someone who wants to be a 3D animator I was slightly disheartened by the fact there wasn't any CG shorts, however the films that were shown we're quite impressive.

Buy Buy Baby (UK), Drawl (Poland), The Other Side (UK) and Snowflake (Russia) were my favourites, mainly for the storyline as they really caught my attention and immersed me into them. Their style varied quite differently from 2D computer, a mix of 2D and 3D computer and 2D computer with drawings on paper. All gave different results and a different feel to them which added to the story itself. With Drawl for example the painted like backgrounds made it really quite beautiful yet contrasted so drastically from the storyline. I really enjoyed these shorts and it gives me inspiration to work towards, hopefully in the near future I can submit an animation I've created into a festival and just see how well it does.

After this screening I went along to a panel talk where the discussion of the 'Student Film', the role, function and purpose took place. Tony Prosser - Managing Director of RealtimeUK, Caroline Parsons - Newport Uni, Chris Williams - Bournemouth Uni and Sophie Jenkins - Recruitment Manager for Double Negative made up the panel. It was good to see that the panel was made up of people who had jobs in different areas. I found this talk very useful and gave me a good insight to what industry people are looking for in showreels or the 'student film'. The main things I took from this talk was that I need to be very pro active and get out there networking and contacting people. Another thing is that when it comes to my showreel, it really needs to reflect my specialism, I need to tailor it to the specific job I want. I also need to be aware of opportunities that are available once I come out of uni, or even before this point. I need to be able to take advantage of festivals and competitions, anything to get my work out there and noticed.

For myself, I already know I want to become an animator and I am already pushing myself that bit further to improve my work and gain a better knowledge of this area. However with this talk it makes me want to push myself even more and make sure I am as prepared as I can be for when it comes to apply for a job within the industry. I am becoming a bit more confident with talking to people so I am trying to network as much as I can to get those all important contacts and see if I can get feedback from any animators to see how I can improve my work.

The last thing for the first day was a screening of films from All Animated. All Animated is a membership and networking organisation that covers animation in the North West, North East and Yorkshire. I had heard of them before but never got around to going to the previous networking event in Leeds as I felt I didn't really have any work to show. The shorts that we saw were from a range of people that had been made by local people and companies and gave a good insight to who was involved and the work they were producing. I got a chance to speak to the lovely people of All Animated afterwards and they were very friendly and encouraged me to attend the next networking event in a couple of weeks. The shorts that were shown were mainly 2D animation with a bit of stop motion but after speaking to Kath, Steve and Kim - the people who run All Animated, they assured me there were other 3D animators about and gave me the names of some. The first day was quite informative and enjoyable and I knew the week was only going to get better and was thoroughly looking forward to it.

Uncharted

As we are making a game cinematic for this module I have decided to look into the making of a cinematic of a well known and popular game, 'Uncharted'. This game amongst many major titles uses motion capture when creating the cut scenes and in game animation. Motion capture is where the actions/movements of a person are recorded and then by using that information it is translated to create animations. By using motion capture,  it would speed up the process and produce more realistic results, complex movements are more accurate.

For the first Uncharted game because of the space they were using it was not suitable to record audio at the same time so this had to be synced over the animation at a later date. Even though this produces good results it's better if it is all recorded together at the same time, easier and more efficient. Obviously this depends on the space, you need a room that doesn't give you back any echo or where other sounds are present.

The video below shows part of an Uncharted cutscene that has been broken down to show the process. You can see the videos at the top are what is being captured by the cameras and the actors in the mo-cap suits that allow for this to happen. The bottom left is how the whole scene would look without textures, just the basic outlines of the environment and the characters movements. The bottom right is the fully rendered sequence. Further in to the video you can see that even though there are certain objects that are not shown in the basic modelling, it still needs to be recorded in the first stages. This gives something for the actors to get a grasp on and the actions will be more believable. The props are modeled and added in at a later stage.

There will always be pros and cons for both motion capture and key framed animation, as we are doing key framed animation it will undoubtedly take longer however we can put more emphasis on exaggeration and the 12 principles of animation. Even though motion capture is quicker, for exaggeration such as squash and stretch, this still needs to be done afterwards as movements that do no abide by the laws of physics cannot be captured. Depending on the style of game would determine on what technique is used, whether it be motion capture (more realistic) of key framed (more stylized).

