Tuesday 31 January 2017

Hyper-reality / Passion Pictures / Part two

After discovering passion pictures in previous research. I was hooked with the work they produce. I found more advertisements that connect hyper-reality to advertise and demonstrate great skills to make the videos that I can learn from.

Theo from Passion Animation Studios on Vimeo.

Above is a video called Theo, directed by Patrick Jean. The effects used within this video are very clever and relate to an interesting idea I have in mind. My idea is to illustrate the connection millennials have developed with the internet and this connection makes anything entirely possible. This video uses rotoscoping very effectively to transition different scenes of footage and also is used to reveal graphics that create a different scene from the original footage. In this video the creator simply drags whatever he desires in front of him that will be of use to him in the situation he is in. I feel this is a fascinating approach to hyper-reality and is within my depth to develop something of this nature for my own project.

Cadburry Moro 'Pegasus' from Passion Animation Studios on Vimeo.

Above is a simple hyper-realistic video that communicates its purpose effectively. Passion animation studios create a surreal video using rotoscoping and skills to construct a surreal environment, most likely using Photoshop. The unorthodox nature of this video reflects the unorthodox, yet beautiful sensations tasted within the moro chocolate bar. This is another manageable process to production that I could potentially develop towards my hyper-reality project final outcome.

Animals and hyper-reality / Passion Pictures / Part one

Animals entering the human world and presenting unrealistic animal behaviour is an interesting route to follow. It may prove difficult generate an outcome in this nature however, I will have to research how it can be done. I believe the best way to go about this is to rotoscope the footage of animals that will best relate to my scene or story, also to best reflect the composition of my video.



One of my favourite music videos ever is the funny Bingo Players - 'get up' music video. This video posses a hyper-realistic nature of ducks getting their revenge on a group of immature teenagers who, stole an elderly woman's handbag, threw a rock at one of the ducks, stole a bike and much more deviance. The ducks eventually could take no more and took matters into their own hands to save the neighbourhood from the criminal teenagers.

This music video was created by passion animation studios and directed by Tim Hope. To create the visual effects in this video, passion animation studios has footage of ducks and rotoscoped the ducks into compositions within the video. Along with animated visual effects to create hyper-realistic actions of the ducks attacking the gang. I could potentially create a video using these techniques, but gather footage from the internet and rotoscope the elements that I want.

Compare the Market 'Steve Smith' from Passion Animation Studios on Vimeo.

Passion animation studios also create the compare the meerkat adverts, directed by Tim Hope and Darren Walsh. These videos also connect hyper-reality, with a talking animated meerkat promoting the company 'compare the market.com'. These videos will be created using cinema 4D to model and animate into 3D characters that can be super imposed into video footage. This is a software that I want to learn more about, so creating a video like this for my project would be a huge challenge to learn it and complete what I have to do.

Animating Graffiti

Bringing wall graffiti to life is an interesting hyper realistic concept that I could explore. I could record footage of me walking past a wall and I could super impose graffiti that would spring to life as I walk along. I would create the graffiti using illustrator and animate it using after effects. Below, I will research processes of graffiti animation to spring ideas and methods.



Muto, an animated graffiti hyper reality is created by a street artist known as BLU. The work is hand crafted and photographed in frames to create an animated visual. He uses chalky white paint to illustrate bizarre stories along the walls, with a charcoal black to outline shapes and figures. Continuously, creations he makes are erased and smudged out, ready to draw on the next frame and leaving a motion trail behind that illustrates a path to guide the audience along the wall and follow the journey. A similar concept to this would be a great way to story board my idea, in terms of graffiti animating from one destination to another.

I have created a character animation of myself that I could incorporate into this idea. I could blend it into a wall background and follow me along the wall as I walk by, this would be one of many animations however, if I decide to take this idea further. Below is the animation of myself composed onto the urban city wall.

---MY animation to be inserted....



