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Drawing styles for animation:

STIK
David Shrigley
Quentin Blake
Raymond Brigs
Tracey Emin

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Much of the power of animation comes from the drawing style and how far the type of line supports the emotional and narrative content.

Clean outlines lines for manipulation of rigged characters have become the norm. They are easier to read, clearly separating characters from backgrounds and are easier and faster to replicate as part of animation studio production lines.

Hand-drawn lines in natural media, or digital lines that attempt to replicate natural media, convey emotion and feeling.

to recall the reality within the drawing rather than thinking the drawings themselves are real Isao Takahata

There are many different line styles that can be used expressively: thick lines, thin lines, variable width lines. Choices to be made about the colour of lines and how far they affect colours of shapes. Different types of line can be used for different characters. Or can change with a character's emotions.

It is also possible to omit lines all together to give greater freedom with palettes. But this requires attention to tonal contrast and negative space so that figures continue to be readable against backgrounds.

The artists and illustrators below present a range of graphic styles with which I would like to experiment in my animation on the iPad. Many of them have also worked with textless, or near textless narrative, and their work as a whole is discussed in more detail as I develop my own animations in Part 4. The full posts are accessed through the title links.

STIK

Stik is a British graffiti artist based in London known for painting large stick figures as street art, often with a very political message about social inequality, homelessness and gentrification of low-income areas..

What interests me is the way in which he manages to get a wide range of expressions and stories in his murals simply through varying the size and position of a few dots in a circle, together with rectagle body and length and angle of the stick legs.

For more details see:

Quentin Blake is a British illustrator who is particularly well-known for his illustrations of children's books. His quirky line drawings over whimsical watercolour wash have a childlike nostalgia and can make even dark themes seem lighter and humorous.

He has authored textless books like 'Clown' and some of his work has been animated.

For more details see his website:
https://www.quentinblake.com

Sara Fanelli is an Italian British artist and illustrator, best known for her children's picture books

She combines drawing and painting with cutouts and collage to create humorous expressive images. Although she uses text in different expressive handwritten styles, her visual approach could be adapted for animation without text.

For more detail see her website:
http://www.sarafanelli.com

Yoshitomo Nara is a Japanese artist best known for his paintings of children and animals that appear simultaneously sweet and sinister, as seen in his work Do Not Disturb! (1996). He explores themes of isolation, rebellion, and spirituality through printmaking, painting, sculpture, ceramics, and installations.

For more images see:

Tracey Emin talks about her work for the 2010 exhibition 'Those Who Suffer'.

A somewhat bemused response from a somewhat bemused and worried male American tourist.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) was an African-American artist whose spray-painted gestural expressive marks and scribbled words, referenced everything from his Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage, to political issues, pop-culture icons, and Biblical verse. "If you wanna talk about influence, man, then you've got to realize that influence is not influence, it's simply someone's idea going through my new mind." At only 27, his troubles with fame and drug addiction led to his tragic death from a heroin overdose on August 12, 1988 in New York, NY.

See: http://www.artnet.com/artists/jean-michel-basquiat/

Illustrator Line Art

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Much of the power of animation comes from the drawing style and how far the type of line supports the emotional and narrative content. Clean outlines lines for manipulation of rigged characters have become the norm. They are easier to read, clearly separating characters from backgrounds and are easier and faster to replicate as part of animation studio production lines.

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My visual research is driven by professional opportunities and need to develop textless visuals on gender and empowerment for a global audience including people in communities as well as development agencies - particularly low bandwidth on-line animations. This research on wordless animation strategies informs and complements parallel but separate audience work for development agency training on interactive infographics around concepts of leadership and movement-building using Adobe Animate in 'Only One' for Visual Communications Advanced Practice (to be confirmed).

My main focus in Part 3 was gathering data on three levels in order to:

a) focus my questions around 'creative translations'

Based on analysis of community drawings and visuals I explored the ways in which women and men in different contexts use drawing to communicate ideas, and some of the limitations. I identified specific stories that I can develop into translations in my visual portfolio. I also looked at existing animations around development issues and common cultural design and animation styles in South Asia and Africa.

b) expand my visual repertoire

I researched possible animation 'translation styles and techniques' based on inspiration from other animators, particularly those working without text and with simple animation. I identified a number whose work I could feasibly draw on in my creative translations.

c) identify practical possibilities

I researched different types of iPad software I could use as part of an RSI-friendly workflow to achieve the animation approaches and styles that would be feasible for me as an independent animator and started to develop the required technical skills.

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TASK: Design a PDF or similar document of 1,200 - 1,500 words that gives a focused account of:
* summarises your data-gathering, the methods you used and its relevance to your research question
* presents the data you gathered
* documents your analysis and interpretation of your data
* reflects on the results in relation to your ongoing research and research question - are you going to change or modify your approach?
This document can bring together secondary sources through bibliographies, highlight key pieces of data you think are relevant, include additional diagrams that help make conceptual connections, and be a visual piece of work in its own right.

I started by reviewing Assignments 1 and 2 in the light of feedback from my tutor, new work opportunities and software iPad updates, and need to manage RSI now I have more pc work for my professional contracts. My final revisions compared with what was anticipated there can be seen in the annotations on the Research Flow Chart on Visual Research Process and Assignments.

See also my notes bringing together questions from art criticism and translation theory that I use in this Assignment:
Thinking About Translating Community Voices.
I also updated the blog theme to WordPress 2020 to enable a more streamlined and attractive layout (still being refined).

My work on Assignment 3 is mainly practical analysing primary data from my professional work and/or linking to on-line videos, websites and other sources. Going forward, and particularly in Assignment 5, I will link back to and further develop my analysis with the theoretical and methodological frameworks from Assignment 2 and with full Harvard referencing.

SUMMARY

My visual research is driven by professional opportunities and need to develop textless visuals on gender and empowerment for a global audience including people in communities as well as development agencies - particularly low bandwidth on-line animations. This research on wordless animation strategies informs and complements parallel but separate audience work for development agency training on interactive infographics around concepts of leadership and movement-building using Adobe Animate in 'Only One' for Visual Communications Advanced Practice (to be confirmed).

My main focus in Part 3 was gathering data on three levels in order to:

a) focus my questions around 'creative translations'

Based on analysis of community drawings and visuals I explored the ways in which women and men in different contexts use drawing to communicate ideas, and some of the limitations. I identified specific stories that I can develop into translations in my visual portfolio. I also looked at existing animations around development issues and common cultural design and animation styles in South Asia and Africa.

b) expand my visual repertoire

I researched possible animation 'translation styles and techniques' based on inspiration from other animators, particularly those working without text and with simple animation. I identified a number whose work I could feasibly draw on in my creative translations.

c) identify practical possibilities

I researched different types of iPad software I could use as part of an RSI-friendly workflow to achieve the animation approaches and styles that would be feasible for me as an independent animator and started to develop the required technical skills.

For my visual work see:

Assignment 3.2 Visual Exploration: drawing and animation experiments

As the format for the project as a whole is on-line, this page and links therefrom a printed pdf.

Technical research : Data gathering 3

I then started to develop concrete proposals and production plans for 5-10 short animated 'creative translations' with feasible ideas on animation style, technique and appropriate software workflow that will be taken forward in Assignment 4:

For my visual work see:

Assignment 3.2 Visual Exploration: drawing and animation experiments

As the format for the project as a whole is on-line, this page and links therefrom a printed pdf.

1: What is the question?

ASSIGNMENT 2: SPECIFIC QUESTION
How can community visions and strategies for empowerment be ethically 'translated' into powerful visual communication for advocacy in a way that 'frees, transforms and multiplies rather than possesses, controls and defines'?

In particular:
- can this be done graphically without text through using simple lines and shapes?
- can textless narrative sequences as short comic strips or simple animation overcome some of the communicative limitations of single images
- can this be done using media accessible to most people working in communities?

My visual research is driven by opportunities to develop new forms of visual communication in the context of my professional life as a consultant in community empowerment methodologies for international development agencies. There are openings - and also a need - to produce visual resources for training and advocacy that link people in communities with government and private sector decision-makers on a more equal and also global basis. This means resources that do not rely on literacy or fluency in international languages. My research is also driven personal constraints in the form of RSI and health limitations on travel.

The underpinning theoretical framework I chose was that of translation theory, together with questions from communication theory and semiotics (See question on the left).

