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Overview of animation draft September 2021

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Overview of animation draft September 2021

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Mary’s story is a compilation of single image narrative marker drawings by women and men coffee farmers at a workshop on gender issues in coffee sector in Gumutindo Fair Trade coffee cooperative in Eastern Uganda.

The community narrative of Mary’s story is very important for gender advocacy in coffee sector. Gender inequalities in coffee farming households, including Fair Trade cooperatives, in Uganda, and in East Africa more widely, has been a key focus of my consultancy work. The overall narrative is therefore grounded in very common patterns of gender inequality throughout the East Africa region. These particular community drawings were selected because these are some of the most expressive single image narratives that have been produced in participatory workshops I have facilitated. The drawings are separate one-image narratives that are expressive in themselves – the most expressive being ones by a woman called Mary. I also have video footage and and photographs ofthe workshop – including role plays – workshop and Mbale context. Some of this material I used as the basis for my own drawings. Including Mary’s head that I drew in pencil from a photograph, then and then edited in SilverFX.

The narrative structure of the animation is constructed by me bringing together the selected drawings in the context of other video about women as ‘the Mother of the Nation’, and the backbone of African agriculture. But interventions, including organic production, tends to mostly target and reach men, and increase women’s workload without giving them more control over the income because they do not onw the land. I sequenced selected drawings as a constructed line animation narrative in TVPaint: 1) Bride kidnap 2) Property inequality 3) Nagging children and lazy husband 4) Husband goes drinking with girlfriend 5) Mary is left working in the fields 6) Mary gets a cow 7) Mary is left looking after the cow and shop while the husband still goes out with second wife. Then looped and reversed some clips to indicate a repetitive cycle whereby Mary’s own actions make very little difference to her husband’s behaviour.

The line animations are placed in a contextualising ‘reality wrapper’ of photos and my own sketches/drawings from photos including possible added animation of 8) Mary has fantasies of being a butcher with a sharp knife to take out her anger???. Another possibility would be to add/substitute video footage of the performers, particularly a section showing alternatives with men sweeping and helping women.

The linking narrative thread is a music soundtrack of one of the songs about gender inequality in the household written and performed by workshop participants in local Gisu language. I do not have an English translation but similarity to Swahili words enabled me to match roughly the meaning to some of the images so that they make sense to a local audience. I made effort to match the general rhythm of the animation to the rhythm of the music for global audiences. This ends a bit abruptly and I need to make a final credit sequence, but I was having some issues with file size to upload.

A further linking thread was an overlay of a ‘coffee’ brown gouache grain texture from my sketchbook with a round circle that could be a coffee mug, a sun or a narrative circle. Placed between the backgrounds and the black lines, this breaks the starkness of a white background and adds a more ‘artistic’ and organic feel, and also ties the photographs and animation together.

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Composite narrative 2: colour with audio

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Composite narrative 2: colour with audio

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Line experiment 1: Co-wife, iPad Rough animator

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Line experiment 1: Co-wife, iPad Rough animator

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Line experiment 2: The cow, TVPaint from cow walk cycle rotoscope

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Line experiment 2: The cow, TVPaint from cow walk cycle rotoscope

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Line experiment 3: Mother and child: constructed animation in TVPaint

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Line experiment 3: Mother and child: constructed animation in TVPaint

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'Africa' style 2:  fractured shapes drawn TVPaint walk cycle 

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'Africa' style 2:  fractured shapes drawn TVPaint walk cycle 

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'Africa' style 1: ink line, drawn TVPaint walk cycle

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'Africa' style 1: ink line, drawn TVPaint walk cycle

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Gender Balance song by Gumutindo workshop participants

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Gender Balance song by Gumutindo workshop participants

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Padlet purpose:
This padlet provides an easy entry overview 'map' to the animations, there evolution through different styles and contributory community sources and inspiration.

Contents

Portfolio animation with explanatory text, supporting sketchlog and overview blogpost (in red centre top, larger file size version)

Community sources, overview blog post, key drawings used and sketchlog (in blue bottom left)

Creative translation questions and visual narrative inspiration of options for animation format (in purple top right).

Sequence of stylist experiments (in orange bottom from left to right. Inspiration sources for each in black)

To open the padlet:
Click on the square with arrow on the top right below.

To open the 'paddles':
Click on the paddle title or image, whichever shows a ‘hand’.
If no hand shows, click on three dots top right and expand.

