Goal for Thursday 9-28

My goal for Thursday is to experiment with using the overhead sheets to draw on pictures. I will be able to finish the building/picture portion of the storyboard (the part that occupies slots 15-19).
I will try a couple different methods, doing larger amounts on a single picture as well as cycling out the pictures though at a significantly slower rate than previous. My original idea was to have close to a hundred different photos, but I'm cutting that down to 5 per photo section (give or take a couple). The primary problem will be attempting to create a transition between the black and white of the pencil images to the colored images of the photos.

Potential ideas to offset the transition...use black and white or gray-scale photos; derived from this I can use more sedate images in terms of color. Also, it may be solved simply by using simpler images as opposed to some of the, even moderately, complicated ones.

Storyboard

Do-Over

Since pretty much the only thing that changed in my idea was the transfer of following a figure into the process following a leaf. Hence, I have merely switched out the words figure/person with leaf.


The motif of my piece is constant change or growth being cyclical, with everything building off of what came before. That is to say, change is constantly occurring throughout the piece, whether it’s something actually growing and changing, or if it’s using the method of rapid replacement to rapidly switch out images, and in the end the whole thing becomes too large and crumples; it then starts over from the beginning.
I’ve broken down the structure of the piece into four sections. There’s the birth, growth, fall, and rebirth. The birth consists of a tree growing, then dropping a leaf, which then begins to float through nature, until coming across budding town. It watches the town grow, then moves through the town. It then observes a building grow and change and grow some more, until it becomes a skyscraper. It becomes so large, however, that it pushes against the paper, and the paper crumbles, bringing the building down with it. The leaf also sinks into the ground. Where it sinks, a plant blooms to bring the whole thing full circle.

I want to show the changes using draw and erase on paper as well as rapid replacement of drawings (on top of pictures) at certain times. I also plan to bring the paper itself into play later on in the piece, as a means of showing the breakdown and fall section of the cycle. Once the paper is settled, the cycle will begin anew.

Pitch

The motif of my piece is constant change or growth being cyclical, with everything building off of what came before. That is to say, change is constantly occurring throughout the piece, whether it’s something actually growing and changing, or if it’s using the method of rapid replacement to rapidly switch out images, and in the end the whole thing becomes too large and crumples; it then starts over from the beginning.
I’ve broken down the structure of the piece into four sections. There’s the birth, growth, fall, and rebirth. The birth consists of a tree growing, then dropping a leaf which turns into a human figure. The figure then begins to walk through nature, until coming across budding town. He watches the town grow, then moves through the town. He then observes a building grow and change and grow some more, until it becomes a skyscraper. It becomes so large, however, that it pushes against the paper, and the paper crumbles, bringing the building down with it. The figure also sinks into the ground. Where he sinks, a plant blooms to bring the whole thing full circle.




I want to show the changes using draw and erase on paper as well as rapid replacement of drawings (on top of pictures) at certain times. I also plan to bring the paper itself into play later on in the piece, as a means of showing the breakdown and fall section of the cycle. Once the paper is settled, the cycle will begin anew.



My inspiration examples are:
Regrowth
Don Herdzfelts' 'Rejected Cartoons' Specifically at 7:55 when the paper crumbles (then again, Don Herdzfelt is a large part of my inspiration to be an animator in the first place)
Tree Cycle
and
Human Cycle

I wish I could have found the animation I was thinking of when I first had the idea, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was called. Oh well.

The general theme of my final idea is a basic “Cops and Robbers” type chase. It starts out with a blank page then a doodle of a cartoony criminal figure is made, who then comes to life. He looks around, and a cartoony police caricature comes onto the page. A chase begins across the original page, and the robber stops at the edge, back to the edge, and eventually jumps off. He appears on a nearby piece of paper, surprised and excited to have escaped. But the officer appears on this page as well, and a chase proceeds around the room, over various blank documents, photos, copies of paintings…perhaps some real paintings, with the characters changing to fit the style of the painting they are in. Eventually, the cop catches the robber, drags him to a drawn incinerator and tosses him in. A burned, crumbled up piece of paper appears behind the incinerator, and the police officer pushes the paper into a trash can (the burnt paper is 3d, the cop is 2d). After a few moments, a different crumbled up paper climbs out of the trashcan and lands on the floor. It opens up, and the robber is there. He runs away, end.

