COP2 - Essay

COP3 Proposal - ISSUU

Adorno & The Culture Industry - Study Task 3

QUOTES:

• 'This process has not been confined to quantity, but has resulted in new qualities'
• 'seized all media of artistic expression'
• 'amazing parallelism ... even when they have little in common on the surface'
• 'tension is but superficially maintained and is unlikely to have a serious effect anymore'
• 'Everything somehow appears "predestined"'
• 'congealed and standardised'
• '[it has been] reduced to a kind of multiple choice between very few alternatives'

Adorno explains the complete lack of individuality and creative freedom on Television and explains how it's all the same, with the same plot and basic ending, whatever the genre. He also goes on to state that TV effects the audience in a way that people as readers before TV, could 'expect anything to happen' however 'this no longer holds true', suggesting that there is not shock-factor within the audience anymore and it is never achieved.

These concepts might relate to animation in the way that a lot of children's animation is pumped out constantly on TV channels such as CBBC, CITV or Cartoon Network, where the overall narrative never changes. This might involve the story following a young boy/girl unhappy with their home life and then goes out in the world and discovers new magical things, or again young protagonist finds themselves a superpower ect. 

EXAMPLE:

Powerpuff Girls - Three young girls, with superpowers saving their city from evil.

Scooby-Doo - Four teenagers, saving people from paranormal mysteries (evil). 

Here we always know how these animation episodes will end, always with the main characters finding the evil villain and saving the day.

Analysis

The Simpsons is a tv show that has been on everyone's TV at least once and some people quote it as the best TV animated show of all time. The narrative of the Simpsons is usually the same structure, where one of the characters come into a disequilibrium and by the end of episode it is usually resolved, Adorno might add that usually 'everything [is] somehow predestined' (Adorno, 1954:213-35). This may be seen as a way of teaching values to the Simpson's audiences clearly outlining 'what to do and what not to do', however Adorno suggests that having things plainly set out this way repeatedly leaves no room for individuality and instead people are seen to be just following the 'status quo' (Adorno, 1954:213-35). On the contrary, it could be argued that it's not the fault of the producers and writers of the Simpsons, and instead could be down the way that society has developed. Adorno states that TV shows simply 'adapt to the system's own requirements', outlining the need to fit into the social norms that have been created within TV on what people's likes and dislikes are (Adorno, 1954:213-35).

T. Adorno (1954) 'How to look at television', The quarterly of film radio and television, Vol. 8. No.3, pp. 213-35

COP3 - Thinking About a Question!

After reading through the brief I found it quite easy to pick a topic that I liked and I decided to go for society, mainly because I find people fascinating in the way that people's brains work and for what reasons.

I looked at the question: What is Good? - To what extent does Social Responsibility impact on the role and function of Animation?

I like this question a lot as it's quite broad and doesn't really focus on one aspect of what really is social responsibility, although I would possibly like to look into way that animation is usually shown to a lot of children. This led me on to think about why animation is the main medium choice for children's films and media and is becoming more and more increasingly common/popular. I feel it would be really interesting to look into the psychology of children's mind while they are developing at such a young age and how different things can effect the way they think and their perception of things. In COP1 I looked in gender roles in animation and how this effects the minds of children, which I really enjoyed researching and learning about. So, to look even further into this would be really interesting, especially since being an animator so heavily involves working for children audiences.

I also thought about these questions:

• Why is animation the main choice of medium for children's films and media?
• To what extent does animation act as a platform for teaching roles, values and ideals?

I feel that this topic is broad enough for dissertation as it is quite a controversial and researched topic and animation is something that parents may subject their children too without any prior thoughts. Not to say that animation is teaching good or bad to children, however the fact that it is so normalised is quite a bizarre concept.

Animation Artefact - The Final Result - TOUCH

I decided to call my animation 'Touch', I wanted something simple and memorable and this targeted to message between touch screen and real touch. I did multiple takes of some of the scenes so that I could pick the best version in the editing stage, which now I am really happy about as some of the scenes weren't as good as the later versions I shot.

After putting all of the footage I had together all I needed was my final sounds and some of them I recorded myself as this way I could get the exact sounds I wanted and they are mine without copyright. I voice acted the gasp and little 'hmm' at the end of the animation and them sped them up to sound more high pitched. I found that this made them sound really cute and in keeping with the animation. I also put titles on my animation so that it made it more professional and the audience would get the word 'TOUCH' before watching and hopefully this would be thought provoking. 