To close, check whether or not the ‘paddle’ has opened in a separate window on your browser. Closing that will bring you back to the overview padlet.

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Mary's Story: Key Creative Translation Questions

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Mary's Story: Key Creative Translation Questions

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The following were some interlinked parallel underlying questions relating to creative translation options - pointing to other potential animation interpretations for future experiments following post-COVID crisis feedback from colleagues and communities in East Africa.

Narrative options

Narrative balance between comedy and tragedy to counter 'not all that feminist whingeing again!' reaction and attract attention from different audiences 'outside the already converted'? Importance of dramatic timing?

Sequencing and contextualising of narrative? As a scene-based sequential narrative where different scene 'nuggets' are linked through visual dynamics as in 'Primal'? or each is pushed, or represented by page turns? or linked with elements moving between frames as in 'Merlot'?

Possibility of a composite of cycled looped vignettes like 'Tango' to show the burden of things? (technically easier using looped symbols in Adobe Animate than TVPaint). Ending with some sort of comic or tragic concluding clip eg from the Mother of the Nation You Tube video, or gestures from the singers of the song. To show the cyclical build up of pressures to boiling anger.

General style/message medium

Main mood: Mary's anger? vulnerability? strength? what mix of these?

How to visually present a balance of comedy for audience engagement to create contrast with tragedy/poignancy/seriousness of inequalities to promote action and advocacy?

Fidelity of line: should I replicate original flat black marker line or use a more artistic ink?

Use of colour? shape? fracture? follow more more globally recognised 'African' colour style'? 'professional' Disney/Hollywood style preferred in some comments on otherAfrican animations on You Tube?

Illusion of Life: realism/magic balance

How far should the animations observe global conventions of visual dynamics and perspective to show 'professionalism'? Which global visual conventions are necessary for clarity across audiences?

Which visual conventions can be ignored to follow the flat uniform viewpoint and perspective of the original drawings and give a more 'authentic/community look'? eg in use or non-use of perspective? use of upside-down faces? Which of these non-standard drawing features indicate different ways of seeing things? which are just due to the lack of time, practice and types of drawing materials at the workshop?

How can clarity, drama and 'magic' be enhanced by selective use of colour? camera moves and lighting?

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Merlot Marta Gennari and Giulia Martinelli

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Merlot Marta Gennari and Giulia Martinelli

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‘Merlot’ is a textless animation in comic format where the scenes are each set in separate pages that are pushed vertically or horizontally or turned, with some movement across and between each page.

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Merlot | A Short Film by Marta Gennari and Giulia Martinelli

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Portfolio animation 1: Supporting information blog post

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Portfolio animation 1: Supporting information blog post

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Overview assessment with full details of evolution of animation and technical skills to March 2021.

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Mary's Story

Alan Becker uses Adobe Animate for stick figures in his series of 'Animator' animated stories.

Coloured fractured shape style

Overview of animatic draft March 2021

Mary's story is a compilation of single image narrative marker drawings by women and men coffee farmers at a workshop on gender issues in coffee sector in Gumutindo Fair Trade coffee cooperative in Eastern Uganda. Gender inequalities in the coffee sector in Uganda and in East Africa has been a key focus of my consultancy work. The overall narrative is therefore grounded in very common patterns of inequality throughout the East Africa region on which advocacy is needed.

The community drawings were selected because these are some of the most expressive single image narratives that have been produced in participatory workshops I have facilitated. The drawings are separate one-image narratives that are expressive in themselves - the most expressive being ones by a woman called Mary. I also have video and photo footage of the workshop and Mbale context. Some of this material I used as the basis for my own drawings. Including Mary's head that I drew in pencil from a photograph, then and then edited in SilverFX.

The main part of the animation are 2D frame by frame animations in TVPaint of the line drawings from the community workshops that I sequenced as a constructed narrative: 1) Bride kidnap 2) Property inequality 3) Nagging children and lazy husband 4) Husband goes drinking with girlfriend 5) Mary is left working in the fields 6) Mary gets a cow 7) Mary is left looking after the cow and shop while the husband still goes out with second wife. These are placed in a contextualising 'reality wrapper' of photos and my own sketches/drawings from photos including possible added animation of 8) Mary has fantasies of being a butcher with a sharp knife to take out her anger???. Another possibility would be to add/substitute video footage of the performers, particularly a section showing alternatives with men sweeping and helping women.

