Nothing New

'Nothing New' is the title of mine and collaborator Alan Livesey's animated short which we completed in July 2019. I have known Alan for about nine years, though this is our first collaboration. He is a talented writer and director and hopefully this will be the first of many films we make as a creative partnership. As it happens, we are working on another project together at the moment.

This blog post comes as a result of having recently cut together a super short teaser trailer type thing, so we had a moving clip of the film to show. Due to the virus, it's UK festival premiere has been postponed, but we both wanted something for our websites which was more than just a still image, but didn't want to display the film in full. A teaser trailer was the best way to go about this.

Life in 2019 was quite chaotic for me on a personal level, so ended up making just this one film. Despite the lack of quantity in terms of my creative output, I feel this was a great project to have completed on numerous levels, especially in the fact that it was a collaboration (more on that later). I also managed to complete a lot of animation 'test clips', really exploring and pushing my style- something I continue to do when not working on a major project. Always great for my showreel, too!

This film actually started off as just some test pieces. Rewind: I have an Instagram page for my animation production company and I like to post at least once post a week on there, because you know if you don't post regularly you lose engagement and all that. I don't often care too much for posting on a super frequent basis, as I feel like being present in real life is more meaningful to me than losing myself in algorithms and engagement. If I did that, then I would cut down the time I spend on creativity, though I understand this is the 21st century and having social media and web presence is pretty much essential. Anyway, rambling here, back to the main point: I decided to rotoscope some shots of hands as an exercise in style and development. I then started to consider more carefully what I wanted to include in each scene and realised there was a theme going on: the clips were all 'mundane', every day type activities, or at least, mostly. The less mundane ones didn't make the final cut, like picking up a pizza slice. There is nothing mundane about that!

Once I had a fair amount of clips, I was talking about the project with Alan and asked whether he would like to have a look at it and if he might have a script for a voice over in mind. Our conversation continued and it revealed that a theme we would both like to explore through our films would be existentialism. We are normal though, I promise! Anyway, a bit of back and forth with script drafts, we had 'Nothing New': a story of a woman who discusses what life means to her in a voicemail message, after quitting her routine driven job. Alan was also responsible for casting our wonderful voice actress Janelle, amongst directing her on the day of the shoot.

I'm so pleased how the film turned out and without collaborating with Alan, the film would not have been the film it is- it would probably still just be a load of these test clips sitting around on my computer and Instagram page. I don't often collaborate with people as various 'group film' projects during my education put me off that. I think those don't always work out, as you are often grouped together by a lecturer and placed with people who might not necessarily share the same creative values as yourself. Others in the group might have visions of creating huge blockbusters with explosions and guns, whereas you might have visions of creating something more understated and character driven. I'm pleased that I have found someone I can collaborate with though, as the film was much better for it and we both got something positive out of the experience.

The film is very short, clocking in at just ninety seconds- made with the DepicT competition (make a film lasting ninety seconds or under) in mind, run annually alongside Bristol Encounters Festival. I like to try and enter it each year, as it's a project I can just about manage with no budget and often working solo. Unfortunately we were unsuccessful, though we were accepted for international competition at Cardiff Animation Festival, which was fantastic news as I loved the festival when I attended in 2018. Sadly (and correctly), it was postponed due to you know what, but it will be screened at the rescheduled festival, which I can't wait for!

The aspect ratio of the film is square (1:1), because as the test clips were originally intended to be screened only on social media where a square video works better than a rectangle 16:9 (or slimmer). This is because a square video appears larger on a mobile device as it fills up the screen equally both vertically and horizontally. You probably know that I like experimenting in my work (unless you have only just stumbled upon this blog, then hello and welcome, by the way) and experimenting with an aspect ratio was a continuation of that. I liked using it for this film and it definitely suited it, though for our current collaboration we are developing, it is going to be in standard 16:9. I am also working on another short, again a little ninety-seconder for same competition and this one is a 4:3 (academy) aspect ratio. I just like to try them all, really!

Without further ado, here is the teaser:

New Showreel

I finally updated my showreel- yay (insert applause)! The last time I updated it was October last year and since I've created a few new strong pieces of work. I like to update it a couple of times each year (depending how much new work I make) and felt like it needed a bit of a refresher. So, without further ado, here it is:

Road to Wembley: So Far

If you have been following me on the socials (or indeed this blog), then you will know I am attempting to watch a match from each round of the Women's FA Cup, or my 'road to Wembley'. Today is the ninth of May: the day of the final. Right now I would be heading to Wembley Stadium, sun shining, summer well on its way, spirits high. 