UV Mapping

I had previously unwrapped Gloria - our main character, which took me a really long time, probably longer than it should of, but I got there in the end. I knew in some places it was a bit messy and the way I unwrapped parts probably wasn't the most efficient way to do it. I had to re do some of the maps however as when it came to smoothing our character she turned out to be a fair few too many polys. Ideally a character should be as low as possible around 6000 - 7000 polys, trying to be the most economical. Because she was so many polys I went and started deleting unnecessary edge loops and by doing this I got her below 8000, the issue was that by deleting edge loops I had messed up the uv map. I think by deleting edges after it was mapped I may have deleted the seams which would distort the map itself. I was annoyed at the fact I would have to re do most of he unwrapping again, but in hindsight it was a good thing. This time I was able to make the map a lot neater and more understandable.

Now knowing this, with our second character we have smoothed him and then Lija deleted the unnecessary edge loops first before unwrapping him. This shouldn't distort the map in any way as we are doing it after the editing stage. We just hope that smoothing it beforehand won't be detrimental in any way as we were told to unwrap first then smooth. I guess we shall soon se if there are any issues, but hopefully they would be an easy fix if anything.

Modelling our second character

Carrying on from the previous blog post, I have now completed our second character. He has turned out really well and I particularly like his facial features, he is such a stark contrast to our main character and I think the contrast will work great when they are put together. Due to time constraints I am not going to be able to UV map and rigging the second character as I know the animation is going to take me awhile, so I have passed these jobs onto Lija. Learning from our previous character we are going to smooth him first, delete unnecessary edges and then UV map him. This character has been quite simple to model compared to Gloria, however the hands were a bit of an issue, as he is quite 'chunky' and stubby I had to work out a good proportion for his hands, hopefully they'll be alright when it comes to rigging and weight painting.
 

The Gaze in the Media - Writing Task

This piece of writing aims to compare and contrast Mulvey and Coward's essays on 'Visual Please and 'The Look'. Both Coward and Mulvey look at how as a child, there comes a certain age when we finally acknowledge our own image "...recognition of himself is joyus..." (Mulvey, 1975). Mulvey goes on to explain that even though the child's recognition is joyus, it is overlaid with mis-recognition, this reflection the child sees mistakes it for more of an ideal ego, a superior projection of himself. This ideal ego can be linked towards the portrayal of a male movie star. Where women in movies are displayed as "...erotic object for the characters...and as erotic object for the spectator..." (Mulvey, 1975) the men, are seen as more perfect and more in control, a more powerful ideal ego.

When looking into contemporary media, the camera is a reoccurring object that can be used "...as an extension of the male gaze at women on the streets." (Coward, 2000) Women are constantly scrutinised through the way other women are portrayed in advertisements, film, photography and television. Through these mediums it gives birth to the 'ideal' woman which men can then judge and come to conclusions based off these visual interpretations; however because of this judgement it makes women feel vulnerable and powerless to look back at men in the same way. "Advertising in this society builds precisely on the creation of an anxiety to the effect that, unless we measure up, we will not be loved." (Coward, 2000). Women feel the need to better themselves, to reach this standard that has been set by the 'ideal' woman where in actual fact, this is a false representation of the real woman. Mulvey (1975) argues however, that within psychoanalytic terms it is the man that can hold the anxiety "...her lack of a penis, implying a threat of castration and hence unpleasure." This links back to the castration complex brought up by Freud, where there is the fear of loosing his penis. To avoid this the male unconscious has to come up with a way of escaping, one of which is to objectify the woman, to make her physically beautiful, something that will satisfy.

The woman is never in control, especially when voyeurism comes into play, looking rather than being close to something, similar to a Peeping Tom. "And Peeping Toms can always stay in control...distanced he may be, but secure he remains." (Coward, 2000). This looking at a distance is mens way of defending their judgement of women, their scrutiny.

The problem is that the male gaze is not something that will disappear anytime soon. It is a way to advertise and sell, however this male gaze has developed to become somewhat of an anxiety within women. Because of this anxiety women feel the need to perfect every part of their body "...preparing the face to meet the faces that we meet." (Coward, 2000) and that in itself boosts sales of certain products. People have expanded on what once was 'sex sells' to manipulating the scrutiny of women.