The music soundtrack is one of the songs about gender inequality in the household written and performed by workshop participants in local Gisu language. I do not have an English translation but the Swahili words used enabled me to match roughly the meaning to some of the images.

Mary's Story: Key Translation Questions
General style/message medium

Anger? vulnerability? strength? comedy? tragedy?

Original flat black marker line or more artistic ink?

Use of colour? shape? fracture? follow more African cartoon style?

Narrative options

Sequencing of narrative? As a scene-based sequential narrative? As composite of cycled looped vignettes like 'Tango' to show the burden of things?

Importance of dramatic timing?

Balance between comedy and tragedy to counter 'not all that feminist whingeing again!' reaction and attract attention.

Best way of contextualising the narrative to show that this is the situation of very many women in East Africa. Does the use oSequencing of narrative? As composite of cycled looped vignettes like 'Tango' or more fluid sequential narrative? Book page turn over.

Dramatic timing is keyf photos/sketches work?

A possible second approach I thought of later that would be potentially more faithful to the original workshop process, mixing the images in a looped 'cycle of life' like 'Tango' by Zbigniew Rybczyński, ending with some sort of comic or tragic concluding clip. To show the cyclical build up of pressures to boiling anger.

Illusion of Life: realism/magic balance

How far should the animations observe conventions of visual dynamics? Which visual conventions are necessary for clarity across audiences?

How can clarity and drama be enhanced by selective use of colour? camera moves and lighting?

Which visual conventions can be ignored to follow the original drawings and give a more 'authentic/artistic look'? eg in use or non-use of perspective?

How far should the animations observe conventions of visual dynamics and vary perspective?

Should they follow the flat uniform viewpoint and perspective of the original drawings. eg in use or non-use of perspective.

Which conventions are necessary? Which can be ignored to give a more 'authentic look'?

Need to look at camera moves and lighting

Timing is key

Anger? vulerability? strength?

Original flat black marker line or more artistic ink?

Use of colour? shape? fracture

Creative translation assessment of animatic draft

The community narrative of Mary's story is very important for gender advocacy in coffee sector.

The drawings alone could work very well as simple line animations using Disney principles: squash and stretch, arcs, anticipation etc. Timing will be key. But I discovered that this was far from simple and this requires considerable animation skill and experience.

The current animatic is a 'maximalist version' where I combine different sources together to see how the narrative might work and possible timings with the sound track, and make an initial assessment of how different styles might work together and complement each other for some feedback before redoing the whole thing.

Technical quality: Need much more fluidity and better dramatic timing of the line animations to work with the music, incorporating squash and stretch, camera and viewpoint var. Squash and Stretch.

Fidelity to community voices and context? the focus on animating the original marker line drawings is the closest I can get to fidelity to the original drawn sources. The addition of gouache and crayon overlay on role play photos also maintains close fidelity to what was said in the workshop. But the narratives have sometimes been constructed by me based on contextual information because the workshop documentation had some gaps.

Visual magic and creativity? I find the general style and mix of animated and figurative media quite striking, but there are other contextual photographs and images I could adapt. I now need to think much more strategically about timing, colours and style to reflect the message and how to lighten things with more comedy in order to emphasise the serious points.

Narrative elements

I started by thinking about the overall narrative suggested by the community drawings. The community drawings were all single narrative images, most of which I had some documentation of. But they were images posted on a GALS Diamond infographic as ranked things women liked or did not like about being a woman. These gave a generalised quantified account of likes and dislikes for 10-12 women, but not an individual story in time.

My first idea was to construct a sequential narrative starting with different things women did not like in a sort of life cycle sequence, ending with possible dreams of owning a cow. After consideration I chose as the ending one of the ambiguous images of the small man with large woman leaving the woman with the alcohol shop and cow - still left behind by her husband and co-wife with even more responsibility of the cow and shop will she be able to control the money of still need to give it to him?

First thoughts: black and white line animation in Adobe Animate

My initial aim aim was to produce animations that were faithful to the expressive single image narratives in flat black marker, sequencing them in an 'invented but believable' way that could balance comedy and seriousness.

