Dead Alive

https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Alive-27-Movie-Poster/dp/B000KA0S84

This is Peter Jackson before Peter Jackson was the Peter Jackson we know today. This was like and acid trip on crack. My god. So this New Zealand film set in Wellington. An Interesting thing to note about the movie is that the 'rabid rat thing' is from skull island, the exact island that King Kong is based. The Tribesmen on this island even look the same. and Peter Jackson later in his career made King Kong into a movie. Coincidence? I think not. Anyway the movie seems relatively harmless at the start. Then it just turns its self on top of its head and just goes. You have a Kung Fu Priest, Introvert Mommy Boy protagonist, Fortunetellers, Greasers, And of course your typical New Zealand blokey bloke. There are many more characters. Especially a zombie baby. It shard to explain this movie without giving too much away but it was very funny to watch. I end this blog with my favorite character, Kung-Fu Priest, kicking ass for the lord.

https://giphy.com/gifs/braindead-iTFlYsC80KyPe

Singing In The Rain

https://www.amazon.com/Pop-Culture-Graphics-Singin-Poster/dp/B000VXDHII

Singing in the Rain is considered a classic in film culture, and it still holds up today. There is so much energy in this film and rehearsing for all the tap dancing must of been hell. I would say that this type of movie is something that i would watch all the time as it isn't my field of Genre, but it was a good watch none the less. Donald O'Connor is probably one of the most energetic men that I've ever seen, In the 'Make em laugh' section of the film he literally is throwing himself everywhere while singing. I don't thing you could see anything like that in movies nowadays. Below are some examples of this.

Of course I have to comment on the song "singing in the rain, its quite the classic, and the cinematography of Gene Kelly dancing in the rain is great.

https://gfycat.com/gifs/search/donald+o%27connor

https://makeagif.com/gif/1080p-hd-make-em-laugh-singin-in-the-rain-1952-Fw-ubF

https://giphy.com/gifs/filmeditor-musical-debbie-reynolds-xTiIzrMsKRTuAV2hYQ

Swiss Army Man

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SWISS-ARMY-MAN-Daniel-Radcliffe/dp/B01FWP2EAG

When I first heard about this movie (about the time of its release which was 2006). I expected this movie to just about a dead guy who farts. Which wasn't really a selling point to me. But repentantly I was given the opportunity to watch this film. After watching the entire thing I can confirm that this film is absolutely bonkers, but oddly quite enjoyable to watch. Its surprising how well Daniel Radcliffe plays a dead body (Spoiler Alert, he can talk). This film is like reliving a sex education class, or a parent telling their child about the birds and the bees. Because this movie Ironically talks about life and love. Daniel Radcliffe is truly a Swiss Army Man, He does the most Impossible things. and its great.

https://tenor.com/view/swiss-army-man-swissarmyman-swim-gif-10848931

Notes For Maya Export

Once finished model
file/save as/Maya Binary
file/export all/name file/file type = objexport/export

Caricature of faces

World Animation

1920's to 1930's
United Kingdom
George Studdy
Pioneer in the commercialisation of animation
He started as a cartoonist for magazines. Including The Sketch.
When his puppy character Bonzon became popular enogh to sell merch, Studdy was commisioned to make a series of animated shorts.
Animation of a dog - 2946 (1920)

France
Fernand Leger
Influentual Abstract/Avant-garde animation
Mixture of painting on film, stop frame animation and live action film.
The Mechanical Ballet (1924)

Germany
Lotte Reinger
He used a cutout silhouette style and the first film to use a form of multiple plane camera to get 2D animation a feeling of depth
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1925/1926)

Walter Ruttman
Formulated a theory of abstract cinema that he described as "painting with time".
He worked on Lotte Reiniger's film The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1925).
Lichtspiel Opus I (1921)
Lichtspiel Opus II (1923)
Lichtspiel Opus III (1924)
Lichtspiel Opus IV (1925)

Hans Richter
He made 3 early abstract films of minimalist animated geometric shapes in the 1920's
Rhythmus 21 (1923)
Rhythmus 23 (1923)
Rhythmus 25 (1923/1925)
Combined live action with animation and used more advanced camera tricks to overlay patterns and used focal properties of the lens to blur and smear imagery.
Befriended Viking Eggeling.
Film Study (1926)

