Applied animation week 4

This week I listened to the silk road podcast and found it very informative and specific as the people who were talking about the silk roads development from it's beginning were all experts in the field as historians. They touched upon Marco polo and his involvement of trading in his time, they also discussed some battles that occurred such as the "Battle of talas" in 751AD where the Arabs and Chinese fought resulting in the Arabs (mostly Muslims) winning the combat and taking over the silk road which I found very interesting as I'm a fellow Muslim, so I researched about Islam Silk Road and found many articles that talk about the influence that Islam had over on the Silk Road Providing many benefits to everyone. Here's a link to the podcast http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p315t

Here's a book that I found called "The new Silk Road":

 

This seems like it would be a good read and I would like to find out more about what Islam has brought to the Silk Road. I've talked to the team and it seems like we are going to do some new research into the Silk Road and it's different events, Grace found some information such as where it all started with a Silk Goddess and both Rey and Grace are developing character concepts which I look forward to seeing next week. I hope to find as much information as possible and it is now clear what we want to develop for our animated documentary. 

Roald Dhal ressponsive collab week 4

Week 4 and we have all managed to get together to discuss what we had done so far to the member who didn't attend our meetings, she instantly reacted with the fact we were drawing detailed sketches and that we should go for a cartoony style, she explained that children these days are looking for simple shapes and colours that they can identify the character quickly. She had a point but I just didn't like this concept of having to change everything after our hard work we spent. She showed us some examples of characters we should be taking inspiration from, and whilst she was showing us references to characters such as Jonny Bravo, Power puff girls, Mojo Jojo and hulk, Steve joins the conversation.

At first, I thought he was going to side with our hard work and then seemed like he sided with the other member because she was giving points as to why she thought the characters need to be simple. Whereas we thought we could add a bit of detail to define the characters, which we discussed. As we were on the topic we talked about age range and how children that read books such as Roald Dhal like looking at detailed illustrations but it seemed apparent that Steve and the other member were disagreeing heavily towards the idea. I accepted what they said and decided to redesign the character for Matilda to make her simpler. and here are the results:

This seems to be going in the right direction and I hope the final design is similar to this design because it's simple enough and easy to identify when we create the concept pieces. hope to have a final design soon!

Applied animation week 3

We started this week off by researching a bit more into Marco Polo's history as he was really important in helping the developing the silk road, reaching many areas and that he was under Kublai Khan who was the fifth Khagan of the Mongol Empire, both of which were living in the 13th century. The reason behind why Marco was one of the top people was because of his amazing trading skills and linguist skills as he mastered 4 languages and helped Kublai or rather served him for many years.

Kublai Khan (1260-1294)

Marco Polo (1254-1324)

There's a lot more research to be done if we are going to make an animated documentary about Marco polo's journey throughout the silk road, in first person view.

One of our tutors asked us about our development of the project, which I explained to him along with Rey and Grace. From the explanation, he mentioned that we were being a bit broad with the idea and that we could not fit his journey within 2 minutes, therefore we had to think a bit more about the subject we really want to create a documentary on, but the research we have done so far has not been all wasted and I'm sure it will be useful in the upcoming weeks. 

We also were suggested to listen to a podcast about the Silk Road and find out any information that could potentially help us, which I will hopefully listen to and discuss next week with the team.

Roald Dhal ressponsive collab week 3

Week three and we decide to have the meeting, Yet again Mary and I started to discuss and do some sketches in our books, we are starting to get a better understanding of how Matilda is gonna look like and how we pose her. Since I haven't read Matilda in a long time, I had to ask Mary as she was reading it. She apparently never watched the film which I was surprised about, when she started discussing the scene she was currently reading I instantly though about Matilda going up against Mrs Trunchbull. In order to make that happen we needed to design Mrs Trunchbull which Mary started doing.

The description was a bit hard to understand at first from the looks of what Mary drew and so I asked her to develop it making her a bit bigger and taller. We did discuss about the absence of our other member as Mary was annoyed that she has not been able to talk to her or even meet her, the fact we are doing the work without her bothered Mary but I told her that the other member is ill at the moment and is having anxiety attacks. Although she is working on other stuff as I've talked to her through messenger which I find worrying that she is not cooperating with us.

Hopefully next week we will have designs for Matilda and Mrs Trunchbull developed, but may need refining if the other member is not keen on the design we have come up with.

Applied animation week 2

We started this week off by looking at our mood boards we made last week, and we also decided to think about Marco Polo since we are looking to make the documentary about him in first person view. and explore his background as to why he was so important and what his role was on the silk road.

On this mood board, I created last week we can see the different colours throughout the path, from china all the way to Europe. the landscapes change from desert to grass entering Europe which is a nice contrast to play with in terms of mixing the colours to match.

