Sunday 26 July 2015

Jan Švankmajer Animation Research

Faust
How: Puppetry, Claymation, Live Action / Stop Motion
Trying to Communicate: Difference between what he feels he needs to do and what he wants.
As a puppet he’s doing what is right, or trying to? Without being a puppet he’s following what he wants, his base instincts, his lust.
Higher being controlling him, the Puppet Master. Tests him but also is controlling him it seems.
Puppetry is conforming. Letting the puppet master control him. The puppet master then sets him up to fail by making him a perfect temptress, even giving the puppet a vagina.
His Lust is his own creation, his consciousness (metastophilies) tells him that heaven isn’t that good, that man is greater than the gods.
He uses the phrase, Amor Vincit Omnia, which is known as “love conquers all”. Perhaps conquering all downfalls, such as a vice in a relationship, or his own issues.
The temptress runs away, and purposefully into darkness, he chases, the chase keeping him going, he sees the bones and the darkness, he follows without fail, his lust unwavering, blinding him.
She makes out as if it’s an accident, but is obvious


Lunch
How: Live Action / Stopmotion , Claymation

Consumerism. Capitalism.
Poor follow and emulate the rich, consuming all they can, but when they run out of things to consume, the rich feed off the poor, consuming them, Banks, Loan Sharks.


Alice:
How: Pupperty Stopmotion / Live Action
Alice wants to be free, so she invisions a rabbit taking hold.

She’s tripping, imagining an escape from her room, which perhaps is a meaning of her life. And Her parents that don’t let her see anything.

Parent blocks her from reading the book, perhaps meaning also outside influences. 

Professional Skills - Copyright / Parody research

http://www.nzlawyermagazine.co.nz/news/dumb-starbucks-lawful-parody-or-unlawful-freeriding-183990.aspx

Dumb Starbucks, a giving away coffee as a donation using the name Dumb Starbucks as a parody of Starbucks. They're fine because they arn't charging for their coffee.


https://cdn.auckland.ac.nz/assets/nzpglejournal/Subscribe/Documents/2006-2/6-EleanorONCE%20UPON%20A%20TIME.pdf

Page 3, sequels of 'Once Upon A time'
Abstract from above: "The sequel is an economically valuable property, the creation of which is consumer driven. This paper explores the relationship between the unauthorised sequel and the law of copyright. Issues examined include the extent to which copyright owners should have the right to control sequelisation of the original work and the impact the form or intended audience of the sequel has upon copyright provisions. The approaches adopted by several jurisdictions are commented upon, noting in particular the development in American law, which provides copyright protection for the fictional character as an independent entity. The paper will conclude that intellectual property protection must be carefully balanced against the need to ensure a bountiful public domain from which all creators may draw."


http://lawapart.com/posts/music/no-parody-and-satire-defence-new-zealand

Suggests that because other countries that align with New Zealand's copyright laws also allow parodies, and because there has been no court case deciding on weather parodies are protected or not, by treading carefully and understanding the risks involved, feel free to act as you would in for EG, USA when it comes to parodies.


http://99designs.com/designer-blog/2013/04/19/5-famous-copyright-infringement-cases/

^ Good advice and information when it comes to copyright, none are claused as parodies, but all include, cite the original, AND ASK PERMISSION.

https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/2-live-crew-weird-al-yankovic-and-the-supreme-court-on-parody

Parody falls under the right to free speech is a typical arguement for the use, but that requires a level of social commentary to legitimise it's claim. Also good information on parody use.


https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131126/10224325381/myth-busting-yes-advertisement-can-be-fair-use-parody.shtml

Even advertisers have used and gotten away with parody.



http://deadline.com/2015/03/threes-company-parody-does-not-infringe-on-copyright-1201402475/

A parody taken to court, the parody was allowed because it was classed as free speech. Aritcle talks about that a good Parody takes something current, and then turns it on it's head.



Parody 1: Company Emulation

A dry mockery of how un-innovative the self proclaimed 'innovative' company Apple is.

As above, but this as a way to convey the feeling a user gets when dealing with a company.

Another apple Parody, a social commentary on social media / technology use, using the classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory story, which was a commentary originally on society back in it's conception aswel.



Parody 2: Song Parody, of which there are many, but there's normally two kinds.

One is a variation of a song, such as the above which use the song rhythm to convey their own story.
 Another song variation is to take the lyrics of a song and focus on them.


The other kind of song parody is a mockery of the artist or their audience. Which seems unoriginal and cheap. Not a good look.


http://www.theedge.co.nz/Lorde-gets-parodied-by-Key-Of-Awesome/tabid/106/articleID/29104/Default.aspx


Parody 3: Using the likeness of a show or movie is a big trend, and results in being more of a Homage than a Parody at times. Tend to originate on loving the content than a satirical look at it, or using the method from the shows to be satirical about something else.

