Speaking with Animation

For this blog, I chose a short animation (45 sec.) done by one of my favorite artists, Lois van Baarle. She is an illustrator and computer animator from Holland. Her work is amazing, and I would highly recommend checking out her website, loish.net. The animation I chose was done for her Paperbag Parachute Studio website. The project is entitled, "Paperbag Parachute." It features four main characters, three monkeys on a branch mocking a fourth lone monkey on another branch. The style of the work is 2D animation which happens to be the traditional animation style, used in classic cartoons. She created the animation using a tablet stylus and produced in Flash.

The animation begins with an overall view of the environment, a desert perhaps with some trees spread out across the plain (she gives off the illusion of 3D by placing some trees further on the z-axis creating 3D depth in a 2D environment), then three monkeys appear on a branch when suddenly a fourth monkey appears from above on a separate branch. The fourth monkey, who is styled somewhat differently (different color, bigger hair, lop-sided eyes) from the first three monkeys, gives a friendly wave at the three monkeys on the opposite branch. His endearing gesture is met with lively laughter from the three monkeys, then the taunting begins, and the fourth monkey does not understand what is so funny. Then one of the three monkeys takes out a pen and paperbag, draws a happy face on it and throws it over the fourth monkey's head. The clouds roll in from above and the skies become dark and lightening strikes the tree of monkeys. The tree collapses along with the three monkeys, but the lone fourth monkey remains afloat due to the paperbag parachute.

This whole piece was meant to show that in life, there will always be people who put you down for being different, but what goes around comes around and the one who was taunted will one day rise to the top. It was also the inspiration behind her animation website, paperbagparachute.com. My only criticism is that the animation contains no sound, which is somewhat disappointing. I felt that by adding sound, it would have greatly elevated the user's experience and engaged the viewer more.

With that said, I hope you enjoy this piece as much as I did, check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF1tWCdesMw

Jenni

Best Movie Ever!!!

Special thanks to Tal!

Post Production Notes

Where to start? Planning my first 3 minute documentary about the music people listen to was exciting, drawing out the storyboard was the first step in making my mini-movie come to life. Shooting the actual footage used in our documentary was challenging, I learned a lot about framing the interview participant with concerns to lighting, I also learned that acquiring sound with the camera microphone isn't the best way to capture sound outdoors. I had trouble hearing some of my interviewees outside of Hunter, the ambient sound was too strong and during post-production, I had to edit these interviews out. I was surprised at how willing the students at Hunter were to be filmed, all interview participants were extremely friendly and I found the entire shooting experience to be fun and fulfilling. I was able to interview a number of people during the short time we had during class, which is something I was worried about during pre-production.

Editing the video was an entirely different story, I discovered that editing even a short documentary is tedious and requires a lot of time and effort. The first time Tal and I began editing our footage we worked for about three hours only to discover that we were unable to save our project. Due to this setback, we had to start editing all over again. However the second time we were able to edit, we really had an idea of which shots we were going to use and which ones were completely unusable. Our transitions between scenes really began working once we added our soundtrack to the piece. It made the documentary flow a lot easier and helped with our continuity. Overall, I thought the piece came out great! It was short and to the point and thanks to planning, it came out the way I hoped it would. If I had to change anything about the process, it would be obtaining a better microphone, a lavalier perhaps, this captures sound better than a camera mic. I have learned that capturing sound is just as important, if not more important than capturing images.

This whole experience really makes you appreciate all the hard work that goes into making a film or documentary. While watching an edited film or video, you never really even think about all the effort that took place in order to make the piece, now when I watch films and other media, I think about the steps someone made to capture that one shot and the amount of editing someone did to ensure continuity. Thanks to this project, I have a greater understanding of how films/videos are made :)

Jenni