Coward, R., 'The Look', in Thomas, J. (ed.) (2000), Reading Images, Basingstoke: Palgrave pg 33-39

Mulvey, L. (1975), 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', in Badmington, N. and Thomas, J. (eds.) (2008) The Routledge Critical and Cultural Theory Reader, London and New York Routledge, pg 202-212

Alien Animation

As I mentioned in a previous post, the next stage to my alien would be to animate it doing a walk, jump and an idle which would then be taken into Unity 3d for a turntable. I have created a playblast of the animations in each state of the alien; skeleton, skeleton and controls, geometry and textured. This gives a better overview of the alien and the construction that took place to create the final version.

I still find walk cycles a bit awkward to do and it is something I really want to get better at so when it comes to animating the characters for our cinematic; I will be wanting to create some reference videos to work from and analyse. I find it easier to do other actions and a bit of facial animation so hopefully this will stand out in our cinematic, but as most of it is walking I need to make sure that there are no issues with it and that I am able to execute it to a high standard.


Alien Animation from Siobhan Parkhouse on Vimeo.

Un Chien Andalou

Un Chien Andalou is a surrealist silent film from 1929, created by the Spanish director Luis Bunuel and artist Salvador Dali. The whole film is set out to be a dream-like sequence and there are many areas within the film that can be related to psychoanalysis, the imagery used and ideas and concepts that are portrayed through this. The film starts off with with a woman's eye being slit open which is then juxtaposed with a similarly shaped cloud, the cutting of the eye is the abject - a physical fear rather than a psychological one. It adds horror into the scene in a more obvious way.

Throughout the film the Id and the Superego seem to be a recurrent theme. The idea that the Id is our unconscious where fears and irrational wishes lie and the Superego being the social order where things have to be acceptable. This is shown through the sexual desires of the man in the film, he battles between his irrational wishes and the acceptance of it within society. The woman fights against him and this is also representational of the Id and Superego as in the end she succumbs to his groping before pushing him off. "...in the former the ego, in the service of reality, suppresses a piece of the id, whereas in a psychosis it lets itself be induced by the id to detach itself from a piece of reality." - (Freud, 2007). The ego is our conscious mind, our thoughts and perceptions so the quote from Freud's 'Fetishism' text explains that because of our conscious, our ego, it suppresses part of our id - the irrational thoughts, our unconscious. In the film however the room where the majority of it takes places, could be the conscious and within the conscious there is safety so the irrational wishes and thoughts can be shown.  The man tries to corner the woman however picks up two ropes and drags along two grand pianos with rotting donkeys, stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments and two priests. This could be a representation of religion and culture and the actions this man is trying to carry out is not acceptable in society.

Another idea you could look at is the actual title of the film, Un Chien Andalou which is translated to The Andalousien Dog. This can relate to animal instincts and in some way shape or form you could say that we as humans, all have an animal instinct within ourselves. The id is the instinctual part of ourselves within our subconscious. This is not only represented through the title of the film but also through the actions of the man. Is the man the dog?

There are many different ideas and concepts that you could look at within this film with it being based on dreams and created by a surrealist artist. Only by covering a few, it already is obvious that a lot of the ideas present within the film, revolve around the idea of our conscious / subconscious and unconscious all of which are Freudian Models.

Freud, S. , 'Fetishim', in Barnard, M. (ed.) (2007) Fashion Theory: A Reader, Abingdon: Routledge, pg555

Second Character

I've started modelling our second character, the boss man that is judging our main girl throughout the training course. Using the turnaround from Lija (found HERE) I did the same process as before to turn them into image planes to model from. I did a really rough model of this character a few weeks ago so the head didn't take me that long to do compared to our woman character. The bit that is taking the longest at the minute is his clothing, I still need the adjust it quite a bit as the clothing should really reflect his personality; stern, disciplined so the clothes should be sharp and in form.

At the minute it's just in smooth view but I've tested it a few times with it actually smoothed and have found that the braces in particular don't work too well so for them, I think I will just use soften edge. This is quite useful as like it says, it almost softens the edge, giving it a smoother appearance yet without adding any extra faces to it; so this is almost ideal for games that have a poly-count.

Panopticism

Panopticism is the control of conduct, behaviour and performance. It derives from the word Panopticon. Jeremy Bentham designed the Panopitcon as a way to create a disciplinary power and society. They could be used as hospitals or schools amongst others, however the majority that were built were as prisons and asylums. The Panopticon was a circular building full of individual cells, open from the front with bars and lit from the back via windows, each cell looked towards the centre where there would normally be a tower that could hold guards or doctors depending on the institution. The inmates could never see each other only the constant presence of the guards. This created a mental effect and soon the inmates would behave in the way the supervisor would want them to behave without having to actually do anything. It was the constant reminder that you are always being watched. The inmates were permanently isolated which caused a psychological issues, almost as a form of torture. Foucault (1975) stated that power functions automatically.

