The Use of CGI in Films

You can use Computer Generated Imagery in various ways; filmmakers in particular have become a lot more reliant on it within the past 15-20 years.
With the advancement of technology in today's society, it has become easier to visualise and create fantasy settings which predated technology could not have handled.

Despite this, some films such as Labyrinth (1986) managed to create a fantasy setting with clever costume and make up designs without much technology.

To the left is an example of how they moulded the material around an actor to create the illusion of a monster.

This shows good use of materials for the time this film was made, but it could not have achieved computer generated imagery, simply because that advanced technology wasn't invented yet.

Ludo from the film Labyrinth, an elaborate costume

Compared to costumes, computer generated imagery has proven to be cost effective and allows the filmmaker to create anything they visualise, whereas with big costumes and make up, a lot of materials go into producing what the artist wants.
In recent films such as the Harry Potter franchise, a lot of fantasy creatures and beasts were needed to bring the film to life. The easiest and cheapest way for them to achieve sufficient images was through CGI.
An example of this is the basilisk in '...The Chamber of Secrets'. A model of the creature, roughly the right size, would be made for the actors to interact with on set, then the motion would be man made through the use of CGI.

Basilisk model

Final shot from the film

A similar technique was used in their third film '...The Prisoner of Azkaban' with the hippogriff being created as a model then animated later on. 

Hippogriff Model

Shot from the film 'Harry Potter'

A limitation to CGI could be when working with actors, they obviously can't feel the computerised creatures they are supposed to be working with on their stage, so to get the best performance out of the actors, models have to be made to interact with, which will cost the team money to build.

Even with this in mind, the high quality of the animated creatures proves that the investments into the film were worth it and will ultimately look more impressive on the big screen.

Loop De Loop - Testing My Ideas

After documenting my best ideas, I thought doing at least one test for my two favourite ideas would be the best way to decide which one to continue with, so I made some GIFs.

The first clip is the one I enjoyed animating the most; despite it moving slightly too fast for the action, I still think the splat and drips look good.
The hard part will be animating over facial features and giving the impression that makeup has been applied. I will also continue the animation until the goo drips off the face, in order for it to loop.

The second clip is from my idea of the tree face paint growing on someone's face, developing and withering away when it dies. This idea would be a lot easier to loop, because at the end the tree will crinkle up and disappear within itself.

Now that I can see both of these ideas forming, I've decided I prefer the first idea with the makeup goo; it's got a simple meaning behind it, which would make more sense from the audience's perspective.

Loop De Loop - Developing My Loopy Ideas

Since I have decided to go with the make up splatter idea, I have experimented with different variations on how certain aspects of the animation could look:

Flynn Rider

The book titled 'The Art Of Tangled' contains some of the development work for the film Tangled. The part which interested me the most was how one of the main characters 'Flynn Rider' was developed and their reasons behind the dramatic change in his design.

In order to design Flynn the artists first had to answer a few questions "Who is this guy? Why is he funny? Why is he so good? Why is he the match for Rapunzel?" - Nathan Greno (Page 103)

Originally he was not meant to be very attractive, but a sweet, good companion for Rapunzel; however their ideas were all over the place, and ultimately they decided that being good looking would be a big part of Flynn Rider's personality.
They wanted Flynn to be an attractive, good looking man, so they did some primary research and asked a lot of women who they find attractive and why.
This lead to them creating the final design for their male lead, who has a symmetrical face and a juxtaposition of horizontal and vertical elements which give him an attractive look.

This story of their process has shown me how important a character is to a narrative, and how their image can make up a part of their personality; I have slightly more understanding of what a character needs in order to make their personality shine through.

Loop De Loop - Inspiration

I have had various inspiration for this project from a number of places, and I'm finally documenting them here!

Spongebob (spongey/flexible face)
Cartoon Network Summer Ident
Tom and Jerry?
Morph

Another film I have taken inspiration from is 'Phantom Limb' by Alex Grigg. In particular for this project is the gooey 'phantom' arm that follows the main character around. If I am able to use this somehow involving faces then it could have interesting results.

I also looked on Pinterest to find pictures of faces to start visualising how some of my ideas could look. Here's a small mood board I made summarising my research:

These images are good inspiration for my current 'faces' project, particularly the top left image with the make up being thrown on her face compared to the black and white complex.

Loop De Loopy Ideas

The first task to do for any project is to create a mind map of words relating to your themed brief. In this case the word is 'faces', so here's the words that first popped into my head as I was documenting:

[Image (mind map)]

From this I have made some quick sketches of some of the most appealing ideas:

[Image (thumbnails)]

Out of these I like 2 of them; the one involving the makeup splatter and the face paint of the tree. Before I can decide which one to go with I will have to experiment with techniques and see if I can visualise either idea more clearly.

Loop De Loop - 'Faces'

One of the brief's I want to partake in for study task 1 is from the Loop De Loop competition website.

Every two months, a new theme is released on their website for animators around the world to generate a short film based on; the theme for December/January is 'Faces'. This film can be of any length and in any medium they choose, so long as it is submitted in the right format. The rules are shown here:

[ http://www.loopdeloop.org/december-january-2015-theme-faces/ (screenshot this) ]

I think this is a good opportunity to explore word association and see how one word could lead onto a number of ideas, so long as it doesn't stop being relevant to the original word.

I will go on to start documenting my ideas and see if I can develop them into fully established animations.

Moo - Feedback and My Plan of Action

After pitching my boards for 'MOO' to my classmates, we had an afternoon on thinking of questions to ask and how to give appropriate feedback to our fellows; as a class we thought of 10 questions at the start of the lesson:

[10 questions]

Then we were put into small groups so we could take it in turns to pitch our ideas to each other within a time limit. After this we were given half an hour to fill out 2 feedback forms to 2 members of our groups, so I received 2 sheets filled with feedback based on my work:

Overall my feedback has been good so far, they were both intrigued by my ideas and the improvements are manageable!

Now that I have another point of view to look at my work from, I can consider and improve upon these points into the next month before I have to have refined my boards and ideas, to gain more feedback at the next stage in January.

Moo - Pitch Boards

After finally pulling together all of my work so far for Moo, I have put together 3 pitch boards to present to my group on the 11th December:


My first board has to show my final product; what it's going to look like and the idea I'm going to produce.
So I thought my storyboard and my final designs would be the best pieces of work to show first since they both demonstrate what my idea is.


















My second board consists of the layout and format I want to work in. I want to show my classmates exactly how I want this to be made and where I want it to be shown.

The third board shows every design involved in the film, and how I want them all to be animated.
I want to describe how I want each line to move throughout the advert so that my classmates can visualise my idea in motion, so that I can hopefully get better feedback on what I can do to improve my work.

Final Idea for 'Moo'

Developing from my compositions and designs, I altered my storyboard slightly and finalised my idea:

Here's the final composition of cards and designs that I will present in my pitch, compared with a photographic version of the cards I want my animations to playback on: