Portrait Collage – Project

Loop De Loops

This was my first try at creating a loop de loop by drawing over several photos I took at Formby beach using photoshop, its not very good as the drawings don’t really match up with the background because the original loop de loop is on a flat background so when I transferred it to the photos it looks dodgy. I’m going to retry on one photo so the background doesn’t move only the cat does to see if it works better.

My second attempt is a bit better, it seems to work better when the background doesn’t move only the cat. I also used a flatter picture to fit with the movement. Its still not great but as its just practise for animating digitally it doesn’t really matter.

This was the first loop de loop I made for the donkey bucking, its extremely simple I seperated the donkeys body into different segments then using white plasticine on a black plasticine background I copied the movements of the kick. I actually like the version that’s the most zoomed out the best where you can see the table and paper moving I think it looks more organic somehow and makes for a more interesting visual.

Planning for final video

https://padlet.com/lwilliamson03202111/rdyaaoc6jw3ybult padlet of inspirations for this project

I have written a first draft of a script but at the moment its way too long, read out its about 2 and a half minutes, and also I don’t know how personal and in-depth I feel comfortable going. Potentially my mum is a bit too large of a topic to fit into 20 seconds so I need to condense it. I am also working a little bit too slow so I need to start to speed up and get animating this week.

The script is too negative at the moment I need to decide what I actually want to say with this video!!

The script is drawing a bit of a blank at the moment as everything I am coming up with is a bit cringe so I’m not sure if I even want a spoken script/ VoiceOver for it. I’m going to try starting with the visuals and drawing a storyboard and see if that inspires a script rather than the other way round.

Moving forward I need to decide whether to print out one individual drawing then colour that in, rescan it then animate it as an object or animate the whole scene first then print it out as separate scenes, colour them in and rescan them all separately so more like stop motion. I think the second option will potentially look better but will take a lot longer as I will have to colour in each separate scene. I am going to try and test a few seconds of each and see how it goes.

For the first test I edited the video on premiere with the images I had drawn on photoshop (added the bus wiggle on after effects) then I exported the video as individual jpegs so each frame was a different image. I had to make the video 10 frames per second and shorten it because it was way too many frames at 12fps. I still have 42 pictures to colour in and rescan which is quite intense so we will see how it goes. I think I might have to leave the background and the bus stop as one scanned image then just do the stop motion with the bus and foetus as they’re the only things that move and it’ll be a lot quicker.

Im an idiot! After printing out and colouring in 42 pictures I realised I could have just coloured in 3/4 of each object/background then used them in a loop to make the video with as it would create the same effect I’m aiming for. I am going to keep making this test clip with what I already have then if I like it I will try this quicker method for the actual video.

I honestly think I have accidentally made this as complicated as I possibly could, every step of the process seems to be stupidly complicated when it doesn’t need to be. Moving forward I need to print out each object as a separate image rather than all together, then only colour in 4/5 of each then create a loop and use that to make a video rather than colour in each separate scene as it would be a lot quicker. I think I am going to have to start again which sounds long but will be quicker in the long run. So I need to make the background as one video, the bus as one video and the foetus as one video then overlay them all in premiere or after effects as at the moment its too complicated to line up the backgrounds separately and this other method means I can do 25fps or 12fps rather than 10fps so it will run smoother. Also add any effects after I have coloured in and rescanned because the wobble of the bus looks odd at the moment.

I reprinted just 3/4 of each object, coloured in then scanned them again, then removed the white background on photoshop. I then used after effects to line them all to create loops for each object so it looks a lot smoother now. it looked better to repeat them a few times in different orders rather than just loop 4. For the background I edited the hue of each scan in photoshop to add more variations.

This isn’t a serious video, I was just practising using photoshop as an animating tool, it is quite a slow process but I like it and its definitely faster than hand drawn traditional animation. I didn’t exactly understand what but I had to download a Mac thing so I could download an older/different version of photoshop as the newer version doesn’t let you export videos but it works fine now.

More photoshop animation practice/experiments but this time I tried it with something slightly more complicated – loop de loop of a hare running then made a few different edits of it

https://artslondon.padlet.org/lwilliamson0320211/ujbekykgt5lxa9vh link to a padlet with all videos I have made so far

For the video in the bus window I could continue with the same style but I want to try out new process/techniques. my inspiration is from lots of kids programmes I used to watch where they had real life videos/peoples put into the cartoons, e.g. the tv bellies in tellytubbies, but also the work of Jonathan Hodgson, Marcus Armitage, Joseph pelling (Vimeo) where its messy handrawn quite childish stuff

Experimenting/practicing with video style

I did some quick experiments on filmed footage so I could get a feel for timing, style, effort, etc and I might have to slightly alter my idea as this is a looong process. I filmed the footage on my iPhone so the videos started off as 60f/s so I changed them on media encoder so they were 25f/s so they’re worse quality but I don’t think that matters too much, I have 14 seconds ish of video left to make but even at 25f/s that’s still 350 frames to draw, it took me a while to even make these 1-3 seconds videos so I think I need to think of a new way. I still like drawing over real footage but I need to combine that with a faster method as well or I’m going to run out of time. The one line style of the last video was my favourite outcome. I think I’m going to still using filmed footage from a bus window, edit in someway – maybe some sort of collage type of video with drawings edited on top of the video but real life drawings that don’t move- then draw on top of that video in photoshop so its not the main style but its still there.