Part of the brief for this project was to create a short animation that incorporates the book form. Initially I wanted to include the use of shadows but because of the form of my book I was unable to get the shadows to appear clearly. The next idea that I tried was to use perspective to show a different side to my story. Looking at the book from different angles, my aim was to create an animation that mimicked the journey of the sun from sunrise to sunset, as this has a direct relation to the progression of life. Below were some o the images I used. I knew gaining into the animation that I wanted to use stop frame to capture the story. This was because taking pictures as a way of storing memories is something that we all do and stop frame therefore fits in well with my story. I then had the idea of using sound to enhance my animation. Initially I was going to use a clock ticking to show time passing but after watching my animation it became quite annoying. So I took each frame an connected it to a sound effect that reflects what is going on in the image. This made the animation seem like it was a glimpse into someones life.
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I feel that the star book is the best fit for the story that I am showing because it has 7 sections and can fold out to make a cycle. This fits perfectly with the seven stages of life that I will portray and shows how the cycle of life is endless. By using the star book it also adds another dimension to my book, allowing me to have multiple layers on each page. The seven stages that I will show in my book are:
I was unsure as to what colour theme to choose for my book so I decided to make some colour palettes. Since my book is about life and the seven stages of man, I wanted to look into which colours represented this in various parts of the world. I found out that the colour red symbolised war, power, blood, pride and strength. The colour orange symbolises warmth, sun, fire and health. The colour yellow symbolises youth, fun, happiness and playfulness and the colour green symbolises nature and health. These were the four colours that related to the story that my book is trying to portray the most. The fifth colour that I though would work well within my book was silver as it symbolises emotion, mystery, reflection and intuition. It is also said to reflect the energy that is put into it, a bit like life. This is why I have decided to use it for my book.
One of the ways that I though about telling a story was through polaroids. When I look at a polaroid photo I automatically thing of the past and that the image is a memory. By using this method I would be able to create a narrative that doesn't necessarily mean the same to everybody that looks at it. Despite this it would still be clear that all of the photos are connected because they are shot in the same format and placed together. Another interesting element is the order of the photos, does the order need to stay the same in order for the story to make sense. Below are some examples that I liked.
During this workshop different types of music were played and we had to draw to the music using different types of line. In the top left image we used zig zag and looped lines (this was drawn using a stick in ink), in the top right image we used waved lines (drawn using pencil), in the bottom left image we used dotted and angular lines (drawn using ink and a paintbrush) and in the final image we could use whatever line we choose to fit with the song. Next we had to take one of the images we had created and use it as a basis for some sort of animal or person. As no animals immediately came to mind when looking at my pictures I decided to draw an abstract creature. I enjoyed this exercise as success was not measured by how well you could draw. It was a technique that allowed me to create images quickly without thinking too much about what the end piece was going to look like. It was also good that we got to try out different drawing techniques as opposed to the usual pen and paper. This meant I could see what materials make certain strokes and which ones I might use in other projects.
The second half of the session was dedicated to playing the 'Consequences game', where one person draws the head, then passes the paper onto the next person who draws the body and finally to the third person who draws the legs. We had to spend a maximum of 8 minutes on each section and then move three places to the right to continue drawing the next section. After we had done this we put all of the characters up onto the wall. It was interesting to see how certain themes emerged within individual characters despite the fact that we had not seen what the others had drawn. Just by looking at the characters there was a general consensus as to which of them were the 'good guys' and which of them were the 'bad guys'. I wanted to take a book and create a new book using the pages from it. The book that I decided to do this with was Alan Sugars Autobiography. I chose this book because it is a substantial size and has a lot of pages to work with. I decided to recreate this book by taking out all of the images containing important dates or people that Alan had mentioned and compiling those images into a new book. Using some staples I then bound the book together. I like the result of this test because it tells a similar story to the book but sums it up quite nicely.
This is a book where by the narrative is told using cut out paper and light to create shadows. The book is brought to life when images are projected onto the cur out scenes. Creating a story that id engaging and elegant. In this video the footage flickers between the book with and without projection on it. This enhances the story as we see the book go from just cut out scenes to having people and other imagery surrounding them and bringing them to life.
This is a technique that I could use for my book, and after looking at some of the book formats that other designers have created and watching this video I wanted to experiment with the use of shadows. Below are the results of that experiment.
There are hundreds of apps similar to these ones and all encourage user interaction is a different way. By making books interactive these companies are encouraging people of all ages to read and making reading more exciting.
A book that in concept is similar to these apps is Wreck This Journal by Keri Smith. It is a physical book that comes in multiple sizes. Each page prompts users to complete a different task such as 'draw a non stop line', 'poke holes in this page using a pencil' or 'climb up high and drop the journal'. This book was very popular when it was first released and encourages many people to become creative when interpreting the instructions. The above images are from three different games:
When many artists write a song, that song conveys a message. Whether that be a anecdote about their life or a message to the people that listen to their music. I wanted to explore this further, if songs are like little stories then their must be music videos that incorporate the book form into them. The first example of this that I found was in Eminem's video for 'Like Toy Soldiers'. This video reinforces the idea that songs portray stories because it features two children looking through a book, with the rest of the video appearing to portray scenes from that book. The next example that I found is a cover done by the band Twenty One Pilots of the song 'Cancer', originally by My Chemical Romance. The video for their cover is a animated lyric video that features books in abundance. To me this illustrated that life is a story. The third one that I came across was 'Wings' by Macklemore. In this song he tells a story about consumerism, illustrated by the fact he is reading to school children in various situations. At the end of the song he can be seen closing the book, showing that the story is finished. All of the above music videos feature books in their physical form and portray how the song is trying to tell a story or get a message across. After finding music videos that featured books within them I wanted to look more into music videos that may not necessarily feature a physical book but reference books in some way. Immediately I came across the music video for 'What You Waiting For?' by Gwen Stefani. The book referenced within this video is 'Alice in Wonderland'. I also came across the music video for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song 'Don't Come Around Here No More', which also feature the alice in wonderland story. This is a popular story with many more music videos paying tribute to it.
