# data[].attributes.body
Has more details of community sources and animation experiments to March 2021.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
'The Airplane': Key Translation Questions

Anger? vulnerability? strength? comedy? tragedy?

Original flat black marker line or more artistic ink?

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

Narrative options

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

Importance of dramatic timing?

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

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

Dramatic timing is keyf photos/sketches work?

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

Illusion of Life: realism/magic balance

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

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

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

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

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

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

Need to look at camera moves and lighting

Timing is key

Anger? vulerability? strength?

Original flat black marker line or more artistic ink?

Use of colour? shape? fracture

Creative translation assessment of animatic draft

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

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

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

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

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

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
'The Airplane': Key Translation Questions Anger? vulnerability? strength? comedy? tragedy? Original flat black marker line or more artistic ink? Use of colour? shape? fracture? follow more African cartoon style? Narrative options Sequencing of narrative? As a scene-based sequential narrative? As composite of cycled looped vignettes like 'Tango' to show the burden of things?

# data[].attributes.headline
'Pig Tales' Supporting detailed blog post

# data[].attributes.subject
'Pig Tales' Supporting detailed blog post

# data[].attributes.body
Has more details of animation experiments to March 2021.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
'Poverty is no picnic': drawings, photos, sketches and video animated using 2D animation, cut-out puppet Stop Motion and rotoscoping techniques in Rough Animator, Procreate and/or TVPaint composited as a narrative in Adobe After Effects/Creative Effects and Premiere. Draft Animatic September 2021.

Pig Tales Overview

'Poverty is no picnic' : concept

The narrative contrasts a rather romantic ideal of tribal Santhal life, with the realities of looking after livestock and poverty.

Santhal women work in the fields, forest and with livestock. Lives of 'tribals' are very much romanticised by upper caste Bengali culture - partly because Santhal communities are seen as a much freer/separate place for Bengali men to drink and mix/sleep with women. Tribal communities in Bengal and neighbouring Bihar are also very politicised by left wing movements on wages and communal rights to the forest.

But for the women themselves, issues of poverty, lack of access to education and income and sexual exploitation are key issues. So the stories they told about goats and pigs fighting are often for them life and death issues affecting food security and independence. My translations aim to contrast this romanticism (evident also in my own photos) with the reality of loans for 'exotic' foreign goats and pigs that cost a lot to house, buy and feed, that get diseases, fight and die because of lack of veterinary services.

The drawings, photos and video are from a participatory business planning workshop for a US-based INGO giving grants for livestock development to very poor women in disadvantaged communities. The local NGO had had difficulties communicating with the women because staff do not speak Santhali, except for some volunteers from the community. The power relations were very evident from the body language and interactions during the workshop.

Part of my aim in the animation is on the one hand to showcase the raw artistic power of some of the drawings by women who never held a pen before, as well as the contrast between romantic views of outsiders and womens' dreams for use of the grants - that they have costed - and the realities of vulnerability and food insecurity, even with grants, in an area with very few services and that has been neglected by government.

Pig Tales: Experimental Vignettes

'Romantic visions'

Goat Idyl/Goats with Attitude. Cartoon-style narratives animating women's coloured line drawings with occasional goat/rural sound effects to add. Lighthearted/ colourful inspired by Gottfried Mentor's allegorical sheep and goat CGI animation.
(Jan 2021 draft iPad Rough Animator.)

Pig Mother.
Santhal women obviously like the nurturing 'maternal' role of caring for livestock - contrast with men's commercial role in on-line training. Romantic Stop Motion puppet cut-out from watercolour sketch from photos. Inspired by Nuri Yorstein. (Jan 2021 draft iPad Procreate. )

Pig Fight

Clash of Titans
Clashing shape animation makes the rotoscope more 'real' and dramatic.
Inspired by Peter Millard colours.
(Jan 2021 draft TVPaint animated line and shape rotoscope with After Effects Creative Effects added.

Pig Lament

Pig Lament 2: Watercolour Grunge. Inspired by Peter Millard colours.
(Jan 2021 draft TVPaint animated line and shape rotoscope with After Effects Creative Effects added.

Assessment of animatic so far

These drawings were the most expressive in terms of line styles. I started with these as my first animations as they were very simple and relatively easy to animate on iPad. Selected also because of photos and video for rotoscoping and evocative sound track.

Natural media and cut out stop motion. Cut out stop motion effects make it possible to use drawings and photographs. And they can seem more 'real' than drawn animation.

Rotoscoping is potentially a very effective means of animation is used well, with good drawing skills and an understanding of keyframes and dramatic abstraction. But it is not easy - different degrees of replication and fidelity of line to the original produce very different effects from mechanical to chaotic. Also questions of when and how to use colour and shape, and how this relates to line.

Procreate - TVPaint - Premiere or After Effects (smoother puppet animation with tweening?)

Key questions for further development
Narrative structure

single image vignettes or sequential narrative? One style or contrasting styles for each scene?

