Reflection:
Thinking about this week, I felt really pleased around the last round of feedback for my final, major project, and the delivery of my work for the BPD production coming up. In regards to my personal project, I feel I’ve had the opportunity to really delve into my creative, and technical ability within AI generative techniques. This was due to learning about prompt manipulation to garner effective results, consuming a variety of media to inspire me, and utilising it across a significant amount of frames, has made me feel like I’ve been able to highly refine my craft. I also feel that this was possible due to being able to constantly iterate on my project throughout the semester, learning to push the scope beyond it’s originally planned 1,500 frames, and taking on frequent feedback helped me learn to explore ways to improve my techniques, beyond just technical. By engaging in feedback with my tutors and peers, it opened my perspective to a variety of works that I had heard, and not heard of, giving me the opportunity to deep dive into said works has only furthered my reflective thinking, while enriching my enjoyment of media. Speaking of feedback, I was really happy with the results of my most recent version, and after demonstrating it to my tutors, I was able to confirm that my idea of a grand finale had areas of great success, such as going backwards with a speed ramp, and that adding a grand, clear orchestra felt like ‘Christopher Nolan’ cheese, which was taking away from the feeling of surreal, and felt more fun. While that was news that made me happy, (and laugh!), it gave me the chance to utilise a more sudden, sharper conclusion by concluding it on the eye. I feel that the cut of audio to a clip rooted in reality serves the contrast between the real and the surreal that I wanted to achieve early in the semester, while still giving a stronger sense of conclusion.
Having felt quite satisfied with the results of my final project, I got exceptionally positive feedback on the montage video I developed for the BPD production and was able to make effective use of all the animations I generated for it. With some feedback, I made some timing adjustments to make it feel snappier and create cohesion with the rhythm of the audio track, ensuring that the montage could be as effective as possible at communicating the state of the narrative. The director was exceptionally pleased with the results I produced, and with the final refinements to the city scape, all that’s left to do is upscale for the coming week. Being able to work in a team, where my work was interchangeable, and being linked to others, while having regular feedback from the director has been an exceptionally memorable experience to me. I have had a lot of fun working and developing my ideas within a collaborative environment, since the high level of communication, while having creative freedom, left me feeling exceptionally satisfied. I know that going forward in my career, I would absolutely love to focus on a high collaborative, team environment, as I feel it invigorates me to have more discussions about the potential ideas, while ensuring I can bring a high level of imagination to the work due to sharing that with others.
BPD Production, demoing and experimenting with one of my peers by projection mapping my animations:
As this semester comes to a close in the coming weeks, I feel the best use of my blogs will be to focusing on exploring my feelings throughout the projects I’ve undertaken this semester, and lightly discussing my final, collaborative music video project.
Research:
Currently, due to receiving a high level of positive reception around my AI generative artworks, I am in the process of exploring 360 video conversion, and how I can maintain engagement for a potential feature length adaption of the work for a short film festival. To assist me, I have re-explored surrealist research, and looked at the article “Surrealist sources of Eastern European animation film” that discusses the ways to create surrealist animated films, by ÜLO PIKKOV. There is a standout part of this article by providing a guideline in how the surreal can be achieved, “by combining a number of independent basic elements (art forms), consists of several different structures: we can talk about the structure of story, of image, of sound, etc. On closer observation, it is a multi-patterned pattern.” which is further expanded to state “each of which can be individually assessed as to their degree of surrealism. In animation film we can consider surrealism’s effect on:
1. visuals (visual design of film);
2. sound (aural design of film);
3. movement (rhythms and pace of film);
4. storytelling (rationality and logics of film’s plot);
5. relations (connections between film’s characters).”
Which has given me the opportunity to reflect on my own work, and how achieves the state of the surreal through it’s heavy focus on visuals, sound, and movement, with an abstract story underpinning the construction of the visuals. Part of what I found fascinating, was that this paper brings a focus on this idea of the ‘uncanny valley’, and how surrealist animation “should concentrate on the notion of “uncanny” and “creating uncanny” or, in other words, on the subconscious uneasiness caused by dislocation of realism”. Creating this uncanny valley effect is usually achieved by developing one of the above rooted in the themes of surrealism, to be significantly contrasted by another, which will typically result in the successful feeling of the surreal.
In thinking about how I can accomplish this effect within my own work, over the last weeks, I’ve observed that creating different modes of engagement throughout the experience and giving enough room for the audience to maintain the feeling of ‘what’s next?’ throughout the experience is what creates the heightened state. This article serves to reinforce my research in the previous weeks, in particular this especially draws on parallels throughout my experience of watching Neon Gensis Evangelion, in how surreal I found its finale, especially due to it’s heavily symbolic imagery such as blood lakes, and deities. As I develop and want to focus on expanding my work beyond the break, I feel reflecting on the research, and the media I studied this semester will give me the tools to slowly expand the projects I’ve developed into an entirely new experience.
Pikkov, Ü. (2013). Surrealist sources of Eastern European animation film. Baltic Screen Media Review, 1(1), 28–43. https://doi.org/10.1515/bsmr-2015-0003
Progress:
As I head into the final weeks of the semester, I’ve attempted to do my best to cover all aspects of my projects, and begin to finalise the majority. My major project has nearly reached it’s final state, which is currently as presented here:
Regarding finishing it off, I will be experimenting with some audio fade, and a gradual fade to darkness within the final ten seconds of the video above. I will be reviewing this quite rapidly in response to live feedback, to ensure that the exact feeling of conclusion can be the best it can be. Overall I am extremely satisfied with the result, and am feeling quite confident in completing this within the coming week.
Next up, I have my final video montage for the BPD production which is illustrated here:
This sequence has had the opportunity to receive feedback throughout the week, and has been extremely well received. All that is left to do is to upscale the footage, and deliver it to the director, ready for the live performance. This is expected to be completed by Monday/Tuesday, with Wednesday being the last day to deliver any adjustments should there be any minor requests. I currently have no plans to expand upon the above montage due to the current reception, and will have that completed. Next up, the director has requested for me to loop a city animation sequence I have developed, and I will have that completed for him within the same time as upscaling the video montage.
Lastly, is the development of my music video project as seen below:
Music Video prototype 2
Currently between these two prototypes, the visuals of the prototype 1 have been positively received and will be expanded on. Due to the positive reception of the way the AI glitches out throughout the frame generation, and the entirely different take through 2D animation, I will be retaining these as I develop it for the end of semester. I am expecting this process to be significantly quicker than my major project, simply due to 2D images being significantly faster to render out than 3D. As I work closely with my music composer, the exact timing and way the images glitch out will continue to change as we refine the timing of the rhythm. I am currently experimenting with slightly different values for the data conversion of the audio, which allows me to control the intensity of strength throughout the frame generation, ensuring a greater sense of audiovisual coherency. I am expecting to have this project be completed within two weeks, and this coming week being focused on developing a longer version of the above prototypes, with most of its content expected to be retained in through to the final video.
Lighting Up Your week 