The Panopticon wasn't just about a form of control and discipline but also about watching, observing, scrutinizing and classification. It was a means of surveillance, to confine but also study the insane. Panopticism is a new form of power, that you are always being watched in some way, shape or form. An open plan office is an example of this, you are constantly seen by others so it changes your behaviour. We live in a surveillance society where every single action we do is watched in some way. There are countless of CCTV cameras around so it becomes self regulation, we are controlling ourselves for the fear of being caught doing something we shouldn't. It is similar within the social media aspect, everything is observed by someone so it can make you behave in a certain way to how you normally are, which could in turn shape an identity. Foucault describes it as a mental process yet it is not physically conforming.

The Gaze & The Media

The Gaze is something that has been used a lot in advertising, art, film and games and the theories behind it can be used to explain certain aspects. The 'Birth of Venus' by Cabanel can be looked into further using theories of 'The Gaze'. The pose that the woman is in is used a lot in advertising, other paintings and photography. With her hand/arm covering her face and eyes there is more of a concentration on the body than anywhere else.

John Berger identifies The Male Gaze through paintings and compares them those that hold similar attributes or subject matters, such as Titan's 'Venus of Urbino' and Manet's 'Olympia'. Both paintings have a similar pose produced by the woman, however there are small subtle things that really distinguish one from another and in turn creates a different view. 'Venus of Urbino' is more inviting, a more traditional nude painting, the woman's face acknowledging the presence of a viewer but not phased by it. Manet's 'Olympia' on the other hand is more stern, there is a harsher look to the painting than Titan's. The woman seems to hold more power and her own gaze is quite harsh.

Rosalind Coward, another theorist to The Gaze says that there is somewhat of a normalisation towards nudity/semi-nudity in the street, on billboards etc, it never seems to be noticed fully or it is but in our subconscious. The Male Gaze is prominent in our society however switching men for women in advertisements or art is not a way to challenge it. The quantity of male orientated ads is far less than women. There was an advertisement by Dolce & Gabbana where, instead of women they used men as a celebration of bodies. It was a challenge to the gaze, something you don't get with women advertisements.

When it comes to the media, The Gaze can be a powerful thing. The media holds power over people, the can portray people in a specific way and the viewers will accept this. Paparazzi for example take pictures of celebrities and high status people, not just because it's their job but more so that there is a demand, almost an obsessive perception. With reality television it gives the viewer an all-seeing eye, the power of the gaze.

When it comes to games The Male Gaze seems to be quite prominent, most female characters tend to be overly sexualised. Lara Croft for example was a turning point as she was the main character of the game, an active character. Men normally would drive the story during the 50's and 60's so having a female lead was something different, however even though she drove it and was powerful she was still overly sexualised. You could say it was almost a fantasy for some people, the fantasy of her destruction. There needs to be a shift within games as there is a trend with more girl gamers and not all of us want to be playing as a character in skimpy clothing. There should be customisable characters, you should get a choice.

Finished Alien

My alien is now fully modelled, textured, rigged and weight painted. The process was quite straight forward, placing the specific joints to create the skeleton then adding controllers with constraints, making sure that they were to the right ones. As it was a simple rig it didn't take me too long to weight paint, probably the most time consuming thing was setting the SDK's (set driven keys) and limiting and locking off all attributes. This is a good habit to get in to as within industry, animators would just get a fully working character without having to change the rig in anyway. The SDK's were applied to the feet and hands to allow more complex movements such as the reverse foot lock. By creating the reverse foot lock this allows more of a natural movement when it comes to walk cycles, otherwise without these it would stand out too much.

All there is to do now is create 3 states of animation: a walk, jump and an idle stance. This will then be baked out and exported for Unity where I will then create a character turntable. The turntable will allow the viewer to move around the character whilst the animations are playing. 

I produced 3 really quick animations in order to do the turntable process and see what needed to be done. A script was added to randomise the animations and then put on a loop. There was an issue that came up, as the animations would move from one to another the eye of my alien would deform and almost pop out. Apparently this is due to the actual script as it moves to the next animation it has to almost cross fade it into the next so that's why this deformation happened. There's nothing I can really do about this but I hope it won't be too bad when it comes to my final one. 