I admit the main reason for the chase scene is I needed a reason for a character to want to jump off a page, which for a drawing would be essentially like jumping into the middle of the ocean (I assume). I’ve also thought of having the beginning page become a kind of insular world, where the only time the character would jump off the page is when he is driven to it after doing something wrong. In this setting, it would begin with the doodle looking fairly normal, but would warp into a criminal as the nice looking setting began to fall apart and start to look destitute (a nice looking area turns into a slum). After committing some wrong, he would be chased by a cop, as described in the paragraph above.

This idea still needs development, but I think this is a good start to it. From here I have a good base to expand on.

3 ideas

My first idea is based on a video I saw by a band, Mogwai. It constitutes having an array of objects in a line. Either it can be done in the same manner as the video, with the objects already there, or the objects can either appear or else move into the line. I’m also considering having the line lead to something, though I’m not sure what at the moment (incinerator, trash compactor, etc). This is probably the easiest of my ideas to implement.
The video relating to this idea is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC_3alnTE9g


My second idea is based on the BLU animations mixed with the Kentridge animations. It’s also mixed with the reoccurring idea in a lot of cartoons where the characters will enter paintings in a museum and jump from painting to painting. I see a blank canvas, either hanging on a wall or maybe on an easel. A painting/drawing begins to happen on the canvas which culminates into a creature/figure of some sort, who begins to jump from the first canvas to various painting/pictures/canvases strewn about the room.


My third idea is perhaps the most complicated and probably the hardest to implement since it would take a significant number of pictures to pull off at anything close to the quality of the video. But it would be amazing to attempt, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a person involved. The thing most appealing about this though, is the double layer of stop motion going on, added in with creating space within a different space. It boggles my mind…my mind! It burns! Anyways, this is my favorite of the ideas, but again, it might be outside the realistic.
The video related to this piece is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmkLlVzUBn4

Self Crit

The title of my piece is “Recollections of a Zebra”. This stems from one of the more personal random thoughts that I had when doing the free writing. That is, it was one of the parts that I edited out of the public version of the free writing. The original idea going into the image selection process was to be as whimsical as possible in the selection, which came from the rambling free writing. But, because of the selection method, which was as random as I could bring it to be, I wanted to try and control it with a moderately rigorous structure in the video. I decided to use morse code as a means of structuring the images, and sticking that morse code into a mask inside of other images. I was attempting to make it so that, while the audience may not understand the code, they were still associating what was going on in the mask with what was going on in the larger images, which had been separated into different segments based on subject. Also, I put the mask of the morse code at the bottom of the screen, where subtitles would normally be.
The primary issues arose in photoshop. For some reason, when trying to create the pauses between images that would show the separation between the letters in the code, images would stick. I ended up having to create longer and longer pauses to make up for this. However, in the final version, for some reason the images didn’t stick in the final render. This caused the pauses to last longer, and created, what seemed to me, to be images appearing at random intervals. However, when watching I could see that since a lot of the images were reoccurring due to certain letters being used far more than others, a weird repetition at odd intervals was occurring inside of the larger images. I was not opposed to this effect and decided to stick with it. In fact, I started to see it as the real strength of the piece since the images were easily noticeable as being repeating, and I think really pulled together the idea that it was trying to say something. In the end, my primary issue with the piece is the length, but due to the sheer number of images used it was almost unavoidable if I wanted people to be able to see the images at all. Also, I should have worked mainly in FCP, as FCP really streamlined the process. Things that were taking me tens of minutes in Photoshop were reduced to a minute or two in FCP.
Some things I may try to improve this project would be to use a long rectangular mask rather than the circle mask for the code. This would make it read more like a subtitles bar, but the images themselves would be lost, thus the repetition of the images would be lost. The other thing I would change is to decrease the size of the whole thing to about one and a half minutes, and use only the images from a few of the major groups since at the moment the whole piece runs pretty long. These can be resolved pretty easily.
The biggest thing I learned here was that FCP seems to automatically resize images to scale down to the screen when imported. This greatly simplified the process and I wish I had learned it before I started to run scripts in photoshop, which would have been completely unnecessary if I had realized from the start.