Above, I have found a very compelling wall graffiti animation that tells a story about knife crime and how it effected the characters life in the animation. This is a truly great communication that illustrates the consequences of knife crime, you almost feel sorry for the child criminal after you see everything he missed out on in childhood. The artistic channel of wall graffiti to tell this story connects with the urban environment this sort of crime commonly takes place and this helps convey the powerful message of ill advised teenagers wasting their potential, due to stupid decisions as seen in this video. The ability to connect the media and message , as the no knifes, better lives campaign would be an amazing approach to my hyper reality project. I will attempt to think of an interesting concept that will do so, telling a story at the same time in a hyper realistic manner.


Action for Children 'Lee' from Passion Animation Studios on Vimeo.



Multiverse / Family Guy

Watching late night tv recently, I came to watch an episode of 'family guy' and in this episode Stewie and Bryan explored the multiverse using a hyper realistic device to transport them through universe to universe. Each universe was different is some notable way to the previous, for example an geometric universe where everything was simple shapes, a universe where dogs were the humans and humans were pets, and there is much more strange, but interesting concepts of universes.



I could incorporate this concept into an idea for my hyper reality project. I could use the idea of a device that connects the universe we live in and when I press a button on this device, it will reveal a parallel universe that appears different to ours. To communicate this I could walk around outside and record footage of the environment, with the creative intention to edit and add elements to the video to make the environment unique to its universe.


Ideas of different universes I could create and add to my video footage. I could use after effects and illustrator to create different environments to my footage. Also, Photoshop video editing filter effects would be a good way to express a unique multiverse environment. I could apply a charcoal smart filter, to reveal a world drawn by charcoal, plus more filter effects to create a hyper realistic idea. This could in fact be a special app for your phone, while recording my video footage. I could demonstrate the process of universe switching, by showing my hand using the application and how the process works.

animated environment
vast deserted environment
Hand drawn charcoal Universe
Geometric Universe

Friday 27 January 2017

Polina Zioga / Methodology Of Approach / Essay Prep

In this seminar, we was discussing the structure of our essay and how to approach it. We looked at a good quality essay and evaluated how this essay was writ to confer great clarity and focus.

First of all, the topic is clearly outlined in the introduction. The author is exploring the connection of inverse presence and mediated experiences. This is believing a mediated experience that is not in fact mediated, for example, seeing something and do not quite believe it. Virtual presence, is a huge factor in this and effects the way our minds work, connecting real life events to what would be seen in a movie. The author states many times, people who experienced surreal events often reflect virtual presence, quoting 'it was like watching a movie'. The author explains what they intend to do to investigate this concept. They will investigate many news reports, positive, negative and the unusual to determine a conclusion to the essay. This also underlines the structure of the essay, we now know the order of the essay and what he is going to write about.


In addition, we picked out key words to use and define the essay. Inverse presence / presence / Illusion / Mediation / Hyper reality. These can be used to guide and discover research, a useful notion for me to apply to my essay to help write and guide research.

This essay is an original idea and no one knows what inverse presence is until the author defines the term. This is a new phrase the author has made up to help confer the idea behind his essay. It refers to believing something is or is not real when witnessing a real world event before your eyes, and your mind connects it to surreal imprints virtual reality has had on your brain.


All in all, I have learnt a lot from this seminar. I feel more confident in how I should structure my essay. Defining my topic in the introduction and after, provide the reader with background information after the introduction to create an understanding of how the essay is going to be structured. This essay was a good example to get an understanding of structure writing style.

Thursday 26 January 2017

Self Publication / Nick Deakin / Process and Production / Stencil Prints

Today we produced stencil print posters as a means of self publication. This technique is a unique and cheap process to create intriguing and illustrative posters. This can be a great way to help communicate a message at times, depending on the media and message.

Our group was each given different words to communicate. The words provided could have been anything. I got the words 'sheep' and 'factory', whereas, some of my friends got, 'tank', 'Eiffel tower', 'snail' and much more random words. It was a fun task to create. Anyway, with our words we created stencil stamps. I considered the composition of how I would draw my sheep and factory before I cut it out, I didn't want to cut it out and everything fall apart when I cut out the stencil. Once I drew my stencil, I precisely and safely cut them out with a Stanley knife on a cutting mat. Below are my stencil cutouts.



