Author: Vaibhavi Venkataraman

I am really struggling to choose between Being Human and Playing with Emotions, so I’ve decided to look at some films from Being Human category as well! I am also having trouble coming up with an idea for the ident 🙁 I am hoping to get some clarity by talking to my tutors and peers in the following week.

I had to put this on here because I thought this was brilliant, not just in terms of animation but also the concept! This is the 2020 ident made by one of my second year peers for the Being Human category!

This second ident is also wonderful! I loved the way they portrayed the cute story of the characters! It really reminded me of that scene from the Disney Pixar film Up, where we see Carl and Ellie’s life montage 🙂

Here are some of the 2019 entries for the LIAF Festival that I really liked:

A very interesting take on the Brother’s Grimm tale of The Fisherman and his Wife. The visuals are very abstract which I think works well with the music. I did find the story a little confusing to follow at times because of the flashing images, but I still think that the idea of the wife measuring each house as they got too big for it worked well in terms of conveying her greed.

This was another really intriguing film that explores the selfie craze that social media has brought upon us. I think the live action rotoscoping works well to show the kind of crazy things that people like to film; gives a sense of the virtual world bleeding into the real one. I like the idea that the director presented of people filming themselves until death.

A film with wonderful animation and visuals! I particularly like the style that the characters are drawn in and the use of blue and orange works really well! I like that the story is simple, but sort of carries the message that sometimes in chasing for our perfect life we leave the most important connections behind. I really enjoyed the mix of the abstract world and reality and for some reason really reminded me of Black Mirror’s ‘Nose Dive’ episode, where everything is centred around technology.

A very beautiful film that explores the notion of time; how it can seem different for a little girl as compared to an old couple, who are at the end of their time. I love the way the director captures movement in this film, the slow motion and then the sudden quick motions which are really mesmerising! I also love the end when the girl finally enters the sea after the long wait of five minutes and is finally happy to be reunited with her love of swimming, but it is a sad end for the old couple and it leaves one wanting to know what has happened.

Another wonderful film about how in correcting other people’s English, whether it be our own family or someone we know, we take away the essence of their language. I’ve done it to my parents on several occasions but when they correct me when I pronounce something wrong in my mother tongue, I just look the other way and after watching this film I really feel horrible for doing that. So now I’m going to not care about what accent my parents speak in because they still sound beautiful no matter what!

This is a great film that talks about the rise of gun crime in the USA, lead by Barack Obama’s inspiring speech as the voice over! The visuals are quite abstract so it did take me a while to get the idea of the story, but I thought that it did work well with the tone of voice and music. I love how at first it all seems disjointed, but suddenly you start seeing the barrel of the gun, towards the halfway point of the film. I love the ending with the hands forming the candle; giving the audience the message that we need to unite against the fight to reduce gun crime!

Can’t believe how fast time has flown and that year 1 of MACA is halfway through already! We’re now going to be starting the LIAF project, a client based project, where we will create idents for the 8 competition programme in groups.

I spent part of the Easter break working on my Unit 1 assessment because I took an extension and part of it taking a break that was much needed. I am now ready to move on to the next exciting part of this course! After doing some research over the past day or so, I have narrowed down my choices to two competition programs, Playing with Emotion and Being Human.

I really loved the 2020 ident that my peers made, which I thought was appropriate considering we are artists too!

This is a 2019 entry for Playing with Emotion:

I thought this film was really interesting with a very unique idea! It talks about the problems of global warming and how humans continue to ignore it, but by way of an emotional story of a heartbreak. The visual combination of live action and 2D is seamless, so much so I didn’t realise that the fridge that features is actually a cut out of a real one!

From watching the trailer, I was really intrigued by the story and the style of animation, it has a very quirky style to it and we can find out pretty much straightaway that its about social media. I wasn’t able to watch the entire film of 21xoxo, but I did find this amazing article about the film and what the thought process of the directors were behind making this film! The interview was conducted with the directors by Skwigly magazine. I’m just going to leave the link here: https://www.skwigly.co.uk/sine-imge-ozbilge/

I have also been inspired by Surrealism and Pop Art in general, two very colourful and fantasy driven art movements that have become a fundamental part of my artistic expression. From Dalí to Dorothea Tanning, Warhol to Claes Oldenburg. My appreciation for these forms of art brought the desire to work together with other intriguing contemporary creatives. The two upcoming Belgian artists Kasper De Vos and Wim De Pauw generously collaborated on the live-action scene with their striking artworks the sandwich ‘Smoske’ and the painting Shape of Things to Come. And last but not least, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Alice is for me a recurring inspiration and guides me through most of my artistic endeavours. You can see her presence also in my previous film The Three Ring Circus.

An excerpt from Skwigly magazine’s interview with Sine and Imge Ozbilge

This is such a beautiful film! I love that it explores the life of a single character throughout and that its very clear and concise! The music really adds to the emotion of this film; has a really sad but happy tone to it. When I first watched it, I got the understanding that she is someone who lives alone and is easily scared of people/has some form of social anxiety and that she finds peace with her plants. It is sweet that after she has passed, people bring back the flowers for her as a tribute, showing that her love lives on and she isn’t forgotten!