proj2 write-up

This project was much more difficult to acquire the resources for than it was to put together…or at least it would have been if I hadn’t been stupid and done half of the project in Photoshop. I suck at Photoshop, and Photoshop likes to crash on me fairly consistently…always right when I’m about to save (It’s talented like that). Anyways, right when I decided to ditch that program and compile the whole thing in FCP, everything started to go wonderfully smooth. In the end, I had to do the final masking and rendering in Photoshop, since for some reason some of the .mov’s I created in Photoshop wouldn’t transfer over to FCP for compiling for some reason, but just doing that in Photoshop was a simple matter.
The project came out about how I had hoped, though some of the Morse code bleeps are a little bit far between as re-rendering the final file in Photoshop seems to have finally corrected the black space issue, and a lot of the black space I had expanded for various reasons. It still comes out looking alright, but after watching it a few times I think I’m going to redo the Morse code when I can get a moment.

article response

These articles provided a lot for me to digest, too much perhaps, but even among the overload, the article “The Internet: Is it Changing the Way We Think?” stuck with me due to the compilation of viewpoints from many social scientists, psychologists, neurologists, etc. Even though all of the contributors seem to agree to an extent with what the original premise is, that the internet is causing a mental shift in its regular users, they seem to disagree in a much larger extent about whether the changes are “good” or “bad”.
The majority of these individuals see the brain as plastic. It is malleable and changeable on a day-to-day basis, which seems true given how the body itself is malleable. The mind continues to take in information, and just as opinions can be formed, the way the mind thinks can be changed, or manipulated. The Internet is causing the brain to think in a different way, using different aspects of the brain.
The consenting opinion, or rather the one that appears to think of this process as a good thing, seeing it as, essentially what the Google executive stated in the “Is Google Making us Stupid” article, a second brain. It clears away the need for one to do all the memorizing that was deemed necessary for the growth and development of young children, whether in school or church, and leaves room for the “important” things, later in life when all the things memorized as a child become nonessential. In another article, “Internet Use ‘good for the brain’”, it is also stated that browsing the web could increase the critical awareness of the elderly, as it stimulates a large amount of the brain.
The dissenting opinion sees it as a bit of blessed nuisance. It’s something that can’t be done without, but it also causes hardship. The contributors in the article have a variety of reasons for disliking the effects of the internet, but of course what seems to be the most popular reason is the decrease in attentiveness among even the contributors. Perhaps even more so, as pointed out in the article “An Ugly Toll of Technology: Impatience and Forgetfulness”, the effect it has on the social capabilities of individuals who shut themselves away from face to face interaction and associate anonymously over the internet. This, according to the article, leads children and young adults to ostracize themselves and become more depressed.
Both of these sides see the same effects of the web and based on the observation of different focus groups arrive at different conclusions as to whether the effects are positive or negative. I, personally, am not certain whether the internet is actually sapping attentiveness out of people. I find it just as likely that it’s more of a result of media itself being integral to our daily lives. As far as the children becoming more depressed, I think that may be the result in different ideas that drive parenting these days, and that children who are naturally more depressed would find the computer an easy way to shut themselves off. Depression has always caused individuals to become reclusive. Nowadays people just have a way to be reclusive while still being connected to the outside world through an anonymous terminal.
One idea that I do agree with, wholeheartedly, is that the internet is beginning to affect peoples ability to deal with persons on a face-to-face basis. Just looking within the school, if you look at the incoming freshman both last year and this year, they’re a very quiet bunch when not speaking amongst themselves, versus when I first started college and would go to social gatherings to form a social network. I think people are too comfortably with anonymity and are not comfortable presenting themselves before new people, mainly due to the forced restraint that has to be practiced.
Anyway, I find that while the internet might be contributing to the media madness that rushes at our mind everyday, there are so many things changing at once that it’s hard to state that the internet itself is changing our brains. While I can see the points made by the various articles, without seeing a sample audience and some testing, in the end all I can do is speculate. I saw it most profoundly in the original article I mentioned, but the people consistently say that it “seems obvious” that since our mind is plastic our mind would be changed by something as monumental as the internet, and I would agree looking at it like that, but saying that something “seems obvious” seems to imply that there is at the theory should be held with at least a little doubt as there is a lack of hard evidence to support it. Right now it is still in the realm of the social sciences, and is built up of speculation with some observation of sample groups.

I dunno somemore...

