Simon's Cat

I first heard about Simon Tofield on bbc news, he was in an interview regarding the animation below, when i saw it i thought it was fantastic so i decided to research who Simon Tofield was. Simon Tofieldis an English animator who has a great interest in British wildlife, painting, the great outdoors and of course cats. He has three cats - Hugh, Maisie and Jess. Simon draws all of the Simon's Cat films himself. This can require up to 25 drawings per second of animation. He uses Adobe Flash to animate his cartoons. Simon draws on an A4-size Wacom Intuos 3 pen and tablet. Simon works alongside Shrooty who is a talented sound designer who works on the films with Simon. He makes all the character sounds in the films himself, including the meows! Now that's good Foley work...



After watching the animation i related it with some principles. I defineatly thought it showed squash and stretch when the cat pulls his owners ear. I also noticed that weight was used when the cat was walking along the bed, you could obviously see the weight of the cat inprinted on the bed sheets. Another principle is anticipation when the cat flings the basball bat back ready to crack his owner on the end, all and all a very good animation.

First Colour Animation By Walt Disney

Flowers and Trees is a 1932 Silly Symphonies cartoon produced by Walt Disney, directed by Burt Gillett, and released to theatres by United Artists on July 30, 1932. It was the first commercially released film to be produced in the full-color three-strip Technicolor process, after several years of two-color Technicolor films.

Flowers and Trees was already in production as a black and white cartoon before Walt Disney saw Herbert Kalmus' three-strip Technicolor tests. Deciding that Flowers and Trees would make a perfect test for the process, he had the black and white footage scrapped, and had the short redone in color. The color Flowers and Trees was a commercial and critical success, winning the first Academy Award for Best Short Subjects: Cartoons.

As a result of the success of Flowers and Trees, all future Silly Symphonies cartoons were produced in three-strip Technicolor, and the added novelty of color helped to boost the series' previously disappointing returns. Disney's other cartoon series, the Mickey Mouse shorts, were deemed successful enough not to need the extra boost of color, and therefore remained in black-and-white until 1935's The Band Concert.

Disney Animations

Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie (1928).Steamboat Willie was first released on November 18, 1928. It was co-directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. Iwerks again served as the head animator, assisted by Johnny Cannon, Les Clark, Wilfred Jackson and Dick Lundy. This short was intended as a parody of Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill Jr., first released on May 12 of the same year. Although it was the third Mickey cartoon produced, it was the first to find a distributor, and thus has been cited as Mickey's debut. Willie featured changes to Mickey's appearance (in particular, simplifying his eyes to large dots) that established his look for later cartoons.


The cartoon was not the first cartoon to feature a soundtrack connected to the action. Fleischer Studios, headed by brothers Dave and Max Fleischer, had already released a number of sound cartoons using the DeForest system in the mid-1920s. However, these cartoons did not keep the sound synchronized throughout the film. For Willie, Disney had the sound recorded with a click track that kept the musicians on the beat. This precise timing is apparent during the "Turkey in the Straw" sequence, when Mickey's actions exactly match the accompanying instruments. Animation historians have long debated who had served as the composer for the film's original music. This role has been variously attributed to Wilfred Jackson, Carl Stalling and Bert Lewis, but identification remains uncertain. Walt Disney himself was voice actor for both Mickey and Minnie.

This is stated on you tube as the first animation of Walt Disney but it's actually the third, the first two were 'Plane crazy' and 'The Gallopin Gaucho' but these two did not have sound added to them. This was his third animation which had added sound which is probably why it's the most well known of Walt Disney's animations of Mickey Mouse.

For my Critical Perspective Essay i am looking into the practices and issues around the work of Walt Disney and amongst my research i found several animations which i just thought were superb and use the principles of animation we have been looking at in our Applied Design lessons.

Type

There is thousands of different types of font, choosing the right one is going to be tricky. I found a few examples but none of them seem to be what im looking for.

Different Typography

Knowing now exactly how i wanted to animate my piece i then had the difficult task of deciding what typography best suited by 'Twirl' animation. Obviously certain fonts would be totally unsuitable (i.e, Stencil)

Deciding on a suitable type would mean trying out and testing quite a few different types, and different sizes. For instance a twirly type but being overly sized would ruin the effect.

I found this video online and it shows a number of different types and what effect they have on the type of music or lyrics being played at that time.

Music added with image...

Thinking back to the music i chose to best describe the word 'Twirl', made me think of where i have heard it before. Remembering where it was featured in a disney production famously known as 'Fantasia' i cut down to the short piece of music i was interested and looked to see how Disney animated around the music. Looking deeply at the short animation i noticed how the little mushrooms were dancing and twirling to the music.

This gave me an idea for my piece. Having each individual letter almost dancing around eachother.

Nick Schrunk

Nick Schrunk is a fantastic grsphic/ motion designer. His piece, 'Concious' is fantastic becuase he is doing pretty much the same as what im trying to achieve, he manages to make the letters float almost and at the beginning act like rain but with words. I think this is a truly magical piece and is inspiration to me to make my Twirl word really twirl and give some sort of feeling out to the viewer.

The way in which every individual letter moves at different paces and moves in differet dirrections is amazing, Not one letter moves the same, they are all individually animated which i know will be very difficult to do.

Luckily i have only four letters to animate but seeing this video has made me decide to strive away from animating the whole word together. Iv decided to animate the letters seperatly as i believe this gives a better idea of the meaning of this word.





Nick Schrunk currently works forRed Bull North America as a Moving Images / Interactive Resident producing and executing strategy for their digital outlets.

You'll find more of his amazing work at www.nickschrunk.com

Kinetic Type by Stewie Griffin

When i first watched this video i thought it was really clever the way they mess around with the words to make it visually more interesting. The part i especially like is the 'haha' bit, the way the image is portrayed on the screen gives a sense of humour and suddeness of the 'haha's'. You can almost imagine the word is actually laughing itself and coming alive.

And the Squirrels back...

By now people will probably think i use squirrels too much to express what im doing in my projects but this happened to be fluke i came acros this video, to stray away from music based thoughts about my kinetic word i typed in the word 'Twirl' in you tube which is probably cheating a little bit and found this video, If you ignore the squirrel which i know is quite hard to do it does actually represent the motion of twirl which is exactly what i needed to start looking at my kinetic word more deeply.

When someone says the word twirl to me i automatically think of twirling out of control, like a leaf falling or one of those helicopter things you played with when you were little that used to fall out of trees (obviously not the proper name for it) but it made me think, is there more to twirling than just... twirling?

Inspiration for my 'Twirl' Animation

When i first got this brief my first choice was to use slither as i had quite a few good ideas for it, and how i could make the word slither move across the page, mainly linking it closely with characteristics of a snake but it was only last week when i decided to change my idea to twirl. This word i feel is a graceful, playful and kinetic word which would be good to animate.

As soon as i thought of the idea 'Twirl' i instantly linked it with a piece of music. Whether this was a good idea i don't know, but i couldnt help thinking of it.

Heres the music i instantly thought of -



This to me defines the word twirl, its a really playful piece of music. This piece of music really helped me imagine how i could animate the word 'twirl', as there is different sections to this piece of music, it gave me several ideas as to how i could make my word move.

Evaluation Of My Film

After finishing my video and watching it back i can honestly say i'm very proud of it, the whole video came together a lot better than i thought it would. At first it was just one single shot but adding different viewpoints i.e the owners view, breaks the whole film up and adds more interest and tension to the film. My only critisism is that in some shots it was impossible to get the dogs paws on show so if i was to re attempt this i would consider using perhaps a fluffy toy dog instead which would allow me a broader range of shots. 
 
Overall the film worked vey well and i'm very pleased with it, i'm happy that i managed to keep the humour value of it yet at the same time tell the story. The added addition of the backing song helps greatly with the humour side of it as it's taken from a comedy film anyway so i think this adds more humour and interest for the viewer. The jump shots came together better than i thought, it adds interest and put the point of uncertainty across which is what i was aiming for.
 
I enjoyed making this film and learnt a lot about editing techniques and why they're used, i tried to incorporate these into my film but it made it difficult as it's an animal that is being followed. I suppose in a way this is considered a technique. I only hope my viweres enjoy watching this as i did making it. 

My Treatment For My FInal Project

After weeks of careful and tactical planning, a dog named Toby chose his day to escape from his pen. 

He waits patiently for his owner to leave, and listens for the sound of the door slamming. Toby begins his escape, after climbing impossible objects and a stuggled escape from his pen he looks out to check his owner has left only to realise she wasn't. 

The unsuspecting Toby hears the dreaded sound of the front door, he lunges round only to notice his owner has not yet seen him. This being his only chance to fully escape he makes a break for it, can he make it out without being seen or is all too good to be true?