I was very much inspired by the expressiveness of simple stick figures of political graffiti artist STIK and the ironic humour and expressive lines of David Shrigley. In an early You Tube search for 'short textless line animation' I also discovered 'Nuggets' by Andreas Hykade that encapsulated most what I had in mind.

I planned to do the line animation in Adobe Animate, based on the short textless animations of Flash animators like Ross Bollinger and Alan Becker. But with a much more conceptually rich storyline provided by the original drawings.

At a slightly later stage I also came across the really powerful animation 'Since the Better' by Peter Millard with a very simple drawing that moves 'boiling' across the screen. The poignancy of this suggested a further option.

Andreas Hykade's apparently very simple animation about addiction tells the story through really simple but subtle character animation of the bird, then progressive changes in tempo and colour - just white-grey-black and shades of yellow for the 'ecstasy and bliss nugget'.

Peter Millard, Since the Better (2015) This animation starts with a blank screen that shimmers with slight variations in white/cream while a shrill cild/female/robot/alien? distorted voice sings a vaguely familiar melody. This creates tension and anticipation waiting for something to happen. Then the voice suddenly changes to the more familiar deep male opera voice as the childlike simple pencil drawing of a man's face moves slowly at the same speed and horizontal position across the screen. This drawing 'boils' with slight apparently random changes in the drawing as a whole - size and shape of the face circle, eyes and pupils and length of the line of the mouth. This creates a real poignancy of sameness, thinness of the line and blank expression in contrast to the heavy emotion of the 'we will overcome' vincera aria that also references the masculinity and tribalism of football matches as well as the operatic strength itself. The title 'since the better' then adds a layer of loss and past 'glory'.

Broadening out: 'African colour'?

Although my original ideas had been in line, with possibility of addition of flat colour, the visual methodology I work with also uses colour-coding to signify particular meanings like visions, 'green fruit plans' based on the four marker colours. Experienced members and staff of organisations in Rwenzoris in Western Uganda have also used attractive stylised colour figures in adapting their drawings for eg manuals on coffee techniques.

So before deciding on style, it was obviously relevant for translations to also look at colour possibilities.

In parallel to my line experiments I was proceeding with my on-line research on other animators. Particularly African animators and the different ways in which they had used line (flat, jittery, thin/thin), flat and shaded colour in bright or limited palettes. These all used text/dialogue and comments from You Tube viewers indicated they liked the ones that looked most like Hollywood rather than the more 'ethnic' ones. I also soon decided these were done by a large pool of skilled young animators, putting in a lot of 'RSI-time' with whom I could not compete. Although possibly I could develop contacts and collaborate with them as consultant. If on-line communications could be made to work.

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Cosmic Xo from Ghana. Very short really funny - if it did not have a lot of truth - satire on the education system. Very simple direct animation style that is very dynamic, expressive and effective with just outline and shapes with sound effects and dialogue.

A much more atmospheric sand art style.

Exploration of narrative format

In parallel to the research on style, I also looked for different approaches to narrative that were used by different animators that might be relevant to this particular story.

These

Tango by Zbigniew Rybczyński (1980) Superimposes cycles and repetitions to show how life repeats itself in different combinations. The end with a single person after all the crowd and noise is a poignant image of loneliness.

A is for Autism 1992 by Tim Webb. A is for Autism 1992 by Tim Webb. It assembles hundreds of drawings made by autistic young people together with narrative of fragments from interviews about their experiences and what the drawings mean. He then converts the drawings into frame by frame animation using crayons and other physical media together, combining some line animation with techniques like shimmering 'boil' and varying perspective and zoom. and , zooming in and out with a narrative thread from children themselves.

Story told by movement of contrasting layers across each other.

Sketchbook revisited: broadening out the style

I also worked on Sketchlog 2 Community Voices to think more deeply about the community drawings, and how they might be interpreted through different sequencing narratives compared to my initial story. I also experimented with sketching context photos in different pencil and ink and wash styles to whether and how I might integrate these sketches into the animation for 'contextual realism'.

iPad Experiments

After initial attempts with Adobe Animate I started to experiment with line animation on my iPad as a more RSI-friendly was to put time into learning animation basics. I started by experimenting with changes in facial expressions and effects of different types of line in different iPad software.
See: iPad software review
I then chose the co-wife drawing as one of my very first animation experiments on my iPad because it presented many of the line animation challenges I knew I would have to address. As I was aiming at line animation rather than textural painting effects, I experimented in Rough Animator because it has relatively good layering and time-line management features.

