Lecture: Gentle Ease

One of Sara's final lectures, titled "Gentle Ease" was concentrating on the use of After Effects - an Adobe Programme I've been using throughout the year, particularly on my final project, looking at the graph editor and the use of drawing and animation put together. This lecture was of high interest to me because of the topic, and this could be research for my work. A lot of the lecture included visual material, my favourite were the more graphic-based motion pieces, that focused on After Effects to create them, and less of the drawing ones at the start of the lecture.

One piece, "Just One Day" was something of amazing interest to me. Although created via by hand - Stop Motion, it was placed into After Effects and scaled up. Mixing both mediums of the by hand elements and software was something I found interesting - because the objects were all scaled up simultaneously, they don't line up correctly, which he could have done a lot more quicker and efficiently in After Effects, however, the method behind his work took a lot longer to make - it was his own choice, and made the piece move a lot more. The work is really simple too, I love the style that Kelly has created, it's simplistic and shows off the work well.

In contrast to this work, title sequences for TV's - even my own project, is usually done within a few week time frame, and although this is quick and sports a far more professional appearance about it, particularly with the use of the graphics and software they use (it's designed to look sleek, and as professional as intended, without any errors in it) it lacks any exploration. Usually the research for the project is so minimal in the time frame given that they cannot explore their research as thoroughly as they'd like, and thus, maybe not produce the most creative or thoughtful results.
     This made me think of our work currently and I'm glad that I separated out a few weeks just for the research, as it made me understand the piece a lot more and create a huge understanding of the work and the topic of choice. I'm glad I followed this route, with Sara's explanation it made a lot more sense to me and made me feel more positive in my choice to neglect creating the sequence at first.

recipesforbakingbread.blogspot.co.uk
Sara's blog and collection of documentation of her work was insightful; currently her focus is to document unbranded products and collecting objects that sort of fit into that. Some Soviet Salt packing, that she only bought a few days before hand, looked unbranded, with green screen printing technique used. It looks extremely aged because of the printing technique used, and without any recognizable branding, in just an old paper form, it ages the work well; although this process must be extremely inefficient at the cost of it - as it looks printed out with screen printing, this wouldn't be a practical way of making products due to the cost.
Sara told us that she was trying to do the same in her work - bring language into the work she is making, by using different methods to create unbranded packaging and something that looks aged, although it is brand new, and throughout her blog documents things that remind her of this process and allow her to research the work very efficiently.

The final video of the seminar was by Drew Tyndell, who's clientelle range from the Carton Network to General Elektriks - he has artist creativity and the main focus for his work is drawing, particularly intertwining the two together to create a colourful moving piece, one of my favourites from the seminar.


The process of the video is called 'romoscoping', a frame by frame concept where you trace from an original image, usually hand-drawn, which gives a beautiful effect that is slightly off-frame for each second, giving a lot more movement to the piece; however it is extremely labour intensive, given how long (3 minutes) the video is, it must have taken Tyndell a long time, a true labour of love. The piece is very light and fresh, and although it hasn't been made very quickly, the energy in the work and the colour shines past the technical process and allows something that looks very vibrant and modern.

Overall this lecture was really interesting tome, intertwining both drawing methods and animation is something that I admire greatly as the work takes a long time to produce ,although the work is defiantly worth it.