A key area of interest is in production of short textless animations that can be downloaded onto smartphones and tablets by people in communities as well as development workers, placed on social media and networks for dissemination without additional cost. In the course of Assignment 3 I decided to focus specifically on animation - leaving work on text and infographics to Advanced Practice audience work. In the course of my research I also concluded that it would be possible to do this using free or very cheap iPad software alone, and combining these into interactive pdfs. Instead of using more complex and very expensive pc software. That would also make my experiments more relevant to development workers who could replicate themselves some of my suggested techniques on their own tablets or smart phones. As well as making management of RSI more feasible, at least in the development and learning stages of animation.

The revised question then broke down into a number of specific questions for this stage of my research in Assignment 3 (see right).

ASSIGNMENT 3
SPECIFIC QUESTIONS

How do women and men in communities communicate concepts and experiences in their drawings?

What can I identify as common visual techniques and/or potential narratives for animation?

What challenges of textless communication do I need to address?

What simple drawing and/or animation techniques can be used to clarify visual communication without text?

How have illustrators and animators used line, shape and colour to communicate different messages?

What different styles have been used in different cultures?

How have they simplified and abstracted of facial expressions and figures?

How do they create humour? Shock?

What is the best workflow for me to produce short (60 second max) animations of selected community stories on an iPad?

What type of animation is feasible for me?

When should I draw with pen and paper?

What iPad software is most useful and at what stages, for which styles and purpose?

What might be the main limitations?

2 Data Gathering

In this Assignment the main aim of the data-gathering was to broaden my repertoire of:

1. community images - drawings and role play photos - in order to identify potential styles, communication strategies and narratives

2. animation styles and techniques from other animators, particularly those producing short textless animations

3. iPad techniques and software that could complement photos and sketches as part of my workflow.

In order to start to answer my research question and develop concrete translation plans for my visual portfolio. For overview see:

My investigation and analysis of all the data indicated below was ongoing. Narrative analysis was much more detailed and focused in relation to development of the translation sets identified for Assignment 4. Animation experiments were revisited and polished as short animated vignettes in Assignment 5.

Data Gathering 1a: Community Voices

I started my research on community voices to enable me to focus my questions around 'creative translations'. This meant looking through my thousands of images of community drawings, selecting series where I had enough background information and documentation of the drawings to ask and as far as possible to answer questions about:

How do women and men in communities communicate concepts and experiences in their drawings? How does this different depending on background, context and/or facilitation process?

What can I identify as common visual techniques and/or potential narrative strategies for animation that can be widely understood by different audiences?

What challenges of textless communication do I need to address? How can this be done?

I also wanted a variety of drawing styles, and different development themes important for my current work in order to develop a number of different story lines that might be of sufficient interest to colleagues to get feedback.

Based on my review I selected and analysed five different sets of visual data. I pasted the images I had into my Sketchbook 2: Community Voices and started my analysis and visual experimentation - copying freehand some of the drawings to get a feel for how the lines were made, and the details that were there. But I did not spend long on that at this stage as it became mechanical. A lot more detailed analysis will be done in Assignment 4, focusing on the specific story lines and translations. See detailed presentation of the data and analysis in the linked posts of:

Semiotic and Visual Analysis

The community datasets were very variable, between facilitation processes and individuals rather than contexts as a whole. Particularly in Pakistan and India where most drawings were by people at one-off workshops there were big differences in education level, many different drawing styles can be found on one group drawing. This variation was less in Africa, but there were still big variations depending on education and also how long people had been using pictorial methodologies.

Some images, particularly from tribal women in India who had never held a pen before, were very stylistically expressive - reminiscent of Basquiat or Tracey Emin, though the exact meaning needed verbal explanation.

Some images, particularly from women Gumutindo coffee farmers in Uganda were mini-narratives that could be pretty much understood even by outsiders.

Some organisations had over time developed their own internal semiotic language, resulting in very complex systems for pictorial recording and analysis, innovating with the diagram guidelines provided by myself. Anyone used to working with the organisation would be able to read these diagrams with little additional explanation.

Gender, poverty level and emotional state were widely communicated through abstracted figures differentiated by use of clothing, hairstyle, facial expression etc., even where drawings were spontaneous and done with little guidance.

Signs like arrows, dream bubbles, skid marks, tears and so on were also widely used and understood.

Concepts like empowerment, gender-based violence and leadership could be visually disaggregated into component meanings and gradations of power, abuse etc. that could be understood once the topic of the exercise was known.

That said, some of the images were very formulaic, eg with 'sad crying figures' meaning anything from loneliness to lack of identity and freedom. Such limitations would need to be overcome through developing symbolic juxtaposition of elements as single-image or sequential narratives.

Data gathering 1b: Visuals from development agencies and cultural context

I also looked at existing animations around development issues and common cultural design and animation styles. This was done through Google and You Tube searches and based on resources I have been looking out for in the course of my work before and since starting the course. See presentation and analysis of the data in the linked posts:

Analysis

In contrast to the community drawings the visuals from development agencies, and also graphic artists in Pakistan and Africa tended to be rather formulaic following a global digital style, with some variation in colour, features etc. The most significant shortcomings from a development perspective is the widespread reliance on a lot of written text or voice over narrative in English or main national language. Although these were obviously very professional, using comedy as well as serious messages, they were not appropriate animation models for my own work.

Some of the Indian animation was more 'artistic' with evocative black and white styles that were more relevant for my research, but still very reliant on English.

I continued to look for textless examples of illustration and animation in unconventional style - my aim being to broaden the repertoire. My anecdotal experience is that people in communities - like everyone else - rapidly become accustomed to stylistic conventions and tend not to look at many of the visuals produced by professional artists working with development agencies. Sources of innovative visual and narrative inspiration will in future be included in my category of Data Gathering 2.

Data gathering 2: Inspiration:
Innovative simple textless animation and/or visual style

In Assignment 3 my animation research was just starting with:

May aim in Assignment 3 was to significantly expand my visual repertoire of innovative inspiration for simple textless animation and/or visual style that I could feasibly adapt in my own short animations on the iPad. I used a combination of:

further investigation of illustrators and animators whose work I had looked at in earlier OCA courses

Google and You Tube searches on textless animation, political animation, 2D animation, flipbooks etc.

consultation of the available on-line sections of the OCA Moving Image 1 : animation module, further following up on links from there.

From this research I identified a wide range of possible approaches by animators whose work I myself find very effective in different ways, many working without words and in simple enough styles for me to simplify further on the iPad (see some key examples on the right). I thought my focus would be mainly in the form of traditional cel animation, building on experience of flipbooks. Though I might also experiment with some simple cut-out collage animation and lego puppet animation in the iPad software Toontastic. 2D vector animation in eg Adobe Animate would be left until a much later date.

Within 2D Frame by Frame animation styles I found many different styles and approaches that I would like to analyse in more detail and adapt in some way. I was particularly interested in exploring the key elements of animation identified in OCA Moving Image 1 : Animation module and the examples on the right:

'Boil' strategies that create the illusion of constant movement across all or parts of the image

Cycles, loops and layers

Different frame rates

Attention to eye trace

The use of audio and sound effects and its relation to the visual narrative is also important.

In Assignment 5 this was brought together with further research in Assignment 4 as one page with padlet:

Monochrome styles

Painterly/drawn colour styles

Data gathering 3:
Technical research

The third element of my data gathering was to investigate different types of iPad software, the range of techniques and styles which other animators have used them. In particular, which software techniques would be most useful to adapt the animation styles I want to use in my translations. And how they might be combined in workflows adapted to different animation requirements.

A potentially effective initial iPad workflow I identified was:

Toontastic as a playful lego-puppet story-telling ap with very simple colours and character animation to experiment with simplification of the narrative, character and scenes with built-in mood music and possibility to alter order and number of scenes. Whether it is possible to create comic child-like animations just using this remains to be seen.

Procreate to create very artistic atmospheric drawn and/or painted short scenes, including photo and video import. Export to either:

Flipaclip to create longer sequences with multiple layering and audio tracks. Flipaclip could also be used alone for the whole process where very artistic effects are not required.

Rough animator to create longer sequences with complex loops and cycles with single audio track. Will export to After Effects.

But I found the professional software on a pc with bigger screen and much better timeline automation features much more user and RSI-friendly for my work. I was already familiar with Adobe Animate, used for some of the diagram animations on this blog. But after looking through tutorials and reviews on You Tube, I decided on:

TVPaint because of its art-style drawing and painting features as well as professional timeline management, storyboarding etc.

Adobe Animate for vector animation, symbols and small file size, tweening and interactivity (see Adobe Animate software overview and styles)

Adobe Premiere for final compositing and sound effects

Other software to be further explored in future:

Adobe After Effects for puppet animation of eg Illustrator characters, video stabilisation and robust effects compositing

ToonBoom studio for easier smoother cartoon-style animation?

Blender for 3D?

Key things to look for when choosing animation software:

Drawing tools vector drawing tools for creating motion and scaling and/or pixel-based tools for more artistic effects.

Symbols or re-usable elements

Tweening or smoothing/interpolation of animation between drawn key-frames

Onion-skinning: viewing of previous and following drawn frames to facilitate accurate drawing of current frames

Layers to be able to create scenes. Including image import so that backgrounds and other features can be created from photographs, artwork or imported images from other drawing and painting aps.

Timeline features: control over frame speed and duration, easy addition and deletion of frames.

Audio features to import music, narration and sound effects

Text features to add titles, captions and additional text overlays.

Overview of free and professional software: MohoAnime Studio (free); Synfig (free) ToonBoom Harmony (professional used by Disney); Opentoonz (free Open Source used by Ghibli for Princess Mononoke) Cel Action (free no drawing tools); pencil 2D (minimalist traditional FbF); Tupi Pen Source tweening; Flipbook imports drawings from a scanner; Sprinter Pro to import and animate bones; Stop Motion Studio for Stop Motion.

Having identified potential workflow I did some preliminary experimentation on my iPad based on drawings from Uganda, DRCongo, India and Pakistan.

I then started to develop concrete proposals and production plans for 5-10 short animated 'creative translations' with feasible ideas on animation style, technique and appropriate software workflow that were taken forward in Assignment 4:

Reflection

Notes on how I think my work meets the assessment criteria:

creativity: the new plans for more but shorter animated iPad 'translations' opens up much more possibility for developing a broad range of creative responses and experimentation that will then be carried forward to the final interactive on-line experience.

research and idea development: contextualised semiotic analysis and visual comparison of five different community data sets, exploration of the approaches and techniques of early and contemporary animators to broaden the range of visual and narrative inspiration, together with fpcused experimentation with different visual translation possibilities in the Sketchlogs and digital iPad work.

visual and technical skills: new iPad drawing and animation technical skills, and further development of drawing/sketching/concept drawing skills and addressing a weakness in narrative and storytelling skills.

context: theoretical frameworks and researching illustrators and animators and work of other designers, illustrators and animators in development agencies, Africa and Asia as well as Western traditions.

Reworking in subsequent assignments from feedback (to be done)

Links to Assignment 3 Data-gathering outcomes

Community Voices : data-gathering 1a

I selected four sets of visuals from my many potential primary datasets:

Innovative animation inspiration: data-gathering 2

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Assignment 3.1: Gathering Data: Community Voices and Animation Approaches

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TASK: Design a PDF or similar document of 1,200 - 1,500 words that gives a focused account of:* summarises your data-gathering, the methods you used and its relevance to your research question* presents the data you gathered* documents your analysis and interpretation of your data* reflects on the results in relation to your ongoing research and research question - are you going to change or modify your approach?

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Catherine Anyango Grunewald evocative physical media on social and political issues. UK.

Terry Gilliam political/satirical collage stop motion with some dialogue, but mostly comic sound effects. UK.

Yoni Goodman Israeli documentary animation combining digital 2D, rotoscoping and video. Israel.

Jonathon Hodgson US animator using digital FbF drawn animation and rotoscoping, some without words.

Andreas Hykade evocative minimalist vector animation. Germany.

William Kentridge charcoal stop motion animation on political issues. South Africa.

Ryan Larkin hand drawn animation, generally in watercolour, including social issues like homelessness. Canada.

David Lynch minimalist line animation on satirical political issues. Sometimes with dialogue, but also with sound effects. US.

Gottfried Mentor focus on narrative and tragi-comedy. 3D CGI without dialogue, using animal allegories to tell social stories. Germany.

Peter Millard hand drawn animation, sometimes minimalist, sometimes bright colour. UK.

Ng'endo Mukii political animation in multiple media: drawing, paionting, rotoscoping, video. Kenya.

Yuri Norstein evocative puppet stop motion. Russian.

Zbigniew Rybczynski video using different narrative approaches. Polish.

Genndy Tartakovsky Digital 2D animation with very bold action narratives and use of colour, shape and action animation. US/Russian.

Gianluigi Toccafondo Handdrawn rotoscoping using oil and smeary effects, also incorporating collage. Suggestied rather than clear narrative. Italy.

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Catherine Anyango Grunewald evocative physical media on social and political issues. UK. Terry Gilliam political/satirical collage stop motion with some dialogue, but mostly comic sound effects. UK. Yoni Goodman Israeli documentary animation combining digital 2D, rotoscoping and video. Israel. Jonathon Hodgson US animator using digital FbF drawn animation and rotoscoping, some without words.

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Animation in Hindi about the behefits of womem gettingva loan to buy a cow. Hanna Barbara productions.nwholecseries of Meena stories. Meena's oarehts are un debt and her father says she will havevto be taken outbif school. They gobtobthe jarket to get a loan from a shopkeeper. Meena notices thaf thecshopkeeoer has put the loan for 18 years and not 8 years - cheating her father outbif a lot of money. Hecsays he wants her to carrybon a5 school. Her teachers suggesr they get a loan and buy a cow. And everything ends happily. Meena gets a bike.

An8mation witg English text about eatly marriage,

Animatuon in English about benefits of wonen getting loans and tra8n'bg gor handicrafts.

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Animation in Hindi about the behefits of womem gettingva loan to buy a cow. Hanna Barbara productions.nwholecseries of Meena stories. Meena's oarehts are un debt and her father says she will havevt...

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pakistani_animated_films
Pakistani feminist animation and film

A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness is a 2015 documentary film directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy about honor killings in Pakistan.

Haroon: Burka Avenger

Other Pakistani animation styles and experiences

SharoomkiSketchbook: Flash animation

Flash 2D animation in a limited palette South Park style.

An example of a successful independent You Tube animator with over 323,000 subscribers and funded from commercial sponsorship and advertising.The credits at the end state that each 8-10 minute video takes 2 weeks of hard work to produce. Though this may be reduced with recent advances in Adobe lipsync software. Funded from advertising and corporate sponsorship.

Urdu cartoons on You Tube by SharoomkiSketchbook. I understand Urdu and can follow most of what is said. I took some time looking at these animations for insights into Pakistani male youth humour. A

The interest in these animations is mainly in the spoken text and amusing satirical storylines about everyday experience of life in Pakistan, particularly for young men students. But the animation is not accessible to non-urdu speaking audiences.

Apart from lip-syncing the dialogue, the animation itself is not very developed. The main visual interest is in the drawing of caricature characters with stereotypical appearance and attitudes. Together with stylised backdrops including blank rooms, countryside, train toilets etc.

A cartoon In Urdu by about the importance of having passion for one's work. Has a lot of different character styles and ways of abstracting the figure.

Train Journey. A humorous account of the experiences and annoyances of train travel from dubious fellow passengers, sounds of people clearing their throats and spitting, dangers of dropping a mobile phone through the toilet hole and accidentally lifting the curtain on the wrong family compartment and seeing things one shouldn't.

Biker Boiz. Asking mother for money to buy a motorbike like friends. Mother worried about accident. 'no keys needed' and lots of things missing.no problem.

University Hostel. Difference between laid back richer students and excited students from poorer families far away from the city who are naively generous but get laughed at and exploited. One floor serves as common washroom' and problems of group study with disturbance of mobile phones etc.

Cold/winter vibes Follow up by one of the dubious fellow travellers met on the train. About winter cold season, coughs and colds, lack of hygiene etiquette and heating appliances. Hot abd cold showers that cant be controlled. Need to pile about 10 layers if clothes. Handshakes with very cold hands.

SiBboy: 3D/CGI

Similar genre and humour. Simple 3D animation, maybe using Blender free 3D software? But less successful with only 218 subscribers at time of linking.