We also discussed that we are going to concentrate on creating the animated documentary about Marco polo in first person influenced by Pear cider and cigarets, as I've never created a first persons view animation, and would be cool if we could actually pull it off. but seems unlikely since it took 5 and a half years to create Pear cider and cigarets, but we will consider the chances in the future.

hopefully, by next week we will decide what it is we want to do for this animation as we are still developing and we are confused on what we want to look into.

applied animation week 1

We started this groups collaboration thinking and generating ideas as to what we want to work on as a topic, my team includes Grace and Rey. The topic we choose was History as we all wanted to create a documentary based on a subject we like, In the process of thinking of a subject to research we were shown a Interesting documentary that might of inspired our thinking as to what we want to animate by the end of it, called "Pear Cider and Cigarettes" the animated short follows a man on a journey to find his friend "Techno" in China and bring him back to his homeland, the only issue is that Techno is a drug addict and has caused many problems to himself and others around him which ends with him dying, this was briefly shown at the beginning when the main character receives a will from Techno. The film is brilliant because of its use of 2d first person animation which I definitely got inspired by when forming ideas with the others in the group as they were also inspired from the short.

I did a bit of research and found an article that interviews the animator of the development of this short film. He discusses what it was like to develop this film over 5 and a half years. and what he thought about in the process.

It's quite an interesting read and it's nice to see how he illustrates what he has seen and gone through in the journey of trying to save Techno. Here's a link to the interview about what the director thought about

https://vimeo.com/blog/post/graphic-novel-turns-animation-pear-cider-cigarette


We started thinking about what we wanted to work on or rather research for history, and based it on ideas that both Grace and Rey were thinking about which involved trading and war, from that we made an idea board:

from this, we then picked one of the ideas we wanted to base our project on and we all agreed on the subject of Silk road, I didn't really know much about Silk road but that does not matter as I will be researching and finding out what it is and what I will be able to discover.

And so we continued meeting up throughout the week to discuss about Silk road and what it is essential, from our research I found out that it is a path that traders would follow around the world to provide trade and earn a living out of, but with further research I found out that there were some famous traders such as Marco Polo. Which I will probably research more into since he was important for the development of silk road.

We then started creating mood boards, Silk road had a very long path that went across the whole planet, with that in mind I found a map showcasing the path and added pictures of the different landscapes of the different locations as you can see in the picture below:

The different colours surrounding the path seems interesting and will probably help when developing a colour palette in the upcoming weeks.

We were suggested to watch Lord of War which is an about trade featuring Nicolas Cage as the main protagonist, the story introduces itself through the process of how a bullet is constructed from its point of view and ends with a composition of bullets on the floor around Nicolas, with that the story
begins explaining how Nicolas got to that moment of time. I enjoyed watching how the trade system works behind the scenes, the different techniques that people undertake to get their business successful, in this case, the gun industry all to obtain money and cause trouble around the world! there is a lot that goes on and is just considered a way to earn an income to live your life, but the sad reality is that people come to the realisation that this is not how people should live their life as we witness throughout the film.

Like I mentioned above, the film was delivered in a way that took my interest to the subject of trade and the methods of trade used to obtain (mostly) income, I'd like to showcase this within in the animation if possible and should be discussed when generating ideas. when we meet up next week.

Roald Dhal Ressponsive collab week 2

This week I met up with Mary for our second meeting, it's unfortunate that the other member of the team was ill. We discussed about the characters we choose last week for the competition brief. Mary brought out her sketchbook showcasing her designs of Matilda, which were really cute and done in a preferred style we both find easy to do (Anime) but it didn't really suit the character as we talked about the design. Unfortunately, I didn't have much to show and so we discussed what I need to do before we meet up again next week.

I sat down and got to work, looking for reference images but didn't get much inspiration, hopefully by next week ill have something to show and be able to develop with the rest of the team.

Roald Dahl responsive brief week 1

We read through the brief and understood that we were to create 3 character designs and 3 backgrounds which will be made to look like compositions for a children picture book from our favourite series. The target audeince is clearly mentioned above and from this we are to devlope simple drawings children can easily identify the characters.

Ideas intantly came up as we discued which book we liked from Roald Dahl such as Matilda and Charlie and the chocolate factory. So we started on creating quick sketches of the characters they requested from the brief, being a Villian, Child and mystical creature.

here are some quick sketches i did of Matilda trying to get a feel as to how she would look like and the way she act's, inspired from the film and book explained as a checky little child who is quite and reads books:

The description from the Matilda book does not explain or rather give a description of how matilda looks. she is mentioned to be a girl who is either 5-6 years old and wears a dress, The film adaptions shows her wearing a tomboyish dress overalls with a red ribbon tie in a bow on her head. heres an example :

We need to start developing the character designs and think of composition for Matilda, picking our favourite moments from the book, for the coming weeks. we should also consider making mood boards and referance sheets to help us in the development of making these characaters.