Online journal entry #5: prepared speech and illustrations for presentation

Hello, and I'm here today to talk to you about my proposed stop motion music video, Patchwork of Our Love. I will be making this video for my Sculpture class project. 

I will make a music video for my parent's 50th wedding anniversary.  I will commission Anna van Riel to make an original song- she and I will collaborate on the lyrics and she will write and perform the music.  I will make 2 sets of puppets: my parents in the '70s and my parents in their 70s.  I want to show how they are the center of the family and how it grows over time from the beginning to today.  The theme will be the love they have for us and our celebration of them as the foundation of our family.

I have experimented with 2D and 3D concept art. I started with drawings of the style of puppet I wanted to make, rough technical drawings of the puppets proportions to use to make wireframe armatures, sculpting 3D concept art of faces, and experimenting with types of painting and accessory making.  As a result of my experiments, I have decided to use clay to make the hands and feet but to use 3D digital modelling techniques so I can print "replacement heads" and use them to lip sync to the song. 

One of the ways that I will show time passing is through changing the couches that the puppets sit on.  I made a rough pattern out of cardboard and then made and tested the pattern for a cloth cover.  This is the 1970s couch that the young Mom and Dad will sit on as the quilt is being made.  Behind the couches, the wall will fill with family photos.  

There are two creative industry pathways that interest me: Puppet Maker and Director.  These are the puppets for Rilakkuma nd Kaoru, a stop-motion television series on Netflix.  Mackinnon and Saunders made these puppets and also worked on Tim Burton's Corpse Bride and Bob the Builder.  They hire teams with lots of different skills.  I already have experience with costume design and construction but I think that I need more experience making armatures and using foam rubber to make puppet bodies.  

I am taking a remote class put on by Aardman Animation.  Two of their directors, Mark Simon Hewis and Will Becher, taught lessons about how director's focus on the emotion of each shot and let the animators work out how they'll animate the puppets to get that across to the audience.  They also emphasised how close up reaction shots really power a film because showing how the characters are thinking about events is more important to the audience connecting with them than the events themselves.

The look of my film will be influenced by the stop motion film Anomalilsa and music video Odd Socks.   Anomalisa uses puppets with natural-looking clothes and proportions and movements .I also love the warm colours of this poster.  Odd Socks layers photographs of the musicians moving and creates stop motion out of that.  I will use this style to make the photos of the family move on the wall.  

 Thank you for your attention today.  Does anyone have any questions?

Online journal entry #4: Contemporary Practices

Grand Pocket Orchestra "Odd Socks"

://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkynNTUEzJU

This music video was made by taking photos of each move and then cutting them out and sto motion animating them.  I want to do a variation of this where I show my family growing up over the years by going from a photo of them in each year.  With digital cameras, you can take dozens of shots until you get the right picture and I noticed when I was looking through photos for this project that I had multiple runs like this.  I will put them in frames on the walls and play with this other form of stop motion.  

Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQkHA3fHk_0  has realistic-looking puppets in ordinary situations.  My puppets, sets, and movements won't be this subtle but I do want to show small moments in time for my characters, for the space to be very intimate, and for there to be connection between them and the family moments that go by on the wall.  

I love the warm tones and soft light in this movie poster.  I hate cold light!  

Online journal entry #3: Creative Industry Pathways

 Stop motion puppet making really appeals to me.  I don't know about making the wire armatures, though.  I have a background in ceramic figurative sculpture, puppetry, and costume/mascot making so this takes all of my skills and bundles them together. The wire armatures make me nervous because what if they're not strong enough and they break during filming?  What if I over-strengthen them and they're too stiff to be operated properly?  Its a worry.  

https://www.mackinnonandsaunders.com/  They made Rilakkuma and Kaoru! I love this show, I love these puppets.  

M&S don't hire a lot of outside character designers.  They say they already have them or the design comes from the client.  Instead, they bring in teams of people with special skills like  sculpting, mould making, fine metalwork/jewellery making, foam latex/silicone casting, costume design/needlework and general model making.

I already have costume design/making skills, some mould making and silicone casting but I've never tried foam latex. If I wanted to be really competitive, I should find out more about this part of the process.  

Director/story writer.  Mark Simon Hewis and Will Becher of Aardman Animation have been really interesting to learn from in the Aardman Academy classes. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mshewis/?originalSubdomain=uk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-fOdYNpqd0

  After we talked about the power of reaction shots/close ups, I watched Will Becher's Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon and better understood what he was talking about.  I've never thought about myself as a director, just a project manager.  But I HAVE been directing this whole time because I make decisions about tone, mood, story, editing, everything.  Mark Simon Hewis talked to us about how important emotion is to the story and the director is responsible for communicating this to the animators who are responsible for making the little movement decisions.  

 

3D modelling is how replacement heads get made by companies like Laika.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhTVkxi_36I  They print out hundreds of heads per character per production. I need lots more practice doing 3D modelling because I can really see the value of being able to 3D print multiples.  Otherwise, its lots and lots of casting and molding which is messy.  The molds break down in time, anyway, whereas a good diigtal model lasts and can be scaled up and down with a few clicks of the mouse and reprinted.   

Online journal entry #2: Experimental Artworks

 

Experimental drawing of a character for my video, side and front views.

I drew out Mom and Dad puppets next to each other to get sizing for wire armatures.

I made a clay version of my Dad 1972 character to figure out how the front and sides would work out before trying 3D digital sculpture.  

This is a painted version of the clay experiment to trial colour and accessories. A trial of the Mom 1972 puppet's wire armature and clay hands and legs is seated to his left. I will use clay for any skin you can see and use digital sculpture only for the replacement heads.  This way, I can 3D print multiples and they'll all be identical.

There will be a series of sofas from different eras which will help show that time is passing.  Behind the sofas and puppets, family pictures will fill the wall until its completely covered.

The 1970s sofa.  I tested a pattern, sewed it, and put some stuffing over the cardboard frame so it looked nice and cushy.  I will make the other sofas using these patterns.  I really like this wool plaid- its what I used to cover my own couch at home!

Online journal entry #1: Introduction of a Stop-Motion music video Concept/Idea

Idea:   For my project, I want to make music video for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary.  I will commission Anna van Riel to make an original song.  I know that its going to be a big job so I think that if I do half the video with stop motion puppets and the other half with photos of the family, like on a gallery wall, it'll be a manageable amount of work.  I'll ask Alectricitynz (Al Reid) to do any final fix up of the music so it sounds ok.  

I'm going to make 2 sets of puppets: Mom and Dad in the '70s and Mom and Dad in their 70s (age).  Besides the pictures of the family, I'd like to have them moving through time through the use of a patchwork quilt that Mom 1972 makes and Dad 1972 and 2022 sleeps under.  

Anna and I have collaborated in the past so I know that if I can string together some lyrics and images, she will be able to make them fit into a song format, create a good chorus, and of course, write and beautiful music.  Dad used to play the guitar and I'll ask her if she can write and perform that instrument.