Natural media stop motion

Getting more fluid in-betweens? software

Need to look at camera moves and perspective

Rotoscoping: communicating narrative and emotion

How to achieve variation in amount of 'boil'

Use of different types of line

Use of colour and shape

Narrative structure

Translation

Creativity

Technique

Portfolio evolution

Jamghoria Sevabrata: Community Drawings

For these experimental animations I decided to focus on the distinctive use of line by tribal Santhal women in West Bengal who had never held a pen before. Although the community drawings from ANANDI were potentially more interesting in terms of the views of empowerment, they would take much longer than the time frame of this module to animate well - something planned for future. West Bengal, and Santhali culture, was part of the research for my PhD and so I felt more comfortable trying to 'translate'. I also had some photos, video and music I could use.

Unlike caste Hindu or Muslim women, they do not have such a strong tradition of handicrafts that give them an immediate facility for drawing. Like older women in ANANDI, they tended to use very abstracted stick figures but add symbolic elements and gestures. Some of the drawings were the most expressive drawings I have seen, in many ways more artistically interesting than the more figurative drawings of people with more education or the line drawings I have from Africa.

In addition to the drawings I also had photographs and some video footage (badly shot while I was facilitation or in a hurry in bad lighting).

Sketchbook

Pig Tales_Sketchlog page

Romantic Visions 1: Goat Idyll

My first translations were very early animation experiments with line on my iPad, for a very simple playful effect, inspired by sheep 3D animations by Mathias Klein from FilmBilder.

Inspiration: Gottfried Mentor, comic social parody

Oh Sheep: FilmBilder Directed by Gottfried Mentor with animation by Matthias Klein
https://youtu.be/sY5MmhLQBng
A tragi-comic political parody of two shepherds who do everything they can to distinguish and keep their two flocks of sheep apart. Every time the sheep manage to meet and mingle. When finally the shepherds think they have found the solution through branding, the sheep see themselves as different and fight to the death.

An amusing tale about youth rebelling and teaching old goats how to survive in a new world.

The lamb's parents are shocked, because their little lamb doesn't sound like the other sheep: It's making „moo" instead of „baa".

I used these line drawings to do a series of animations in Rough animator on my iPad, exploring effects of frame rate, duplicating and mirroring layers and creating quick story-lines.

Goat idyll 5: Goats with attitude. Rough animator. 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 like the general feel and pastel-type colours. I could develop this much further into a series of comic encounters - drawing more inspiration from the different Mathias animations.

Rural Idyll 1: Goat goes for a walk. 6FPS gives strobing. But for this animation I like the awkward, tentative child-like effect.

Goat idyll 3. Two goats passing. Rough animator doodle. Duplicate and flip layer than offset movement to create interaction between two goats. 24FPS focuses on the passing.

Goat idyll 2. When two goats meet. Rough animator doodle. Duplicate and flip layer than offset movement to create interaction between two goats. 12FPS. Slower frame focuses on the meeting.

Goat idyll 4: If goats could fly. Rough animator: Quick animated doodle replicating the style of the community line drawing and using cheap sketchbook background. Duplicates and mirrors the same goat, then adjusts the movement of one goat to make it jump over the other one. 12FPS.

Romantic Visions 2: Pig Mother

This second set of experimental animations aims to project a dreamy, romantic vision of happy caring women 'mothering pigs'. Very unlike the harsh, cold commercial realities of sterile concrete pig pens and sending pigs to slaughter.

I take a painterly approach, using texture, colour and shape as well as line.

Inspired by a mix of Japanese hand-painted watercolour animation, monochrome puppet stop motion of Nuri Yorstein, animated watercolour (based on rotoscope?) of Ryan Larkin and integration of the very varied whimsical 2D, rotoscoped and cut-out styles of Gasparovic's Satiemania.

clearly shows the mix of line styles for different moods. Colouring strategies from flat for characters to watercolour. And very sketchy fluid animation for dramatic flight and high emotion.

Ryan Larkin 'Walking' 1968. Uses a variety of techniques-line drawing, colour wash, etc.-to catch and reproduce the motion of people afoot.

'Tale of Tales' by Yuri Norstein uses Stop Motion puppet animation, drawn by his wife and very smoothly animated on a multiplane frame to produce a really evocative fairy-tale look about cycles of life.

"Satiemania' by Zdenkó Gasparovich 1978. The subject matter is somewhat inappropriate. But I am very inspired by the mix of a wide diversity of line and colour styles and mix of handrawn, rotoscoped and cutout images for different emotions and effects.

iPad photo to Procreate to Rough Animator

I start by manipulating one of photographs on my iPad.

I started with full colour overlay in Procreate, replicating the colours from the photograph. Then I took this into Rough Animator for a line, and then coloured crayon version. Much finer

iPad video to sketch to Procreate

I then used the video to get more realistic keyframes that I printed out as jpgs.

From these I made a series of sketches. Taking these into Procreate I cut out and recoloured the drawings, overlaying and compositing them into a picture.

I then manipulated these to make a short animation. The second version has more perspective and less saturation in the background to give more depth. This is still too jerky and needs more in-betweening.

But I think the style is quite effective and many possibilities for further development as a longer and somewhat smoother animation - depending on whether I am trying to copy Stop Motion or handdrawn watercolour. Puppet animation would be more professional using Photoshop to create the puppets, then using puppet animation in After Effects.

Pig Mother watercolour 4. Monochrome in the style of Nuri Yorstein, could potentially create a more romantic and distanced effect. Pig Mother1 adjusted using curves and pentatone filters in After Effects to blend the woman, pigs and background more as a cohesive image.. I think this approach has a lot of potential to take further. But the original file from iPad needs to be cleaned up with better tonal balance between the woman's face and the white pig. It would also be more interesting as a multiplane camera animation.

Realities: Pig Fight

Inspiration: aggressive 'boil'

This third animation 'Pig Lament' has a lot of creative potential - the furious purple pen drawing of pigs was what first attracted me to drawings from this workshop as a source for translation.

I wanted to animate the pig fight drawing, rotoscoping a real pig fight video clip, using aggressive line like the Santhal drawing. Drawing also some ideas about violence and final death scene from Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke. Adding either pig fight sounds and/or the haunting song.

This could either be a simple 'boiling line drawing' like Jonathon Hodgson's 'Dogs, or a bold colour animation like those of Peter Millard. Or I could use energetic coloured strokes like 'Layman, Shamam, Daydreaming'. This last would probably be best done in natural media painting onto acetate over printouts of the rotoscope.

In order to get a feel of the fight and possible keyframes, I selected video keyframes edited in Premiere. Then did some quick pencil gesture drawings from printouts. These were very useful, but it would be better next time to do these while watching the video, not just from photos.

'Dogs' from Jonathon Hodgson: partly rotoscoped animation in which all elements are constantly in motion but at different paces of boil to show different moods - energy, waiting and anticipation. Sometimes the colour shapes pulsate and shift more than the lines, sometimes figures, shapes and lines all move energetically and dissolve into chaos.

Princess Mononoke is a much more violent and dynamic animation, with very dramatic scenes of a wild boar (see right). The dead skeleton is something I could try to add as a ghost image at then end. But this might be too cliche.
Mononoke_screenshots

Rotoscope 'Kadiri Pig Fight' video and Creative Effects

Rotoscoping over an edited version of the Kadiri pig fight video in TVPaint. These are not so successful and not as dynamic as I would like them to be.

The line drawing would be better as a gesture drawing from live video. The coloured version would be more interesting painting into that digitally or on acetate using printouts from the line animation as underguide.

Developing Narrative

Narrative Format 1, song thread: Pig Lament

The song in the video I find really haunting. Though I have no idea what it means - maybe an interesting point about translation.

But I think that adding a rotoscope of the singer for at least part of any narrative would add a degree of realism. I like the way the line drawing in the version in the right dissolves because I accidentally omitted some lines towards the end. I am planning to experiment a lot more with different rotoscope effects like the variations in Jonathon Hodgson's animation.

I like the way the line drawing in the version in the right dissolves because I accidentally omitted some lines towards the end. I am planning to experiment a lot more with different rotoscope effects like the variations in Jonathon Hodgson's animation.

Animatic 1: Pig Lament

First attempt to composite as a narrative with sound. I need to redo the rotoscopes and rethink this - colours, line, style and technique. I was aiming for something much more expressive and emotive.

Adding Creative Effects goes some way towards this. I particularly like the charcoal version and the watercolour grunge version. But I need to experiment more with settings. And possibly layer with different elements eg singer and pigs in different but complementary styles to signify different roles in the video.

I could also experiment more with framing, again separating different layers.

Pig Lament 3 Watercolour Grunge natural colours

Pig Lament 4: Textile effect. Links the idea of Indian women's handicrafts as romanticisation and beautification by outsiders.

Pig Lament 5: Watercolour Grunge coloured. I like the angry flaming red colour effect on the pigs. But need to work out how to control the effect more. Inspired by Peter Millard colours. (Jan 2021 draft TVPaint animated line and shape rotoscope with After Effects Creative Effects added.

Format 2: Documentary envelope, Pig Tales

Could 'envelope' the animation between short 'reality context' introduction and ending using some video footage of women drawing and the workshop process, with examples of drawings.

This first version attempts to put the different styles together. But this does not flow. This was the version sent to my tutor i Assignment 5.

This first revised version just uses the goat clips with the song, As the most faithful rendering of some of the community line drawings. This could be further developed as a humorous narrative.

This final version focuses just on the pigs. Although it brings in more 'creative elements' and documentary from other sources, it reflects the community narrative and angry feel of the pig drawing better.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
'Poverty is no picnic' : concept The narrative contrasts a rather romantic ideal of tribal Santhal life, with the realities of looking after livestock and poverty. Santhal women work in the fields, forest and with livestock.

# data[].attributes.headline
'Tupa Tupa' supporting detailed blog post

# data[].attributes.subject
'Tupa Tupa' supporting detailed blog post

# data[].attributes.body
Has more details of community sources and animation experiments to March 2021.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Box 5a 'Tupa Tupa' Key Questions

Different possibilities of narrative sequence eg starting with the women's fight - explanation of woman on woman violence or picture of Tupa Tupa all alone, rejected by his family.

Use of humour

G rammar of the shot:

Increasing drama through simplification/clarification of composition

Directing the gaze eg girlfriend feeling man's pocket to see how much money he has, lawyer putting money from police chief in his pocket

How relevant are the Illusion of Life animation principles?

Need to look at camera moves and lighting

General style

Maintaining clear link with 'reality' of the story through using photographs. Photographs edited and cropped versus collage/digital illustration from the photos?

Use of colour and line

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Box 5a 'Tupa Tupa' Key Questions Different possibilities of narrative sequence eg starting with the women's fight - explanation of woman on woman violence or picture of Tupa Tupa all alone, rejected by his family.

# data[].attributes.body
Has more details of animation experiments to March 2021.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Mary's Story

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

Coloured fractured shape style

Overview of animatic draft March 2021

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

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

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

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

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

Anger? vulnerability? strength? comedy? tragedy?

Original flat black marker line or more artistic ink?

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

Narrative options

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

Importance of dramatic timing?

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

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

Dramatic timing is keyf photos/sketches work?

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

Illusion of Life: realism/magic balance

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

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

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

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

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

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

Need to look at camera moves and lighting

Timing is key

Anger? vulerability? strength?

Original flat black marker line or more artistic ink?

Use of colour? shape? fracture

Creative translation assessment of animatic draft

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

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

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

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

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

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

Narrative elements

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

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

First thoughts: black and white line animation in Adobe Animate

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

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

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

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

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

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

Broadening out: 'African colour'?

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

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

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

.

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

A much more atmospheric sand art style.

Exploration of narrative format

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

These

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

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

Story told by movement of contrasting layers across each other.

Sketchbook revisited: broadening out the style

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

iPad Experiments

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

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

TV Paint experiments: line animation

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

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

Coloured ink cartoon style

Coloured fractured shape style

1: First wife marriage kidnap

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

2: Man owns the Land and Property

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

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

3: Nagging children and lazy husband

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

6 First wife slave, second wife pleasure

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

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

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

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

7 Woman gets a cow

Woman Walking with Cow 3 with Stop Start animation. TVPaint

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

8: Even more work overload

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

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

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

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

# data[].attributes.headline
Ethical and aesthetic issues in visual translation 

# data[].attributes.subject
Ethical and aesthetic issues in visual translation 

# data[].attributes.headline
Sketchlog 3: Drawing Experiments and Notes

# data[].attributes.subject
Sketchlog 3: Drawing Experiments and Notes

# data[].attributes.headline
Research Dissertation: Life Realities vs Visual Magic? Creative animation of community voices for global audiences

# data[].attributes.subject
Research Dissertation: Life Realities vs Visual Magic? Creative animation of community voices for global audiences

# data[].attributes.body
Padlet purpose:
This padlet provides an easy entry point 'map' of my Visual Research and links to the different sections and contents of this blog.

Contents

Top centre: Portfolio animations (red), sketchlog (orange) and supporting blog/padlet links (black)

Top right: Dissertation and Research Review with supporting documentation (blue)

Bottom left: Technical research on presentation design

Bottom centre: Global animation inspiration

Bottom right: Research blogpages and padlets on visual storytelling approaches and practical animation techniques. (purple)

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

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

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

# data[].attributes.headline
Sketchlog 2: Inspired by Community Voices: consolidated pdf

# data[].attributes.subject
Sketchlog 2: Inspired by Community Voices: consolidated pdf

# data[].attributes.headline
Portfolio Animation 4: 'The Airplane', Pakistan (opening clip)

# data[].attributes.subject
Portfolio Animation 4: 'The Airplane', Pakistan (opening clip)

# data[].attributes.headline
Portfolio animation 1: 'Mary's Story', Uganda (draft)

# data[].attributes.subject
Portfolio animation 1: 'Mary's Story', Uganda (draft)

# data[].attributes.headline
Supporting Padlet 2: 'Tupa Tupa', DRCongo

# data[].attributes.subject
Supporting Padlet 2: 'Tupa Tupa', DRCongo

# data[].attributes.body
Easy access overview with final video, links to community sources, animation stages and inspiration.

# data[].attributes.headline
Supporting Padlet 3: 'Pig Tales', India 

# data[].attributes.subject
Supporting Padlet 3: 'Pig Tales', India 

# data[].attributes.body
Easy access overview with final video, links to community sources, animation stages and inspiration.

# data[].attributes.headline
Presentation Design: aesthetic and technical decisions (very rough notes - not finished)

# data[].attributes.subject
Presentation Design: aesthetic and technical decisions (very rough notes - not finished)

# data[].attributes.body
Explanation of why I use padlets as well as Wordpress, and some of the issues with each.

# data[].attributes.headline
Assignment 2: Creative Translation Framework

# data[].attributes.subject
Assignment 2: Creative Translation Framework

# data[].attributes.headline
Portfolio animation 2: 'Tupa Tupa', DRCongo (rough animatic)

# data[].attributes.subject
Portfolio animation 2: 'Tupa Tupa', DRCongo (rough animatic)

# data[].attributes.headline
Animation Principles and Process: padlet overview and links

# data[].attributes.subject
Animation Principles and Process: padlet overview and links

# data[].attributes.headline
Global animation inspiration: padlet overview and links

# data[].attributes.subject
Global animation inspiration: padlet overview and links

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Padlet of research links to animations and blog posts, focusing on animations without words

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
My animation research and experiments are practice-based, aiming to help me develop a coherent and distinctive 'Zemni Voice' and manageable workflow for my own independent animation practice.

