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.