structuring an essay

“What is the role of handmade / traditional animation in the digital age”

In this essay i will be conducting research to find an understanding of the title, which I will investigate the history behind animation and how it has improved within the years, and what techniques we use to make animations in the modern/present time. Handmade/ traditional animation has played a big part in shaping how we produce animation today, this is because of  animators thinking about of ways to help them produce animations quicker and faster luckily technology was becoming more advanced with the creation of a PC. Many programs we use today have been all constructed to make our animation lives easier, and less time consuming but still takes a lot of effort.

My hypotheses behind the role of handmade/traditional animation is that in order to create digital animations we need to use techniques we have learned such as drawing and colouring. Thinking about it all, what we are essentially doing is creating everything traditionally using a PC to make it a digital format, using less equipment and being able to have tools which help on a PC.

In the digital age of animation, we have develop many things that include making animations in 2D or 3D. many big animation studios have now started to move over to 3D generated animations which states the question of is traditional drawings dieing in this age of animation? disney animations have started to concentrate more on 3D rather than making 2D animations, their most recent 2D animation was ‘The princess and the frog’ which was released in 2009 and was a very successful disney film world wide. If this was successful why did they not continue to create 2d animations which could be very successful as The Princess and the Frog. The chief executive of disney was interviewed and gave the impression that they have not done or thought of making a 2D animation

 ‘To my knowledge we're not developing a 2D or hand-drawn feature animated film right now,’ “Bob Iger said earlier this month.” (Alex Hudson, 28/05/13, web)

In this quote it showcases that disney doesn't look like they will be creating anything in 2d animation soon which could mean the death of 2D animation for Disney and could also be for many other companies that are entering the realm of 3D animations. If this trend continue there won't be much left of the traditional hand drawn animation which could do things which 3D is limited by.

From the beginning of traditional animation there has always been a way to create animations and this improved over time to make animations less time consuming to create and not needing a lot of budget to create animations, it has improved to an extent that people working on their own can create longer high quality animations like a professional because all the tools needed have been put together on a device which is easily accessible.

CoP Consumerism

The raise of consumerism

The US in the 1920 was the start of consumerism, the change of consumerism was becoming as a social control.

Sigmund Freud

-developed a new theory of the human nature
-the entire history of the world has built up what we know today, our desires are within us but not always active. conflict between civilization and the individual which are animal instincts.

he produced many other books and theories which helped with society.

Public Relations by Edward Bernays

If you can sell the idea of pleasure being met to the public, you can manipulate them and produce all sorts which people would follow.

Linking desires to something can manipulate peoples instinct/desire.

this was a stereotype to get people into something in this case. gained world wide production, Giving identity to similar products "made a brand" the ideas of what is known of a product was more important then what it was.

This is a stereotype where the thing is not important but what it provides. Brands used physiological methods to persuade people to buy into things, making them believe that they need these "things"

Marketing hidden needs

-emotional security, knowing you have something.
-reassurance of worth, knowing you are higher/important for the product
-ego gratification
-creative outlets, this productive gives you more freedom.

there are other which help the product to sell to the consumer.

Governments saw this idea working which made them want to work with these policies with the physiologists.

Consumerism is not natural and happened at a time which made everything complicated and made people get in control of others.

CoP Print culture

The term of "late age of print" is what we are currently in.

The royal Academy were the first formal art school and they have develop many historical paintings. the school had many tools to work with which allowed many artist the freedom to do their work.

working class started to produce their own culture using tools that were available for them at the time, Middle class artist John Martian was making art and was beating the system that the Royal academy had. he was making money by making reprints/reproductions of the work which was cheap and accessible to the general public.

Reproductions became a market which allowed people to own a piece of art, with this in hand it changed the way people started to make money from their art, instead of going to Royal academy to learn how to draw people would just do it them selves and sell their works using reproductions,, people were able to control their life not be controlled. which we do in our current time.

High rulers did not want to change the system, and the new working class culture wanted their own rights. first school of design was at 1836, print was used to fight the royal family.

many artists changed the way everything worked and this industry started, and started to work with photography in terms of how to make prints from pictures taken.

in the midst of the culture people used to use prints in order to protest, so instead of people constantly drawing each poster they reproduce using prints so that each poster was replicated and didn't take as much time as a drawing each poster manually.

print has become a big part of our time and has helped in many different companies and the industry in general. without print a lot of the worlds industries would not exists.

CoP What is research?

Research is not just looking up something and producing a essay. there are other ways of research for example visual research.

Understanding how to connect both written and visual to get something out of both.

There is a method of thinking in order to research and creating a creative practice for example, we first have the theory of what we need to do, then we practice and reflect on what we have found and understood, then we develop on them and produce something better and we repeat this process.

As a creative artist we take ideas and develop them, make them into something really good and try to improve it, you can make a quick list of how to go about this:

-Synthesis which is the idea we want to develop

-Analysis grouping the ideas and thinking about how they work.

-Applying taking the ideas that re refined and producing something out of it.

-Comprehension seeing whether you can make changes.

-Knowledge you understand what your doing and are able to change things if they look wrong.

-Evaluation understanding that you need to evaluate how you can do better.

and this goes on a cycle, which is a good way to develop a creative practice.

"process is more important then the outcome" Bruce Mau, focus on the process which helps with finding out things gives you an understanding and different "answer" rather then sticking to the perfect outcome you can learn something new from a mistake.

"knowledge comes from failing and reading"

If we knew what we were doing it would not be called research, without the ideas we cant do much for our projects, we all have our own understanding. we always come up with new ways of understanding/ developing the ideas.

Stimulated approach
Going out and finding relative content, relates to the problem of trying to form something new.

The more we look for references the more ideas we generate, and this will help with future experience/ approach to new ideas, but this can have its downs because your original idea will soon be an influence of many, but its still yours.

"what is research"
Is it not finding facts we know and then proving that it works with our research, research is about defining things by asking:

"How? "
"Why?"
"What if?"

these help with not only defining an idea but ask for reasons which can develop the idea more.

Types of research

-Primary research, research which we go and research, by generating new ideas/data.
-Secondary research, We collect data which already been made which we use to analyse for our projects

-Quantitative research, Data which are facts, figures and measurements that's been collected to be analyze.
-Qualitative research, observing/studding people and collecting what you've seen without data.

What is information?
Adding knowledge to some one will now have more knowledge about it. Data that has been processed to have a meaning.

How we research?
There are methodologies that allow us to think about the ways to research, using all the types of research.

put we should not limit our self's from the possibilities that could come from the research. Feed back is a form of research, we are the center of research.

Reading and understanding a text

The designer as author is the article i choose to read and understand.

The word "Authorship" is mentioned to be used as a popular term that artists are using to establish that they are the author of what they draw but it is not necessarily true in terms of the inspirations that had an effect on the artist whilst drawing, although the artist drew it themselves with skills hes learnt from previous drawings could it possibly be claimed that its his drawing of improvement from his previous drawing. In conclusion is there a true author for art and design? same goes for an author of a book using words that could have been inspired by many others which questions is their an original idea for anything or are we just always being inspired.

In connection to the word "Author" it is defined as someone bringing something into existence which has not previously existed. This implies to define as making an original idea which is rare to see in our life time because everyone is either being influence or copying things that already exist. To add to this we can say that everyone is an author of the hard work they have done but not the true author of the idea because these ideas already exist as said in the article, this concludes that we can become close to being the author because of the effort we put into making this drawing in terms of arts and design, but we cannot be the true author of the idea we used in order to create this drawing.

I've gone over the 250 word limit but I've explained a few key points that I've tried to understand in the article i read and hopefully questioned what a "author" means in terms of art and design. although i only used the first few quotes that were definitions that did not have any reference to any book or website meaning i could not Harvard reference these quotes, although they are from the article written above.

CoP types

The history of Type

The importance of chronologies

why do we work the way we do? Its so that can develop our own practices, learning from the past helps a lot in order to gain new ideas and develop them.

we all as artist have to have an opinion which allows us to think about ways to change or improve something.

typography is far more than just a subject, and comes in many forms in our day and age, even before the modern era we live in.

modernists think of rules and principles for typography, its all about "getting things right"

type can be visual not just spoken, this is shown on posters, animations and webdesign and many more formats. most of typography is about the visuals of the fonts used which gives you an idea of what the product we are viewing is going to be like.

type is based of language, many characters/symbols could mean anything.

the letters are just symbols (which are sounds) and each letter came from images,  these all happened over 2000 years which made the alphabet.

Many years ago, back in the stone age it used to be just spoken word which then people started to document these stories.

There is a while range of ways to visually change a letter from an aural sound, taking written form and then making it a visual understanding. by 1450 we went from images to writing letters.

Europe was getting fixed language at the time, Gutenberg was a man who made the move to printable format.

Their are classifications of what the type looks like.

1870 William Foster introduced the Education act which had influence many to start to educate them self to learn how to read and try to start working on producing some form of writing.

1919 Walter Gropicus introduced form which is visual aspect and function which was print format, form was traditional written letters which was like Romain fancy writing and function as the print was standard lettering .

Designing something for mass production all started with Bauhaus, we would of not had anything like print if art did not connect with industry.

Halvetica  was made mainstream because it was clear and easy to read. type focuses to display eg logos. type is used in many ways

Microsoft produced a similar if not copied Helvatica with Arial.

1990 Steve Jobs made the first computer called Macintosh which had a keyboard and mouse,

type started to get made into type design because you could produce curves using vectors, so now we can do this what can we form form type.

Type maybe visual but we go back to what we want to say using spoken word. so we have to control what we are saying.

1994 Viocent Camare Made our wonderful most really simple but boring looking comic sans. apparently its for people with reading disability but is not scientifically proven.

we as artist have to have a certain way of thinking which we need to stick to and keep on adding ideas to help us make our own way of thinking. design is a tool which can change the world.

study task 1 Animation analyse

I will be talking about the Duck amuck and Fresh laid plans animated sequences.

Duck amuck's genre of animation is deconstruction and comedic, throughout this animation you witness Daffy Duck have a conversation with the audience which is explained as direct address. what this indicates is that we as the audience are apart of this scene, therefore it feels like hes talking directly toward us. In Fresh laid plans there;s seems to be a lack of direct address and more of a narrative which  the audience follow, what happens is we follow a character who wants to help to make life better for the local people, but then this ends up in a lot of problems which he cant deal with, both of these animation show some content where the main characters are not getting what they receive in the end. The way both are composed are similar because both take a similar approach by using flat staging meaning that the camera can only move left or right through the various scenes, and both show case this for example in Duck amuck we get introduced to daffy duck by the camera panning to the right as we see him in a knight suit on the flat stage and stays like this throughout, which is similar to Fresh laid plans where throughout the animation we see the main character moving through the flat stage only going left or right. This showcases that both animations are very similar because they were likely made in the same time period and this may be the reason why they are similar but appeals to the audience in different ways because duck amuck is directed to the audience where as fresh laid plan showcases a story which the audience follows through and leans from.

CoP2

History of image

this lecture there were many paintings which changed the way of seeing something throughout the history of time which also changes the way we see the paintings done at that time, for example "red earth circles" done by Georges Pompidou Roris changed the way we see a painting, one of his pieces is this picture:

using the elements such as sand and earth, he tried to portray the hidden messages of the elements and tried to showcase the amazing way they work together to form something.

Another artist was Marcel Duchamp, he was trying to showcase a political statement by using a postcard print of the Mona Lisa in his own way and trying to show that this image you preserve is nothing so big

another similar political stance using the Mona lisa again is from Banksy,

this is quite a big statement showcasing todays situation, in order to catch the attention of the viewer he has Miss Mona lisa and then as a political statement she is holding a grenade launcher, it also seems like that headset is some kind of communication between army or a spy organisation, but clearly this changes the way we see The Mona Lisa.

 

The artist who did the first hope poster for president Obama also did this as a political statement to show that we don't know if Obama is on our side (Americas side since we are in the uk) its quite interesting and yet again hes change the way we see the true side of Obama.

CoP1

Visual literacy 

There are many things about visual literacy we can approach and this allows us to solve problems that occur, visually communicating something is can be understood differently to many people and sometimes its hard to get the point across, which is why we as visual creators should stick to simple straight to the point ideas which can be easily understood.

-concept, there is a meaning which is sent to the person and has been understood. the images need to be clear and simple enough for the viewer.

-visual syntax, is a clear meaning from the visual content. we can control how people interpret the image

-visual semantics, culture and social understanding of the image. for example some images are understand only in the uk.

-semiotics, are the signs and symbols the individual sees to understand the image being viewed.

-visual synecdoche, is explained as seeing something such as the statue of liberty we instantly think of New York. which is like linking an object to another object, for example material design you can which is associated with web design.

-work the metaphor, everything has something about it for example its appearance but rather then thinking about what it looks like working on putting a meaning changes the way we look at it.

learned a lot for a first lecture.