Little did I know that back in August while watching Wakefield Trinity vs Farsley Celtic in the extra preliminary round, my journey would be curtailed due to a virus. I would have thought that either weather postponements or public transport mishaps would be the circumstances interrupting my efforts, but life works in strange ways and it turned out it was something quite unimaginable.

I had three rounds left to attend and was quite excited about having got that far, considering it a somewhat difficult challenge with various obstacles. We had secured our places for the what was set to be an exciting quarter final between Leicester City and Manchester City, after Leicester causing an upset in the previous round against Reading. This was the weekend when it all stopped (and rightly so: the safety of the spectators, players and staff should always be paramount), though to say I wasn't disappointed wouldn't be the truth...

If football is able to start again when safe to do so and the cup can continue, then fantastic, though if this seasons FA Cup is left unfinished, I will look back on this journey with fond memories. It has no doubt taken me to some interesting games, grounds and places, some of which I never would have been to if not for the cup. I have visited some really friendly clubs and met some lovely people. I have spent more hours than I care watching games in adverse weather, have spent more money than I should have been allowed to on trains and have exhausted numerous hours researching fixtures and logistics. Though I wouldn't have swapped any of it for the world! If you can excuse a cliche (or if you can't, look away for a moment) football really is more than ninety minutes and the day it returns will be a delight.

You can read all about my journey here.

Walks With my Camera

Up until a week or so ago, I've not really been taking my camera out on my daily 'socially distanced' walks. I suppose this is because I feel fairly uninspired when walking similar routes each day, in places I somewhat feel overfamiliar with and have photographed time and time again. As I'm sure you know, I also am really passionate about shooting football and shots of my city somehow didn't seem to be cutting it for me. At least not then.

I took it out one day to try and get some nice images of the floodlights at Deepdale Stadium (Preston North End) and actually really enjoyed being out with my camera again. Yes, it wasn't the same as photographing a ground or game, but it was just as enjoyable in a different way. And yes, it did take something football related to get me started- don't judge!

I then decided to take it on future walks and despite me originally feeling taking shots around Preston was something I didn't want to engage it, I actually got a lot out of my trips. I have always loved the variety of architecture in Preston and what better time to really get my camera to know it when there is next to no one around the town centre? I often feel self conscious taking photographs of buildings (I know I shouldn't, but I still do), because sometimes I feel I get strange looks (in reality I probably don't) and even had comments before along the lines of 'what you taking a picture of that for'? I think the more I'm out and about with my camera taking photographs of the things I enjoy, the more this self consciousness will fade away. I hope.

I also find that to extend my photography to taking images of things other than football, will strengthen my overall photographic skills and make me an all round better photographer. 

Alongside images of architecture, I have been taking some imagery of 'the current times', in terms of signs, social distancing measures and rainbows. I don't often share these on my social media, but take these as some sort of record of this time in our lives. Personally, I find this a quite important thing to do and could be really interesting to look back on in the future.

I too have succumbed to photographing the recent blossom. In these times it's so easy to fall down the negativity route, therefore I find it essential to focus some energy and appreciation towards the positives, however small.

Character Design/ Development Continued

As promised/ threatened in my previous post, I stated I would go into more depth about the character style tests I was working on.

I have now completed (well, mostly: more on that later) all four tests. Some of the results I am pleased with, while some not so, though all of which I will expand on.

I wrote about test #1 in the last post, so I won't dwell on that one in too much detail, but I will say that it still stands out as one of my favourites.

I absolutely love the thick outline and that the whole animation comes across really loose and natural. This is opposite to the realistic style I often work in and it goes to show that if you push your comfort zones, you might surprise yourself and come across something you end up really, really liking. I feel this will be a strong contender for use in the final film.

Test #2 was the least inspired of the four. I used the same style outline which I do in a lot of my work, but for some reason a bit thicker, too?! I was mostly playing with the idea about facial recognition and decided to draw lines across the face, instead of having an actual human face. I still like the concept of what I was going for and there is probably room for further exploration here, but the execution of this piece was not it...

Test #3 was, like the first one, all about loosening up again. Moving away from the 'norm' and really trying to push out into something fresh. This was in terms of both the outline and the colour style. I used the charcoal brush for the outline and repeated the lines a couple of times to emphasise the rough edges. Because the outline was fairly jagged, I decided to colour it in, in one block forcing the focus and attention to the outline. It also really plays well with a film about memory, because it is just going for the shape and basic features of the person, rather than adding unnecessary detail in colour. You might not always remember specifics when recalling a memory, but will usually remember who was there and the basics of their actions.

Lastly, test #4. This one I decided to go all out. How very brave of me! I used a different outline in the way of the airbrush and filled in the character using a textured custom brush. I didn't think the fill was working and it was taking absolutely ages, so decided to colour half of it to give a general impression/ proof of concept. I didn't think it especially meant anything either- or at least not in the context of this new film, so it felt slightly pointless carrying on colouring it, so decided to move onto something else productive instead.

I think I had always wanted to try colouring my work in a different manner, rather than just using the fill tool with no texture or thought, though I feel there are much better (and less time consuming) ways of adding texture to a block of colour. One of these ways could be overlaying a texture in After Effects, once you have completed the standard block colour in TV Paint. I have tried this before and it tends to give a satisfying outcome.

Besides the colouring of the piece, the outline was something I thought might not work that well, but actually appeared fine once completed. I'm not sure whether it would work for this film, but I know I now have it as an option for future projects which might need a more rugged outline.

I decided to leave the faces off all because a) it's for a project about memory and b) to save time: it was to try out styles as a whole, rather than a detailed character account of each.

Overall, I thought completing the task was good for my progression and development in terms of styles. It has opened up my mind to trying new ideas and confirmed whether some styles which I have had in the back of mind to try worked or not. It still frustrates me that they don't all look particularly aesthetically pleasing, but that wasn't the idea of the exercise. I wanted to try new things and forced myself to do so, even though I felt tempted at times to just revert back to what I know. Without sounding at risk for being over dramatic, I am a stronger person (or at least in my craft) for completing this. Here's to experimentation and eschewing comfort zones.

Character Design/ Development

A few friends and I are currently in the process of creating a short animation. We are in the early development stages, from synopsis to logistics to visual style. As the lead animator, the latter is what I have been focussing on. I want this film to be the best I have been involved in to date and really want to put a lot of effort and time into developing it, leading to an end result we as a team are proud of.

I have completed a short test piece as proof of concept in terms of visual style (image below), though wanted to delve a little deeper into character design and development. I sometimes have the tendency to revert back to 'default' when drawing my characters in my films and produce them in a fairly standard realistic style.

The aim of these tests were to push me away from that and move in a direction new. I roughed out a few design ideas in my sketchbook and decided to go for the one which seemed most appealing first: bold lines. This one felt fun, flowing and not very restrictive. All good stuff. The result created something really lively:

In fact, I loved the look of this so much that I decided this style would make up the whole of another short film I'm making (I'm a busy person). I have only just finished the first shot (around three seconds) of a total ninety seconds run time. As it is still in its early stages, I won't be sharing too much about it at this time and you know, being a creative genius like myself, I'm very aware that there are people out there stealing my ideas. Always ready to pounce on this blog and see what I'm working on and the like..!

Anyway, here is a screen grab of the outcome:

I aim to complete four character tests by Monday 20th April, so expect an in depth analysis of the outcomes sometime after that date... Until then, keep safe and wash those hands xo

Elephant Cross Stitch

Well being as cross stitch is all of a sudden my main new hobby, it's only right that I track my progress on this blog, right?!

Since completing the animated horse cross stitch and another quite well developed design (see below), I'm now feeling a little more confident in my ability with these, especially in terms of making my own designs, through to execution. I like to think I know more about what looks 'good' (and what doesn't) on a design. 

 

After completing the one above, I really wanted to develop it a little in terms of creating something in a similar light, but using a more challenging design. This would also make the final outcome less 'basic' and provide me with new challenges along the way. I do like a challenge! What I really liked in the one above was using the full square and the bright colours. These were things I wanted to bring forward into my next project. Tbh I only used the full square to cover up some wrong markings I made for a previous project, but I like it and who needs to know anyway?!

I was doing my usual Google image and Instagram searches for some inspiration to see what sorts of things other people were cross stitching and yep, people are basically cross stitching everything! No help there then... Well it kind of was, as I was then sort of overloaded with inspiration and ideas. Yay! What I really liked though, was the use of patterns people had created behind designs and I wanted to have a go at that myself.

So, I made a repeatable pattern on Photoshop- yes I know you're meant to use illustrator for creating drawings, but Photoshop is basically bae to me so I use that and I don't even care:

The pattern did take some trial and error, but eventually I got there with a pattern that I felt would work for the effect I envisaged. I then created an elephant from this screen grab from an animation I made a while back:

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And finally, I added the repeated pattern:

I didn't want to elephant on the final design to be a black silhouette, because I thought it might look a little too plain and simple, which I was really aiming *not* to go for in this design. Instead, I opted for three dark colours to repeat every five lines. I went with black, navy blue and a dark green colour which I'm not sure what the exact name of it is! In my opinion, using these stripes added a little more detail to something which wouldn't have been *that* exciting if it was just one colour.

