Graffiti

Okay so, I had a lecture about Graffiti and there were a lot of interesting points raised about whether Graffiti is an art form and such and the numerous Graffiti artists who are trying to send out a different message to change how Graffiti is perceived by the public.

The way we see Graffiti has changed so much that it has actually become a point of interest even within tourism and advertising. You've probably seen a few adverts on the TV that use Graffiti such as the Vauxhall Corsa ad (If you haven't seen it you can watch the ad here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPWbnuNXqD0) but I wanted to find something a little more different and I found this.



Because this advert is for a medical firm and about living a more healthy life, to use something like Graffiti to represent that seems a little risky but I think it worked beautifully. It really brings together that sense of doing what you do best and changing it into something good and it really does show a different side to how graffiti can be used.

Moving onto some of the work processes that some artists go through to create their work. This artist was mentioned during the lecture but I just wanted to highlight his extraodinary way of creating Graffiti which is through cleaning surfaces. Paul Curtis otherwise known as "Moose" creates his pieces in a reverse graffiti method which is basically by cleaning dirt and grime from surfaces to create images. This obviously shows a more environmental approach to graffiti. Here is a very interesting video showing just how he does it, why and the impact it has on the general public about how dirty our world really is.



How does this relate to my course? Well, even in the graffiti world there is game related works. I had a little search around and picked out some favourites I'll talk you through.

As I mentioned previously, graffiti can work or be seen as an advert for example this GTA graffiti work on this wall below. The placement of this almost gives the illusion of a billboard and has the same effects because it's in the view of the public eye.

 

Another clever placement of graffiti I found was this piece of the retro Mario next to the green pipe. It's a more fun approach as a pose to the GTA one but it still demonstrates the effects of placement. Gotta admit though, this one is so smart!

Graffiti can be found in many games but some games incrporate graffiti in a very smart way for example, a recent game i've played called Alice Madness Returns uses graffiti to gives the player hints and directions to items and even characters. Spicy Horse which is the name of the one of the game developers along side EA games also appears as a piece of graffiti. This leads back to that sense of placement and advertising I've mentioned previously. It seems that there's room to advertise even in the gaming world.  

Graffiti Lecture Notes

Little and Large

This is the finished piece, enjoy!




I'm over the moon with my animation and i'm proud to call it my first~ There are a few mistakes here and there but I think I did a good job at hiding them by using the camera angles.

Motion Path Fail

Not sure what went wrong here because I followed the tutorial given out to me but the motion path won't attach itself and comes up with an error message every time I tired to do it.

Bath Timeee

This is a lovely short animation made by Carlos Fernandez Puertolas who is a well known animator who works for Dreamworks.



This is a beautifully animated piece. I'm really impressed with the character design and movement, especially that of the dog. I really like his reactions and the sliding along the floor.

The expressions on the characters are really well done too. The face the guy pulls at the end, as well as funny, really gives it a sense of closure especially since he gets his way in the end.

A Stop Motion Favourite

I actually came across this stop motion while I was still studying at Sixth Form but since this is an animation brief, I thought I'd share it with everyone. Hope you like it just as much as I did.



The video is actually a music video made for the song 'Her Morning Elegance' which was written and produced by a man called Oren Lavie. He is also the director of this mv. 

From looking at the website which you can find links to in the video description, all 2096 photos used to create this video are available for print as a stand alone piece of art.

I really love this stop motion because as well as telling a beautiful story, I really like the use of clothes and everyday items to create such an amazing piece of animation.

Editing experience

I was given the job of editing for our second film. Finn did the rough edit and I basically worked on top of that. We originally wanted to put a voice over on it because Finn filmed things in response to the lines of the poem while he was down in Didcot. I booked the recording studio out on Monday and Robyn and Jess experimented with different voices and reading at different paces but they didn't feel a connection. Because of this, we didn't feel that the voice over would work so we all agreed to put text in instead.

When I started putting the text in, I moved a few clips around and dropped the text in changing the font to Goudy Old Style and moving them around a bit so the audience's eyes will explore the screen rather than look in one spot. I also tried to position them in appropriate places so they were legible an also not taking anything away from the footage. 

When it came to the personal tutorals, I was introduced to this...

The outer box indicates part of the image that will be wrapped around the edge of the tv screen and the inner box indicates the screen itself so in essence, everything inside of these boxes is considered 'title safe'. A lot of the text I had put in were way out of these boundaries therefore risk the possibility of appearing off screen so I went back and moved everything on the inside so I can be sure it will be visible. 

Adding text to footage also changes the meaning of the it and some lines of the poem didn't really fit with the footage I had originally put them with, so I did a re-edit and moved a lot of the footage around. I found it quite difficult to match the footage with the words because the footage taken is pretty limited and certain clips were quite short so there's a sequence at the beginning that almost seems rushed. But I did my best with what I had.

Editing to Music

Editing to music, as well as being done in film and games is commonly used in fan made videos. This is an example of one done by hamps19 for Assassin's creed to the song Beautiful Lies by B Complex.

When editing to the music, this person has really payed attention the tempo changes and has added some great effects on top of that to help bring the clips to life in relation the music. The thing I like the most about it has to be the attention to music tempo though, I also like the use of switching between the worlds as well as slowing clips down because it really adds to it in a visual aspect.

During my personal tutorial, It was pointed out to me that the footage and the music were quite detached because of the edit I had done, so when it came to the re-edit, I took this into consideration and tried to get the music to sync with the appearance of the next clip and the titles that come on screen.

Sherlock Holmes

This trailer is one of the most recent trailers I've seen that really stands out for me. I think it's really nicely cut and the footage especially the high speed stuff looks really impressive. I know there's a lot of speculation regarding the use of high speed footage but I think it's used well in this movie. It really emphasises the reality of the situation in one of the movies best action sequences. This is something that might have been a great effect if we filmed our Norse mythology piece because there's a war scene in the story.

Back to the editing, I think it's been done in such a way that the story is well presented within such a short amount of time which of course is ideal for tv ads in between programs and such. Near the beginning there's a few clips that fade to black. I think this really helps build anticipation leaving the audience wanting to know what happens next which is ideal for the beginning of an opening, title sequence or trailer.