As I was new to animation at this stage, I learned a lot from this experiment about animation basics on the iPad, and it showed me how complex even simple animation can be in terms of balancing timing and movement, simple walk cycles walking forward etc. But the result was quite difficult to fine tune on the iPad to something I was happy with. Though I could have achieved more even in Rough Animator if I had known what I know now about animation principles.

TV Paint experiments: line animation

Between Assignment 3 and 4 I started to learn TVPaint from Howard Wimshurst's Animation Academy and Bloop animation on-line training because of its better drawing and timeline animation features compared to both iPad and Adobe Animate.

I used TVPaint and the Animation Academy course to develop skills in Disney animation principles and walk cycles. This meant I could become more ambitious in what I tried to achieve with the animation. In particular how to achieve some degree of humour with simple line animation.

Coloured ink cartoon style

Coloured fractured shape style

1: First wife marriage kidnap

Wife kidnap? Unclear. This is a picture of a (smaller with trousers) man taking a woman (largest with skirt) away? the skid marks under the woman indicate force. Who are the smaller figures bottom right? Children of the man from an earlier marriage? Or is this a scene of domestic violence, with the man forcing the woman back home?

2: Man owns the Land and Property

Unequal Property Rights: This image shows the woman on one side with nothing (the 4 lines are the numbers of other women participants in that situation - out of 12). She is divided from her husband by a straight vertical line. He has ownership of the coffee money, house, livestock and coffee land and trees.

Monochrome version with a coffee overlay instead of the coloured gouache texture, and try some drawings in coffee to see how this would look. I can also add blurs and effects to look more like actual drawings in coffee/sand art.

3: Nagging children and lazy husband

The Lazy Husband: This is a clear drawing - the children are tugging at the mother's clothing - her face is interestingly upside-down. The man (stick figure no dress) is sitting at the back at a table doing nothing/drinking implied by his raised arm as if with a glass at a table.

6 First wife slave, second wife pleasure

Polygamy: This is a clear drawing - the artist is the older less educated wife on the left doing all the work in the fields is working hard on the fields to feed the family. Her husband is walking gaily out with his second favourite wife - they are almost skipping and dancing as they go along the path. Five of the 12 women participants were in that position.

Animation 1 in Rough Animator on the iPad. My first attempt at animating the scene, imitating the original line drawing style. This is too stiff.

Animation 3 in Rough Animator. I swapped things around, making the working wife black and smaller as if she is just in the background. And animated and coloured the husband and the favourite wife, birds and background. That also serves to emphasise the repetitive working movement of the working wife.

Animation 2 in Rough Animator on the iPad. I altered the animation itself and coloured the woman red to focus on her working.

7 Woman gets a cow

Woman Walking with Cow 3 with Stop Start animation. TVPaint

Woman Walking with Cow 4 Red Eyes
TVPaint. Refining the Stop Start animation with the cow running off the screen.

8: Even more work overload

This is a picture of a (smaller with trousers) man taking a woman (largest with skirt) away? (they have linked hands) from another woman (mother? co-wife? friend? bar owner? pimp?) who has a table with drinking utensils and house (alcohol bar? marriage table?) while a cow (whose?) looks sideways on the scene. But the meaning is unlear: This could be a woman (larger) taking her husband away from the bar. Could be a man and his girlfriend leaving the bar. The women could be co-wives. Or the man could have bought his wife with the livestock bottom right - but normnally that would be given to the woman's father.

Animatic 1 November 2020: Monochrome version with a coffee overlay instead of the coloured gouache texture, and try some drawings in coffee to see how this would look. I can also add blurs and effects to look more like actual drawings in coffee/sand art.!!
Try marker on paper write-on drawings and Rybczynski Imagine push narrative strategies. Use head or photo for the repeated push.

Animatic 2 January 2021: Sound and addition of 'contextual narrative wrapper' as in N'gnedo Mukii and

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Overview of animatic draft March 2021 Mary's story is a compilation of single image narrative marker drawings by women and men coffee farmers at a workshop on gender issues in coffee sector in Gumutindo Fair Trade coffee cooperative in Eastern Uganda.

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Story told by movement of contrasting layers across each other.

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Apocalypse Now intro: The Doors, The End {1979}

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‘Malaria’ uses the format of a book where pages are turned by hand as if in a storybook.