This was an incredibly touching film based on a true and very horrific story about the violent girl crimes that took place in California. The drawings are very striking with the red (usually noted as a sign of danger) attracting the audience’s attention to the girl (based on Xiana Fairchild). It’s such a moving film that explores how we are sometimes unaware as to what’s going on in someone else’s life and how scary this world really is. People we come across every day that we pass off as normal or just another stranger can actually be someone who is dangerous and that thought itself scares me, that we actually never really know who we live next door to.

Just a note that this video is age restricted and is for mature audiences only! I watched this film as I was going through the list of 2019 entries for the Playing with Emotion competition programme. A very quirky film based on a very mature topic. I liked the style of the animation but personally I thought the story was a bit too much for me. The topic of infidelity was explored in a very unique way and I think because culturally, I’m not very open to these kinds of films/genres, it makes it a bit hard for me to like these sort of films.

Well I finally animated the personal lip sync, but realised that I stupidly forgot to upload my unit 1 final exercises to the blog, so I’m just uploading those today! I had a lot of fun with this one, as with all the other exercises. I chose to go for a slightly more funnier tone rather than a very scary one, cause I would’ve been scared to animate it myself haha. I was really struggling with this one right to the very end so it took me a bit of time to write what I wanted to say in the audio. But I finally got it done and since I’ve been learning to animate in perspective with my second year work experience, I decided to add a little bit of perspective to my lip sync as well! Its not a very big change, but there is a slight movement of her coming towards the camera and away from it.

I previously had the idea of having a character with a spider on her head, but then again I wasn’t sure if that would work. I also thought of having the spider talk, but I was struggling to figure out how to animate the spider’s mouth moving so it was difficult to make that choice. I was also debating on whether to a “my biggest fear is waking up in a room full of spiders” but I didn’t think it had the same effect that I was going for and it was way too short to animate.

I did look up the talking black widow in one of my favourite films, The Corpse Bride for inspiration

Here are the keys of the lip sync exercise that I did

Here is the set lip sync exercise (audio provided by tutors) that I submitted for my Unit 1 assessment 😀 I really enjoyed working on this one! It was fun to shoot the reference video for this. The vibe I got from the audio was of a very stuck up/proud character, with a very posh accent! So I tried to design a character that fit the voice and I visualised it as being an old man with a top hat! Very old English or Victorian I suppose haha This is fully inbetweened and since I love the idea of follow through with the cloth I decided to add that in with the sleeve. I’m not entirely sure if it’s working fluidly, I think it could be done a little bit better, but otherwise I’m really pleased with how the acting turned out!

Here is my previous version, where I used my facial acting puppet’s character, but just styled him in 2D! I thought it worked well, but just didn’t quite suit the personality that came through in the audio.

This is my third attempt at filming the facial acting exercise 😀 I am really happy with this attempt and I finally submitted it for assessment!

I was planning on mixing mediums for this exercise and animating the cup in 2D. I was inspired by Nelly Michenaud’s work (an MACA alumni) and also my tutor Ko said it would be nice to experiment with both mediums. Unfortunately though it didn’t work out! 🙁 As you can see below, I animated the puppet solely without the cup. The acting was fine, but since I didn’t have the cup in his hand I couldn’t figure out the hand movement and it came out too jerky! I did try drawing the cup in TV Paint but it was an absolute mess, so I decided to leave this for later and to just go ahead with the stop motion cup. I do quite like the cup in stop motion, because it has a more rustic feel to it! I just think I need a little bit more time and practise to figure out how to mix stop motion and 2D 🙂

An update on the body language exercise! I actually altered my long haired puppet and gave her shorter hair and painted her face a bit better, cause honestly she looked creepy! So I decided to continue on the body language assignment for submission using this puppet 😀 This like all the other exercises was fun to animate, I feel like I’m getting the hang of filming the puppet and understanding a lot more about the timing! Since I had to film this in my tiny tiny room without proper equipment, it isn’t the best quality, but I am pleased with the result!

This was the follow through exercise using our own character that I really enjoyed! I decided to do an animal for the first time, so this was my first attempt at animating any kind of animal!

My final submission for the lift exercise! I just added the other hand and chest to the previous version!

So here is the final character design I submitted for my Unit 1 assessment. Her name is Rose! She is warm, friendly, positive and extremely generous, always ready and willing to help anyone; people, but also any animal or anything that comes across in her surrounding! She is around 12/13 years of age, but as the leaves and fruits mature, she matures with them.

She loves to bundle up in scarves and jackets and hats as the season brings in the cold winds. Her one major flaw is her self doubt, she is often too critical of herself and doesn’t think of herself as beautiful. The season in many ways makes it easier for her to cover herself up.

One of the key things whilst thinking about this design, was keeping in mind that the audience needed to be able to connect her to autumn. I had received some crucial feedback from my tutors and peers that the colour wasn’t enough to convey the concept so I needed to add a motif to her that would make it obvious.

I thought it would be a nice idea to add an acorn to her hat! Acorns are very autumnal as they fall along with the leaves, but they are also notably one of the most popular symbols for autumn! I also spoke with Christina about this and she suggested adding a bag to the character. So I thought it might be interesting for her to have an acorn shaped back pack! I also changed her shoes to fluffy boots, which give her that cozy, warm autumnal look!

I’m really happy with how this turned out! I also got some great feedback from MACA alumni, Paul J Nicholson, who very kindly gave us a talk on character design. I showed him my turnaround and he gave me some amazing feedback with notes, so I look forward to follow up on those tips! His talk also inspired me to continue to practise creating characters and broaden my skills in character design!

Here are some previous versions of the design: