Sc1 ruff

I started reading "Invisible Ink" by Brian McDonald, a book about writing.  I revised this story after reading the book because it was too muddy. Too many things were going on.  The worst part of this process is that I have already animated half of the story.  Trying to keep the parts while making the story flow better is not the easiest task. There are ideas I have to cut out because they don't fit the armature of the story.  It still needs some work but it has to be done before Christmas.  Finished but not perfect is better than never finished. 

Two Sides of A Coin: Day

Two Sides of A Coin: Night Street of Snack

I actually did a couple versions of lighting scenario for this scene and I'm posting this one because it got finished first. The final painting for the daytime painting (colorkey from last week) will be posted next week

Updates: This is the first night lighting I did. It didn't feel right.

So I put it aside and made a second one which is closer to the mood I'm aiming for.

Process:

Two Sides of A Coin: Street of Snack

This is based on a sketch I did in 2016 at Ximending. In fact, that sketch has inspired the development of the project Two Sides of A Coin.  I took the sketch, not knowing what it's going to be, made a layout out of it. At the time I thought "Let's try Tekkonkinreet style." It ended up being a piece I'm particularly proud of and it has so much potential I knew I need to take it further. 

colorkey test

This is the sketch. A view sitting at the top floor of KFC

Two Sides of A Coin: Alley

I already have in mind what this scene is going to look like. At least half of the frame is going to be in the dark, creating a focus right below the fluorescent lights. Fluorescent light is a cool light which enhances the feeling of isolation.   

lighting process

Two Sides of A Coin: Alley Line drawing

I want the scene to feel lonely and a bit pathetic as the main character washes the dishes after business hours. The designs are referenced from Taiwanese's traditional market. Usually the markets are located in the alleyways or narrow streets so cars won't be able to enter. They are dark and a bit dirty and sometimes smell fishy (literally) because all the foods are layout in the open air at room temperature. (I don't know about the seafood but vegetables are usually fresh, kind of like farmers market) People who do buy food regularly at traditional market always visit early. 

The roofs are covered with metal sheets so the rain won't pour down during the regular afternoon thunderstorm.

colorkey

Two Sides of A Coin, Storybeat #1

Storybeat: Night. This is where the story started. On one rainy night, two young adults, one from lower working class and the other from wealthy framily were both headed toward the Theatre street. At the intersection, they had an accident.

process

Two Sides of A Coin: Night

A little background of location. This is based on Ximending a shopping district in Taipei around 1970-90's. The district has quite an interesting history.  People still come here to find entertainment, movies, record store, street food, clothing and more now but it's best known for its Theater street. When you walked onto the street you would see large movie posters painted by hand and glued on the building wall for advertisement.

Neon lights were popular at the time and that became an iconic Ximending night view.  Most theaters screened domestic film and there was no age restriction like we have now. Children would sneak into the over-packed theater after school and enjoy free entertainment. 

Colorkey

Work-in-progress

Phone Pencil Test # 2 and 3

Well. I'm planning to finish all the pencil test by this July. I'm about %50 there.  back to work 

Shot #8 frame 16-18

Something a little different from what I usually post 

Storybeat #2

A scene in Weep for Day when human won the war against Nightmares. I was listening to podcast (The Dollop) about the history of Thanksgiving when I was working on this painting. Basically this scene is just like the second Thanksgiving where people celebrated for genocide of another group.  What a history we have.

Storybeat

A storybeat from Weep for day where they discovered the Nightmares cave. 

Weep For Day environment

Took me quite a while to do this one. It is based on the short story Weep for Day by Indrapramit Das. In this world the sun never set and no buildings have east facing windows. The environment is the auditorium at College of Archaeology at the University of St. Kataretz. It doesn't look like a archaeology class just yet. 

Game of Thrones Season 6 finale Soundtrack: Light of The Seven

I haven't update for a while (no worries! I'm being productive that is why I have little time to write and post) but this week's GoT finale is excited, splendid and satisfying I have to share.

I won't spoil any plot but I want to take a note about the music in the opening sequence. Amazing. The calm and melancholy piano melody playing and cello building up the tension adding a sense of urgency.   I felt very emotional watching it.

It is now on Spotify
Or here's a link



A lot of dissonance in the later part piece to create the haunting effect in anticipation of certain event to happen

Blank

I have been working on something secretly. 

It is time to start a very strict schedule 

Zoetrope and Phenakistoscope

There are many ways of making animation. Hand-drawn, computer graphic and stop-motion being the most popular among all.