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Malaria - curta metragem (short film) HD

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Cycles and repetitions

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Kwame. Kenyan animation of Beauty and the Beast style animation. Bright brilliant colours. Most of the animation is like 2D puppet cut-outs. Angular sex-stereotyped figures – big angular brawny men and small coy curvy women that flutter their eyelids and flirt. Uses light colour angular taper brush line art on dark skin shapes. A lot of camera moves. Comments from You Tube Kenya men and women viewers are very positive as authentically Kenyan.

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Raymond Okai animations of Anansi stories. Mostly a series of well composed, coloured stills with limited figure animation.

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Cosmic Xo from Ghana. Very short really funny – if it did not have a lot of truth – satire on the education system. Very simple direct animation style that is very dynamic, expressive and effective with just outline and shapes with sound effects and dialogue.

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Alan Becker uses Adobe Animate for stick figures in his series of ‘Animator’ animated stories.

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The Story of Animator vs. Animation - 10 Year Anniversary

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David Shrigley ‘How are you feeling?’:

ironic humour and expressive use of different simple line styles and shapes. Sometimes with very limited flat colours.

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"Worm and Fuzzy” (Pencilmation #72) | Plus All Episodes From 2016!

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Peter Millard, Since the Better (2015) starts with a blank screen that shimmers with slight variations in white/cream while a shrill cild/female/robot/alien? distorted voice sings a vaguely familiar melody. This creates tension and anticipation waiting for something to happen. Then the voice suddenly changes to the more familiar deep male opera voice as the childlike simple pencil drawing of a man’s face moves slowly at the same speed and horizontal position across the screen. This drawing ‘boils’ with slight apparently random changes in the drawing as a whole – size and shape of the face circle, eyes and pupils and length of the line of the mouth. This creates a real poignancy of sameness, thinness of the line and blank expression in contrast to the heavy emotion of the ‘we will overcome’ vincera aria that also references the masculinity and tribalism of football matches as well as the operatic strength itself. The title ‘since the better’ then adds a layer of loss and past ‘glory’.

Link to blog post of other animations by Peter Millard

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i always want to go back to since the better.  Pavarotti can help me.

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Link to blog post of other animations by Ng'endo Mukii

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This is a commissioned project made for the Danish Refugee Council and RMMS in Nairobi. This Migrant Business, shows the systems that exist that enable and exploit African migrants seeking better lives in the Middle East and Europe. The system creates a cyclic force that ensures that demand and supply will continue to to feed into each other, indefinitely. 

This is a lucrative trade with vulnerable people as its currency.

Awards
-Kalasha Film Awards, Kenya Best Animation Production November 2015
-Disruptor of the Year Award, Kenya October 2015
-Special Mention given by the Bellavite Pellegrini Foundation, Milan, Festival del Cinema Africano, d'Asia e America Latina April 2016
-Special Mention given to AFRICAN SHORT FILMS section, Milan, Festival del Cinema Africano, d'Asia e America Latina April 2016

Screenings
-Udada Film festival, Nairobi, October 2015
-Festival LTC Poland, Warsaw, Poland October 2015
-Out of Africa International Film festival, Nairobi, October 2015
-Underexposed Film Festival, South Carolina, USA November 2015
-Exterritory Project Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel December 2015
-38ème Festival du Court Métrage de Clermont-Ferrand, France February 2016
-Tricky Women Festival, Vienna, Austria March 2016
-Tampere Film Festival, Finland March 2016
-African, Asian and Latin America Film Festival of Milano, Italy April 2016
-Afrykamera African film Festival, Warsaw, Poland April 2016
-Zanzibar International Film Festival, July 2016
-Festival du Film Court d’aigues Vives, France, July 2016
-Indie Street Film Festival, NJ USA, July 2016
-Rwanda Film Festival, July 2016
-Maisha African Film Festival, Uganda, August 2016
-BlackStar Film Festival, Philadelphia USA, August 2016
-Raindance Film Festival, London, UK, September 2016
-Klick! Amsterdam Animation Festival, Holland, October 2016
-The International Short Film Festival of Cyprus, October 2016
-59th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film, Germany October 2016
-Africa In Motion Film Festival, Scotland October 2016
-Interfilm 32nd International Short Film Festival, Berlin, Germany 14 - 20 November 2016
-Africa international Film festival (AFRIFF) Lagos, Nigeria, November 2016

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Link to Blog Post with links to other animations of David Lynch

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Dumbland by David Lynch

Dans une maison très ordinaire habite un individu à la mine patibulaire. C'est un espèce de fou haineux et hystérique, aussi imbuvable avec son voisin qu'avec sa femme, ou envers un pauvre colporteur. L'absurde ponctue la vie de cette brute sans cervelle. On croise ainsi un voisin enculeur de canards, un tapis de gym rebelle et destructeur ou un démarcheur à domicile complètement gaga. C'est parti pour un petit trip au pays des tarés.