Next, I used my stencils to roll paint over and create a print press on a clean page of paper. I first had a practice run to see how much paint I would need to create a design that didn't leak paint through the stencil. In addition, our group was each given a phrase of text to compose and cut out, ready to print paint through onto our designs. I was given the text, 'I'm throwing stones at you' and 'Drown me in your sweet submission'.


Finally, I composed and pressed my stencils to create finished prints. Although simple and basic. these stencil prints do create an interesting outcome. To me, my designs look like they would be printed on children's clothing. That could be an interesting idea actually, I could gather some stock images if children's t-shirts and jumpers and print these designs on, expanding of what I have done. All in all, I have gained a greater insight to what can be achieved with this kind of self publication. The designs that you create do not just end physically, you can produce endless manipulations by scanning them in to digital form. To use in animation, clothing, illustration and much more.


Above are kids t shirts that I have created using my stencil prints. In addition, on of my stencil prints had a phrase and image that connected to represent a sarcastic approach to global warming. With this in mind, I created a billboard poster to illustrate an environmental warning of the increasing carbon dioxide in our world. The phrase illustrates the notion we are drowning in the submission of the smog, but in a sarcastic manner. Communicating the message, 'well done, keep killing earth'. This is reinforced with the change from colour into dull colour within the smog, conveying decay.


Wednesday 25 January 2017

Lenticular Printing

Lenticular printing would be another fascinating way to convey hyper-reality. This technique can connect several images into one still composition, but change depending on the angle of perspective. Creating an optical Illusion. Often confusing viewers and causes the mind to ask questions.

This effect is done by a special way of printing. The print will have small rounded bumps that scale across the design, creating two surfaces to print on. View one side of the bumps, you will see one image, view the other side, a different image will arise. This is often used to convey messages on DVD boxes, relating to the story of the film. For example, I have the final Harry Potter DVD with a lenticular print that flicks between two images. One of Harry Potter and one of Voldemort. The lenticular is cleverly used to ask the question, 'who will win the battle?', the DVD case shows two different outcomes, engaging the viewer to watch the film to find out. Even though, most already knew from the books.

Harry Potter Lenticular "Wiggle Art" DVD Box Cover ~ Deathly Hallows, Part 2 from Sandra Riffero on Vimeo.

Lenticular printing is an interesting concept and could be a good idea to explore to express hyper, reality, the meme, or the millennial generation. The illusive design itself connects hyper-realism and with the inclusion of a clever message, the two combined would reinforce to create a really intriguing design, bringing about a lot of intrigued attention.


This book is amazing, The lenticular prints bring the animals to life as you flip the pages. This book uses lenses in a vertical direction. The eyes each see from a slightly different horizontal standpoint, which creates a three dimensional effect. If the lenses horizontal, both eyes see the same image, but it changes with the angle of elevation of view. This is what creates the animation within the book. As the pages are turned the horizontal lenticular reveals different images and creates an amazing, hyper-realistic effect, bringing the still image to life.

Rotoscoped Hyper-reality / The Pirate Bay Song

When researching I stumbled upon this amazing music video, connecting the theme of hyper-reality. Anything nowadays is retrievable over the internet and a lot of people, who want something hard enough can get it from the internet. Illegal or not. This band Dubioza kolektiv, created a funny song advertising the ease of piracy and mocks pop culture ruthlessly. The music video was directed by Salem Kapic Kantardzic and features feature film worthy effects, including guest appearances from, President Obama, Jon Snow, Kim Kardashian and many more.

The song is dedicated to the founders of thepiratebay.org website, Per Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, who is currently being held in solitary confinement. Facing a six year prison sentence in Denmark. Also to, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, who is incarcerated in Sweden. The song questions copyrights in the modern digital age, privacy on the internet and freedom of information. Discussing a very popular view that gets zero attention.



I love the choreography of the music video. For my project I would love to create the effect of me exploring the depths of the internet inside the virtual environment. It would be funny and an exciting challenge to choreograph funny scenes from internet footage, with the inclusion of me. This will be an intersting way to show the hyper connection millennials have with the internet, as if we are interacting with the things we see on the internet. When we share a video, it is like we are telling peers and laughing together. Maybe, a similar approach to a video as ,Salem Kapic Kantardzic for the pirate bay song, will be a great path to go down. I would just need to learn how he did it. Most likely rotoscoping and a green screen to ease the process of adding subjects into footage.

