Initial Storyboard...

It was time to start thinking and experimenting with storyboards for my project. With my project being an observational account of journeys through town, the main part of the storyboard can be left open, filled in with a few different routes that allow me to capture the most weird, unusual and Brighton-esque places, however, every animation must of course have a starting point, and with my project commenting and playing on the idea of the inner child, the end location will work as a conclusion to this notion, so therefore needs to be meticulously thought about.  

My idea at the moment is for the video to end with me walking passed an adventure playground or of the like, double taking and then diverting towards it, standing up against the child's height restriction and clearly surpassing it and then running off into the playground . I feel this would conclude the notion of the inner child and visually portray the power of the shop windows and advertisements that I have passed on my journey to release the inner child that is within us all, whilst also providing a joyful tone to end the animation on, that hopefully brings a sense of joy in the audience and too plays on a sense of nostalgia within them. 

Animating unique brain states

I came across the term 'Pyschorealism' in Samantha Moore's journal 'animating unique brain states' and I felt it relates well to the idea within my project. Samantha defines pyschorealism as a technique allowing the audience to get behind the eyes of the subject, explaining and evoking their unique perspective through sound, visual metaphor and interpretation of material experience and this is exactly what I am seeking to do within my project. I desire to visually represent my spontaneous and complex sub conscious thoughts as I move through public spaces and it is fundamental that the use of pyschorealism is adhered to in my project as the main method of doing so. 

The animation of unique brain states also relates well to Bradshaw's notion of the inner child that I have previously made reference to. From initial observations of shop windows and advertisements in town, I recognised their attempts to not just sell a product but also to sell a fantasy or sense of nostalgia to society. I feel that shops are selling to this notion of nostalgia in a bid to release societies inner child and consequently hit the broadest target audience. A sweet shop for example is seen as more of a 'childrens' store, however, two of the stores shop windows I noticed in town were advertising what I would class as 'retro', 'old school' sweets and I feel this is to play on the sense of inner child and nostalgia in teens and adults , that would consequently to be drawn to the sweet shop even if they were not with a child. 

12 Principles of Animation

The 12 principles of animation:
Squash and stretch
Anticipation
Staging
Straight ahead action and pose to pose
Follow through and overlapping action
Slow in and slow out
Arcs
Secondary action
Timing
Exaggeration
Solid drawing
Appeal

Due to my project being an illustrative art based animation many of the 12 principles of animation were irrelevant to my design process, however, the principles of ‘staging’, ‘timing’ and 'appeal' are three that do relate and need to be considered within my animation. Staging’s purpose is to direct the audience’s attention and make it clear what is of greatest importance and I will attend to this via the use of illustrative art and descriptive words to highlight the telling details of my observation.

Timing is an essential principle for any animation and I will attend to it by ensuring the speed of my animation helps to portray the spontaneity of my inner thoughts, whilst ensuring it is not too fast that the animation becomes incomprehensible.

Appeal is again an essential principle for any animation. Animations are art, they are entertaining, interesting, thought provoking, therefore, if the principle of 'appeal' isn't adhered to then an animation can be none of these things. For my animation to be successful, I want the audience to be drawn into my unique world, and if my animation isn't appealing, this will not happen. 

Turning off Autopilot...

I began to explore the notion of 'autopilot' further, and how in todays society the heavy reliance and use of media technologies has led us to be defined and driven by such technologies and hindered our reliance on human contact, companionship and trust. One of the best examples of autopilot for me is driving, especially my drive home from university to my family home in Kent. The first few times I did the journey, I was assisted by the use and direction of my TomTom that via visual and audio instruction would lead me from my start to end location. Although SatNavs are great pieces of equipment, that have revolutionised the efficiency of driving, they do however, cause the driver (me in this example) to rely on technologies all of the time rather than using the details provided in non technological form. For example, when I drive to and from home, a journey that I do at least 5 times a month, I could not tell you which junctions I come off at on the m23 and m25. Due to my SatNav I recognise the environment and nature that surround the junction, which causes my brain to register that it is time to turn off. I don't think about it, I don't take much notice of junction signs etc as from the routine that my SatNav has given me they are almost useless to me. Combining this with the fact that I have a CD on, which allows me to become lost in my music and allow the journey to go much quicker, I realised that I am in complete autopilot. I subconsciously make the journey home, my brain focused on the music and (cars around me to avoid crashes) road signs are insignificant, junctions unimportant.