Load shedding - the issue of frequent power cuts in extreme heat and mosquitoes. Juxtaposed with music from advertisements about electric fans, strip lights and other appliances that look good in TV but useless if there is no power. When the light finally cones in again everyone just wants to go to sleep.

Flash Animation

Urdu cartoons on You Tube by SharoomkiSketchbook. I understand Urdu and can follow most of what is said. I took some time looking at these animations for insights into Pakistani male youth humour. A

The interest in these animations is mainly in the spoken text and amusing satirical storylines about everyday experience of life in Pakistan, particularly for young men students. But the animation is not accessible to non-urdu speaking audiences.

Apart from lip-syncing the dialogue, the animation itself is not very developed. The main visual interest is in the drawing of caricature characters with stereotypical appearance and attitudes. Together with stylised backdrops including blank rooms, countryside, train toilets etc.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pakistani_animated_films SharoomkiSketchbook: Flash animation Flash 2D animation in a limited palette South Park style. An example of a successful independent You Tube animator with over 323,000 subscribers and funded from commercial sponsorship and advertising.The credits at the end state that each 8-10 minute video takes 2 weeks of hard work to produce.

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!! Rough Notes. To be further developed and updated. Fast evolving industry.

Ng'endo Mukii

You Tube animation 2020

Main topics:

Cartoons for childrens' education

African heritage and history

Development issues

Features of You Tube animations 2020

Puppetlike stylised 2D animation. Seems to be done in Flash?

Some beautiful colourful, flat cut-out illustration, with characteristically African use of angular tapered line and geometric shapes and shading.

Very little realistic character movement apart, mostly stiff limb movements and head turns. Much of the animation is produced by camera zooming and panning on still illustrations, sometimes multicamera, that may have some minor looped movement like hair or breathing.

Some Strong gender stereotyped differentiation between women and men.

Heavily dependent on crudely lip-synced dialogue.

Key Sources

Africa Angles To Be Animation's Next Global Hotspot, Rob Salkowitz, Forbes Magazine, Jun 26, 2020
Why Africa's animation scene is booming Vivienne Nunis & Sarah Treanor BBC News, 14 October 2020 African Animation Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation_industry_in_South_Africa
William Kentridge

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Rough Notes. To be further developed and updated. Fast evolving industry. Ng'endo Mukii Cartoons for childrens' education African heritage and history Development issues Puppetlike stylised 2D animation. Seems to be done in Flash? Some beautiful colourful, flat cut-out illustration, with characteristically African use of angular tapered line and geometric shapes and shading.

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Animations from development agencies on empowerment and gender-based violence

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Animations from development agencies on empowerment and gender-based violence

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Women's empowerment

Animations

You Tube and Google searches on 'women's empowerment animations' and 'gender equality animations. Some of the You Tube viewer comments are also quite revealing - and shocking.

Amusing short textless animation for Social Europe about the inequalities in recognition of skills between women and men.

More artistic treatments for video competitions etc.

Violence Against Women

Training for development staff
https://beamexchange.org/market-systems/video/

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You Tube and Google searches on 'women's empowerment animations' and 'gender equality animations. Some of the You Tube viewer comments are also quite revealing - and shocking. More artistic treatments for video competitions etc. https://beamexchange.org/market-systems/video/

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In addition to revisiting work on Islamic calligraphy and Street Art from Book Design 1 (opens in new tab), I selected four sets of relevant visuals from Africa, Asia and development agencies from many potential primary datasets:

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Islamic Design Principles Colour in Islamic Cultures Islamic geometric design Islamic Geometric Design Using Adobe Illustrator Islamic calligraphy Islamic Modern Art Iranian Art Iranian Art: Geomet...

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I selected four sets of visuals from my many potential primary datasets:

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The community empowerment drawings from Pakistan are by women and men clients and staff participating in gender workshops for micro-finance programmes 2004 - 2005.

Many of the drawings are in the form of 'Diamond Tools' that I developed for identifying community criteria for assessing empowerment, 'happy families' and differences between women and men's poverty. The Diamond shape was chosen because if you just ask 'what does poverty mean here' people just say 'everyone is poor' or 'has no power'. In order to tease things out I started to ask 'what do the richest people look like?' 'what do the poorest people look like', the Diamond shape representing that one might think those are the fewest people, with most people in the middle. If it turns out most people are at the bottom, then that is a discussion point. For full discussion of the Diamond tool and its various uses see post on my professional blog: https://gamechangenetwork.org/gamechange-methodology/diagram-tools/diamonds The other drawing is a very early 'Road Journey' showing progress over time from bottom left to top right.

These drawings were done before I had developed a systematic process for participatory drawing where everyone has time to reflect and draw for themselves, and then everyone shares and contributes their ideas. The artists are unknown, and also there is limited documentation on the drawing process from Kashf where staff conducted the workshops without me.

Findings and analysis

The same themes recur on most diagrams from different places, and also by men as well as women:

Signs of empowerment and wealth are cars - sometimes driven by women or at least at women's disposal with a driver, mobile phones for women and men, love, affection and respect between husband and wife. In one case also flying in an aeroplane for women. Men also identified being able to educate their daughters (learning to use a video camera and computer) and being able to go out freely with their wives to cinema and elsewhere as being part of a happy family life.

Signs of disempowerment and poverty: violence by men and women (mother-in-law??), dirty unkempt hair and stress, too many unruly children, men's drug addiction, sickness and lack of medical care. Where these are quantified based on assessment of their frequency in the community these issues affect at least two thirds of the population/micro-finance clients.

There are a wide range of styles of figure drawing, even on the same diagrams and using the same media - markers, biro or pencil:

Some of the drawings have very expressive faces. Sometimes this is intentional - frowning, tears, smile. Other times this is from 'happy accident' where expressions are because of lack of drawing experience. But still relevant for my own adaptations either because they are so expressive or they make people laugh.

Type of clothes are important markers eg between rich and poor. But significantly women are rarely drawn with veils either by men or women, even where they were in reality wearing full burqa.

Selection of key drawings

What happened to my airplane?' story line ideas

In terms of storyline, the most poignant is the image of the woman lying dead in a cemetery with her children crying around her - so many women identified with that. Compared to the vision of flying in an aeroplane and the happy couple.

The animation could actually be quite simple. It could focus only on women, or more interestingly/accurately/less stereotypically include the visions and situation of men also expressed in Taraqee Foundation:

Scene 1 Visions: A foreground drawing of a woman with (probably unkempt hair) with a series of flashed up dream bubbles of aeroplanes and happy family etc. This could also include men's visions.

Scene 2 Reality: A sequence of what actually occurred : violence, too many children etc. These could just be sequential still images. Or a series of very short 3-5 frame looped animations. This could also include men's frustrations and the reasons for their descent into violence.

Scene 3 Tragic Result: The final shot of the cemetery with the children animated then replicated to show the numbers of women in that situation. There could also be an image of a man distraught at what he had done.

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The community empowerment drawings from Pakistan are by women and men clients and staff participating in gender workshops for micro-finance programmes 2004 - 2005. Many of the drawings are in the form of 'Diamond Tools' that I developed for identifying community criteria for assessing empowerment, 'happy families' and differences between women and men's poverty.

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The visuals I chose for my second set of creative translations are from stories already composed by farmers in two role plays - one by women and one by men - from a GALS gender training for Muungano Fair Trade coffee cooperative from DRC. I chose these images for in depth analysis because the role play narratives were very powerful and highlighted different things about women and men's perceptions - echoing many of the issues about gender inequalities in the coffee sector from Uganda.

This was also the only clear set of visuals I have of farmers' complete stories, as opposed to vignettes from drawings that I then interpret from interviews and other contextual information. The photos are of variable technical quality as they were taken in difficult bright lighting while I was focusing on facilitation and documenting the narrative. But many are very expressive and dynamic when edited as the basis for sketching and further development for animation. Importantly the photos provided a basis for developing my ability to draw local expressions and body language so that animations could abstract and clarify without resorting to stereotypes and potentially racist tropes. They also highlighted both the ways in which women and men perceive their own and the opposite gender - both seriously and as comedy.

These stories and effects of men's control of coffee money, alcoholism and adultery and corruption of officials are common across all the coffee sector in East Africa, including Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. So these role play stories have wider implications as advocacy in the coffee sector - Fair Trade as well as private sector companies.