Tuesday 24 January 2017

Rotoscoped Hyperreality / Joe.co.uk

Joe.co.uk connect rotoscoped reality with footage that relates to a current situation in the world. The videos are carried out in a funny manner, placing famous peoples rotoscoped faces on footage to create hyper realistic events, but always referring to a real world occurrence in a comedic way.




I think the hyper-realism of the videos above are hilarious. It is just funny for people to imaging these hyper-realistic events actually happening between certain celebrities. I would love to create funny videos in this fashion. These videos also relate to memes. These sort of videos have to be produced at a quick rate however, once an event has occurred there is a time frame for them to create the video before the moment has passed. Creating the video shortly after the event will get more shares and views. When the moment is hot, people search and find these funny meme videos.

I would use after effects to create this idea, rotoscoping faces and placing them on the faces of people in a relatable footage to a current happening. I could also, think about rotoscoping my face into funny or serious events to make funny. It will all be hyper-realistic. On that note, I could rotoscope me to be in the internet and wonder around the virtual reality to play and discover what I can do inside my computer screen, I would try to make this comedic in some way. Who knows, one day that might be possible, similar to Keiichi Matsuda.

Millenials

The majority of internet memes are transmitted by millennials. I am am millennial. It is a term used to apply to individuals who reached adulthood around the turn of the 21st century. We are hyper connected and captivated with the internet and social media, hence the reason millennials are the main transmitters of memes.

Millennials are often taken joked about in the workplace. The older generations view millennials as people who expect more than they deserve and see them as the 'me' generation. Often the workplace neglect millennials and what they have to say, they believe millennials do not know how the real world works. Above is a funny video a group of millennials have produced, playing along with the stereotypes people give them to comically communicate how they are perceived. This is an attempt to say, 'are we really like this?'. Also, they play along with their imperfections to create a new creation that is unique and funny. Playing to their strengths. I like the funny nature of this video and I think it is a clever way to advertise us. I would consider making some kind of funny video that relates to the theme millennials as a theme to work on for my hyper-realities project.

Hulu "Millennials" from GOLDEN on Vimeo.

Above is an animated take on the topic millennials. It is a really clean and slick animation used to signify millennial uniqueness and individuality. The use of contrasting typefaces and bold clashing colours shows millennial culture and creativity, with the capability to mix with all different backgrounds. The youthful animation communicates the strengths of millennials and the power they posses to take the world forward. This is also an interesting concept, the use of animation characterises our generation and displays a youthful outlook to the creation. Maybe I could go down this path and create an animation to communicate the millennial generation. I will investigate further processes and productions to create an idea of the direction I wish to take.


Memes / Hyperreality

Memes is an area that is associated with hyper reality. Memes have blown up over the last few years due to the connectivity social media and the internet has brought us. Images, videos, a piece of text and more, can now be shared across the world at an amazing rate, with the touch of a button.


A meme is an idea, behaviour, or style that is shared from person to person within a culture. It acts as tool to carry cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transferred to many people through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Its name derived from the Greek word 'mimema', meaning something imitated, according to the American Heritage Dictionary.

Although memes have notably rose and got a name for itself over the past few years, they have actually been around for many many years. The first meme created dates back to 1976, created by evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins. Dawkins described memes as a process to transmit social memories and cultural ideas to each other. However, the internet was not at the power it is today back in then and the capacity to share memes was limited.


Before the internet, Memes were spread physically. A notable meme that you may have heard of is the 'Kilroy was here' meme the American army used. It was a popular cultural expression in America, around the time of world war II. This meme was typically seen as graffiti on walls, drawn on by United States servicemen in places they were stationed, camped or visited. Leaving their mark as memorabilia in what ever destination they went.


Memes were also distributed by posters before the internet. In 1998, Stephard Faiery created the Andre the giant phenomenon. He created stickers and posters he would place all over the city environment. He did this in an attempt to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the sticker and its relationship with its surroundings. It re awoke a sense of wonder about the environment it was situated. It got people talking and questioning, achieving its goal of becoming a phenomenon and became a popular act in this time period. This has gave me an insight as to what memes actually are. They can be in physical form to, scattered around environments to connect people and bring together a social culture. Either posters, clothing, digital, its endless. This is good to know as I gather research to develop ideas for my project.

De-realisation


Interestingly, I have just found out that derealisation is a condition that connects the aspect of hyper-realism into the real world. It is an alteration in the perception or experience of the external world, making the external reality seem unreal. Symptoms include, feeling as though ones environment is lacking spontaneity, emotional colouring and depth. Derealisation is a disorder of psychiatric and neurological disorders, or it can be a stand alone disorder called depersonalisation.


While, depersonalisation is a subjective experience of unreality of the external world, depersonalisation is the sense of unreality in their self. The idea of this is that the phenomenological experience of ones self, others and the external world is all one continuous whole. So, the sufferer depicts unreality to blend in and cause the person to puzzle over deciding whether it is them self or the world that feels unreal to them. It is reported that a person who suffers from this condition, almost observes them self interacting with the world from an external source, having no control over their actions. In the image above, the drawing illustrates an interesting concept that depicts a person viewing through the eyes of their outer person. This powerfully communicates the silenced character inside having no control over the actions of their external person, viewing the world through their own eyes, but not in touch with the external realities or themselves. This is an interesting concept to investigate to generate ideas along these lines.


Matrix is in some sense related to this condition. Who knows, the whole idea of the matrix may have derived from derealisation and depersonalisation. The film Matrix depicts a future in which reality is perceived by most humans is actually a simulated reality, that was created by machines to bring under control the human population. The humans are plugged into the matrix and the heat and electrical activity from their bodies are used as an energy source. This is a well documented hyper reality, but an interesting one at that. For an idea, I could move towards the direction of futuristic hyper-realities, creating a short video or illustrations of how the world is perceived in the future.

Hyperrealities Introduction / Final Year 2 Brief

Today, hyperreality is everywhere you look. It can be anything from videos you see on the internet and social media, on your TV, or even walking down a city street in some sence. New York, for example is full of Hyper realistic flashing advertisements strapped along the city blocks. Basically, a Hyperrealities are images or simulations, that either distorts the reality it projects or does not in fact depict anything at all, but nonetheless comes to represent reality. 

For my research I will investigate methods and different connections people have made to connect hyperreality with real world. The term hyperreality is very broad and allows the capacity to invogorate many different ideas, from the extremely bizzare to the genious depications of futuristic environments. Below are a few hyperrealistic depictions I will investigate, to develop interesting concepts to generate a unique idea of my own.


https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2016/05/hyper-reality-movie-keiichi-matsuda-virtual-physical-reality-future-vision-media-concept_dezeen_936_0.jpg

I was introduced into the work of Keiichi Matsuda as an insight into hyper reality today. He depicts an over exaggerated future where we are installed with a technology that connects us to the world. In this world there is no need for mobile phones to interact. He communicates this through the overuse of notifications and advertisements in a chaotic manner, creating a lot of confusion between the virtual and real world environment. The focus of this message is 'how far will technology grow, what is the limit'. If technology continues to grow and we tee the internet with our eyes, the world will be hectic and non stop. The internet never rests and Keiichi creates an amazing animation to communicate this. In the video, you also notice that the technology installed into the main character is a little faulty and had some sort of virus, popping up adds and malware. That would be a night mare if this actually happened. Especially when you gain life points to move up the system, levelling up to get better jobs and more. The hyper realistic effect is switched off at one point in the video, when the character reboots her system. This relieves us from the chaos and reconnects us with the real world. Which seemed really slow and lifeless, due to what we experienced before.

HYPER-REALITY from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

This concept really intrigues me. I would love to create an outcome where I can make my self connect with hyper reality. Whether it be me, inside a computer and walking around and playing with all and everything the internet has to offer, just having fun inside the virtual environment really.