This one is awesome and an obvious anthem of love for the show.

An obvious love Lord of the Rings with some silly pokes at the many Street Magic TV shows.

This one is a bit malicious against Christianity and a parody of the typical things that happen in Mythbusters.




Parody 4: Person Likeness, because you can't really copyright people, these typically get unscathed from issues to do with Intellectual Property, but are risky when it comes to defamation and privacy and flat out using someone's likeness. In many states in USA, it's flat out illegal to act as someone. These come under Personality Rights, but the area becomes grey when it comes to obvious parodies of the person and not attempting to use their literal likeness to cast misinformation.


Parody 5: Movie Parody, different I feel than just homages, these are satirical looks at movies, to provide humour on accidents or plot holes, or to literally critique the film in a creative way.




A ploy at the Meme "Gramma Nazis" and a parody of the film, Inglorious Bastards.





Parody 6: Company Likeness is a lesser spread but widely understood parody, it's meme level.




Saturday 25 July 2015

BADASS DESIGN

Browsing around, found some Badassery by the Ace Combat 6 game.



Friday 24 July 2015

Beautiful Animation and Design

A feature of beautiful animation and design, using the Unreal 4 Game Engine. They show beautiful weight and aesthetic choices, althought the camera could have used more shake to immerse us in things like the explosions I feel.

Sunday 19 July 2015

2D Animation Style Research



The Duck from Simon Cottee on Vimeo.

A rough art style focusing on simple emotion.


the dewberry empire from christian schlaeffer on Vimeo.

Lush environments and foley / sound on rotoscoped children / animations.




An Object at Rest from Seth Boyden on Vimeo.

A loose style on  a textured medium.



The Waldgeist & Me - Joe Bichard from Joe Bichard on Vimeo.

A flat animation that uses a childish style to make light of the more darker theme.



PLUG & PLAY from Michael Frei on Vimeo.

A striking animiation of black and white, teh message is very.. uneasing? And hard to understand, but definately makes you feel -something-. Simplicity being key.



To Venner / Two Friends from Profile Pictures on Vimeo.

Beautiful landscapes backed up by simple characters, beautiful story. A visual beauty. Mature



Chronemics from Animade on Vimeo.

What if darkness was like water, but light was light. Simplicty in it's strongest form.



Writers' Block from WÖNKY Films on Vimeo.

Very Creative use of the story, integrating the literal script as to whats happening, something i think i may be able to pull off, maybe.



PostHuman from Colliculi Productions on Vimeo.

BAD, ASS. Brad would probably love this, mature.



A silly unpolished animation, The Happiest monster shows how low budget and rapid development is fine. It doesnt take much to show your story and have something to enjoy.



LUCKY DAY FOREVER from Alek Wasilewski on Vimeo.

Using the styles for diferent ideals in the story, simple character design but complex scenery.



Keith Reynolds can't make it tonight from Felix Massie on Vimeo.

An interesting simple style.

Path of Exile, an ARPG with a harsh style and interesting spell effects.





A controversial rant without lip syncing, showing emotion and relative metaphors.



Ori and the blind forest is a BEAUTIFUL game with an art style I wish I could achieve, but I feel i arn't up to the level.


WAKFU, a turn based game that uses a grey line art style and 3 turn shading. Similar beautiful colours and backgrounds to ori, something I wish I could do.





The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9! from jake armstrong on Vimeo.

Beautiful, and doable.
I'm going to be going with the Alpha 9 style, perhaps with a simpler / skinier arm / limb type.

Skinny arms / Rick n Morty style etc


I'd like to do my comic story, where a Boy is in a hospital, he sees the world as weird, and disgusting, the doctor comes in, the boy has his medicine and everything goes to normal, then he walks outside and we see the world really is weird and disgusting as the boy saw.

Boy sees the world in a warped view, after medication he returns to normality, but the weirdness was reality all along.

But i'm aware of the time constraints and i'm unsure if this story would be big enough.





Sunday 12 July 2015

BDM124 - Stop Motion Animation Styles


https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2015/01/15/for-the-love-of-god/

The above is a very viseral and surreal style of stopmotion, it seems to use a wax style. The story itself and the style is very creepy in it's realism and surrealism.

https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2015/06/29/miss-todd/
A stopmotion based on 2d perspective characters and poseable parts, akin to what I think would work for this assessment.

https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2014/07/28/marilyn-myller/
A dramatic series about a sculpter, made totally out of floam, with light to give definition.

https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2014/07/08/retrograde/
A short about two civilians left behind on a station, the captain has set the station in a collision course to prevent an asteroid from destroying a city on Uranus, these two save themselves but not Uranus. Akin to the Miss Todd style of using 2D animation for character faces and hands, but this uses textiles for the bodies of the characters.