POSTER INSPIRATIONS

SOURCE

SOURCE

SOURCE

SOURCE

SOURCE

SOURCE

SOURCE

KITTY WITH TITTY - STORYBOARD AND ANIMATIC

Rough ideas of techniques I might use for my final - referencing back to my initial tests to know what techniques I can achieve and experiment with. 

My first initial rough of my storyboard - you can see I've bullet pointed the story with words first and the scenes I decided to use and not use. From this initial draft I reviewed the most 'defining' scenes and they made  it onto the 'final' storyboard. But if you scroll down you can see I still had some adjustments when I thought of a scene that could work better such as the undressing scene (6.5) and the groping scene (7). 

1 + 2) heart shape montage to get across the genre I guess?

3) Introduce Kitty with her appearing from the hearts.

4) We see Kitty infatuated. With hearts/love etc coming out of her.

5) We see Owner happy  and smiling and Girlfriend appears from below *hint hint* - she blows him a kiss - hopefully conveying they are in love with each other.

6) Start of love scene.

6.5) Undressing of the Girlfriend.

7) Fondle of the Girlfriend, we see the Owners hand grope her breasts.

8) Kitty montage of being upset and flashing of breasts. 

9) Tears montage

10) Montage of Kitty and breasts before it ends with breasts. Hint of the solution for her.

11) Introduction of the knife. 

12) Knife surreal 'trippy' montage (symbolism) .

13) Close up of Kitty's torso, tears stream as a 'X' is marked onto her chest.

14) The knife is inserted and goes to a blank black screen (we think she has committed suicide).

15) Kitty slowly wakes up.

16) pan down of the chest and we see the tits

17) Shot of Kitty being overjoyed - she jiggles her new found tits.

18) Kitty silhouette waits patiently for owner - hearts beaming from her. Owner walks in and jumps in horror.

19) The words 'WTF' appear in a grid format and ends with an exclamation with a cat symbol replacing the dot. It ends with a close up of Kitty's head silhouette.

This is my story board for my animation in which I think conveys my story well enough. I've broken it down to 19 key scenes. 

This a rough paper animatic of my narrative. The final  is to be in a collage style and will incorporate colour/music hopefully. 

193 stills for 1 minute and 8 seconds animation! I know animatics are typically done through sketches but I wanted to test it would actually work (not very experienced with stop motion - so any hands on practise helps)  before I went down the collage route which will take me awhile to prepare for anyway (finding the right materials etc). I'm going to ask the opinions of others because I probably have the story so ingrained in my head my judgement is probably blurred. Also after reviewing my animatic I want to be a bit more experimental with some of the scenes ( 3 and 8 in particular) with more techniques, since I played around so much with my stop motion tests it would be a shame to not utilise them in some way.

Feedback from others:

• Get the basis of story but when I fill in with context it was suggested I make it more overt that  Kitty is more  jealous of the Owners Girlfriend.
• Try and convey that Kitty belongs to the Owner and Girlfriend.
• Make the ending more dramatic?
• "At first I thought someone had fallen in love then I thought it was lust and an obsession with the cats tits. Quite abstract. Were you trying to personify the cat and the love it has for its owner?? (I replied yes). I thought it hit the nail on the head. I got the feeling the cat was jealous of the girl too. I liked it. Was the knife symbolic of the cat wanting surgery to have tits??"

STOP MOTION TUTORIALS

I found these videos whilst looking for some tutorials on how to make effective stop motion animations.   I've dabbled with it only twice, but I've always been part of a group, and it's never been near  as ambitious as I want it to look (Quentin Jones inspired). I should probably add why I want to tell my story this way..... because I think my narrative is so 'out there' I didn't want it to become too serious or horror/thriller-esque (genre). I guess my genre is very light-hearted and 'mad', surreal etc to anchor the story. I think her way reflects this bizarre world with things constantly evolving /moving/changing - nothing static. Maybe it's not realistic but I want to be experimental with my animation (I could make things easier for myself if I wanted to) and I hope it works out. Anyway back to to these tutorials... need to learn the basics. So these videos guides you from idea to the final outcome.

SUGGESTED CHECKLIST:

1. KEEP IT SIMPLE
2. EXPERIMENT/BE PLAYFUL WITH TELLING YOUR STORY
3. MAKE A PLAN YOU'LL STICK TOO
4. CREATE ANIMATIC
5. TIME YOUR SCENES - TO WORK OUT HOW MANY IMAGES YOU NEED  TO CREATE YOUR ANIMATION
6. ADD AUDIO TO FINALISE THE TIMING
7. EVEN LIGHTING
8. MATCH STORYBOARD
9. SMOOTH MOVEMENT
10. FINALISE IT

LOST POSTERS

SOURCE

SOURCE

SOURCE

SOURCE

SOURCE

Side note if you've not read the whole Missy saga before click on the link. So so funny. Douche-y but funny.

SOURCE

References for my 'lost' Kitty poster. 

KITTY WITH TITTY - COMIC (GIRLFRIEND) AND POSTER (OWNER)

 At this point I decide I want my narratives to be told through 3 different mediums and perspective. My chosen story (2) allows there it to be told in 3 different ways (Owner, Kitty and Girlfriend) effectively. Kitty view is told through animation, Girlfriend's is told through comic and Owners is told through poster which continues on from girlfriends perspective so that they all are in synergy with each other. I've done a rough draft on the Girlfriend's 'telling' of the story and the owners of a rough draft of his telling through the lost posters - and from some feedback I needed more humour by referencing 'tits' more. You can also see my sketches of characters for my comic when I start to think about how I want the 'style' to be.

I've been looking at my NoBrow 6 as a reference as they have a comic section in which the illustrators/artists have managed to broken their story down to a 2 page spread - condensing the story down - which is what I want- trying to convey my narrative as focused as I can.  I've doodled the possible layout of my comic too by drawing out grids I could use to format my comic. I don't plan for my comic to be really long. I was thinking just a small collectible perhaps in the style of Jack Teagle's comics - which is really simplified and uses just 2 colours to visualise his tellings. I also start to visualise the story about by drawing out the scenes. The Girlfriend's retelling is basically noticing Kitty being in love with her Owner. Whilst the Girlfriend and Owner are canoodling Kitty overhears his love for tits. She starts fantasizing about the idea of having them to win his heart. Girlfriend confides with Owner with Kitty's odd behavior  Owner shrugs it off claiming she's only a cat. We see a dark silhouette of kitty with a knife in her hand in  a pool of blood in the shape of a heart. She turns around to reveal she has tits. I've drawn out more scenes then my written retelling but I noticed when I told my story I didn't need all the scenes I drew out anyway. On the side pages I start visualising the owner too with some quick sketches in different styles. 

My 'final' story board for my comic. I've cut the story into 10 scenes - but these can obviously be expanded. The story is exactly the same but I've thought more about copy writing to anchor the images. From some initial feedback there's a bit of a sinister edge (especially the ending) so the text is very 'relaxed' - I didn't want to too 'formal' it's not a thriller/horror genre. My language is quite crude and I think this offsets the narrative well. 

I start thinking about my poster a bit more too. I've referenced to some 'authentic' lost posters and I want it to have the same vain - since she has gone missing. I didn't want to just do a random poster with it's story. So some of the features have to relate.

The current version of text for the missing poster is:

"HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CAT WITH TITS? THIS IS NOT FURRIES GONE WRONG. DON'T CALL RSPCA. KITTY GAVE HERSELF TITS SO I'D FALL IN LOVE WITH HER. TIT  IT DOESN'T MATTER TO ME. I JUST WANT HER BACK.

I think the text works? I've managed to say why she did it and what happened to her. I've added  bit of my humour by adding the furries part ('weird' phenomena of giving animals human features) and I played around with some word play with the mixing up of 'tit' and 'it'.

From my feedback session with Thomas he liked the idea of the 'lost' poster but mentioned it needed to stand out so it doesn't look 'secondary' and that it's apparent it's part of the retelling of the story. He mentioned maybe play around with the format so it balances the two - a design poster and  tells the story.

MY STOP MOTION TEST VIDEOS

Clapping (opening and closing repeat)

Creasing/folding/transforming

One of my longest tests.... and it's 11 seconds haha. Experiment with close up/zooming in shots, tears and having words come out of the mouth by creating a slit.

Animating the face.

I play a bit more with narrative here. Animating the facial features (happy to sad) and also manipulating the image by mark making (blacking out the eye in the end with pen).

Woman blowing a kiss. Very simple but playing around with adding/changing parts to build the narrative.

Break/divide into parts and falling away.

Swallowing sprout

Testing out movement. Attempting to be fluid. 

Another test where I play around with narrative. The line of sprouts (actor) morph into a heart shape, then into a smiley face eventually bundling together and turning into just one sprout and disappearing. Oscar worthy I know. 

Sprouts doing a Mexican wave. It's the only test I've added sound too. The techno/electro beat fits well with the movement.

So these are my initial stop motion animation tests after watching the previous tutorials. I didn't plan all these tests out but I did plan out some of the techniques I wanted to achieve just so I could have an understanding such as movement/moving parts/typography/animating expressions etc. I've also learnt how laborious it is just to shoot a couple of seconds. But I've been spurred to keep at it. I hope to expand on these techniques as long as they are appropriate. I have my story already but need to storyboard them out 'properly'. P.S the actors used or these animations are not related apart from maybe the people. I just wanted to bring random objects into life. I also need to think about sound properly - I don't really want any dialogue but I'll see how my storyboard progresses. 

KITTY WITH TITTY - INITIAL IDEAS

KITTY WITH TITTY - NOVEMBER 2011

Original proto-CAT. She actually originates from a presentation I had to do on 'what is graphic design?' - on one of my slides I drew a cat with tits. And so she was born.

Here's more sketches - she's not shy.

I knew I wanted to create use/create my own narrative and my friend passingly mentioned a character I created awhile ago. Which I thought would be pretty neat to bring to life again - 'Kitty with Titty' (yes a female cat with human breasts) , I decided to use Hugo's narrative creator to derive a back story for  my  character. Which should be fun..... where did Kitty's tits originate from huh?

1) Lonely man dreams of a woman and decides to turn his cat human-like with tits ends with a sinister edge with "here kitty."

2) Cat is in love with its owner but she knows he's already in love with his girlfriend, she watches them fondle and thinks the secret to his heart is by having tits too. We see her grabbing a knife and think she will commit suicide instead she gives herself a boob job and is overjoyed with the results. She waits patiently for her owner to come back only to see him surprisingly shocked. 

3) Mad scientist creates a Frankenstein cat with body parts, hysterically he creates Kitty with titty, it ends with another innocent cat meowing.

4)  Kitty unsuspectingly swallows some pills laying around, she goes into a LSD trance and wakes up to find she has grown a pair of tits, she's happy, till she looks down and finds she's also grown a penis.

5) Whilst her owner is sleeping, Kitty creeps up on her and starts devouring her. Cut to horror scene moment. Kitty decides to nap of her meal but wakes up to find she now has her owners breasts. She now screams in horror.

6) A bunch of chemicals gets knocked all over Kitty, whilst she wipes herself clean she notices her chest has grown a pair of tits. She embraces this new found feature around her home. When the clock strikes 12 she returns back to her former self and her owner comes back completely unaware of what has just happened. Kitty just meows.

7) In some weird sinister world, a pot of body parts is simmering away. Kitty falls in and the voodoo spell has found its missing component. Kitty desperately climbs out only to find she's been merged with  the tits from the concoction. She screams in panic. "MEOOOW."

8) Kitty is in love with her owner and is heartbroken to see him with another woman. She begs a questionable surgeon for a boob job. Whilst in the waiting room she meet s another cat seeking a 'dick' job. Their eyes meet and they realise they are meant to be together.

9) Mad scientist doing a mix and match type experiments, conjoining the weird and wonderful all together. Like a game machine the tests stop and it's left with a cat with breasts. The scientist is impressed and ends with "oh hello."

10) Lonely man turns to Internet  to find a companion. He see's a profile of a woman called 'Feline' and is slightly drawn to her explicit profile photo of her breasts. After a short while of internet romancing they decide to meet in person. He waits patiently at the park and immediately recognises the tits he's seen before, he looks down only to notice she has a tail, furry, and short... Feline is in fact a cat! She confides she was born mutated and just wanted to be loved. They gaze in each others eyes and decide to to give their romance a chance.

At this point I remember I have to retell my narrative through 3 different mediums/perspectives etc. So I need a story that allows for that outlet. I decided the most strongest narratives that allows for different perspectives is idea 2 and 10. 

More ideas development

1) A litter of cats is born and the Mum notices one of them is a bit different - she has breasts. Kitty is mocked and teased throughout her life in the cat community and decides she needs to be 'normal' to fit in. She gives herself a mastectomy to be like the others. However when she returns the others still mocks her/doesn't accept her. This story has a bit more of a 'moral' message - be yourself/ignore others.

2) I decided to focus my attention to create a story a bit like Rashomon. I decided to think of a story that could be retold in 3 different genres. The story is each owner ignores Kitty, something happens to her (she gains tits), only through this do they give her attention she craves. The genres I thought of were a 'normal' everyday setting, in a horror world and in a sci-fi world.

3) Teenager cat is also teenage-ry (stereotypical moody crap) and he dreams of meeting the one. He wakes up and begrudgingly looks outside his window to see the cat of his dreams. Kitty with titty. He runs outside and as he about to touch her she 'vanishes', he looks around whilst everyone in the neighbourhood laughs in hysterics as he's outside naked talking about this imaginary cat. 