Friday 20 January 2017

Cinema 4D / Lesson One / Jay Payne / Process and Production

Today was my first lesson with Jay Payne learning Cinema 4D. The focus of the tutorial was to build a 3D logo, with elements designed in illustrator merged with Cinema 4D to create the outcome. Everything about Cinema 4D is new to me and I am eager to learn how to use this program. Most design for brands are produced in cinema 4D now, bringing a new dimension to the work and making designs more interesting. The programme was designed by designers, so hopefully I will be able to pick the programme up quite quickly.

First of all, I created a basic shape in illustrator, using the shape tools. Once I created a shape I was satisfied with I saved the file in a format that is compatible with Cinema 4D, Illustrator8. Now I could open up a Cinema 4D file and merge the illustrator file to work with.


In Cinema 4D, I added extrude paths to the shape layers of my hashtag and enhanced its movement to 50cm for each to make a strong, solid 3D shape. After this I added colour to the shape. To do this I double clicked the bottom create box and created a colour path. With this path I can create any colour I want and change its appearance, from diffusion, glow, illumination and more. Once I created a colour I dragged it onto the layer I wanted, changing its colour. 



Viewing the shape at this stage in a rendered view it looks like a clean 3D design, however the edges do not look rounded or real as an object would look away from the computer. To solve this problem, I clicked on the extrude tool and clicked the caps option in the toolbar. This now opened up a cap editing space to round the edges of the shape. To create the real effect, I changed the start and end of the shapes to fillet caps and edited the steps to 3cm and the radius to 0.5cm.

After, I added a floor and background to the virtual space to bring everything together. This was easy enough, I basically dragged the floor and background paths to my editing space. Once situated, I could add colour to these paths the same way I added colour to my shape. Now to add a new dimension to the design I added light paths. One positioned at x-150, y1000 and z-500 (over left shoulder light). With the other light at x500, y300 and z-500 to lift the 3d aspect of the design.



Next, I added text. I typed the word 'me' in the font Helvetica, to place beside my hashtag as a simple design to learnt with in this tutorial. Similar to before, I added extrude paths and dragged the text layer into this path, enhancing the movement of the text to 50cm to match the hashtag shape. Also, I added colour and fillet cap effects to create a more real outlook to the design.

Moving forward, I added a camera tool with the intent to move around the shape and create a short 3D video. This is where the programme started to get a bit tricky. I used the key-frame tools, in a similar fashion to after effects to move the camera along a time line and around a shape. It was just a different layout of edditiong the camera to do so, but I got the hang of it in the end. However, I feel the use of the camera could have been a bit better. I will practice this in further development. I really want to get to grips with this programme, it has an endless capacity to create anything.

Cinema4D / Lesson One / Process and Production from Charlie Hamnett on Vimeo.

Finally, I learnt how to save files in cinema 4D in, JPEG, Quicktime and AVI format. First, I altered the render settings for a JPEG format. altering the effect to ambient occlusion, anti-aliasing to best and changing the output to JPEG. Then clicking the render to picture viewer icon in the toolbar to complete the render process for the JPEG. For the video output, I altered the render settings to Quicktime movie, changed the compression type to -H1264 and the frame rate to all frames. Hitting the render video icon in the toolbar to complete the process.

All in all, I have learnt a great deal of information about Cinema 4D today and I will definitely stick to the task to learn more and more of this programme. It excites me what I could do with this programme and I will now put my the skills I have learnt in this tutorial to practice.


Extra Exploration



Cinema 4D / 3D Logo Building Practice from Charlie Hamnett on Vimeo.


MY LOGO





MY ICONS














MY SKILLS






Thursday 5 January 2017

Think / Street Billboard Mock ups / Reverspective Posters












 I have placed my reverspective posters in real world billboards to see what the over all outcome looks like in the build environment. I had to use Photoshop skew tools to arrange and lift the reverspective sides, in order to create the pyramid structure extruding from the 2D poster. All in all, it works and I am happy with the unique communication this poster offers. People will pass these posters and will remember the unorthodox nature and will retain the information, whether they like it or not. If people notice it, they will retain the information and fulfilling the job of the poster.