Annie Lennox's video for 'Walking on Broken Glass' is based on the french novel 'Dangerous Liaisons' by Choderlos de Laclos. The song 'Please Don't Leave Me' by Pink heavily references the book 'Misery' by Stephen King. With Pink being the farm girl Annie. This video also makes reference to various horror movies including 'The Shining', originally another novel by Stephen King. All of the artists below have taken books and reconstructed them in various ways. By either taking the meaning/story of a book or by creating their own interpretation of the book and visually representing it. I find this way of looking at books fascinating because it brings them to life, making some of the books seem more interesting than they actually are. The time that would have gone into each of the designs making them look perfect really shows and makes the final outcomes even more impactful. This is a new way of looking at books and gets you to think about the real meaning of the message they are trying to portray. Robert The: Thomas Allen: Cara Barer: Brian Dettmer: The praxinoscope is an animation device that uses strips of pictures placed around a spinning cylinder to create the animation. It was invented in France in 1877. Simply by spinning the wheel you could see the animation come to life. This was one of the first forms of creating animation and many designers still use them today.
Since the progression technology more and more books are becoming available in a digital context. Apps such as Wattpad allow users to upload their own stories as well as reading those posted by other users, a concept witch encourages creative writing. Issuu is another example of this allowing users to publish documents as well as controlling who can see it and being able to see information about the locations of their viewers. Audio books are available on many platforms and are available almost anywhere online, including amazon.com and audible.com. They encourage a different kind of interaction with books, with listeners becoming fully immersed in the experience. I think that the use of audio books is amazing. It allows people that may not necessarily have access to physical books or people that are not the most confident at reading to be able to enjoy literature. This type of book is also used in some schools to aid learning of students with learning difficulties. This works by allowing the students to listen to the book whilst following along with the physical book, therefore allowing connections to be made to the look and spelling of the word and its sound. The progression of books from a physical into a digital form was inevitable. In my opinion both forms offer a different experience. Digital books are more suited to people on the go that may not necessarily be able to carry a book with them, and they can enhance learning for those that struggle to read. On the other hand you cannot physically turn the pages (even though it is mimicked) and the pages can't easily be bookmarked. So although this transition from physical to digital was needed, i think it is good that both can coexist together and compliment each other.
There are loads of examples of how paper cups are used to create animations. Simply buy cuttings out sections of each cup and drawing on them short stories begin to form. The below example is based on a comic called One Punch Man. I really like these types of animations because not only do they tell a story but they are simple to make and can be as detailed as you want them to be. The narrative is completely down to the person interacting with the cup and how they chose to twist each cup, therefore the narrative can differ from person to person, making the experience unique. We were given the task to recreate the three little pigs story in groups. We decided to begin by watching the story again, allowing everyone to be focusing on the same variation of it. After brainstorming some ideas we decided that the best way to do this in the allocated time would be to use a stop frame animation. We then allocated each person a part of the scene to create and gathered all of the materials we needed. To bring in the book context we thought it would be a good idea to place the scene on top of the open pages of a book. The part of the scene that I had to create was the brick house. To do this I printed out a texture and created a net out of it. This then folded together to create the 3D structure of the house. Once everyone had created their parts of the scene we put them together and began to take photographs. Before going into the final animation we wanted to do a test run to ensure that everything worked smoothly. The final step of the process was to compile the images into premier pro and add see how it turned out. After watching back the animation we decided to add some sound effects. The 3 act structure divides the narrative up into three main parts; the setup, the confrontation and the resolution. In our scene the set up was the scene being introduced on top of an open book, the confrontation is when the wolf blows the first two houses down and attempts to blow the third down, and the resolution is when the wolf tries to go down the chimney but gets burnt and runs away.
When researching for this project I came across a news article written by Flavio Salsano about how he likes to use shadows to create stories. When put together with his illustrations they create little characters with big personalities. Below are some examples of his work. I liked how he used everyday overacts to create the shadows for his characters then drew on top of the shadows. I wanted to look more into the use of shadows and how I might be able to incorporate them within this project. I came across a book by Megumi Kajiwara and Tathuhiko Nijima entitled Motion Silhouette. In which the reader used a light to cast shadows on various pop outs in the book. This creates a shadow which in turn tells the story. I really liked this book because it is very minimalistic and encourages the reader to interact with it. Whilst looking at the different types of books I came across the work of Jodi Harvey-Brown. She uses the pages from books to create these beautiful sculptures that bring the story to life. Some of her most intricate and most impressive designs are below. I also came across the work of Victoria who create similar sculptures to the ones above. One of her most popular pieces is made from the book The Hobbit and features Smaug the dragon and a miniature Bilbo Baggins. The idea of making a book come to life is one that I wanted to experiment with for this project. To do this I took a well known story and illustrated over some of the pages. The book I chose to do this with was Of Mice and Men and to choose what the illustration would be I read the page and picked out what I thought were the main points/subjects. Below are some of the pages that I illustrated on.
The Cambridge English Dictionary defines a book as 'A written text that can be published in printed or digital form.' This is a definition that I don't completely agree with. I feel that a book can take many forms. Picture books such s flick books don't fit into this definition. However Ulices Carrión defines a books as a 'sequence of spaces'. Definition that I think is more fitting.
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May 2017
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