BVA106-What I watched During the Break

One Small Step-Short Animation

This was a super cute and inspiring animation. I loved the animation style and how lovable the characters became in the first minute. 

CGI Animation-Reflection

And animation I used to re watch, found it again and still like it. 

Animation-Mr Indifferent

I found this to be an interesting comment on society as well as funny.


Love Death and Robots
A series of short film/animation. Super cool and I want to see more shows on Netflix done like this.

Haikyuu!
This makes me want to play volleyball. Great anime.

Overlord
Quite funny, like the animation and characters.

Bear Grylls-Interactive Netflix

In this interactive Netflix special, Bear Grylls goes on multiple adventres were the viewers have a chance to choose Bear Grylls Choices.

Black Summer

Binge watched this, loved it.


The Cured

Zombie apocalypse with on of my favourite actors, Ellen Page. Loved this film.


Original animatic: CHURCH

This animatic is amazing and I keep re-watching it.


Horror short film: The Dollmaker

A cool short film about how hard it is to let go and the consequences of not doing so. 

Siames:The Wolf- The making of

A video on how the music video The Wolf was made, super cool and gives insight into how the animations was done.

BVA115-Things I've Drawn in the Two Weeks Break

BVA142-Project Final Products

This is the finished clock design. I don't like the white bits so I need to figure out a way to clean it up. EDIT The white bits are fine you cant really see them when its hanging on the wall

Digital painting 1-An abandoned town covered in the remnants of the biological warfare.

Kaliedoscope 1

Themed around a biological warfare. Used Corel Paint and oh boy, that programme is annoying and slow. But here is one!

Edited photograph 1. Used photoshop, shot this at Queens Park.

Digital picture 2. A city covered in smog and spores 

Chess Piece that was 3D Printed

An abandonded town covered in the spores from the fungi bio ware

Bio clean up man who has been infected by the Fungi Bioware

A town created from scraps of the past. humans have adapted.

3D render of chess piece.

City affected by the spores.

Childrens play castle affected by huge mushrooms

City in the background is on fire and filled with spores, the water coming out of the city is contaminated

Shady Snow Market, here the creatures trade. The climate has changed heavily and now cold is snow and hot is like being in a desert.

Snow Nomad on the hybrid wolf/deer. Splicing of DNA has created new species. 

BVA142-Project ideas

Digital Paintings

1. Hybrid Wolf in a ruined city
2. Abandoned and toxic town
3. Savannah with mutated animals (Giraffes and elephants)
4. Bioware monster
5. Mutated Animals 
6. Mutated people

Kalidoscopes

1. Something that looks toxic and weird
2. -

3D Renders

1. Chess Piece
2. Mutated Mushroom Creature

Edited Photographs

1. Fungi
2. Abandoned Building

BSA106-Jan Svankmajer

He makes weird surrealist films and stop animation.  His works remind me of Felix Colgrave, who creates strange and surreal animation such as Double King. 

Jan's Jabberwocky was real weird, but not unwatchable. Although the lack of story line makes it a bit boring as there is nothing to follow. He makes really weird things and uses a lot of materials to do so. 

BSA106-Double King

Double King is a strange animation created by Felix Colgrave. It could be surreal. 



This is my favourite animation ever. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_MSFkZHNi4

BSA106-Surrealist Animation-Slideshow Notes

Detsino

January 14, 1946. Salvador Dali signed contract with Disney, short animated film Destino. 
Production halted after 8 monthd because of financial difficulties. Only 17 seconds made. 

1999, while working on Fantasia 2000, Roy E. Disney unearthed the project and completed it. 

Dreams of Dali, based on Dali's painting Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet Angelus. 


Terry Gilliam (Monty Python's Flying Circus)

Monty Python, surrealist, absurd comics during it's run from 1069-74. Gilliam had complete creative control over the animated interstitial. 
Sketches were created using "table top/Cut-out animations" Combination of original and stock images, collaged together.

 Walerian Borowcyzk

Polish filmmaker and animator. Using characters from his 1962 short film  The Concert of Mr and Mrs Kabal. The Concert of Mr and Mrs Kabal'S Theater in 1967. 

Features minimal scratchy drawings, animated photo's and deconstructed live action. 

Fantastic Planet

Rene Laloux, taught painting at a psychiatric clinic in the 1950's and introduced the patients to shadow puppetry and films. 

These short films led to meeting French illustrator Roland Topor with whom he collaborated on three films. 

Jan Svankmajer

Czech surrealist filmmaker. Leonardo's Diary was shown at Cannes in 1974. Denounced by Czech film critic as a piece of fantasy without socialist context. He experienced waves of censorship, banned for 8 years from film making. 

BSA106-Blog Research-Surrealist Film

Summary of surrealist film: A movement created after the Dada movement in the 1920's. Focused on changing narrative style of film, mixing the conventions until it made to conventional sense, aiming to derange, upset, disorientate and shock. 

Surrealism evolved from the Dada movement. Andre Breton founded the movement in 1924 and drafted the manifesto. 

Aims of surrealist films and animations: Movement= use of shocking, irrational, or absurd imagery and Freudian dream symbolism, to challenge the traditional function of art to represent reality.  Filmmakers rejected conventional narrative forms, attempted to disrupt narrative conventions, mixing them all around until nothing made conventional sense.  Aimed to derange meaning,  upset, disorientate and shock. Image rather than word. Wanted to liberate Western culture from tyranny and repression of reason and reveal the true nature of reality. 

The filmmakers I found interesting were, Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali and Alfred Hitchcock. 

They had an interesting look on the world through their films. 

We watched a dream sequence from Spellbound and Un Chien Andalou. Both were really weird and didn't make any sense

BSA106-Film Review-The Room

Its horrible. Yet, so horrible that it has become a meme and is considered funny. 

80% of this movie is montages. So many montages, with at least 3 making a reappearance in shorter times with different music.

Tommy Wiseau tired, he tried and in a sense I guess he succeeded in some way. 

BSA126-Head Turnaround+Dialogue

Started the head turn around to be lip synced with dialogue. Will put the video here once the file location isnt cursed. 

BVA142-Clock Design

These are the sketch and final product for my clock design. 

BVA103-Essay-Paragraph Structure and Information

Topic
I have chosen to analyse and explore The Uncanny Valley and 'Complex and Complicated'

Introduction  (125 words)

• Brief explanation of article and topic
• Anselm Frankes article, A Critique of Animation is an academically written article about the influences of pioneer film makers on motion capture and the way we perceive the Uncanny Valley. 
• The topic of this essay is Anslem Franke's perspective on the uncanny valley and 'the complex' and 'the complicated'
• Definition of key words and concepts
• Uncanny Valley-used in reference to the phenomenon whereby a computer-generated figure or humanoid robot bearing a near-identical resemblance to a human being arouses a sense of unease or revulsion in the person viewing it.
• Complicated- Anything whose operations can be computed.
• Complex- Ambiguous, has many layers of meaning. 

Paragraph 1  (180 words)

• Uncanny Valley
• The Uncanny Valley was first theorized and discussed by Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori, who wrote an essay in a Japanese journal called Energy in 1970. In his essay he explored his hypothesis on humans perception and attitude towards things such as robots that look and acted almost human.
• The Uncanny Valley is the 'valley' between where something looks and cats almost human. It gives us the eerie feeling that something is off with whatever it is we are looking at
• Uncanny Valley with reference to the article
• Anslem Franke refers to the Uncanny Valley in the article with reference to the film Avatar which uses CGI characters next to real life actors. He discusses how  
• Quote- "Reality is then no longer the measure of an always imperfect image"(Franke, 2014)

Paragraph 2  (200 words)

• Uncanny Valley in film/animation/gaming
• The Uncanny Valley has been used more recently in film/animation and gaming where newer technology allows us to have nearly photographic  3d models of the characters, or ways of designing an actors costume to make them appear more robotic and eerily human that what they are are.  
• Uncanny Valley in Detroit:Become Human, Tin Toy-Pixar, iMom
• Examples of the Uncanny Valley in recent works are, the video game by Quantic Dream Detroit:Become Human. This video game (and company) has made fantastic use of the newer motion capture technology, a game focused on androids becoming more human really shows the full effects of the Uncanny Valley on humans. , Pixar's Tin Toy which is infamous for people having a bad reaction it it due to the Uncanny Valley effect is the main subject in most articles that explain this phenomenon and iMom a short film directed by Australian director, Ariel Martin, much like Detroit:Become Human shows the uncanny resemblance that an android has to a human through their action and appearances..
• Motion Capture VS Uncanny Valley with reference to Avatar and article
• Motion Capture has helped to bridge the gap of the Uncanny Valley, with actors making it easier to make a characters movements more realistic and more unlikely to fall into that Uncanny Valley. In Avatar the use of motion capture alongside real life actors was a bit of a feat in experimenting with Motion capture and how people would react to it. As Anslem Franke said "showing the actor in the lab and the resulting digital character next to each other, is an image of the production of images, and it represents the solution that was applied to the “problem” of the technological negation and subsequent reconstruction of life."(Franke 2014) Humans are making technological advancements to push machines across that uncanny valley.
• This is why the image of the motion-capture technique used in Avatar matters. This image,  It is an image that is paradigmatic for our current moment: humans pushing machines across the uncanny valley, beyond the winter of artificial intelligence
• Quote-"Captial's solution to then crisis of the absolute negation of life, it turns out, was it's techno-social reconstruction. The paitent had to be reanimated, and in course of this reanimation (and thus de-alienation and de-objectification", the oppositional matrix of the disciplinary society had to be undone" )Franke, 2014)

Paragraph 3  (150 words)

• Complex and Complicated with reference to Schuttepelz
•  
• "The difference between the complex and the complicated was and continues to be the foremost frontier of modernization" (Franke, 2014) We seek to turn complex things into something that is complicated, to make it easier to understand and compute over and over again. Anselm Franke uses war as the prime example an engine of the advance of this frontier. 
• According to Schuttepelz 'compilcated' is anything that can be computed, whereas 'complex' has layers. For example, a timetable is complicated and can be computed, but a conversation is complex, as there are many layers to it.
• Quote-
• Erhard Schüttpelz has suggested a useful distinction between “the complicated” and “the complex,” which helps to understand what is at stake in such a scene. According to Schüttpelz, “complicated” is anything whose operations can be computed, like train timetables. A conversation at a bar, however, is “complex”: it is ambiguous, and its many layers of meaning (and of animation) involve more factors than a simulation can easily take into account.  The difference between the complex and the complicated was and continues to be the foremost frontier of modernization. By means of standardization and computation , modernity seeks to turn complexity into something that is merely complicated. War has been the prime engine of advance on this frontier.

Paragraph 4  (50 words)

• Winter of artificial intelligence
• The winter of artificial intelligence was the period where AI and Robotics failed to fill the expectation set in reconstructing and automatizing life. This is an important period of time for those who push the boundaries of the uncanny valley and the 'complex' and the 'complicated'. This is because the technological advancements come from the failure of this time, in order to not repeat it, people have pushed technology further across the uncanny valley. The winter of artificial intelligence was a problem, one that was determined to be solved.
• The winter of artificial intelligence: this refers to a period of several decades in which AI and robotics failed to fulfill the horizon of expectations in reconstructing and automatizing life. It describes the temporary inability of the machine to cross from the merely complicated into the realm of the dynamically complex. The winter of artificial intelligence: an allegory, also, for the reductionist, militaristic reality principle of an “administered life.”  But above all, it was a “problem” at the junction between technology and imagery, one that demanded to be solved.

Conclusion  (150 words)

• Restate main points and conclusions
• This essays main focus points from the article A Critique in Animation written by Anselm Franke, were on Frankes perspective on the uncanny valley, the complex and the complicated. It was found that Anselm's view is academic and ambiguous as he doesn't really show much in the way of his opinion on it. It seemed that Franke viewed the uncanny valley as a problem to be solved, often putting it into the complex category. This is because the Uncanny Valley has many layers of meanings and input from people that act as factors on it.

References & Sources of Information

Uncanny Valley

https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/the-uncanny-valley

iMom-Youtube-Dust

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfuustKNO-g

Detroit:become Human-Quantic Dream-Video Game

http://www.quanticdream.com/en/#!/en/category/detroit

Tin Toy-Pixar-Animation 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffIZSAZRzDA

Complex and Complicated

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-critical-difference-between-complex-and-complicated/

Franke, A. (2014, November). A Critique of Animation. 

                e-flux, Journal #59. Retrieved from

https://www.e-flux.com/journal/59/61098/a-critique-of-animation/ 

BSA106-Surrealist Film Slideshow notes

Background / Dada

Surrealism was an European artisitc/cultural movement staring in the 1920's.
Prominent in painting, literature and cinema. Evolved out of Dada (1916-1922) 

Dada (nonsensical word) was a protest against everything. Arising after and commenting on the stupidity of WW1. Dada was anti rational, humorous, deliberately shocking and anti art.

The origin of surrealism, it was founded as a movement in 1924 by Andre Breton who was a major member of the Dada group.

Andre Breton drafted the Surrealist Manifesto declaring surrealism as - "Pure psychic automatism, by which an attempt is made to express, either verbally, in writing or in any other manner, the true functioning of thought. The Dictation of thought, in the absence of all control by the reason, excluding any aesthetic or moral preoccupation

Movement= use of shocking, irrational, or absurd imagery and Freudian dream symbolism, to challenge the traditional function of art to represent reality.  

Filmmakers rejected conventional narrative forms, attempted to disrupt narrative conventions, mixing them all around until nothing made conventional sense. 

Aimed to derange meaning,  upset, disorientate and shock.

Image rather than word.

Wanted to liberate Western culture from tyranny and repression of reason and reveal the true nature of reality. 

Surrealist Filmmakers:

• Luis Bunuel
• Salvador Dali
• Jean Cocteau, director, poet, novelist, painter, playwright, set designer and actor.
• Man Ray, American to play major role in both Dada and Surrealist movements
• Maya Deren
• 
  

BVA106-Film Review-Wonder Woman

This weekend I watched Wonder Woman  for the second time. I can confidently say that it is one of the better movies to come from DC. 

First of all, I love the costumes for the Amazonians, they have actual armour that would protect them in battle yet still allow them to have mobility. 

Wonder Woman in this is the best I have seen, her armour looks pretty cool, although some leg coverings would have protected her more, but I guess she doesnt need them, she is Wonder Woman after all.

I loved the setting of this movie, it really shows just how old she is in the newer movies (perks of being a god I guess) But the setting is a  great choice, even though WW2 settings are used quite often, as it shows us how passionate Diane is about saving people.

The movie was still pretty good the second time round, I found that I still enjoyed it and found even more little secrets. 

Cinematically there were some cringey moments, but that is to be expected when one is trying to make someone look extra powerful. Some moments where the camera angle and shots didn't quite the scene, but worked enough I guess.

Overall, I still liked the movie the second time so thats good.