Below is my final animation!

TOUCH from Stacy Straub on Vimeo.

Overall, I am really happy with the outcome of this animation. I think it went really well and I feel like there is a clear message within the animation like I planned. I now want to get a bit of feedback on it so my next steps are to get some written feedback from my peers and see what message they got from it.

Animation Artefact - Animating!

Animation begins! As I had an animatic ready and a solid storyboard it was really easy for me to just go in and animate straight away without any problems. Below is my little baby on set, I put a diaper made out of tissue on him so that we wasn't naked anymore. Also, I taped down the tea towel the best I could before started to animate to try and prevent movement.




Above is little Jack with his pile of electronics in the process of being animated. The main thing I struggled with, within this animation is the movement of the tea towel, because I wanted a completely tactile set I didn't realise the drawbacks this could have. I had only used a solid set before and not a material based one and there was lots of movement with it even though I wasn't actually touching it that much. I feel that this is one of the negatives you get with using this kind of background and the only thing I could really do would just to be really careful every time I leant on it. Even though there was movement, this is one of the main charms/flaws that happen within stop-motion, and one of the things I explored within my essay. So, when looking back at the footage and seeing these flaws it makes me think now that it could even contribute further to the ideas I explored in my essay and the message I am trying to convey within this animation. I am really happy with the way that the scenes have turned out and below is a little preview of one of the scenes. I can't show any moving footage yet as I have to export everything as an image sequence to then put together in Premiere to ensure I get high quality frames.

Animation Artefact - Finalising Props & Background

I started out by creating the little teddy bear for this animation which was so tiny! Luckily I have small hands so I managed it, but it wasn't easy to make. I made him out of wool as I wanted him to be a completely different texture to my main character. I began by cutting two balls of foam and a tiny piece of wire and I wanted him to be quite sturdy, so this was his base.










Next I glued an put together his body before I began with the needlefelting and as you can see compared to my hand he was very, very small. The main thing I struggle with was his arms and legs as there was so little foam to poke the wool into it was hard to get the arm to go together without the foam falling apart.


















Eventually, after lots of struggling with tiny arms and a leg, he came out really well! I made a plasticine version before this as you can see in my animation tests, however he looks so much nicer in felt.











Next, I began making the tiny iPads and laptops. These again were very small, however they weren't as hard to craft. Below is a tiny iPad, I made quite a few of these.

Then I made some tiny laptops.

Here is some of the electronics with the bear, I did make a few more so that the pile would completely cover him for the animation.

Next, I had to get a background! Originally, I was going to get a baby blanket, but I felt this would be a waste as I would never use it again! So, I instead bought some microfibre tea towels, that are really soft looking and I found pink ones! So, I could use this in the future as well as for my animation. I tested the colours mainly pink with white stripes and white with pink stripes as these were the different patterns I had.

I decided on pink with white stripes was better as the white background seemed a bit off with the skin colour of the baby and the pink made him stand out more.

So, now with all my props made and background sourced, I am ready to animate!

Animation Artefact - Storyboarding and Animatic

Before going on to creating my animation I needed a storyboard and animatic to follow, even though the animation is quite short. I still felt it was necessary as I needed to know the timings for shots before working out how many frames were needed. I found creating the storyboard to be quite easy as I had a solid idea of what I wanted to do and the narrative was really simple.


I tried to make the shots as simple as possible as it is a stop-motion animation and with the facilities available there can't be too much camera movement. With the zooms I am going to fix these in post-production and shoot them all in wide shot. I really want to play on the textures in this animation, and after the peer review I am now on the lookout for a fuzzy cute backdrop to contrast with the plasticine I am using for the baby and the electronics.

Above is the animatic I came up with before going into animate. I thought a lot about the sound for this animation and I decided that it would be most effective if there wasn't any music and instead was just a room ambience and this works better. I want to use a textural soundscape within this animation so that it accentuates the message of the tactile nature of stop-motion. For example, I am planning on making him stroke the bear once he pulls it out and I want a foley sound of material rubbing on itself to make the bear seem even more realistic. I feel that by using sound in this way it will really help to bring the animation more to life instead of sticking some music over the top. Even though the animatic is 15 seconds, I don't feel like my final animation will be this long as I have left some long pauses in the zooms, which may come out a little shorter in post. I'm really happy with the way that it has turned out and now my next steps are to begin animating!

COP Pratical Response - Peer Review

As part of COP2 we had a peer review session with me and three others, where we all gave each other feedback on our ideas. Below are the pages that were filled out for me.

I then filled out my own sheet after reading and receiving feedback from my peers, which was really helpful. They felt that the overall idea for the project was really clear and well thought out and could see a clear link between my theoretical ideas in my essay and my plans for my animation. This was really great to hear as I feel that this is one of the most important parts of the module, if they had no link the research would have been unsuccessful. I was also given the idea as a way of evaluating the effectiveness of the final animation to review people opinions to see if they understood without any context and this would prove the strength of it's message. They suggested that my idea of a black/plain lit background on the animation would work, however it might work better if I were to use a pastel baby colour or even a baby blanket from the charity shop to tie it all together a little more. I felt this was a great idea and I hadn't really considered the background to be a massive issue before, but after hearing this I will definitely go on the search for a blanket! Finally, Dan gave me the idea that to explore the subject from a more technical viewpoint that I should talk about the way that stop-motion is completely independent and as an animator you have to figure out and solve your own problems. Then comparing this to CG it differs as the program/software you use to animate actually solves most of the problems for you as well as using coding that someone else has made to create your animations, whereas stop-motion you literally create everything from scratch.

Overall, I found this crit really helpful as it gave me some new ideas that I hadn't previously thought of and these will help me to develop my idea further! I now have a plan that I am going to stick to and get on with before the hand in.

Society - LECTURE

(Raymond Williams)

It's about sharing, humanity and freedom.

"You can spend 10% of your time doing things to help out fellow members of society then you are contributing to society. You are contributing to the bettering of the world"

Socially and Ecologically Responsible Design

This is what the first things first manifesto is all about.

How do we determine what is socially responsible?

What you need is a framework of ethics.

Ethical Theories

• Subject Relativism - there are no universal moral norms of right and wrong, all people decide right and wrongs for themselves, everyone does their own thing. (Here you don't have the concept of society)
• Cultural Relativism - the ethical theory that what’s right or wrong based on he place or time. (It claims to have some link to some social organisation but doesn't)
• Divine Command Theory - good actions are aligned with the will of God, bad actions are contrary to the will of God, the holy book helps make the decisions, ethics can be found in the holy book. (There are different interpretations of the ethics, this where it is flawed)

Kantianism (Deontological Ethics) - Duty based ethics

To act ethically you need to follow these two things and if you are then you know you're acting in an ethical way.

1. Act only from moral rules that you can universalise (if everyone did it and it caused problems them it is not moral).
2. Act so that you always treat both yourself and other people as ends in themselves, and never only as a means to an end. (If you use people for your own benefit)

Utilitarianism - If something generally makes the world a better place hen it's probably the right thing.

Social Contract Theory - The idea that there is a social contract between everyone in society, like a bond and that bond prevents us acting like savages. To be civilised we need to help each other, and work together. Without this we have anarchy.

Figured out that the best campaigns are those that make people feel like they are doing something ethical.

Technology - LECTURE

Technology, Digital Culture and Practice

Developing Research Proposals

• Start with what you already know
• Identify what you want to know more about
• Plan how you are going to find out

Start to define what it is, what the words are in the question and break them down.

Think about other definitions and other ways to look at it.

Jan Svankmayer - the way his whole career was based was on cost.

South Park - people who had their hands of fairly sophisticated technology were able to say something without needing a huge studio. (political free speech)

Animators are using technology in a new way, independently. Thanks to new technologies such as social media they are able to not only make it but distribute it without the need of a company.

Their idea and their practice evolves with the advancements of technology.

‘We shape out tools, and then our tools shape us’ - Marshall McLuhan 1911-1980

McLuhan believed that to fully grasp the impact of a new technology, one must examine figure (medium) and ground (context) together, since neither is completely intelligible without the other

Digital Culture

• A set of values, beliefs, opinions, skills and practices shared by regular users of digital media for production and distribution.
• A social phenomena of interrelated online and offline activities.

Principle Components of Digital Culture

• Participation - formal and informal online affiliations, connections, collaborations, expressions and networks.
• Remediation - new technology and media as a constant development remix of older media and the refashioning of old media to meet the demands of new technologies.
• Bricolage - the creation of products through available media, re-using existing artefacts, remixing, remaking, and redistributing through new-media distribution.

Culture - LECTURE

Raymond Williams - Keywords

Theoretical enclycopedia about terms and their changing uses throughout history.