-->

Unity Web Player | turntable

« created with Unity »

Hotel Transylvania

It's been quite a good couple of months for animation, some really good releases have come out and a lot more yet to come. One that I was quite interested and looking forward to seeing was Hotel Transylvania, and I was not disappointed in the slightest. The animation was something I had never really seen before in CG and it just blew me away.

Genndy Tartakovsky, the director of Hotel Transylvania pushed the character poses beyond what was natural, breaking the rules of physics. Before Genndy, Hotel T was going towards more of a Disney feel, more subtle, however when he was brought in as the new director he wanted more exaggeration. He pushed it so far, that is was going more towards hand drawn with the over exaggeration. This was far more common when it's 2D however it's rarely seen within 3D which I think is a shame because this turned out so well and was so visually appealing.

Tartakovsky went in and drew over the animated shots to show what he wanted however the rig wasn't designed to go that far, so the animators came across a problem. They had to figure out a way to almost break the rig in order for these poses to be achieved. It paid off as the final outcome was stunning. What really caught my attention was Dracula himself and the way he moved around with his cape. The cape itself had close to 100 controls which were spread over 5 different layers, this allowed for more elaborate movements and to respond in different ways. When it was completely closed, it encased Dracula fully and as he walked it was more like he was gliding around; this would then very quickly shift into another position and it looked seamless. The cape itself has characteristics of its own and really adds to Dracula's character.

Images taken from: http://danpozo.blogspot.co.uk/

 "I took all the aesthetics I like from 2-D and applied them here," he said. "I don't want to do animation to mimic reality. I want to push reality. You want to have your own identity. You don't want to have an expression that Pixar has. That was super important to me. In 2-D, the way you draw defines you, but in CG the computer takes away your identity. I wanted to make sure the movie had my point of view." - Genndy Tartakovsky

Hotel Transylvania is easily one of my favourite movies now, no matter how many different clips I watch the animation still astounds me. I want to be able to put that exaggeration into my work and have it grab the audience, but I know it will take awhile to achieve this and I will need to look more into the 2D side of things. I think it would be good if I researched into 2D techniques more as these are always transferable into 3D work and it's the foundation of any good animation.

Rigging and Weight Painting

The rigging process for Gloria was quite simple as nothing really differed from the alien exercise I had previously completed. The only major change was adding more joints to her hands as she had been modelled to have 4 fingers and a thumb. I had to adapt the rig slightly as our character was more stylised and her coat affected the way her shoulders would move compared to a human. For this I had to move the shoulder joints down further than they normally would and the clavicle joint I ended up hiding as it wasn't until the weight painting began did I realise it would affect the model quite drastically if I left them on. The clavicles ended up deforming the geometry too much and I found it easier to weight paint just the shoulders. If I could have used the clavicles it would allow more breadth of movement. The reason why I hid the controllers so you wouldn't be able to move them was because I did a lot of weight painting at that point and didn't really have the time to go back and unbind the skin to delete them.

Initially I was going to create dynamic chains for the coat so they would move with the legs in a fluid and natural movement. To do this I created joint chains that went down the sides and front of the coat, created curves that followed the joints and used the nHair system in Maya to make the curves dynamic. I then had to group and parent them in a certain order and create a sphere to go round each leg. This sphere would act as a collider (when made to collide) and stop the legs from going through the coat. I got the process correct however when it came to moving it I had a lot of issues. For one the coat geometry would never return to its original place and also found that it deformed far too much even after weight painting - as seen below.

To overcome this I had to compromise by just having the coat bound to the skeleton like the rest of the body. The coat would still move with the legs, however it wouldn't be as much of a fluid motion and because of the low poly model and the weight painting, if the leg moves past a certain point it would penetrate the geometry. The image below shows how the leg moves with the coat when bound. It took me awhile to weight paint it correctly, mainly because I duplicated the coat to overcome the backface culling issue within Unity. However by doing this I placed it too close to the outside of the coat which made weight painting a nightmare. In the end I deleted in inside part and it was a lot easier to do, so when it comes to putting it into Unity I will just change the coat shader from diffuse to the soft occlusion leaves shader which projects the texture through the geometry and you can't not see through it.