All the animations in the portfolio should clearly reflect, integrate and valorise 'community voices' as represented by drawings, photographs, video and other contextual material from participatory workshops on empowerment with women and men in:

- Uganda
- DRCongo
- India
- Pakistan.

The community voices in the research were selected from many other sets of primary resources from Asia, Africa and Latin America (see my professional blog: https://gamechangenetwork.org/) because of:

- the diversity, dynamism and narrative power of drawing styles.
- poignancy of the stories and relevance for a global audience.
- access to sufficient contextual resources - either my own or on-line to construct authentic narratives.

Through a 'bricolage' research process I identify a range of workable creative animation and moving image approaches and strategies combining digital and physical media that:

- are visually driven so that they can be globally understood without relying on text or spoken languages, and thereby needing translation into hundreds of local languages.
- communicate not only the style but also the meaning of the original sources.
- can be used by an independent animator like myself who does not have the support of a large design or animation team and/or budget.

Producing professional finished animations was outside the timeframe of this research. The aim was rather to develop an experimental portfolio based on/integrating the community workshop outputs including:

- different animation and moving image vignettes representing different approaches and interpretations as a basis for discussion with potential audiences/clients about their animation preferences and needs.
- specific combinations of moving image approaches to develop 1 minute documentary animation drafts and animatics appropriate to narratives suggested by the community workshops and/or my contextual documentation.

As an independent animator wishing primarily to produce my own animations alongside other professional and creative work while managing RSI, I was interested in exploring:

- visual narrative strategies for very short textless 1 minute animations, including animations that can be downloaded by viewers on mobile phone without the need for translation.
- ways of working with physical media: integrating drawing, painting, printmaking, photography and video.
- combining different digital software and techniques that could vary my computer work, including iPad, TVPaint, Adobe Animate, After Effects and Premiere.

I also needed to take an objective and long-term perspective to developing artistic and technical skills for animation work - and also keep an open mind as to whether my research would lead me to conclude that the tasks I set myself were not possible.

Animated Documentary

'Herstory' : Mary's story of a cycle of disempowerment, overwork and lack of property rights and unhappiness in a polygamous marriage.

Animation from community drawings and sketches from role play and contextual photos by women and men in a Fair Trade coffee co-operative in Eastern Uganda. Draft Animatic January 2021.

Key Inspiration:

For overview of evolution of these animations based on analysis of the primary source community drawings and sources of inspiration on animation styles and techniques from secondary sources, see:

'Mary's Story': Experimental Vignettes

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

Animated Documentary

'Coffee reality play': What happened to the coffee money? Women do 70% of the agricultural workl in coffee, but because men own the land they control the coffee money. 60-70% men admit to spending this money on alcohol, gambling and girlfriends in town. This often leads to fights with much of the money - even land leases - going to police and lawyers.

'Tupa Tupa': Experimental Vignettes

Role play photos by women and men in a Fair Trade Cooperative in DRCongo animated as cut-out puppets and collage/photo-montage in Procreate and Premiere. Future work will include collage stop motion, and digital puppet animation in Photoshop and After Effects.

Animated Documentary

Poverty is not romance: drawings, photos and found video animated using rotoscoping and transformation techniques and watercolour and ink styles in TVPaint composited in Adobe After Effects and Premiere. Draft Animatic January 2021.

Tribal women in West Bengal receiving grants for livestock from an international NGO start with dreams but draw many obstacles to success in getting out of poverty.

Main sources of inspiration:
- Ng'endo Mukii: integrated drawing, Stop Motion, rotoscoping and video.
- Andreas Hykade: simplified line and colour styles.
- Gottfried Mentor: tragi-comedy visual storytelling techniques.
- Jonathon Hodgson: rotoscoping and 'boil'.
- Nuri Yorstein; puppet Stop Motion and sfumato style.
- Zdenkó Gasparovich; integration of natural media styles.
- Ryan Larkin: integration of natural media styles.
- Peter Millard: line and colour and narrative format.
- Gendy Tartakovsky: dramatic shape animation, composition and narrative format.
- Zbigniew Rybczynski: narrative format.

Pig Tales: Experimental Vignettes

Animated documentary

Disintegration of Dreams: drawings, photos and found video using build-up, erasure and transformation in physical media, TVPaint and Adobe Premiere. Draft Animatic January 2021

Women in a micro-finance programme in Pakistan draw their dreams, but also how many of them are driven to suicide by having too many children and violence and addiction of their husbands. The men also have dreams, but are trapped, leading to behaviour they are ashamed of.