Examples of Editing Techniques

I came across this clip on you tube which goes through a vareity of editng techniques used in modern films.

Jump Cut

This is a scene which basically cuts quickly to assist with a scenes meaning, as my favourite Guy Ritchie film shows here in 'Rock and Rolla' The editor James Herbert, wants this scene to be quick and love less, The two Lovers engage in a quick and emotionless sex scene which gives the viewer the sense of distance and urgentsy.

This is a perfect example of Jump Cuts being used to sympolise a certain meaning within the scene.



Jump cuts cam also be confusing cuts from one shot to the next that do not
follow the obvious rules of cause and effect. These cuts are usually used to disrupt the
audience’s attention in order to create shock. In Steven Soderbergh’s lm The Limey
(1999), jump cuts are used intentionally to suggest the main character’s unbalanced
state of mind.

When individual shots are edited together, FIlm Makers have a number of editing
techniques at their disposal.

The importance of these techniques is that they often
happen so quickly that we don’t notice them at all. Becoming aware of where these
techniques are used in movies is important in order to understand the constructed
nature of all moving images.

Some of the most common editing techniques include:
• Simple cuts — which are breaks from one shot to the next. Cuts carry the
continuity of action forward in a straightforward manner, from action to action or place
to place.

• Fade-downs — which show the screen fade from an image to a black screen.

• Fade-ups — which show the screen fade from black to an image. Both fade-ups
and fade-downs are used to suggest the passage of time and generally work to give
the audience a chance to take a breath in preparation for the next scene.

• Dissolves — which show one image slowly disappear as a new image is
introduced. Dissolves are used to indicate the end of one event and the beginning of
a new event or scene.

• Wipes — which show one part of the screen literally wipe over the rest of the
screen. One image disappears as it is replaced by a new image. This kind of edit
is not often seen in movies, largely because it looks comic-bookish. For this very
reason, wipes were used throughout Star Wars to suggest the comic-book origins of
the movie.

The Right Music

When i originally started this project and after reserching the Carling Squirrel i was certain on using the Mission Impossible theme son but after much thought i decided against this as i thought it would be too muc of an obvious choice and one that has been overused increasingly.

I researched a few songs which had a hint of what Mission Impossible has and a hint of humour, i came across this song when i was watchin 'Johnny English' and iautomatically knew this was the perfect song for my project.

Setting Up My Shots

I bought this book a few weeks go when we got this project to help me decide what shots i'd need and cuts i'd be able to do. After choosing my project to be that of my dog escaping i need my shots would need to be shot from low down and the movements of te camera quick and precise, i also knew that id need to rock the camera as i move to show the dog running and to put the viewers in the mind of the dog.

Other cuts i used was that from my perspective, i.e door opening shots, i used these shots to increase the viewers tension. and to break up the dogs escape, planning this out i found many problems along the way, problems which were helped solved by this book, i reccommend everyone to buy it, it's a reat helpful purchase.

The Tension... of 24!

I'v only recently got into the Tv program '24'. Whilst i was watching this i noticed the cuts and editing that takes place in this program is very inventive and different. I tried to find a screen shot of this so i could show you but i couldn't find one. Basically as the clock sound ticks different views of different shots of different scenarios that are going on at the same time, Then the camera zooms in on one particular scene and it carries on from there, i think that is an amazing way of setting up a scene and adding drama and tension.

In my opinion 24 is a very cleverly well done show.

Editing the dog's Perspective

 The hard task of trying to put your mind  where a dog's mind would be. to think like they would, to act like they would. As my project involves being a dog and acting as though i'm Toby, i thought i should do some research about camera angels, actions and heights of where id place the camera. This video shows a larger dog than mine so is higher up, this gave me the idea for possibly using black and white, as supposedly dog's can only see in black and white, whether this is true i don't know, i don't know how someone can see what a dog literally see's. 

    

After watching this video i decided against the black and white idea as i think it looks better in colour, Beethoven saw in colour so, so can Toby!!

My Project And What Relates...

 

 

When i was looking at doing my Applied Design project i was wondering what would be out the ordinary with a hint of humor, I have a puppy named Toby and he is always escaping. I suddenly thought about the advert that carling had made in 1989. This gave me the idea for using the 'Mission Impossible' music entwined with toby escaping, i think this will add a hint of humor and give a perspective of the life of Toby. Rather than filming my project like this video where you can see the squirrel.