Filmographie :

# 1976 : Eraserhead (Gardenback titre du scénario original; Labyrinth man pour sa sortie en France)
# 1980 : Elephant Man (The Elephant Man)
# 1984 : Dune
# 1986 : Blue Velvet
# 1990 : Sailor et Lula (Wild at Heart)
# 1992 : Twin Peaks (Twin Peaks, Fire Walk with Me)
# 1997 : Lost Highway
# 1999 : Une histoire vraie (The Straight Story)
# 2001 : Mulholland Drive
# 2007 : Inland Empire

Playlist : http://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/xxfmw_no_sence_dumbland-david-lynch

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Dumbland by David LynchDans une maison très ordinaire habite un individu à la mine patibulaire. C'est un espèce de fou haineux et hystérique, aussi imbuvable avec son voisin qu'avec sa femme, ou envers un pauvre colporteur. L'absurde ponctue la vie de cette brute sans cervelle.

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Link to Blog Post with links to other animations from Andreas Hykade

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External Narrative: Mother of the Nation

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External Narrative: Mother of the Nation

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Community Voices: Gumutindo and Bukonzo Joint Coffee Cooperatives

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Community Voices: Gumutindo and Bukonzo Joint Coffee Cooperatives

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Uganda is one of the countries where I first started to develop the GAMEchange methodologies from 2002, building on other pictorial methodologies that already existed from organisations like Action Aid, and also local Ugandan artists working with development agencies. It is a country where I have a lot of photographs of community drawings and also contextual information from two coffee-producing regions:

Rwenzoris in Western Uganda with three organisations: Kabarole Research Centre, Bukonzo Joint Cooperative Union and local Community-Based Organisations like Mwana Mulho where I worked first between 2003-2016.

Mount Elgon in Eastern Uganda with a Fair Trade coffee Cooperative: Gumutindo from a gender empowerment process funded by TWIN UK 2012-2014. This process was linked with Bukonzo Joint from Rwenzoris.

In my selection of images to work with I focus on images that contain sufficient narrative to translate as animation. In Rwenzoris people - many of whom could read and write when they started - have developed a very distinctive colour style and symbolic language to produce very complex pictorial narratives of their experience as infographics and/or information manuals with sequential illustration. Animated symbols could form the basis for interesting interactive infographics. They could also be animated as narrative, but this would require a lot of time, much more documentation on precise meanings and should be done with participation of the people concerned to develop the narratives.

The Gumutindo drawings from discussions of 'What do you like and dislike about being a wo/man' were very expressive 'mini-narratives' as individual images rather than a pictorial language of juxtaposed symbols. As such I decided they would be more suitable for my experimental animation, looking at ways in which animation can clarify or alter the meaning of the drawings based on documentation I have available.

Link to 'Mother of the Nation': Mary's Story, Uganda

Gumutindo is a Fair Trade coffee cooperative on the slopes of Mount Elgon. As elswhere ion the coffee sector, although women perform about 70% of the work on coffee, men own the land and control the coffee money. Married women are generally not admitted as cooperative members - and so are not eligible for training and credit. GALS empowerment methodology was introduced as part of a gender strategy of TWIN-UK who were prominent buyers of Gumutindo coffee and did a lot of the training for them.

Men locked the store to stop the women getting hands on the coffee money. Domestic abuse and male alcoholism were very common (about 70% households). These were dominant features of the role plays at the workshop - see the three different couples in the photos.

The single-image vignettes by women about their situation shown in the slideshow below are some of the most expressive, poignant and raw that I have encountered. Each image manages to tell a story in itself that can be largely understood even by someone from outside. I have not acknowledged the artists because although they were happy that the drawings and photographs from the workshop would be used in manuals etc, that was on the understanding that they would not be identified in ways that might make them more vulnerable if they are known to express themselves in this way.

