Introduction to Animation

Group project- Creating a response to another artists work

For this group project we had to visit various galleries and find an artist whose work focuses around objects, then using this artist as inspiration create a 20 second video. I joined my group late for this project so I didn’t manage to visit any galleries with them but they told me what art works they were deciding between so I could go and look myself. I went to the Tate Modern to see Pat Steir’s work ‘Long Vertical Falls’ and Yinka Shonibare’s (CBE) ‘The British Library’

We decided to take inspiration from Pat Steir’s work, she uses water and ink on pinned up canvases to create pieces that emulate waterfalls at the same time as being waterfalls. We decided to each create 4-5 seconds of video in our own style then merge them into one video.

I started by making a mind map with some research on Pat Steir and initial ideas for my video, I knew I wanted to do something with simple stop motion as it was the type of animation I had enjoyed the most so far and was the most achievable in the time frame. I developed a very rudimentary storyboard as I was planning to use straight ahead animation so didn’t need to go into too much detail. I used a Lightbox and paper to draw each frame, for the video I used 25 fps and 2 pictures per frame so I needed to draw 50 pictures for 4 seconds of video. As I was doing the drawings I realised 50 pictures wouldn’t be enough so I changed it to 1 picture per frame and 100 drawings in total.

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/641574024

Link to my final video

Overall I am pretty happy with the outcome, its definitely a very simple animation with no deeper meaning but aesthetically its cute. I looked at scientific drawings of a raindrop landing on a flat surface to recreate a realistic looking landing. As a group project as a whole it could have been a little bit more blended together but with the time constraints and also living in different parts of London this was the easiest way to make a video that showed off all our individual skills and styles.