4) I decided maybe I try another story without Kitty. I go back to the original story I created with the 3 random images about the crowd. I however didn't feel passionate about the story to want to carry on with it. I had more feelings with my Kitty idea.

With all my ideas I decided to develop and refine  my strongest 2 narratives. Which was the cat in love with owner (2) and the online dating one (10). I then started to vaguely think  of the methods and mediums I could interpret my narratives. Singing (house mate is a keen musician I could collaborate with), word video, colour video (similar to the one I did for Thomas that I really enjoyed making), music, packaging or a poster of some sort. Out of my little brainstorm I really liked the poster idea, a lost Kitty poster would go really well with my cat narrative and allow for another perspective. I'm kind of into word play too/copy writing so it'll be quite fun to use words to retell my story besides from visually.

CURRENT INSPIRATIONS

PEZ

Witty, fun and imaginative. Clever way of story telling!

BLU

Working with your surroundings just got to another level. I could possibly experiment this method on other surfaces?

SOURCE

SABRINA TIBOURTINE

Reminiscent to the Quentin Jones work I've been looking at. This could work well animated. Love the surrealist proportions and use of spot colour.

SOURCE

BENJAMIN PHILIPS

Going back to illustration route of things, I've always liked Benjamin Philips style - always a sinister edge to his work? His hand drawn quality is a nice departure from vector art I've been into lately too.

SOURCE

JACK TEAGLE

I've mentioned Jack Teagle earlier but the more I think about the 3 outcomes I have to produce the more I want to create a comic. He's got a knack for making something 'basic' looking look good. And his stories are entertaining too!  

STORYBOARDS

Filmmaker Andrew Stanton (Toy Story/WALL-E) shares what he knows about storytelling.

Main points from his talk:

•  A story should start off with a well-told "promise", like a hook or sales pitch
• A story should give the audience the "2+2", not the "4"
• Change is fundamental; life is never static
• Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty
• Know your rules and know when to break them
• Strong unifying theme
• Sense of wonder

After watching the video we had a small discussion/critique on his way of storytelling. His ideas are very 'classic' and 'generic' but at the same time effective. I agreed with most of it, but it depends on your concept anyway, I don't think you'd follow his philosophy if you were doing an art house style film etc. and the thing to remember is he works for a HUGE institution - your motives are different. Hugo also mentioned some pointers for our own brief to make sure we cover the fundamentals. 
Check list:

1. Idea/purpose
2. Form (medium)
3. Structure (how to compose it)
4. Idiom (style)
5. Craft (how to create it)
6. Surface (polishing and appearance.

And a reminder of how the 3 narratives can be presented: 

• 3 different perspectives on the same story
• 3 genres/domains
• 3 set of actors /settings

Ah, there's a lot of things to think about. Have a ton of ideas just floating around in my head at the moment!

So for the second half of Hugo's session we got down to story boarding and discussed the purpose of them and how it differs from comics (basically 'finalised' pieces). The task was to watch the Citizen Kane (arguably the 'best' film ever - my media teacher suggested we watch it too - though apparently quite dull) clip twice, the first time whilst watching the clip try and storyboard to 6 scenes and the second time from just the audio thinking about camera shots/angles etc. 

Here's my first attempt. As Hugo broke down how he would of done it I was quite happy I managed to get some of suggestions/scenes/shots in the right order.

Here's my second attempt with just the audio. I did find this one slightly harder just because I've just seen the clip so it was hard to forget about all the characters/set up already in my head. I think I might of also focused to much on the characters too much as my shots don't really vary here.

This task was to storyboard James' narrative. It was actually a really fun task as you had to quickly come up with the most appropriate scenes that depicts a significant part.

For the afternoon, it was Thomas' session when we all presented our colour videos. It was really nice to see everyone's interpretations - some were literal to the abstract and we had a mix of genres of clips so it was interesting to see how colour was used to depict a mood/emotion/scene. 

I think Hugo's off for the next 2 weeks? But Thomas mentioned he'll be giving us all one-to-one tutorials next week which will be very useful to get some feedback on the direction we are all going. Better get cracking! 

QUENTIN JONES

Mix of live film with animation. I like the use of colour and collage techniques. The sound/music flows really well too.

Mix of typography works really well and the mostly black and white colour scheme with flashes of colour.

This piece I find interesting as she works on top of the medium to create new meanings. I like the craft element incorporated into this less reliance on the  sfx/digital route to recreate these...  but this is because I'm a noob on these programs still. 