Sources of inspiration:
- Pakistani feminist animation, particularly Haroon's Burqa Avenger CGI narratives and Hamida Khatri's Stop Motion 'Mother and Me.
- Marjane Satrapi line and shape animation in Perspepolis
- Shirin Neshat feminist black and white photography and films
- Catherine Anyango erasure techniques
- Gianluigi Toccafondo rotoscope techniques
- William Kentridge silhouette theatre and charcoal erasure techniques
- Nuri Yorstein puppet stop motion
- David Lynch angry line and eye trace.
- Yoni Goodman's documentary animation with integration of video.
- Alfred Hitchcock violence editing in Psycho
- Zbigniew Rybczynski narrative format.

The Airplane: Experimental vignettes

Very simple shape-based 2D animation in style of Marjane Satrapi. Combining monochrome with some colour as visions fade. Adobe Animate or iPad.

Stylised found video footage (short clip here) in style of Catherine Anyango. After Effects

Stop Motion puppet animation from gouache 'accident' painting in style of Nuri Yorstein and David Lynch. Proceate on iPad. (fpor

Shadow animation for threats and violence. Inspired by silhouette drama of William Kentridge and stop motion cutout animation. TVPaint with gouache texturing.

Stylised found video footage (short clip here) in style of Ng'endo Mukii. After Effects

Fantasy Stop Motion cutout of woman piloting airplane using gouache and/or charcoal animation in style of William Kentridge and David Lynch Pozar and Burka Avenger, Shirin Neshat

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
My animation research and experiments are practice-based, aiming to help me develop a coherent and distinctive 'Zemni Voice' and manageable workflow for my own independent animation practice. All the animations in the portfolio should clearly reflect, integrate and valorise 'community voices' as represented by drawings, photographs, video and other contextual material from participatory workshops on empowerment with women and men in: - Uganda- DRCongo- India - Pakistan.

# data[].attributes.headline
Visual Research Process: Review and Assignments Blogpost

# data[].attributes.subject
Visual Research Process: Review and Assignments Blogpost

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This visual research project is driven by a professional transition to diversify my consultancy work for international development agencies from working directly at community level because hypersensitivity to air pollution now prevents me from travel abroad. My 'unique selling point' is my professional consultancy reputation and understanding of development concepts and global experience in many different contexts. Visual work from the UK can be usefully integrated into existing consultancy arrangements, not necessarily needing to stand on its own.

My initial research ideas in Assignment 1 covered a range of outcomes and media including infographics, logos, cartoons as well as animation, but with a focus on strategies for textless communication across language and social barriers. I decided to focus on animation because incorporating a time element into the community drawings provides the most engaging way of clarification of the messages that people from different audiences might want to look at. There is a growing demand for on-line visual materials linked to my consultancy - significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic - to reach large numbers of people more rapidly and sustainably and reduce budgetary and environmental costs of travel. Although there are a growing number of professional animation studios in many countries, most development agency animations are done by technical people in urban areas in international languages with written text with limited connections at community levels. They do not have the depth of development experience needed to design animations for my work.

My research process was not linear, and became progressively less linear as I worked through interconnected and interlinked questions, research on other animators and my own skills development and 'creative translation' experiments (see diagram above).

I started with limited animation experience, intending to focus on 'simple' stick animation of line drawings in Adobe Animate. Focusing on drawings, photographs and video from participatory community workshops on strategies for empowerment, gender justice and livelihood development in Africa (Uganda, DRCongo) and Asia (India, Pakistan) these animations aim:

to be visually driven so that they can be globally understood without relying on text or spoken languages, and thereby needing translation into hundreds of local languages.

communicate not only the style but also the meaning of the original sources.

be interesting to a range of audiences - including people who cannot read and write as well as international audiences with high levels of formal education and access to global visual cultures.

workable for an independent animator like myself who does not have the support of a large design or animation team and/or budget. And importantly for me to be RSI-friendly.

Then between Assignments 3 and 4 a number of things happened:
- the COVID-19 pandemic that put all my consultancy work on hold from March to August 2020. This included work on leadership that I had initially considered including.
- I signed up for a number of on-line animation courses because I had become frustrated by the limitations, and also RSI impacts, of working solely on an iPad. I decided that if I really wanted to understand animation to give me the flexibility of creativity, I would need to develop a more diverse software workflow. So I could focus the research back on issues of translation without getting continually sidetracked by the practicalities of iPad animation.

As I increased my understanding of basic animation principles, my bricolage research on global contemporary animation pointed to possibilities of other moving image and documentary animation approaches:

rotoscoping,

Stop Motion: puppets, cut-outs and use of physical media like charcoal and coffee

integration of video and video effects.

Working with a range of approaches enabled me not only to reduce issues of RSI, but importantly to incorporate a wider range of community source material in developing my own contemporary creative style. More effectively combining 'visual magic' by the animator with 'realities of life' from community voices.

Cross-cutting all these approaches are principles of visual narrative, visual dynamics and - in the case of animation - Disney principles continue to be relevant. But experimenting across a range of approaches has helped me to understand these cross-cutting issues better than just focusing on 2D animation.