CULTURE:

• Before C18th it is the tending natural growth
• C18th it is cultivated or civilised
• Human development
• Cultures in the plural, there is not just one shared culture
• Modern usage is that culture means music, art, literature, film ect.

Idea of Britishness is bringing civilisation, bringing culture to the uncultured.

Increase of inhomagisation of the world

Global Village Thesis - Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media

It changes from people who live on the other side of the world into people knowing about everyone like a village and everyone would be interconnected.

Three problems of gobalisation:

• Sovereignty
• Accountability
• Identity

Cultural Imperiliasm

If the ‘global village’ is run with a certain set of values then it would not be so much an integrated community as an assimilated one.

Qualities of ‘authentic culture’

• Real
• European
• Multi-Dimensional
• Active consumption
• Individual creation
• Imagination
• Negation
• Autonomous

Proposal Writing & Research Questions - LECTURE

It's not about developing new knowledge it's about showing you understand the knowledge you are gathering.

 Methodology

• Refers to how you will find out what you are looking for
• Identifies who will be involved and how
• Specifies how you will turn source material in to evidence
• Considers how you will generate meaning from your evidence

Study Task: COP3 RESEARCH PROPOSAL

• Blog should supply a critical journal into practice and theory
• The key difference is that you are driving it completely

Your proposal should focus on the development of a body of theoretical, contextual and practical research around an individually appropriate theme or subject relating to your selected question.

It should be based on the theories that will support you as a practitioner.

Research questions:

Politics, society, culture, history, technology and aesthetics

Explore the different questions and explore the one that will get you started.

Animation Artefact - Progress!

As I realise I don't have much time to create a full animation I have really been cracking on with this part of the module and after speaking to Richard about my idea he fully supports it and thinks it's simple yet effective, which is great news for me. So, with that comment I carried on planning my animation and I have began by drawing designs for baby Jack, below are all of my sketches and plans.

FINAL DESIGN I LIKED

I thought it would be really fun to look at character design with plasticine and actually just made different faces with Newplast to experiment and it went really well! I thought it would be a fun activity to practice sculpting with the material as well have it as a material consideration as I had originally planned to use a felt puppet for this animation. Although, after playing around with plasticine I actually think it could work better as I am trying to make this animation as tactile as possible and when taking photos of my model you can really see the details and the errors, which just makes it even more charming and possibly more charming than felt!

I liked this face shape the best, however I felt the eyes were a little creepy and it reminded me of Coraline! So I decided to make them smaller and put a rough body onto it so that I could get a concept model before making the final thing.

More images of my concept model.

I really love how this has turned out and I think it really captures the handmade feel of stop-motion puppets! I don't want to overcomplicate my puppet as the plasticine can get very gooey when under lights and handling him so I feel like simple hands and feet like the ones above will work better and I can shape them back to as they are here quickly and effortlessly.

I also did some little animation tests to see how he would move and the clip is below.



Baby Testing - Stop Motion from Stacy Straub on Vimeo.














This little test took no time at all and I did it using my iPad at home, however it has helped me decide that I definitely want to use plasticine for this animation! My next steps are to create a wire armature to put inside the plasticine and it was hard the move the head of this character very much as I felt it was going to break off. I also need to design the little soft toy and iPad props used in the animation.

Animation Artefact - Initial Ideas and Planning

I decided to start as early as possible with my animated artefact for this COP2 module as I really want to create my own stop-motion animation in response to my research and investigation into the digital age and where stop-motion stands within this. My first thoughts were that I was going to create a character design that was digital and in puppet form and then compare them, however I felt this wasn't as beneficial as it would be to make an animation that could expand my knowledge on stop-motion and be something I could put on my showreel as I want to go into this part of the animation industry. Below are some of the ideas I came up with in a spider diagram to get me started.

So, my favourite idea was to create an idea around a child that is fed up with all his 'digital' toys and he doesn't really find them very fun or interesting. After sifting through them, tossing the digital gadgets and toys aside he comes to the bottom of the pile where he find a cute stuffed toy with one eye missing. This makes him extremely happy and he snuggles it before the scene ends. I loved this idea as I explore the ways that stop-motion makes animators feel like children again finding something in their adulthood that they loved to do as a child; play with toys and make them come to life. Even though this idea will require me to make a puppet and props, it's a really great opportunity for me to work on another stop-motion animation and get my skills evolving.

Below are some of the moodboards I have put together for this idea.