For the Creative Translation: Tupa Tupa See:

The Role Plays

The workshop itself was held in Rwanda because there was too much bombing in the area the farmers came from. Also to link them with women and men in Rwanda who were doing the same methodology.

The role plays were to look at differences and similarities between women and men in how they perceived women and men's roles in coffee production and benefits from coffee. Participants were divided into one men's group and one women's group and given props so that women could play men and men could play women - adding a lot of laughter to the proceedings.

The idea was to combine the two role play stories into one, experimenting with different ways of sequencing of the storyline - as in Matt Madden's 99 Ways to Tell a Story. Although I did not have good drawings or audio from this workshop, I did have some relevant media I could edit and add to increase the power and clarity of narrative.

The photos straight from the camera were of variable quality as I was taking them in difficult very bright light and shadow, and having to concentrate on facilitating and understanding translation of the role plays themselves for the job I was paid to do. Some of the most interesting images in terms of story were not always of the highest technical quality.

My first task was therefore to edit them in Lightroom to get more consistent colour and tone. And to make a selection for a narrative.

Women's Theatre original photos: women do all the work, men get the coffee money and spend it on alcohol and women in town. But fight the woman, not the man.

Men's theatre original photos: men use coffee money for drinking and gambling. This leads to fight and involvement of police. All the money - include mortgage of land - goes to paying off corrupt lawyers and police chiefs to get the men released from jail.

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The visuals I chose for my second set of creative translations are from stories already composed by farmers in two role plays - one by women and one by men - from a GALS gender training for Muungano Fair Trade coffee cooperative from DRC.

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Indian development animations

Community versus External Voices?
Overview

I selected these drawings from participatory workshops in India 2003-2006 because they show the diversity of drawing styles. In the case of West Bengal and Gujarat I also had extensive background knowledge of the context from my own academic or participatory research.

The distinctive use of line by tribal women in West Bengal and Gujarat who had never held a pen before. Tribal women also work in the fields, forest and with livestock. They do not have such a strong tradition of handicrafts (unlike Pakistan for example) that give them an immediate facility for drawing. Particularly in the case of older women, they tend to use very abstracted stick figures but add symbolic elements and gestures. Certainly to a Western eye (eg my own) fascinated by the expressiveness of cave drawings and petroglyphs these abstracted drawings are in many ways more artistically interesting than the more figurative drawings of people with more education. I had earlier done short Flash videos of the workshops showing the context, drawing process and interpretation of the drawings.

The drawings from Chennai in South India are done by women and men who have some literacy. These attempt more figurative representation of women an men - hair, clothes and status distinctions. Some indicate very clearly the differences between women and men's perceptions of 'women's empowerment'. Others do not visually distinguish between different forms of empowerment and rely more on verbal/written explanation.

There are many professional Indian animators producing artistically creative animations, often based on traditional handicraft styles or drawn animation. I found them to generally lack the distinctive visual expressiveness/rawness of the community drawings. Moreover, the animations I found on-line all relied heavily on dialogue and/or text in local languages or English.
See post Indian animations on women's empowerment

Animation in English about benefits of women getting loans and training for handicrafts.

This has nice very simple white on black drawing. More arty than detailed concept. By Arcsoft Animation.

Artistic Sand Art on women's empowerment.

Cartoon of apparently random drawings of different aspects of women's position as a card for International Women's Day.

Jamghoria Sevabrata is an NGO in West Bengal - most of the women they work with are tribal Santal who speak little Bengali (at the time when this work was done) and most of the paid staff were Bengali men who did not speak Santali. This livelihood planning workshop - for women to plan how they would use a grant from Trickle Up in US to invest in and increase income from different livestock - using pictorial drawing was the first time they had really communicated. The staff also drew and said they had 'never felt so liberated'.

Most of these women had not held a pen before. I was facilitating 60 women in relays on 20, starting with the first batch for an hour then they taught the next batch and the next batch, with me catching up to take the first batch further to more advanced drawing once everyone was happy. From being very shy and not talking initially, within an hour they were confidently laughing, talking and teaching each other.

It was explained that everyone can draw and that all drawings are just different types of lines (straight, curves, wiggly etc) and circles (round, rectangular, squishy, loopy etc). With a bit of thought anything can be represented that way. The first woman below had quickly worked out a way of drawing lots of different types of goat - plain ones, stripy ones and foreign ones with bigger horns and needing to be tied with a rope on one leg. Others drew pigs of different types. The filled dots and circle lines represent different money to do their income calculations.

This shows that this type of mix of symbolism and figure abstraction comes easily. As can be seen from the video, some of the line drawing is also very expressive - Basquiat-like. That sort of 'attacking the paper' is less common when people try to draw 'artistically'.

Contextual Resources

For Jamghoria Sevabrata I have a range of contextual information: drawings and workshop photographs and video - including footage not used in the 2004 video above. I also had photographs of the landscape and village. Including women feeding pigs and a singer.

I also looked at some Bengali videos on livestock farming on You Tube to see how general the issues raised by the women were. And to see if there was any suitable material for rotoscoping.

As my anthrolopogy PhD was on women and gender inequality in West Bengal, including tribal women, I also have some understanding of power relations and economic issues. I also speak quite fluent Bengali to understand contextual resources on-line.

!! Insert pdf of discussion of translation issues raised by Mahasweta Devi.

One of the participants feeds her new foreign breed pig while her children and neighbours watch.

Santhali singer. A really beautiful song performed for us just before we left. But unfortunately I do not have translation.

On-line resources: Goat and pig farming issues

Main point is that goat raising is potentially very profitable with an expanding market. But it needs a lot of investment, medicines, vets etc. Or there are serious issues with disease. Although this can be done gradually, it is more risky. Particularly without training, credit and where vet services are not available.

Goat farming in Bengali (I understand it, but need to make detailed notes.) Main point is that goat raising is potentially very profitable with an expanding market. But it needs a lot of investment, medicines, vets etc. Or there are serious issues with disease.

Goat farming in Bengali (I understand it, but need to make detailed notes.) Advantages and disadvantages of different breeds.

Pig farming in Bengali (I understand it, but need to make detailed notes.) How to start: breeds, feed, disease, buildings.

On-Line resources: Pig Fight

ANANDI (Area Networking for Development Initiatives) is a women's empowerment organisation working with women in tribal, muslim and scheduled caste communities of Gujarat in Eastern India. These drawings were made as part of a 2003 participatory review on empowerment impact of their organisation, focusing particularly on response to the 2001 earthquake that devastated the area.

The drawings in biro on paper were part of an Empowerment Diamond exercise. As can be seen from the video, many of the women had never drawn before. Many are very expressive. Some can be more or less understood by an outsider eg goats (but what type?) a woman with a car (does she own it? drive it? woman carrying a bundle on her head (but is it a profitable bundle? is she carrying it for someone else?) etc. Other drawings are better understood by people who know more about the context (types of crops). Others are only understood by people in the process who are accustomed to common ways in which people draw things like rectangles for land. Others are symbolic and innovative eg use of a fan? for development.

They look quite 'scruffy' just doodles on very cheap paper. It would be interesting to see if they would be treated better if they were cut and framed as 'works of art' like Tracy Emin drawings with more Basquiat-style text.

They really need annotation to understand the full richness of expression. For example why is a stick woman with a red stomach 'healthy', what is the thinking behind that.

These drawings were done as part of an international gender training for micro-finance programmes, hosted by Hand in Hand in Chennai, South India. Hand in Hand worked with men and women, most of whom had some education, some were quite educated. They were not nearly so poor as the tribal women in JS or ANANDI above. Hand in Hand had not focused on women's empowerment, and the aim of the exercise was to get some community indicators of women's empowerment and happy families and see what differences there might be between women and men. The women had a strong handicraft tradition and so could draw quite easily.

The women's concepts when they explained them were clear - around owning property, being able to go where they wanted, having a sense of identity and respect. The drawings however were not clear without the explanatory text. There was some difference in drawing style between powerful (confident marker line) and powerless (wiggly pencil) but it is not clear whether this was intentional or just a difference between media and group. There is also some differentiation in clothing and appearance, but on the whole all the figure drawings look quite similar.

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Indian development animations I selected these drawings from participatory workshops in India 2003-2006 because they show the diversity of drawing styles. In the case of West Bengal and Gujarat I also had extensive background knowledge of the context from my own academic or participatory research.