Response to “Is Google Makins Us Stupid”

This is an intense article. The first few paragraphs dragged me in due to it’s relevance to my own past. I used to read books all the time. I would read at least one book a week, usually two to three. I spent a good amount of time just browsing books at the bookstore. But I all of a sudden stopped reading as often. I still read a book here and there, but not at the rate I used to. Moreover, last year while reading a book I did something I had never done before…I stopped the book halfway through. I liked the book, “David Copperfield”, I was even engrossed in it at times, but I all of a sudden quit reading. This has been a growing problem in games that I play as well. I used to play long story driven games, RPG’s, and while I still do play them, I find myself stopping somewhere in the story.
Anyways, because I can see the effects mentioned in the first few paragraphs in correlation to my own past, I was drawn more into the article. The irony being that I was drawn into an article which stated that we were being less and less drawn into writings (someone somewhere might be screaming “that’s not irony”, but I have long since learned that I’m bad at pointing out irony…hmm, I just distracted myself). Thus, while the article deals with several things, the parts that garner the most of my attention are the parts that deal with “deep thought”. The idea of efficiency has indeed taken root. I see this most evidently in my recent self, as I skim over articles and readings and take out the parts that seem most necessary.
The other thing that was most surprising to me was the idea that we need an artificial brain to supplement and direct our primary brain. When I read that I actually had a mental jump of my mind screaming “WHAT?” (in internet terms that would be “WHAT???!!!??!!?!?!”). I knew there was a reason I didn’t trust Google, with it’s fancy logos, ease of use, and amazing work environment. The human brain is amazing for many reasons, not the least of which because different brains can ponder the same problem and come to different conclusions. Thinking in terms of just productivity it might be a dream, since everyone would be working off the same information and thus would have no issue arriving at the same conclusions, making board meetings a breeze, but when thinking in terms of creativity, everyone would be painting “The Last Supper” for the rest of their lives.
I feel like I’m rambling, and the more I do so, the further I move away from the article. I feel like this is what the article was afraid of…then again rambling is a result of the mind exploring connections, so perhaps it’s what the article was trying to promote… But then again, rambling also seems to be something that skims the surface of the brain as it is jumping through thoughts. The article seems to want more exploration of an idea, or perhaps a “deeper” connection to an idea. However, rambling, while it is a bit of a light skimming of the brain, is still creating a sequence of connectivity between thoughts, thus expanding the original idea without actually going deep into the meaning of that idea, so perhaps rambling is creating depth within that idea by adding more material to the idea.
I have just successfully, I think, rambled about rambling. I think I deserve a pat on the back. But I think I can honestly think of rambling as being intricately correlated to the idea behind the article, as rambling is a process that can only be done by the human brain as it makes jumps through separate ideas that are only loosely connected. Where as I believe that the supplement of AI will cause the mind to see only what is there directly.
I might devolved a little to far away from the article, so I’ll stop now.

definition of random as according to wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

lacking any definite plan or order or purpose; governed by or depending on chance; "a random choice"; "bombs fell at random"; "random movements"


However, I think this is lacking in that I believe that random is more of a matter of perception. I believe that in order for something to be truly random it must be perceived by a different source. i.e. If rather that putting a definition here I had just stated "Mashed Potatoes" or some such, it would not have been truly random for me. I would have had to have made the choice to write something there, and while it might have been the first thought that came to my mind...some connection would have had to have been made between the need to write something random the mashed potatoes in my head. In this case it's easier for me to see the connection between random and mashed potatoes in my own head as it's something that I recall something in the past being random to me when someone said "mashed potatoes". However, you as the reader, would have no idea what I meant there, and it would have been random to you. Thus, for something to be truly random, the connections have to be made in someone else's head.

Thinking about this, I can relate this to the response to "Is Google Making us Stupid" in my following post in that if google was successful in directly attaching the algorithm and information to our brain, random itself would be a thing of the past, as everyones mind's would have access to the same information. That does raise the question, however, of how a person's personal experiences would be handled by the algorithm. I believe people would still have individual experiences, but "how would those be handled?", is what I mean to ask. If everyone was operating on the same database, would a person's personal experiences be enterred into and processed by algorithm? Would the information itself become a part of the greater database? If so, once a person had an experience, wouldn't everyone who had that experience or a similar experience after that be using the information from that first experience, and those after, to process what would have been a unique experience in their life?

Now that I wonder, is this process happening now? Since google is the primary search engine, and we are all under the thumb of the information that google decides to provide for our searches, are we being funneled into a certain thought process? The article has a part where a friend of the writer is quoted as saying that the way he thinks has changed due to the internet, so it's feasable at the very least. But is the way we think being standardized, or rather being made universal? I have asked a lot of questions, but the method I would probably use for gathering the answers to these questions would be google searching...so I dunno.