Germany/Sweden
Viking Eggeling
Eggeling believed art should encompass political, ethical and scientific idealogys.
He left Sweden and his early experiments were funded by German film studio UFA who supported avant-garde.
He made the minor classic of abstract film.
Diagonal Symthonies (1924)

1930's to 1960's
France/Russia
Ladislaw Starewicz
Created first feature film The Tale of the Fox (1930) which took 10 years to make
Features Starewicz signature animation style of humanised animals wearing clothes and standing upright. His stories were based on Dutch and French Folks Tales.
An anti-Semitic version of the story was published in 1937, which may have attracted interest in the film from Nazi Germany. The anti-Semitic version of this story was animated in 1943 (funded by the Nazis), but not a full release.

France/Czech Republic
Berthold Bartosch
Moved to Berlin in 1919 and collaberated with other animators such as Lotte Reiniger, Viking Eggeling, Hans Richter and Walter Ruttmann.
Bartosch filmed cutout drawings on multiple levels of glass and achieved soft lighting effects by back-lighting and smearing the glass with soap.
Berthold made the film The Idea (1930) based on a book of stylised woodcuts by Frans Masereel.
The story is about a dreamer who concieves an idea that appeaes in the form of a small naked female figure.
Bartosch worked on an antiwar film which was ironically was destroyed in World War 2.

France/Russia/USA
Alexandra Alexeieff and Claire Parker
They came up with the idea for animation and built a pin-screen device composed of hundreds of pins that slid  in and out of a grid which would produce relief shadow images when lit from the side.
Night on Bald Mountain (1932)
Le Nez (1963)

France/UK/USA
Anthony Gross and Hector Hoppin
British Gross and American Hoppin joined up together in paris to create The Joy of Living (La joie de virve) (1934)
They used a form of escapism from the reality of Europe at the time: Fascism and the rise of war.
They were working on Around the world in 80 days by production was interrupted by the war.
A few years later some footage was found of the work and was recreated to make Indian Fantasy (1955)

Russia
Alexander Ptushko
Made The New Gulliver (1935). An adaptation of Gulliver's Travels with a cast of 3000 puppets
At the time Russia's policy geared towards soviet realism and film makers such as Ptushko were instructor to make moralistic works. Thus Children's stories often contained pro-soviet propaganda.

Ivan Ivanov-Vano
The general policy was of animation as a public service to provide traditional folks stories and educational films for children.
Animators such as Ivanov-Vano were told to use the Eclair system which involved rotoscoping from live actors movements. This was abandoned in favor of a ridged system of factory-like cel animation
The Humpbacked Little Horse (1947)

Germany
Oskar Fishinger
His work was defined as "decorative" rather than abstract as he was trying to get around the policies against "degenerate art" put in place by the Nazi's.
Composition in Blue (1935)

UK
Norman Mclaren
Used different techniques including the drawing on films techniques (as pioneered by New Zealander Lan Lye)
Dots (1940)

Bill Larkins
He opened up his own studio in London called Larkins studio's. He produced training films for the army during World War 2 (1940). This studio speaheaded the advance towards a stylised, simplified form of animation. The studio only produced information films.
T for Teacher (1947)

UK/Hungary
John Halas and Joy Bachelor
They made animated propaganda and information films as part of the British war efforts. Both of them believed that animation was an art form that could be use for good.
The studio called Halas & Batchelor experimented with different techniques, from low tech paper cutouts through to computer animation.
The studio produced over 2000 films to TV series and films.

China
Wan Laiming, Wan Guchan, Wan Chachen and Wan Dihuan
The Wan brothers were china's animation pioneers and made china's first animated short film Uproar in the Studio (1924).
When the Japanese invade Shanghai in 1937, the wan brothers made several politically-motivated films in protest of the invasion.
In 1939 they saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs which inspired them to make China's first animated feature film Princess Iron Fan (1941).

Japan
Kenzo Masaoka
Created the first Japanese animation with sound in 1933 and the first made entrely with cel animation in 1934
He established his own studio, which was part of a larger unit of animation companies when World War 2 broke out.
The Spider and the Tulip (1943)

A Lit Review, how to do

Advice from David Taylor on How to write a literature Review in 30 Minutes or less
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdJxY4w9XKY

Strip the summary / an annotated bibliography
source citations and give a detailed summary. Each paragraph starts with the in-text citations.

Reorder paragraphs

• Reread paragraph summaries.
• Find similarity and differences.
• Reorder the paragraphs into logical lists based on the connections you find.

Potential Arrangement

• Cause-Effect
• Problem-Solution
• Series of Advances
• Myths- Realities 
• Ancient-Modern
• Effective-Ineffective

Combine paragraphs (if necessary)

• How closely related of the summaries?
• How long will the paragraph be?
• Limiting myself to 10 to 14 lines is apparently ideal.

Add Topic Sentences and Transitions

Add Introduction and conclusion

Model Drawing, A continuation

Foreshortening drawings

Warm up Silhouettes

Hausu

https://www.cinematerial.com/movies/hausu-i76162

I was introduced to another Japanese Horror Film the other day. This one is the funniest horror movies I have ever seen. I believe funnier than Troll 2. Its one of those films that are supposed to be scary but they just turn into a comedy. I haven't laughed at a movie so hard in a very long time. So are survivors in this movie are called Fantasy, Gorgeous, Melody, Mac, Sweet, and my personal favorite character, Kung-Fu. All of there names are based on their personalities. I would give you a run down of the plot for this movie but im not sure what the plot is aside from, lets go on a holiday/field trip to unknown aunts house. Also Aunty's hungry. Cat's Haunted.

Also this skeleton is my second favorite character. He does this pretty much the whole movie.

The Spiderwick Chronicles

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spiderwick-Chronicles-DVD-Seth-Rogen/dp/B0015S0S9O

Behold a blast from the past, aka 2008. The Spiderwick Chronicles, directed by Mark Waters.

This was a movie that I didn't get to see when I was a kid. I got a McDonald Happy Meal toy for this movie. But the other day a friend showed me the Wii game for this and had no idea what they were talking about. So they showed me this movie. Actually this a good movie. Its special effects also aged well. and it's still an entertaining film. Something interesting to note about this film is that Freddie Highmore plays both twins. When you look at it in the film you can just notice but its quite unnoticeable. And interestingly enough Seth Rogan is in this film.

Italian Realism

Context
Neorealistic movement began in Italy at the end of WW2 with the fall of Benito Mussolini's  fascist regime. The movement was a responses to the political turmoil and desperate economic conditions afflicting the country at the time.
Realism criticisms the view of society as a collection of individuals who are indifferent to the suffering of others.
The movement was made to uncover the truth about the widespread suffering in Italy, it showed that there was many problems due to lack of awareness in the plight of others.


White Telephone Films
In the 1930's Melodramas, a sensational dramatic piece with exaggerated characters and exciting events intended to appeal to the emotions, were very popular with Italian audiences.
White telephone films or as they were known in Italy as a telefoni bianci, depicted the emotional turmoil of Italy's upper class. They were made to present a comedic way of life that completely avoided the very real troubles Italians faced in reality.
The Woman in Black (La Signora in Nero) (1943) by Nunzio Malasomma
Teresa Venerdi (1941) by Vittorio De Sica

Form and Style

• Stories focused on the poor and the working class
• Documentary style of photography
• Using non-professional actors
• Avoidance of complex editing and post production processes
• Preference of natural lighting
• Preference of filming on location

Luchino Viconti

Italian theatre director, opera director, screenwriter and cinema director. His realistic treatment of individuals caught of modern society contributed significantly to Neorealism.

Ossessione (1943)

Based on the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain.

The story involves a drifter character who falls in love with the wife of a diner owner and they plot to murder the husband.

The film isn't considered to be a full Neorealist film but shares some of the qualities of Neorealism by showing a less than flattering view of Italy.

Roberto Rossellini

Another Italian film director, producer and screenwriter, Mostly known for his post WW2 films of Italy, he made a trilogy:

Rome Open City (1945)

Drama about the Nazi Occupation of Rome.

Paisa (1946)

A documentary styled film with 6 episodes, set during the liberation of Italy at the end of the war.

Germany Year Zero (1948)

A 12 year old boy's image of a war torn Italy to the effects of a war torn Germany.

Vittorio De Sica

Ce Sica's Career spanned 55 years with him directing 35 films and acting in more than 150 films/

The Bicycle Thief (1948)

This film is regarded as a masterpiece of Italian Neorealism and sited on many lists as one of the greatest films of all time.

The film had social themes of unemployment and the effects of post war conditions.

• Do I agree with the statement that The Bicycle Thief is “one of the greatest films of all time”? I can agree that The Bicycle Thief is a good movie, it does have some solid story telling and with the language barrier it still made sense.  But I wouldn't call it the greatest film of all time.
• What does the bike represent?: The Bike represents money. A better life. A stable income.
• Is the use of non-professional actors evident? Good or bad? All of the actors seem to act well. The film feels a little more natural, rather than dramatic.
• Character arc of the father: The Father is looking for a job. He gets the Job. He goes to work. Gets his bike stolen. He looks for the bike. He starts to get desperate. Harasses an old man. Tries to look for guidance. Finds a guy that may or may not have stolen the bike. He doesn't have the bike. Father needs the bike. Resorts to stealing someones bike. Gets caught. Is now sad that he stole bike in-front of his boy.
• Boys opinion of his father: Sad, Confused. The boy likes his dad but the dad starts acting erratically, including smacking him across the face for reasons.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51H7Zmd2gtL.jpg

More Literacy Review Information

Structure is broad to specific

Cover a large selection of topics then aim for something specific.

Make everything fit together (like a Jigsaw puzzle), explain why they are linked/why any of this is relevant to each other.

Why is it linked to your theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU2uqFY-l4s

Potentially I will look at the Twilight Zone and how it is structured, through story telling an character development.

These are important links that I will look at: Not APA referenced:

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sitlibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=787182&query=twilight+zone+AND+narratology
https://filmschoolrejects.com/what-the-twilight-zone-teaches-us-about-storytelling/

Walking continued

This is the full body movement of the side walk cycle. I am currently drawing over top of it atm, stay tuned.

Uzumaki

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0244870/

Uzumaki, or as the English translation puts it, Spiral, Directed in 2000 by Higuchinsky. Based on the Manga of the same name written by Junji Ito, Was the weirdest horror movie I've ever seen.

It was awful actually. There was that horror factor as some things were visually terrifying but this movie made no sense. Also the acting was also bad. So as you may or may not have guessed. The movies horror comes from spirals. What does the spirals do? make people insane. And also turn people into snails, cause spirals. The main protagonist isn't even that memorable, its her "cardboard" side kick/boyfriend that I remember the most. And he has literally no emotion. None. Nada. He try to be a 'mother' figure to the main protagonist but all he does is tell people to stop crying. So many weird characters too. And there is that one jump cut with sound effects of that of a cartoon show. So if you like bad movies, watch this one. And don't look at the spirals. Cause they might get you, or steal your soul into a giant tornado smoke cloud, or make you hydrate more, or turn you into a human snail or something, I don't even know.

https://giphy.com/gifs/uzumaki-RO1JWbMjRvOnK

actual clip from the movie, what was this film?

Also I heard the manga's good, so there is that. go check that out, not this. Please.

These legs are made for walking

What you see here is the start of my walk animation. from watching a dinosaur constantly walk this is what I have come up with. As you can see i've pretty much got the movement sorted. Now I have to draw the torso and then the actual drawing on top of everything. Hopefully with this done, this will help me with the other angles of the walk. I am going to note that I am worried about the 3/4 turn walk animation because of how my legs are designed. This is going to be an adventure for sure.

This is the specific gif I looked at for inspiration.

Maya - Notes

Today was the day we were introduced to Maya 3D, Theses are some important shortcuts that will help me in the future.

Select project window/Name Project/Save Directory to D drive/Accept
Set project/set folder made - To make sure things don't go missing
Save
alt+left click spin
alt+middle click move cam
alt+right click zoom
Spacebar = perspective view
w move
e rotate
r scale
right click gives you options
new shape/attribute editor/polycube1/change subdivisions - you can only do this once
Move tool/select shape/shift+rightclick (object mode)/Insert edge loop tool
Edit faces - Right click enter face mode/shift+rightclick/extrude face mode
Shift+doubleclick on face mode - select multiple faces
don't hit extrude and not extrude
keep outliner open
Delete type history

Drawing the model time trial

Apologies for the bad quality of photos, but the pencil I drew with was very light and wasn't showing up on the camera. However these are more life drawings of the models. Most of these were done in 5 minutes. At one point the timing of the drawing went down. The lowest we got was 2 seconds.

It was teaching us to draw quickly and efficiently. I had fun doing this.

Inking

First Hands Inked, Drawn Up Close

Second Hands Inked, Drawn at length

Inked Oblivion Guard Helmet

Dunedin Trip

On Tuesday the 7th, The first second and third years went on a bus trip to Dunedin to explore different places. My group being the 3rd group went to explore three places. We went to see the planetarium, the museum and the art gallery.
The Planetarium was one of the more interesting places to go to as we were shown off three media's designs specifically for the facility. We were shown a short Documentary film about Antarctica, a small teaser for a Maori film Animation and we were given a glimpse of the interactive Solar System.
All were very cool. All of the students were then led to a stage in which the speaker from the planetarium was talking about how the films for the planetarium was made.
Afterwards my group explored the Otago Museum, where the planetarium was held. We only had a brief look, which was a shame. However I had been there before so I was quite familiar with some of the exhibits. We got to see some tribal exhibits and some animal exhibits. Highlight was seeing the Giant sea turtle replica, why? cause turtles are cool.
After that my group headed to the Art Museum located in the Octagon. We were also given a brief tour of the facility. Still alright thought as I had also seen most of the artwork prior on my own trips to Dunedin, but there was one exhibit there that I hadn't seen before and it was actually pretty cool. It was 3 artworks by a guy who had mastered photo composition. The artworks were all black and white and one was shown on three television screens. They were images of what appeared to be mountains, but when you had a closer look at them, they were actually buildings, copy and pasted over and over again. Quite fascinating stuff.

Story Arc Development and Narratology

From my last blog i've decided to change my topic as the Character Tropes topic wasn't getting me anywhere. I realised that Story Arc Development and Narratology would be more in my field of interest. Here is the notes that I found on the subject, all taken from various sources.

Beginnings of Jumping Animation

https://media.giphy.com/media/mTrUbEjM1Agta/giphy.gif

Today Ruby gave us our next task, to animate jumping. You may be wandering why there is a gif of  a jumping dinosaur. Well I was using this as a reference for Raspers Jumping as his legs are much the same as this dinosaurs. I also looked at other references such as these:

https://giphy.com/gifs/animated-bird-TBmdZGucMuy5O

https://tenor.com/view/parrot-gif-10071535

https://giphy.com/gifs/cute-aww-eyebleach-7JI6TvZRGvOAmdcJWi

I know they may look silly but they do show the funtion of a bird leg, in which I want to replicate.

So this is what I have drawn up so far. I like it, now I'm going to have to draw up the rest of the body.

I may even do a loop where its three consecutive jumps before the animation resets.

Coral Painter 2018, Kaleidoscopes

Today In digital we were introduced to the application known as Coral Painter 2018. This was introduced to us because of its Kaleidoscope feature. So for this whole class I was experimenting. So Four of them had a theme in mind. The Fire and Water ones are my favourites out of the five that I did. I even started on one of the two kaleidoscopes meant to be used for my Digital assignment.

First Test

Fire Element

Wind Element

Earth Element

Water Elemeent

Halo 1 - The Master Chief Collection

https://www.redbull.com/ca-en/halo-the-5-best-esports-matches-ever

In the holidays, I was introduced to Halo 1 on the Xbox One. Fun fact, I didn't grow up on the Halo franchise when I was a kid. I only was introduced to the game when I was in my late teens, This included Halo 3 and Halo: Reach. So with that I kinda new what I was stepping into but I was still unsure of what was going on. Playing this for the first time (with my diehard fanboy friends) made me realise why this game was such a gem. The game had everything you'd want in a sci-fi shooter. It has a few guns, Squadrons of Allies, A lot of bad guys, Alien landscapes, Military vehicles and a ton of spaceships. Also the maps were pretty huge and you could play your own way in a way (However I was playing Co-op so I didn't really have time to truly explore)

There was a cool feature in the master chief collection and that was to change the graphics back to the original graphics from the original xbox. Lets just say you can definitely see the changes. The gameplay was indeed fun and I did have a good time, I also understand a wee bit more on the Halo lore which is nice.

Planning for a Literature Review

Literature Review
In a Literature review format, research and analyse one of the following topics.

According to Papersowl.com, this is what you need to know about a literature review.
https://papersowl.com/blog/how-to-format-literature-review

So what I want to look at specifically is Character and Genre Tropes
What I want to do is explore character tropes on one specific Animation/Game and show evidence of the trope in other material.

Below are some links to look into (this will be added to):

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AnimationTropes