I feel this notion of autopilot is hugely rife amongst society. People put their headphones in, or glue their attention to their phone and move through spaces without recognising or taking in anything that goes on around them. The repetitive series of roads that make up a day to day journey become embedded into ones brain and the escapism into a form of media technology allows the individual to wander through public space whilst remaining in their privatised realm. Through my project, I hope to provide the audience with my unique perspective that doesn't fall into autopilot and instead meticulously picks out details whilst moving through urban spaces and highlight to them the weird, wonderful and interesting things you can consume if you open your eyes to the world around you.

Rotoscoping...

"Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over footage, frame by frame, for use in live-action and animated films. Originally, recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device has been replaced by computers in recent years. In the visual effects industry, the term rotoscoping refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background." Although the illustration technique I wish to use within my project isn't exactly rotoscoping in its correct form, the idea of illustration over live and real movement stems from the technique of rotoscoping, so I felt it was a good point of reference for searching the amount of detail that should be illustrated within my project to ensure I capture a nice equilibrium between too little and too much and have a strong visual aesthetics.

I came across this youtube advertisement for MySaskDeals whilst browsing online and was taken by how powerful and visual appealing the basic use of rotoscoping within the film is. 
It eased my nerves about how I would incorporate rotoscoping or a similar style of rotoscoping with my project. I was impressed with how the 'less is more' in terms of detail still had powerful visual aesthetics and this encouraged me ahead of my project.

Panopticon

The notion of surveillance and observation led me on to refer to the critical work of Michel Foucault who comments on how our surveillance society can be seen as representing the ‘panopticization’ of urban space. With reference to Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon design, Foucault goes on to suggest that society under observation and surveillance are, as in the panopticon, to be seen but to never know when or by whom and this subsequently causes them to “begin to interiorize the gaze and thus exercise surveillance over and against themselves”.

I found this an interesting concept that I can personally strongly relate to. Via the use of social networks, as a society we all exercise surveillance over ourselves in how we portray and depict a selective identity of ourselves and this is also the case with how we carry ourselves in public. The type and brand of clothes we wear, the areas we travel in, the modes of travel we use, choice of hairstyles etc are all selective identity choices that we make with the notion of surveillance and judgement in mind. We make choices on our appearance based on what that will say about our identity to the passer by in society and within my project what I wish to capture and highlight is the unique telling moments when society release their guard on their appearance and reveal glimpses of their true inner self or to capture unusual and unique forms of appearance management. 

Telling stories

Inspired by a task undertaken during last years Digital Media course, I decided to go out and document a boring event in detail or document time passing through drawings, textures and words. The idea of telling an unexpected story has always interested me, and with the freedom of my journey for my project this notion is very prevalent. I set myself the task of sitting in the library during a cold, wet afternoon and decided to spend a 15minute period focusing on the unusual details that surrounded me that I would usually subconsciously notice but fail to register into my thoughts. Below our my findings:

During the time period, it felt I had lost control of my mind and body. It seemed as if I was unconsciously noticing things and noting them down, without even registering their existence. I was amazed with how quick I became lost in the library and was shocked in how quick the 15 minutes went, considering I expected it to be massively boring and drag on as time usually does whilst in the library. Reviewing my documentations, there was one drawing that caught my eye the most. I had referred to the ceiling lights of the library as spaceships. I looked up at the lights again and couldn't really see it, had I hallucinated the idea of spaceships? Did my mind make up this new identity for the lights as a form of entertainment? Or in reference to Bradshaw, was this my inner child coming to the fore and creating this idea of a living/moving toy within the library. This idea reminded me of one of my favourite films 'Toy Story' which I feel perfectly captures the notion of the inner child, in that everyone at some point of their lives has believed or wanted to believe that their toys are real living objects. 

The success of this task led me to think of how interesting every simple day to day task could be if we opened our eyes and allowed our creative, observational minds run free. As previously stated, I feel my sense of observation is strong, however, after this task, I recognised that I could reach new realms if I allowed my mind to truly be free and get lost in the environment. This would be hard to do during my journey, as with the numerous distractions and noise of outdoor, public space it would be hard to allow my mind to completely shut off, however, this was something I was going to have to experiment with to try and achieve. Possibly the use of headphones to shut me off from the world around me would allow my mind to solely focus of the visual distraction of the public space, so this is what i would do on my next journey. 