It was this video that made me fall in love with her work. Who knew Chanel nail polish could be this interesting? 

Jones explains her work/inspiration. 

Jones work reminds me of Terry Gilliam's Monty Python animations.

I think ever since Hugo suggested the animation/film route, going out of your 'comfort zone'- I've been quite compelled to go down the 'fuck it and go with it' route for this brief. Potentially dangerous (marks wise) but like he says it's probably the only time to really explore these routes before shit gets serious (third year dun dun dunn). 

Anyway I know the narrative/story is always the core element but I've been thinking of artists/designers/film makers/animators etc. I've liked in the past and it re-sparked my love for Quentin Jones' work. It's the kind of style I like and I want to explore. Fantastical, whimsical, a sense of 'rough' way of handling (craft element)..... I love it. Let's see if I combine this kind of technique with my narrative. 

PAPERMAN

Watch the full short film here. 

Maybe I'm out of the loop but I only saw and first heard about this yesterday. Disney OWNS it on narratives. So it's no surprise this is 6 mins of highs/lows/comedy/romance all done well. There's no dialogue too which shows the importance of a good narrative - wins every time. 

COLOUR ASSIGNMENT

SOURCE

MARK ROTHKO, NO.8 (1952)
Thomas mentioned he didn't want just a single block colour for every scene - so maybe a bit like Rothko's piece where it's been broken into parts with different sections. 

WASSILY KANDINSKY

Whilst talking about the relationship between colour we touched upon Kandinsky and synaethesia - the capability to see sound and hear colour. The mixing up of senses. His works are again all in colour so perhaps visually our assignment should reminisce to this?

SOURCE

SOURCE

JOSEF ALBERS

Technician mentioned him when I talked about this task and it's awesome. Block colours and experimental pairing of colour ways.

From 0:28 - 0:58
I decided to base my work on one of my favourite films - Spirited Away. I only saw this about 2 years ago because I was a bit douche-y and didn't get the hype around it.... so wrong.  Miyazaki is AWESOME. The narrative/characters/music everything is so epic. I initially wanted to do the trailer but I felt it was too fast for me to concentrate on specific parts. So the scene I've chosen is one of the more tense and memorable parts of the film - which is ideal to convey using colours I think.
The pig scene reminds me of when Pinocchio's friend turns into a donkey - opps tangent.

Once I selected the clip I was using I broke it down into sections (storyboard I guess) of the important scences I should visualise. So the 30 seconds is now 26 scenes for me to turn into colour! 

Rough sketches of the scenes with colour - I ended up cutting out 3 scenes out because they were unnecessary. 

I decided for good reference (placement) to screen shot all the screen grabs I'm going to use for the colour clip. 

I had a feeling this wasn't quite the idea, but I thought it's still colour blocks? It looks a bit 8-bit, far too 'detailed'. Anyway my friend explained her interpretation of what the assignment meant so I might use a few of them but then do the 'right' thing of capturing the story/emotions through the block colours. At least I found out sooner than later..... back to the drawing board!

Just found these videos which is what I think they want. Thomas did say to be more experimental so I might play with the concepts of the above.

Some sketches/storyboard/ideas/techniques on how to visualise the scenes with blocks of colours.

1) my initial thoughts on colours
2)brights
3)dark hues
4) more brights

Version 1

Version 2 - added more scenes

Version 3 - colour change, colours didn't reflect the mood which is much darker

Version 4 - changed the ending scene

FINAL! 57 scenes in total but for my final video I ended up with75 - I repeated a few of the scenes and also cut out parts that didn't quite fit when paired with the audio.

The final outcome

Week 2's assignment - choose a short clip (max 30 seconds) and rework this clip only in colour. Original sound allowed. 

This exercise was fun and challenging, figuring out colour combinations using the theories we covered (metaphors/contrast) and just the task of trying to visually represent the scene/emotion/mood in 30 seconds with the audio. I'm quite happy with mine because initially they were mostly block colours and some of the sequences I created looked out of sync but I spent a lot of time thinking of ways to convey parts of suspense/crashing/running through the colour use and shapes such as the running scene (the single square to mimic running), shouting (having the squares increase), the whipping (flashes of yellow to connotate speed), the "urgh" with the green (sick), excitement (alternative flashing boxes), the calling of  "mom" (pink) and "dad" (blue)... stereotypical but works! And a bunch of other stuff like that. I think these techniques used flows well with the audio so I think  fulfills the task of illustrating a moving visual only with colours.