Development of my own 'creative translation' animation voice continues to be a very steep learning curve. Producing final combined professional animations is outside the timeframe of this research, and also my current skill level. I focus on developing a framework of 'creative translation' prompts and an experimental portfolio of alternative stylistic vignettes before arriving at draft animations for future community and client feedback post-COVID. Clarifying also what community inputs I might need to ask from colleagues on the ground in future, what further animation skills and research I myself might need and/or in what form I could hand over draft concept/narrative visuals for final development by other animators.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Visual Research Process: Review and Assignments

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This visual research project is driven by a professional transition to diversify my consultancy work for international development agencies from working directly at community level because hypersensitivity to air pollution now prevents me from travel abroad. My 'unique selling point' is my professional consultancy reputation and understanding of development concepts and global experience in many different contexts.

# data[].attributes.headline
Visual dynamics: padlet overview and links

# data[].attributes.subject
Visual dynamics: padlet overview and links

# data[].attributes.headline
Supporting Padlet 4: 'The Airplane', Pakistan

# data[].attributes.subject
Supporting Padlet 4: 'The Airplane', Pakistan

# data[].attributes.body
Easy access overview with final video, links to community sources, animation stages and inspiration.

# data[].attributes.headline
Supporting Overview Padlet 1: 'Mary's Story', Uganda

# data[].attributes.subject
Supporting Overview Padlet 1: 'Mary's Story', Uganda

# data[].attributes.body
Easy access overview with final video, links to community sources, animation stages and inspiration.

# data[].attributes.headline
Assignment 4 A Working Draft: Making Lines Talk 

# data[].attributes.subject
Assignment 4 A Working Draft: Making Lines Talk 

# data[].attributes.headline
Assignment 3 Data-Gathering: Community vs External Voices?

# data[].attributes.subject
Assignment 3 Data-Gathering: Community vs External Voices?

# data[].attributes.headline
Visual storytelling: padlet overview and links

# data[].attributes.subject
Visual storytelling: padlet overview and links

# data[].attributes.headline
Portfolio animation 3: 'Pig Tales', India (draft)

# data[].attributes.subject
Portfolio animation 3: 'Pig Tales', India (draft)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Rotoscoping Overview

History
Techniques

Contemporary Inspiration

1: Rotoscope as Reference: Mary's Story, Uganda: Cow Walk
2: Rotoscope as line animation and Effects: Pig Tales, West Bengal
3: Rotoscope as impression: Airplane, Pakistan

What is Rotoscoping?

'Rotoscoping' is the process of frame-by-frame tracing of recorded movements of actual humans or events. It involves drawing and painting on and manipulating video or photo sequences to produce animated frames.

This can be done using natural media on tracing paper or cinema film or digitally in any professional 2D animation software.

Rotoscoping is not an easy option to avoid drawing freehand. Producing dramatic animation requires in-depth understanding of keyframing and movement to select the frames, and good drawing/painting skills to select and reproduce elements on each frame. Drawing mechanically on top of photographs and video produces robotic and uninteresting animation - unless that is the effect required.

- rotoscoping limits possibilities for creating imagined worlds and narrative
- real actors and objects do not have line, so tracing often results in lines being too prominent and sharp, too flaccid or too stiff.

But it is possible to produce very beautiful work this way that also plays on distinctions between fantasy and reality. With good drawing skills and an understanding of 'boil', keyframes and dramatic abstraction, different degrees of replication and fidelity of line and/or shape can original produce a range of effects from mechanical to chaotic.

History of rotoscoping

Rotoscoping was developed in 1915 by animator Max Fleisher who used this technique as a way to create a seemingly more 'realistic' (or photorealistic) style of movement. Disney and other studios used this technique as one way of enhancing 'realism' in animation through the mimicry of live action.

The first software to do digital interpolated rotoscoping, 'Rotoshop Software', was developed by computer scientist Bob Sabiston in the 90's which he used to make his film " Snack and Drink ". Subsequently this software was used by director Richard Linklater for the production of his feature films Waking Life (2001) and Scanner Darkly (2006).

Rotoscoping techniques

Digital rotoscoping: Filmed or live media are used as a reference point for the creation of digital animated movement: motion capture, interpolated rotoscoping, mattes and frame by frame rotoscoping.

Motion capture: Uses live actors and the signals of their movement is interpreted by a computer.

Mattes/Masks/Stencils: Similar to motion capture but uses two dimensional sources to create a silhouette (called a matte) that can be used to extract that object's shape from a scene for use on a different background. This extraction is often aided by green screen technology, motion-tracking and/or digital onion-skinning. Then images are composited in layers these in much the same way as a stencil or cut out shape would work in analogue collage/layering. Digital rotoscoping plays a large role in the production of visual effects and animation.

Interpolated Rotoscoping: the digital equivalent to the pose-to-pose approach. The animator sets a particular style, line weight and colour. They then link key drawings to anchor points in the source footage. The computer then 'interpolates' all the in-between movements according to the action on screen.

Digital Frame By Frame Rotoscoping does the in-betweens by hand - either in physical or digital media. Each frame of the video footage is drawn or painted over, one by one. Done digitally the technique requires import of the source video, but can be done in most professional animation programmes. In physical media every source frame is printed out and manipulated before being rescanned and played in sequential order.

