Now I've got the start of a loose story with which to build on, I wanted to start thinking about possible ways I might create it.
My main intent for this project was not to rely on digital means, ie: making and moving everything in After Effects. I wanted to try something new, something different, something challenging.
I've learnt more and more about After Effects since I started to specialise in Motion 2 years ago, and given my intended career path I expect I'll be using it for the rest of my life. so while the opportunity is available to me, I thought I'd push myself and try something a little different.
With that in mind, I've looked at other ways with which to animate imagery.
Probably one of the oldest, most basic methods, is a flip book. Each pic is drawn on a different sheet in a tightly bound note pad. cycling through them rapidly shows one pic after another and brings the animation to life.
As simple and effective as a flip book is, it is perhaps too simple and basic, nothing new at all, and may undersell what I'm trying to achieve.
Illustrated white board. The RSA videos all have a common theme that binds them, giving them all a distinct look. They exist to back up audio pieces, and are comprised of a single marker pen being used to draw images and write text in real time, sped up or slowed down to fit the audio. I believe the imagery is digitally enhanced and maneuvered to scroll along as a constant shot, and the whole thing is crisp and clean.
I do like this style, but it's limited in its motion, being essentially static imagery drawn from fresh. It might be tricky if I wanted to put more movement into my piece, and the method may require a little tweaking. Still, for what it does, it does it well, and it would be nice to design a series of illustrated still images, drawn afresh, based on the problems and dilemmas faced in my subject matter. It could work quite well.
This video is almost the next step on from the previous one, in that it uses the same tools of a white board and marker pen, but in a much more animated and creative way, as the imagery isn't static and each pic is redrawn as a new frame to stimulate the process of motion.
To recreate each individual frame afresh is a massive task, and very time consuming, even more so on a canvas different to an easily wiped clean white board. If I went this path, I'd have to plan well and set aside alot of time. But the results are very nice, right in line with my original plans to do something non-digital, and add a nice, hard crafted element to an animation, something that might suit my subject well.
Then again, it would be ALOT of work.
This video is an amazing way to animate, each picture is drawn with sand against a light board, with small elements within that animated frame by frame. It is a beautiful way to create something that moves, with every frame clearly having had lots of time and attention to detail spent on it. The effort that the artist has obviously put in makes you appreciate it even more, and just the resources used and the original way it has been made makes it stand out even more.
Something innovative and exciting like this would be ideal for what I want. The only trouble would be having to not only learn, but master a whole new craft in the time we have, something which takes years for many designers. Whether it could be done in time, realistically I doubt, but it certainly provides an option and a line of thought to build off. Like the first white board though, movement is restricted somewhat, not that you'd tell due to the way the video is shot, but it's essentially a series of establishing shots.
And one sneeze, and it's all gone.
This is a fun video, with a good method of recreating pixels on a screen by using memo paper. Each square makes up what would have been a square pixels as seen on screen, and this video was made by putting many of the memo squares together and adjusting them to animate the images. To be honest, there's a dispute that it isn't real, and while I agree it doesn't look right, its still a good video, and the method itself is clearly a good one if done right.
Using materials to build up separate images, then manipulating them to give the impression of movement is a nice idea, like a living breathing mosiac almost, which is essentially what a massively zoomed in computer screen would look like, pixel by pixel. Definitely an interesting concept which again, would require a lot of work, but could really come into it's own depending on the materials used, which would certainly present a whole new set of opportunities by themselves.
Some interesting ideas here, which certainly warrant further study. At this point, any method is worth exploring before really committing and it would be in my best interest to try a few of these methods out in order to get a feel for them!
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