Equally interesting is the very graphic final drawing by a man of what he did not like about being a man - running after a woman with an erect penis - although he was too embarrassed to explain exactly whether this meant he did not like the fact of his arousal, the fact that women always ran away, or a particular woman was not interested in his advance. He later hid the drawing from view after another man made fun of it.

Community-based organisations in the Rwenzoris to the far West of Uganda: Kabarole Research Centre, Bukonzo Joint Cooperative Union and Mwana Mulho have been working with me to develop and adapting PALS since 2003. Women and men in the area have developed their own pictorial language and do very detailed diagram analysis for their own life planning. Organisations have also integrated the pictorial systems into their organisational planning and impact assessments.

Many of the drawings are very detailed in terms of information, colourful and organisational drawings, like those on the right, are often large and colour-coded with quantification in their adapted number system.

Many of the images are figures doing something that are quite easy to understand for people from the area who know the crops, trees etc. However because they have become a 'pictorial symbolic language', there is a tendency for drawings to become formulaic rather than innovative and expressive. Particularly in manuals produced by staff like those on the right where the more polished style is very noticeable. Though understandable as the aim of the manuals is clarity.

But as can be seen from the videos below, the drawings enable women and men to describe and analyse many issues in their lives, including sensitive topics about family relationships, adultery and land ownership that provide rich contextual information as background to the narratives from Gumutindo.

'Mother of the nation'??: Constructed Narrative

This video 'Investing in women farmers in Africa' is quite interesting for the somewhat patronising and complacent attitude towards women farmers - the compliant but neglected mothers who need 'support from their men' so that they can feed their families and feed and educate the nation. Issues of land rights and domestic abuse have been raised since the 1980s and still many countries have not changed. Even Fair Trade working with men's cooperatives and increasing men's incomes can simply increase alcoholism and enable men to marry more wives.

What is clear from the workshops in Gumutindo and Rwenzoris, and particularly videos from Bukonzo Joint, is that many women farmers resent many of the cultural practices and inequalities. Wanting rights to land, credit and profitable businesses. Many men after the workshops also support these changes - they have seen their mothers and sisters suffer.

But the video can provide an interesting counterpoint to the realities of women's lives as they depict them in their drawings and role plays. And documented changes since the workshops can also provide a pointer to future possibilities.

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Uganda is one of the countries where I first started to develop the GAMEchange methodologies from 2002, building on other pictorial methodologies that already existed from organisations like Action Aid, and also local Ugandan artists working with development agencies.

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Portfolio animation 1: Mary's Story, Uganda

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Portfolio animation 1: Mary's Story, Uganda

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Visual Storytelling: Animation Strategies padlet link

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Visual Storytelling: Animation Strategies padlet link

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Visual storytelling for particular audiences requires adaptation of insights from narrative theory, visual dynamics in art and design on each frame and editing techniques from video and film.

Animation is a form of visual storytelling involving sequential images played sequentially over time. Animation can take many forms in different media including eg line drawing, shapes, photography and video. Each of these can be manipulated in different ways to give varying degrees of 'objective' or 'imagined' representation of ideas.

Animation is inevitably a process of abstraction. It is not possible for the human eye and brain to follow infinite details in moving images. Even in video, motion blur between frames. a process and the malleability of time is its primary material. It is not the image, drawing or shape of each frame that matters in animation, rather it is the difference between the frames that generates the illusion of movement in animation.

It is the animator's ability to control and play with these intervals between frames that matters. It is important to think in terms of intervals, rates of change and flux, rather than thinking in terms of still images or compositions.

The ways in which these principles of animated movement are applied varies depending on the types and style of animation in question.

'Time is what prevents everything from being present all at once' The animator seeks to control at what pace, rhythm and direction things appear.
Henri Bergson.

"What happens between each frame is much more important than what exists on each frame"
Norman McLaren, Computer Animation

Visual Storytelling padlet

Animation Principles and Process padlet

Visual Dynamics padlet

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Visual storytelling for particular audiences requires adaptation of insights from narrative theory, visual dynamics in art and design on each frame and editing techniques from video and film. Animation is a form of visual storytelling involving sequential images played sequentially over time. Animation can take many forms in different media including eg line drawing, shapes, photography and video.