The Inner Child

From my investigative journey through town, I found that a lot of what stood out to me in shop windows, advertisements etc was very playful objects/forms of display. This led me on to think about how and why is it that as an adult the objects that stood out to me and caught my attention the most were rather childlike. The pig with wings watering can, the sweet shop, wanting to run up and jump off the end of the sloped piece of wood would all be seen as childlike objects/activities. This encouraged me to examine the idea of the inner child and think about whether society encourages our inner child to prevail by playing on notions of nostalgia ? I started to think about how this could become an underlining theme within my project and could possibly help to create a stronger narrative, as the final destination could aid and appeal to this inner child or it could completely shut it away...

"Inner Child" is a concept formed through popular psychology and analytical psychology. It points to the whole of our childlike aspect; what we learnt and experiences, good and bad, as children before puberty. The inner child denotes a semi-independent entity subordinate to the waking of the sub conscious mind. (This notion of the waking of the sub conscious mind tends well to the spontaneous, sub conscious thoughts that flow through my mind as I walk and interact with society through urban spaces). John Bradshaw famously used "inner child" to point to the unresolved childhood experiences and the lingering dysfunctional effects of childhood dysfunction.

I am keen to explore Bradshaw's notion further as I feel this sense of unresolved childhood experiences is rife among many adults in society. A popular phrase that you hear from all age ranges in society is "oh to be that young again". As you age, you gain responsibilities that restrict the freedom you have as child. From year 6 students sitting their 11+ entry tests into secondary looking down and wishing they were running around on that elusive second break period the kinder garden children got, to final year university students sitting in the library jealous of the young, wild and free reigns of the freshers and up to parents heading into their 20 plus years of work, whilst their children 'live the dream' at University- going out, socialising, attending university for less hours in a week that their usual working day. I feel this nostalgia and dream of being young again is prevalent across society and from my observations in town I feel the shops/advertisers in society play on this in order to capture the attention of the passer by and draw in their custom.

Big Brother is watching you...

George Orwell's 1984 was a forerunner for the idea of the 'Big Brother theory', focusing on the idea that in our society someone, somewhere, through one of the million computers is always watching you. The notion of surveillance/observation is key to my project, as my footage will present the audience with a first person account of my voyeuristic journey as I observe, survey and comment on the people and area around me. Orwell covers the topic of surveillance fantastically in his dystopian fictional society in which everyones movement is monitored and controlled by the 'Big Brother' and I feel that my project allows me to become a moving surveyor of society, their behaviours and the spaces they interact with.

Illustration Practice

After viewing images and videos of illustration and researching into a few blogs I decided that digging out my 'graphic tablet' would be the next best step for me, as it would enhance the quality of my final pieces and give me more creative freedom when coming to illustration. I still haven't decided if I want to draw directly on the computer or draw freehand and scan the drawings into the computer, however, I felt it would be good to practice both and compare results to see which was best. I almost desperately needed to dust the cob webs of tablet and get use to using it again.

The following images are a few practice illustrations, drawn with my graphic tablet to get myself comfortable and back into the habit of using it. They are certainly not the best drawings I have created, however, they highlight the idea of the style of rough, free hand style drawing that I feel best illustrates the idea of spontaneous and quick fire thoughts. 

Focusing my Idea...

I began to start focusing my idea down to the idea of observation and the spontaneous thoughts that would ignite in my head whilst I am in public spaces. I feel that my observational skills are a lot more acute that others. I seem to have been blessed with an eye for detail and combining this with my enjoyment for observing and watching the world go round me, I tend to notice very odd and peculiar objects, shop names, advertisements, behaviours around me that people I am with will take a while to notice or not even notice at all.

I decided that what better way to use this skill by doing something productive and creating a project of a journey through town, illustrated with my internal spontaneous thoughts. The work of Jonathan Hodgson, as previously stated, helped provide a visual inspiration that matched my idea and after the successful journey through town with a still camera, I set myself a to do list of capturing a similar journey in video form and also capturing an audio recording of me saying aloud my spontaneous thoughts as I moved through the urban space.