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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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Assignment 3.2 Visual Exploration: iPad animation experiments

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Assignment 3.2 Visual Exploration: iPad animation experiments

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My work on my visual portfolio in Assignment 3.2 was limited to development of basic skills in animation and preliminary style and software exploration on iPad. Because of my RSI I needed to develop an animation workflow that did not require me to sit for long periods at my pc in order to get a better understanding of basic animation principles before transferring to more professional software like Adobe Animate. In Assignment 4, and also 5, my main focus will be more developed animations in professional pc software for my visual portfolio and detailed discussion of the most relevant sources of inspiration. My visual work in this assignment was primarily exploratory to:

1) Explore some of the ways in which the original community visuals could be adapted and used

2) Establish a range of potential animation styles that I could feasibly apply to story lines on the iPad within the time-frame of this module, based on inspiration from contemporary animation and study of work on animation techniques and other animators whose style I like.

a) Identification and practising drawing and cartooning principles behind stick figure and simple animation.

b) Preliminary iPad experimentation with animation techniques from my iPad animation software review (Procreate 5 that I knew already and new animation software) to see how I could translate animation inspiration from my data-collection into my own animations.

The main results are a clear story-line plan for two translation sets of very short animation variants in a range of different animation styles that are feasible for me to review and develop to a much more professional standard in Assignment 4: Making Lines Talk.

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TASK: Bring evidence of all the visual work you've done so far together in one document. This should include a summary of what your visual work is trying to do with an explanation of how it links to your data collection and your research question. If you've modified your research question in the light of your data collection, clearly state your revised research question and explain why you decided to change it.

Note from Course Text: Aim to produce a substantial amount of visual exploration and developments. Don't leap to final conclusions yet: you are still at a divergent stage of the design process, although some convergent elements might start to creep in. This is still a stage of visual risk-taking and trying lots of different options. Don't spend ages on final pieces - work on a range of options that are still mock-ups.

SUMMARY

My work on my visual portfolio in Assignment 3.2 was limited to development of basic skills in animation and preliminary style and software exploration on iPad. Because of my RSI I needed to develop an animation workflow that did not require me to sit for long periods at my pc in order to get a better understanding of basic animation principles before transferring to more professional software like Adobe Animate. In Assignment 4, and also 5, my main focus will be more developed animations in professional pc software for my visual portfolio and detailed discussion of the most relevant sources of inspiration. My visual work in this assignment was primarily exploratory to:
1) Explore some of the ways in which the original community visuals could be adapted and used
2) Establish a range of potential animation styles that I could feasibly apply to story lines on the iPad within the time-frame of this module, based on inspiration from contemporary animation and study of work on animation techniques and other animators whose style I like.

a) Identification and practising drawing and cartooning principles behind stick figure and simple animation.

b) Preliminary iPad experimentation with animation techniques from my iPad animation software review (Procreate 5 that I knew already and new animation software) to see how I could translate animation inspiration from my data-collection into my own animations.
The main results are a clear story-line plan for two translation sets of very short animation variants in a range of different animation styles that are feasible for me to review and develop to a much more professional standard in Assignment 4: Making Lines Talk.

Woman Crying in Rough Animator

'Pig Tales' first attempts in Rough Animator

'The co-wife' first attempts in Rough Animator, now developed in 'Mary's Story'

I explored some of the ways in which the original community visuals could be adapted and used, particularly line styles, methods of figure abstraction and manipulation to show emotions, how women/men characters can be differentiated building on ways in which people in different communities and contexts do this, and different cultural styles. To enable me to animate with conscious use of any stereotypes in ways that provoke questioning, and building on types of humour and visual conventions already familiar to people.

This proved potentially never-ending, and I stopped (early) when it started to become repetitive. I focused my own drawing on freehand copying drawings from India and Pakistan in biro, pen and marker to get a feel for how the drawings were done and look at some of the contrasting styles of figure abstraction.

I also looked at narrative photo sequences from drawings and role plays in DRCCongo and Uganda as examples for future animation as well as rich resources for drawing women and men in a more figurative style and/or where the community narrative was clearly developed. For more detail see:

Through this process I identified a three series of story lines to develop in multiple versions for testing with audiences. I will revisit the community visuals in detail as I develop the creative translations in Assignment 4: Making Lines Talk.

'Tupa Tupa' means drinking/drunkard. The idea is to combine the two role play photo stories into one. And experimenting with the sequencing of the storyline - as in Matt Madden's 99 Ways to Tell a Story. This would be done combining physical drawing and painting on photos and/or rotoscoping over the drawings and/or photos, cropping them to add drama. Possibly I might do some cut-out and collage in the style of Sarah Fanelli. Certainly I want to retain the colours and expressions. Good sequencing and framing, focusing on the very expressive faces, should make it possible to tell the story without text or words. I would have to think about sound - possibly one of the GALS Swahili songs and/or sound effects.

This series - as it is in the form of photos - was not developed in Assignment 3.

A series of different translations around the big gap between women's dreams and visions, and the realities of violence and suicide. This will be done in a number of different versions: simple line black and white style, colour cartoon and fuller colour with masking.

2: Exploration of stick figure drawing and cartooning principles

I wanted to explore potential drawing and animation styles that were effective but also simple enough for me to feasibly apply to story lines on the iPad within the time-frame of this module, based on inspiration from contemporary animation and study of work on animation techniques and other animators whose style I like. I then practised some of the techniques identified. But as this was potentially a never-ending process - life-long I hope - I did not pursue this too far at this stage before working on specific translations with a clear purpose.

I started by identifying and practising some of the drawing and cartooning principles behind stick figure and simple animation using standard cartoon guides (!! refs to be inserted), and also looking at the work of STIK.

I started Sketchlook 3: Animation Doodles (A4 old 'scruffy' lined exercise book with gouached pages over old text) for me to freely practise my own character animations and just 'doodle' as I explore different styles and 'think outside the box'. I was particularly interested in what happened when my spontaneous quick drawing doodles produced random expressions compared to what happens when I purposely try to depict a particular expression. And how I can link the two in a learning process without tightening up. In Assignment 4 I want to work much larger and do this more freely still.

I also started to look at facial expressions of women and men from different parts of the world so that my animations are better able to question/avoid stereotypes.

iPad animation

I also started to experiment with the iPad software I had reviewed in:
iPad animation software review
to start to identify which software might be best suited to my animation ideas.

Again this exploration was potentially a lifelong project. So I did not go too far in this assignment, leaving much for Assignment 4 when I can experiment in a more focused way with specific creative translation storylines. I did however start to get more familiar with quick animation, and some idea of the different possibilities and styles.

MotionBook

MotionBook produces quick Flipbook-style animations. There are only 4 brushes but you can alter the line thickness, opacity and colour. No layers except a fixed background (where you can import a photo) and one animation layer. The timeline is quick to add, subtract, duplicate, delete and move frames around. It can export the animation as frames into Procreate for further development, as well as animated gifs and MP4.

Procreate 5

For simple cel animation. Here you can take advantage of all Procreate's drawing, painting, selection, effect and masking etc features. You can have many layers in each frame, as well as designated background and foreground layers. And import photos and video. Layers can be blended and masked.

The timeline is a bit clunky for complex animation with lots of elements because it is separated from the layer menu. Buy you can export from here to Rough Animator

Rough animator

Preliminary animations and walk cycles

Rough animator: Goat 6FPS : First animation copying the lines of the community drawing and placing on a phoito of a cheap sketchbook page. 6FPS is quite leisurely to relly notice the way the goat turns its head (only move the eye position) and stops and looks.

Series 2 Woman crying

Rough Animator: Line Drawings from Photos

Rough Animator: Woman Crying
Animation of first Photo coloured and simplified. Uses selection tool and painting to adjust the cracks in the animation.

Series 3 Pig Woman

Rough animator: Goats Coloured: I started to make a story of flirting goats. Colouring the background. Duplicating the layers again but flipping vertically and altering opacity to create reflections. I could develop this much further into a comic encounter.Inspired by FilmBilder Lambs

Rough Animator: Woman Crying
Animation of first Photo coloured and simplified. Uses selection tool and painting to adjust the cracks in the animation. Purple background gives a sadder feel.

