As it turns out that rather than submitting the posts that should've existed over the last couple weeks, I've been saving them into a huge pile on the server. So instead I'll condense all that ramble into one big one here.
Firstly, an overview of where the City In Flux project is headed. As cities tend to be rather grey, drab, unemotionless, and not really terribly interesting despite being someone who is yet to live in one. So rather than trying to tell a story through the medium of neatly cut blocks of concrete, I created a batch of characters to tell the story instead. As they've not been scanned or anything yet, I'll upload those at a later date. Basically, it takes place over something like 150 years with 5 characters from different generations telling the story. It's also based around a house. Maybe a bit of the street too. It'll probably have five distinct versions of the house. After speaking to Sarah, she's suggested I focus on animating one of them in particular to a really high standard. Maybe set one of the characters as a centerpiece? It'll be the teacher if I do.
Animation-style-wise, I'm thinking of working in Flash with motion tweens for a large bulk of the basic animation. It'll have a faux-traditional feel too. Not quite sure how far I'll take that. Chris Ware is probably the big influence here. There'll be a little bit of Mattias Adolffson here too. Initially Martin Langford and Italo Calvino were going to be influences too but they got sidelined as the story took a different turn.
Next up is the studio sessions. I'll try to be chronological here. Emphasis on 'try'. Firstly we did a photoshop poject (after the week I set up this blog at least), which was fairly cool. We had to photoshop a tree into a glass bottle. Sadly the file has been deleted however. I forgot to save it onto a format other than ones at the Uni. They must've been doing some work on the IT systems and formatted some memory or something. Either way, it's gone. I might try to reproduce it at some point, depending on how much time I have.
Next was the physical tutorial. It's going to be a lot of fun. We cut through newspapers and tried to piece stories into a narrative. So yeah, Paul McCartney is teaming up with an inflatable crocodile scientist, and a chicken with an ASBO, and being criminals. I said it was silly.
Then came the aftereffects workshop, where we pieced together a whole load of photos to make a trailer. I'll upload that later if I can find the files. Just going to re-iterate: The computer sytem here is appalingly bad. Just saying.
Afterwards, a lesson on Illustrator, and Vectors. We're making Marlyn Monroe. Well, trying to. Did I ever mention I'm bad at drawing people who don't have eyes the size of grapefruits? Well I am. Still, it's going OK.
Finally, is the incoming essay. Not looking forward to this really. Not a whole lot planned for it either. Probably based around the city in flux thing if possible. I'm going to need to throw a lot more time at this.
Anyways, that's all. And when I say all, I mean a giant text wall with no remorse.