I particularly like Zoetrope because I was lucky enough to work on one that's 8 ft tall and climbed inside the cylinder. The experience was once in a life time. It was the product of blood and sweat. How we cut our fingers making puppet's and sweated ourselves to dehydration from the summer heat (no tears, all H2O molecules were conserved for perspiration). The producer told us our work was "accidentally" burnt down two days before the show (sure... with the whole frame work still intact without a burn mark. Come on... make up a better lie) but that's for another story.

What is a Zoetrope?

Zoetrope is a type animation device that has a drum like form with vertical slits around it. Viewer look through the slits as the cylinder spins. 

It was invented by British mathematician William George Horner in 1834. It uses the persistence of vision to create illusion of motion. Each slit acts like a shutter. Another way to view it is to use strobe light. Those seemly inanimate objects will come to life right in front of your eyes. (see the reaction of this Spinning Chocolate Joy)

There are some famous 3D Zoetropes built by big studio like Ghibli and Pixar.



The wedding cake structure is to get maximum space for animation. 

Here are some of my favorite ones made by independent artists:


I know this Halloween Zoetrope video is tedious to make because who ever did the video had to carve the pumpkin while shooting instead of carving everything out and then shoot.



In real life, without the slits (or the shutter) we will need strobe light to be able to see the motion. Since video camera has built in frame rate, filmmaker can match the strobe light speed to the frame rate of the camera to avoid what I like to call "seizure" effects.  I'm pretty sure this one and halloween Zoetrope video are both done by shooting still images, like stop-motions.

Those 3D-printed Zoetrope sculptures were designed by John Edmark. Quite mesmerizing to watch. This video is mostly likely created by matching frame rate and strobe light.

*Some rudimentary calculations are required to make the objects move in the direction you want. It can get quite complicated though, which I won't go into.


Another type of device that is similar to Zoetrope is Phenakistoscope

What is a Phenakistoscope?
It looks like this:

It is a flat disc with slits around the it. To see the images move the viewer spin the wheel in front of a mirror and look through the slits. This device can only be view by one person at a time.

other version

It is a toy invented by Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau in 1832. (Children back in the days have more inventive toys than what we have today. Jealous.) This is all pre-film and pre-computer era so people find creative ways make "effects".

I think computers and consumerism strip away our ability to built and invent new toys for ourselves. 


There are other types of optical illusion device like Thaumatrope, Praxinoscope, Kinetoscope and Mutoscope.  Since I have only work with the Zoetrope and Phenakistoscope I only want to write about those two.

Frame Rate
Lower than 10 frames per second our mind will perceive them as still image and the motion will look jerky. Today's animation is made at 24fps or 24 images/sec. You can get by with 12fps. 

Theatrical film has a frame rate of 24fps. A traditional theater project will project the 24fps film with shutter speed at 48fps or 72fps to reduce flickers. 

Stander NTSC video system has frame rate of 29.97

My work.


Reference: http://www.earlycinema.com/technology/zoetrope.html

Side by Side

I recently discovered a documentary called "Side by Side." 


I think film is better than digital. I value film because the images are made from psychical contact with light. It stored much more information than digital camera we can build now.
What fascinates me with film camera is its mechanics, with digital camera that element is kind of...lost.

There is German Film Museum (Deutsches Filmmuseum) in Frankfurt I really enjoyed the last time I visited. It has a collection of objects that creates illusion of space and movements.  Visitors are welcome interact with the objects.

Perhaps I am a little close minded. Yet, I always imagine in the future, we will no longer be looking at a flat screen but walk inside a virtual reality space where you become present in the events. A bit like this experimental piece "In The Eyes Of The Animals" (or ever scarier completely simulated in your head like dreams). We are already seeing some of the technology been development like the Oculus glasses. If this vision ever became true, cinema form will be completely different. All the knowledge on cinematography, composition, editing and lighting we have now that are based on creating illusion of three dimensional space on flat space will need to adopt to the change. 

At the end I wish film will not be a dead form of art in the future. 

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

I am very excited for this. 

The main character Newt Scamander is the author of the textbook "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." A required reading for Hogwarts first year students. The movie is probably about the adventure Scamander had that alternatively made him to write the book. I checked on IMDb, J.K Rowling is working on the second and third screenplay for the trilogy. It is going to be a trilogy...YES!

James Newton Howard's composition is thrilling

this is why I love film why I love environments because they bring your to another world. A world that exist only in imagination

Beautiful cast shadow

When something actually works 

Look at the shadow casted on the boat.

I'm going to burst into tears 

Thank you After Effects Masking tool

It's moving

i must be crazy to make myself hand animate a 3 minutes and 40 seconds film by myself