Zemni Examples

Mary's Cow: Rotoscoping as reference for line animation

Pig Lament, India: Rotoscoping as line and shape animation

!! To be done. The airplane, Pakistan: Rotoscoping as video effect.

Contemporary Inspiration

Jonathon Hodgson here uses video as references for very expressive line drawings.

Tommy Pallotta, Snack and Drink (1999)

Gianluigi Toccafondo mixes rotoscoped video footage with very expressive painted shapes and background.

Elizabeth Hobbes, Finding My Way (2014)

Zemni Rotoscope Experiments

Rotoscoping for reference: Experiment 1, The Cow, Uganda

7 Woman gets a cow

Woman Walking with Cow 3 with Stop Start animation. TVPaint

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

Cow Walk Cycle 3D animation video source from You Tube.

Cow Rotoscope 2 keyframes only TVpaint

Woman Walking with Cow 1 The different image planes were layered and used motion tween to move them at different rates across the screen TVPaint

Cow Walk Cycle 1 Rotoscope overlay with notes

Cow Walk Cycle 3 in-betweens

Woman Walking with Cow 2 Walk cycle overlaid on rotoscope with pose marks

Rotoscoping as animation: Experiment 2: Pig Fight, India

Rotoscope Pig Fight

Rotoscoping over an edited version of the Kadiri pig fight video in TVPaint. These are not so successful and not as dynamic as I would like them to be.

The line drawing would be better as a gesture drawing from live video. The coloured version would be more interesting painting into that digitally or on acetate using printouts from the line animation as underguide.

Pig fight 1: Line rotoscope of edited version of pig fight video. TVPaint. This would be more dynamic as a gesture drawing from live video.

Pig fight 2: Coloured version of line rotoscope. TVPaint. This would be more dramatic painting into the gesture line digitally or on acetate using printouts from the line animation as underguide.

Pig Fight Rotoscope 10 watercolour grunge 2 original colour

3: Rotoscoping as animation: Domestic Violence, Pakistan

Key Issues and Conclusions

https://viscom4dev.zemniimages.info/richard-linklater

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Rotoscoping Overview HistoryTechniques Contemporary Inspiration 1: Rotoscope as Reference: Mary's Story, Uganda: Cow Walk2: Rotoscope as line animation and Effects: Pig Tales, West Bengal3: Rotoscope as impression: Airplane, Pakistan What is Rotoscoping? 'Rotoscoping' is the process of frame-by-frame tracing of recorded movements of actual humans or events.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Cutout animation is a form of stop-motion animation using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or photographs. The cut outs are used as puppets for stop motion. Cut-out animation puppets can be made with figures that have joints made with a rivet or pin or, when simulated on a computer, an anchor. These connections act as mechanical linkage, which have the effect of a specific, fixed motion.

The technique of most cut-out animation is comparable to that of shadow play, but with stop motion replacing the manual or mechanical manipulation of flat puppets. Flat, jointed puppets have been in use in shadow plays for many centuries, such as in the Indonesian wayang tradition and in the "ombres chinoises" that were especially popular in France in the 18th and 19th century. The subgenre of silhouette animation is more closely related to these shadow shows and to the silhouette cutting art that has been popular in Europe especially in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Cut-out techniques were relatively often used in animated films until cel animation became the standard method (at least in the United States). Before 1934, Japanese animation mostly used cut-out techniques rather than cel animation, because celluloid was too expensive.

While sometimes used as a relatively simple and cheap animation technique in children's programs (for instance in Ivor the Engine), cut-out animation has also often been used as a highly artistic medium that distinguishes itself more clearly from hand-drawn animation. Today, cut-out-style animation is frequently produced using computers, with scanned images or vector graphics taking the place of physically cut materials.

Of most relevance to my work here are:

- puppets manipulation of cut-out photographs, drawings and other flat materials.

- manipulation of drawings and paintings in natural media like charcoal and scraperboard to produce expressive lines

For other types of stop motion see my research and own work in:

My experiments January 2021

Animatic with digital manipulation of photograph cut-outs in Procreate on iPad. To be developed as Stop Motion photo-collage in Stop Motion Studio with final composite in After Effects.

Feeding the pigs sequence. Started with digital manipulation of photograph in Rough Animator on iPad. The version here was produced by drawing and watercolour painting from video, then photographing the puppets and manipulating in Procreate on the iPad. With final toning and tinting in After Effects. To be redone with smoother movement as cut-outs of the sketches and drawings and multiplane manipulation in After Effects.

Silhouette experiments for Mary's Story, Uganda and/or Pakistan 'The Airplane' are also envisaged.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Cutout animation is a form of stop-motion animation using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or photographs. The cut outs are used as puppets for stop motion. Cut-out animation puppets can be made with figures that have joints made with a rivet or pin or, when simulated on a computer, an anchor.

# data[].attributes.headline
Animation Approaches, Styles and Software: padlet overview and links

# data[].attributes.subject
Animation Approaches, Styles and Software: padlet overview and links