Rough animator: Pig Woman art colour
Colouring over the line with crayon on the woman, and paintbrush on the pig and background to make a more cartoon effect.

Toontastic

A stop motion lego puppet animation programme with audio and scenes. Can be used by children. But with a bit of practice this can be used to produce some very comic animations.

Features to get used to, practise and plan:

the action is live so you have to practise several times to get things right

audio is live recording, so you have to be careful about background noise

you can only move one character at a time

With a bit of practise, skill and good storyline, this could produce some very comic animations in childlike style eg on leadership.

Reflection

Notes on how I think my visual work so far meets the assessment criteria:

creativity: I have only just scratched the surface of what is possible. But the experimentation can become quite repetitive unless I have a clearer narrative focus. For Assignment 5 I will revisit these drawings - possibly the above vignettes, but more likely some new narratives eg a pig fight, a longer narrative using more of the Uganda drawings and a longer narrative around women and men's perceptions of empowerment in India.

research and idea development: again I have only scratched the surface. But will further develop ideas and themes in Assignment 5. I still need to assess all my visual work in relation to the creative translation theory questions I identify and develop these questions further.

visual and technical skills: I came to this with very limited animation experience, apart from some video in Flash. This was the reason why I wanted to develop animation skills in this Research Module. I think I have made quite a lot of progress from a very low base. I am planning very intensive work on both narrative and visuals in Assignments 4 and 5, now I have established the basics.

context: my animations so far have been mostly attempting to recreate the community drawing styles, or animating photographs. I will be applying styles from other animators in Assignments 4 and 5.

For Assignment 4

Reading through the course material again after a gap, I noted that I was asked to work across multiple media. This was also part of my decision to focus much more on in-depth experimentation with physical as well as digital media, but with a narrower range of primary source data sets. Having thus re-focused, I came to see some new possibilities:

Creativity: I revisited the work on creative process I had been doing for VC Advanced Practice as the basis for a much broader experimentation of a wider range of translations of the same narrative.

Research and idea development was significantly widened to include approaches and styles that I really like and enjoy, beyond more conventional digital styles.

Visual and Technical skills focus on a workflow that has TVPaint at its centre, but includes physical media and iPad experimentation in Procreate.

Context was significantly broadened to new approaches by following up threads from Moving Image 1 and Discord discussions on my Howard Wimshurst course. This reinforced my bricolage approach, as many of my discoveries were serendipetous, partly from Google or You Tube generated 'additional suggestions' on animations that I had purposely searched for following recommendations. This serendipity then became the focus for a further set of purposive searches.

Resulting plans for creative translations from Assignment 3

As noted above, most of my time on this assignment was spent in developing a visual repertoire of ideas and inspiration from the community drawings and role plays and the work of other animators and illustrators (See links in the menu below).

My visual portfolio for this Assignment was very limited and preliminary because the process become repetitive and mechanical without a clear focus on narrative and story-line. As a result of my research and visual experimentation I have identified ideas and story-lines for two translation sets:

I anticipated that most of my time in Assignment 4 will now be on developing my visual portfolio from these translation ideas. This will include drafting the animations on the iPad, but transferring these to Adobe Animate and/or After Effects in order to get better fluency and combine scenes into an overall narrative.

Changes in Assignment 4

By Assignment 4, following more in-depth work on animation techniques and approaches, my interests had broadened considerably. I therefore followed my tutor's advice to focus more on particular sets of primary sources.

Between VisRes A3 and A4 the COVID pandemic struck, necessitating changes to my plans for Visual Communications Assignment 4 to produce an audience-based body of work to 'make the world a better place'. I thought that the work I had been doing on Africa so far in this VisRes module would be very well suited as sequential narrative and animation in Adobe Animate as part of an advocacy-focused body of work on the coffee industry, together with other material from my professional work.

At the same time I had progressed with work on Moving Image 1 as a personal development course, experimenting with Stop Motion and animation of natural materials. I was also progressing with a practical course with independent animator Howard Wimshurst using TVPaint that enabled manipulation of natural media images.

So as a result of both these developments, I for a while decided to focus in much more depth on India and Pakistan that offered more than enough primary source material for very significant 'creative translation' experimentation across a range of animation approaches. Rather than becoming diverted by too many different narratives. And focus in this Module on TVPaint and 'material performances', as well as continuing to use Procreate on my iPad for some of the image creation.

See:

But these plans were changed in Assignment 5 to encompass work on all 4 creative translations.

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Assignment 3.2: Visual exploration: iPad animation experiments

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TASK: Bring evidence of all the visual work you've done so far together in one document. This should include a summary of what your visual work is trying to do with an explanation of how it links to your data collection and your research question.

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Key features to look for when choosing animation software

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Key features to look for when choosing animation software

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Drawing tools vector drawing tools for creating motion and scaling and/or pixel-based tools for more artistic effects. Including image import so that backgrounds and other features can be created from photographs, artwork or imported images from other drawing and painting aps.

Symbols or re-usable elements, including import from other software.

Puppets and rigs : ability to create characters with movable skeletons and bones that can then be manipulated for action as in 3D animation.

Tweening or smoothing/interpolation of animation between drawn key-frames, including control of the number of before/after frames, colouring and opacity.

Onion-skinning: viewing of previous and following drawn frames to facilitate accurate drawing of current frames

Layers to be able to create scenes with background, foreground and multiple animated elements with different animation rhythms.

Timeline features: control over frame speed and duration, easy addition and deletion of frames.

Audio features to import music, narration and sound effects - preferably onto separate layers for multiple sound effects, music and/or voice over.

Text features to add titles, captions, credits and additional text overlays.

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iPad animation: Rough animator, Procreate, Toontastic and other

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iPad animation: Rough animator, Procreate, Toontastic and other

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In parallel to experimentation with physical materials, I developed technical skills in a range of digital software options that can simplify and automate the drawing process.

I started with experimenting with iPad software as a means of quick exploration, brainstorming and drafting. Procreate 5 and Adobe Fresco in particular have brushes and graphic capabilities that are very useful as part of a workflow with more professional animation software.
Assignment 3.2: Visual Exploration: iPad Drawing and animation experiments
I later developed skills in software used by professional independent animators - particularly TVPaint - for my more experimental polished vignettes.

Digital software used

iPad

Procreate 5

Adobe Fresco

Stop Motion Studio

PC

Software Overview and Feature Checklist

Key features to look for when choosing animation software:

Drawing tools vector drawing tools for creating motion and scaling and/or pixel-based tools for more artistic effects. Including image import so that backgrounds and other features can be created from photographs, artwork or imported images from other drawing and painting aps.

Symbols or re-usable elements, including import from other software.

Puppets and rigs : ability to create characters with movable skeletons and bones that can then be manipulated for action as in 3D animation.

Tweening or smoothing/interpolation of animation between drawn key-frames, including control of the number of before/after frames, colouring and opacity.

Onion-skinning: viewing of previous and following drawn frames to facilitate accurate drawing of current frames

Layers to be able to create scenes with background, foreground and multiple animated elements with different animation rhythms.

Timeline features: control over frame speed and duration, easy addition and deletion of frames.

Audio features to import music, narration and sound effects - preferably onto separate layers for multiple sound effects, music and/or voice over.

Text features to add titles, captions, credits and additional text overlays.

I started by experimenting on the iPad with different software, to experiment with different styles and basics of short animation:

But I found the professional software on a pc with bigger screen and much better timeline automation features much more user and RSI-friendly for my work. I was already familiar with Adobe Animate, used for some of the diagram animations on this blog. But after looking through tutorials and reviews on You Tube, I decided on:

TVPaint because of its drawing and painting features.

Adobe Premiere for final compositing and sound effects

Other software to be further explored in future:

Blender for 3D

Adobe After Effects for compositing

Adobe Animate for tweening and interactivity

ToonBoom studio for easier smoother cartoon-style animation

Bloop animation review of the main professional software: 3D from Autodesk (3DMax, Maya and?); Blender (free 3D); Cinema 4D; After Effects; Adobe Animate; Photoshop; TVpaint; Toon Boom. See also https://www.bloopanimation.com/animation-software/

Overview of free and professional software: MohoAnime Studio (free); Synfig (free) ToonBoom Harmony (professional used by Disney); Opentoonz (free Open Source used by Ghibli for Princess Mononoke) Cel Action (free no drawing tools); pencil 2D (minimalist traditional FbF); Tupi Pen Source tweening; Flipbook imports drawings from a scanner; Sprinter Pro to import and animate bones; Stop Motion Studio for Stop Motion.