With the pattern, I wanted it to contrast with the elephant as much as possible, so I used pinks, yellows, reds etc. Sewing the pattern was quite straightforward, though took a lot of time- these full 3x3 inch square ones take a substantial amount of time to create. I do like the size though: I feel they're quite manageable and can be completed across a couple of days, rather than something larger which might take a week or so to complete.

It was difficult choosing colours, because I'm running out of a lot of my threads and needed enough of one colour to last the amount of squares needed to fill for the designated colour. It's hard to tell how much thread you need to complete one section just by looking at it, but the more of these I've been doing, I find it's getting a little easier to estimate. I need to get out more. Oh, wait... My thread box is also a hot crazy mess right now and it super needs sorting. I'd love to get one of those boxes which has separators or drawers in, so each colour of thread can have its own section, ideally labelled too with the number of thread colour. Anyway, being as nothing of those are 'essential' items, they will have to wait until this has passed and it's safe to acquire 'non essential' items again.

This cross stitch did achieve what I wanted it to in terms of creating something more complex. I would like to continue and develop on this going forward as I really liked the way it turned out and already have some inspiration and ideas in how to take it further. If anyone has any questions or suggestions then let me know in the comments!

Horse Stitch

So what else am I doing during lockdown? Following on from one of my recent posts, I said I was working on quite an ambitious cross stitch project. Well, here it is:

An Eadweard Muybridge Horse in Motion. Every frame hand stitched, taking between 1.5-2 hours each, along with creating the cross stitched patterns (another full days work at least). And then post production (scanning in, importing them into the project, tweaking the frames and so on). For just over 1 second of animation. Dedicated or mad? You decide. Maybe both.

I didn't test out how it would look with the patterns I made before starting the sewing, so for all I knew, it could have turned out looking terrible. Luckily, it turned out exactly how I wanted and couldn't have been happier with the result. I put a lot of work into creating it and I'm pleased it paid off. Now I just need to find a film festival which is accepting entries of films under 10 seconds!

Postponed

As we all know these are strange and uncertain times and without football being played currently or in the near future, understandably people are at a loss, myself included. I do have plenty of other hobbies and interests to keep me going, but one thing which I was getting a lot of my enjoyment out of lately has been removed. Photographing and watching football has been a key part of my life in the last year or so and with a lot of events coming up which I had booked in to photograph now postponed, it all feels quite gloomy.

Being as what is happening in the world right now is far greater and more important than football and the safety of everybody involved is paramount, I understand the need for the postponements. If honest, I would not even wish for the games to carry on in the midst of this crisis. Annoying as it may be, the more we all pull together and keep to the guidelines given, the sooner this shall pass and we will be watching the game again, looking unto it as even more beautiful than before.

Cross Stitch

To give myself a bit of a break from my animation, because of feeling uninspired and downhearted due to the gazillion rejections I've had with it recently, I decided to go to Hobbycraft and treat myself to something fun. This would be to take my mind off my work and provide a different type of creative outlet other than photography or animation. Sometimes it's refreshing to have a break and do something which is still creative/ productive, but with no pressure.

So, I decided to buy a cross stitch kit. For a 3"x3" kit, you get a pattern, a piece of material, a needle and a selection of threads in the colours as per pattern. I chose a fairly simple beach hut one as it was vibrant and I love going to the seaside! There are loads to choose from. During 2012 when I was unwell, I did a lot of these cross stitches when in hospital, but I have not done one since. It felt a bit strange, but also pleasing to pick it back up again.

I really enjoyed making it and it was quite easy to get back into the swing of it. It's a really relaxing hobby actually, but does involve a fair bit of concentration. If you're not careful, you might lose count!

Anyway... once completing it, I thought, well why don't I do my own design next? So that's exactly what I decided to do!

I made a pattern for 16 aida count fabric of the above giraffe. Maybe you recognise it from an animation I made not so long ago?

The pattern took a while to produce, because it was a case of putting in each symbol separately. If anyone knows a quicker way, comment please!

Once the main pattern was complete, I added an outline (in blue, above). This was so the finished piece didn't look so 'pixelated'. I actually 'ad-libbed' the outline when I was sewing it, because some of the lines on the pattern would have seemed a little unnatural otherwise.

Finished outcome

Regarding the overall piece, I am pleased with it as it's an achievement in terms of what I have accomplished: a cross stitch from designing my own pattern through to completing it to a good standard. Despite this, as it's my first one, there are bound to be issues and I feel that there are some parts I would improve upon. I feel these will only get better with practise, which is why I have decided to embark on a really quite ambitious project for my next one... Watch this space for more!