Useful overview that guided my initial review of the software - subsequently extended in the list on the left.

!!Software comparison Excel chart to be done

iPad Software Review

Rough animator

by Jacob Kafka for hand drawn animation application runs on Android, iOS, Mac OS, and Windows.
https://www.roughanimator.com
Pros:

Well-designed timeline with unlimited layers, easily adjustable exposure length of individual drawings, for pose-to-pose or straight-ahead animating

Onion skinning

Preview playback and scrub along timeline

One audio layer for importing audio and lip syncing

Import video for rotoscoping animation

Customisable brushes

Export animation to Quicktime video, GIF, or image sequence

Export projects for import to Adobe Flash/Animate, After Effects, and Toon Boom Harmony

Cons:

Limited brushes

Only one audio layer

Transformation features with numeric position, rotation and scale, but limited flexibility and without registration point

Procreate 5

For short artistic cel animation and/or artistic redrawing of animations from more specialised animation software. Only available for iPad.

Pros:

Sophisticated drawing, painting and image creation tools including infinitely customisable brushes and smudge brushes, blend modes, masking, flexible selection and transformation tools, effects and ability to import photographs and video to timeline.

Timeline with assignable foreground and background layers, and possibility of separate frame-lengths for each frame.

Layers for each frame produced through grouping in a separate layers panel.

Onion-skinning flexible options of number of frames, colouring and opacity

Text tools

Export of creative process videos.

Cons:

No audio

Complex to use unless you are very familiar with procreate drawing and painting tools.

Animation features are a bit clunky because of the separation of timeline and layers panels.

Motion Book

Very simple easy to use programme for digital flipbooks. Its simplicity makes things quick and easy to produce minimalist animations that can be exported to Procreate and other programmes if needed. Very good for learning basics of animation.

4 basic brushes

basic timeline without layers but can allocate a frame for background and import photos and movieclips to it for rotoscoping.

inApp purchase of selection and transform tools.

But a bit basic for my purposes, though was good to learn on.

Animation Desk

Animation desk by Kdan is another animation app that allows to create animations and cartoons on android or iOS device. It is free and easy to use app where you can

good selection of 45 different brushes

easy frame by frame animation with easy alteration to frame timing etc and storyboard labelling and export

create animations on videos, images, PSD layers.

on-line Kdan cloud community

Cons

no audio

not text

no layer blending

https://youtu.be/iXSMOsOlVH4 https://youtu.be/kXHyZ0aY4VM

Flipaclip

Developed by Visual Blasters LLC for both android and iOS. This is a much more robust animation software designed specifically for animation.

Pros:

very quick and easy drawing and frame by frame animation with anime style marker and brush, onion-skinning etc

multiple layers for each frame to do complex moving backgrounds and camera effects

easy selection and transform tools to move objects around in space with registration point

easy timeline manipulation

can import, add and remove video

multiple track audio including import and recording of own audio as well as in-App sound libraries.

has a video capture to export a record of the animation process

export as MP4, GIF, IMAGE SEQ

Cons:

separation of timeline and layers makes animation quite time-consuming.

limited brushes biased towards anime style

https://youtu.be/6_HElptQ5c0 https://youtu.be/CEl9ZmDM-Ms https://youtu.be/-xd12uQhDrg https://youtu.be/hYMiCQ-p_RI https://youtu.be/00Wka4man0k

Toontastic

Lego-style 3D animation developed by Google for android and iOS users.

This is a very simple App that is an entertaining introduction to 3D storytelling with narration and mood music. Movies are inherently amusing because they have the feel of children playing with lego figures:

You have the option of different scene numbers but are guided to have a beginning, middle and end. But these can be swapped around and extra scenes added.

Each scene is recorded live with a set length and stop watch while the director moves the characters around and does a voice-over narrative or adds live sounds.

You can zoom in and out of scenes with a somewhat jerky movement. The inbuilt scenes are quite complex with different floors of buildings and moving parts. You can draw your own very simple coloured backdrops - one brush, eraser, paintbucket and large set palette of colours.

There are an array of inbuilt characters that walk, talking mouths, can be scaled and moved around. Arms and feet can kick, hit and hug, but limited actions. Colours and certain parameters of each character can be changed. Only one character can be moved at a time - like children playing with lego.

You can draw your own characters and objects that can be extruded to be 3D but with no moving parts.

There is a choice of mood music - one per scene - with volume control. If you want your own music this would have to be input at the time of recording. There is no facility for importing your own sounds.

Stop Motion Studio

Stop motion studio is a popular animation apps for android and iOS users which allows make animation video on your device. It is an easiest app to get you into stop motion movie making for android and iOS users. It is also used as slow motion video app to make slow motion video with different video editor options. App has lots of attractive features, which makes it super easy to get into stop motion video. It has different modes as overlay mode, grid mode, integrated movie editor and others.

Stick Nodes

Stick Nodes is a tweened IK stick animation Apdeveloped by ForTheLoss Games, Inc for Android and iOS users. It is a powerful but also quite clunky and complicated stickman animator app with:

options to construct fully animating kinematic stick figures and/or import ones ready made. These can be exported to a library for re-use.

add one background image per project

automatic frame-tweening with ease and stretch

sound effects using sound effect apps

text captions

virtual camera to move and zoom.

It is a possible Ap to use if you do not have more professional Aps like Adobe Animate. But time for the steep learning curve is substantial to do more than a few Japanese kick box animations with text (see below). That time is better spent leaning Adobe Animate.

I include these tutorials here because some of the techniques can be applied to cel animation figures also.

Miscellaneous

PicsArt Animator

PicsArt Animator is a GIF and video maker app which allows you to create animations & cartoons on your android or iOS device. You can easily click snap using your 3D camera apps and use them to create beautiful animation video on your smartphone. It allows you to draw frame by frame animations and see animation timeline with play mode option. There are some advance drawing and sketching tools listed in this app which can be used to make beautiful animation video for free. Along with these you can also use multi-layering for complex animations and also control animation length and speed.

Movepic

Animates loop photos and cinemagraphs.

Movepic is a popular photo motion apps for android and iOS users which allows you to easily create live photo with animate effect. It is available with both free as well as app to purchase option with lots of features. It brings fabulous photos & gifs into your social life with various animated effects and beautiful filters. You can easily animate anything in loops photos simply by drawing a path , and make your still images into awesome loop photos & cinemagraphs. Along with these it also allows you to adjust the speed of the loops photo animation.

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In parallel to experimentation with physical materials, I developed technical skills in a range of digital software options that can simplify and automate the drawing process. I started with experimenting with iPad software as a means of quick exploration, brainstorming and drafting.

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Adobe Animate: animation styles, techniques and tutorials

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Adobe Animate: animation styles, techniques and tutorials

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Animate features and advantages

Vector stick animation allows very easy and quick manipulation.

Easy motion graphics with shapes.

Html coding for motion graphics.

Character rigging and links to Adobe character animator make character development relatively straightforward.

Symbols for automating cycles and loops

Layer blend and opacity modes.

Hand painting styles and link to Adobe Animator.

Potential for very low band width.

Interactivity with html canvas.

Animate gaps and challenges

Number of features means a very high learning curve.

Artistic styles are not as advanced as Procreate or TV Paint.

Can crash easily if overloaded with complexity eg of art brush strokes or complex characters.

Drawing and basic keyframing

Using Adobe Animate for Frame by Frame animation requires:

very good drawing for key poses and in-betweens

good understanding of the Disney animation principles

understanding of drama and timing

The best tutorials available are by:

Howard Wimshurst Animator Guild: https://www.animatorguild.com

Flow, intensity and dramatic timing

But with good drawing and understanding how to create dramatic timing, extremely dynamic animations are possible.

The best tutorials available are again by:

Howard Wimshurst Animator Guild: https://www.animatorguild.com

Lighting, atmosphere and distortion

Character animation and rigging

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Animate features and advantages Vector stick animation allows very easy and quick manipulation. Easy motion graphics with shapes. Html coding for motion graphics. Character rigging and links to Adobe character animator make character development relatively straightforward. Symbols for automating cycles and loops Layer blend and opacity modes.