The second one is about a guy that just live his daily boring routine (wake up, work, eat and sleep), but one day he sees a person doing a drawing  and he decides that he wants to try that out. His drawings are terrible and he gets very frustrated but he keeps on the same way. He is no longer doing just his boring routine, he has now found something that can take him out of it, at least for a while. 

With those two ideas in mind, I have settled my research framework around the elements that compose an animation, like techniques, storytelling and film production. For the music one some research into music.

On the afternoon I have tried to conduct some research on these topics but I found it really difficult to carry on with this research. I can’t find references or books that talk about these themes and I am starting to question what I might be doing wrong if things are not working out. Is the concept that is not clear? Maybe this ideas are not a good starting point?

For these reasons, I decided to give a try going to talk with Carlos tomorrow to see if can help me out.

Fortunately, it worked, on the workshops, some people gave references for my project, that were actually things that I haven’t thought before (like movies, comics and TV programs). This made me realise that opening up my research for other media and types of references (not only philosophy books, articles, artists and designers) could actually improve my research and get it going. 

Regarding my presentation, I think I was sufficiently clear for people to understand it and get the concept of my presentation. An indicative of that is that some of my friends have come to tell me how they found that my project was “so something I would do”. I did not understood the comment at first, but then the person said that it was relatable with the one gif I did for the identities project. (in fact it is, “methodic” brings out the idea of a repetition or consistency, two elements that can be found in a “routine”). For me, this comment is a indication that at least people could get the concept out from my presentation, showing that it clear to a standard.  

On monday I visited Galeria Ricardo Camargo that was exhibiting the works of Ranchinho, a painter who makes drawings and paintings that portrait scenes of the routine in the countryside. Farmers working, people in small towns, animals all this elements of the countryside. My project is more related with the environment of the city and the lives of people in it, but it was interesting to observe how Ranchinho approached the theme- although in a different surrounding-. I’ve not thought of making drawings or paintings for this project yet, but seeing his works made me think of this as a possible approach for the project.

Tuesday I visited MIS and MuBE. Since I might work with a motion related technique on the project I found that it could be an interesting idea to visit the museum of image and sound, once it is place that holds works in the same media. MuBE shows lots of sculptures and installations, which are not the focus of my research, but since it is literally by the side of MIS I payed it a visit. MIS exhibition on Hitchcock  was very interesting, it made me realise that that are other ways of presenting a video, using the space to create a relation with the video and enhancing the presentation as a whole adding meaning and significance to the video work.

On Wednesday I went to Funarte and Ink gallery in Republica. Ink gallery was exhibiting a series of photos from Valmir Dacil that were about the everyday of the paulistano. The photos were actually good, but the presentation was so poorly done that it took me a while to realise that it was an exhibition. The photos were just badly glued to the walls in very awful way, that it was actually preventing me from enjoying the artist’s work. I must be very careful not to mess things up in the presentation of my project, otherwise I’ll  be judged by the presentation instead of the work itself.

Thursday I went to the 33° Bienal, most of works in the exhibition were not really much of my interest. They too conceptual for my particular taste, but I could take some good references from it. For example Dreher’s “day by day” series of paintings, that relates so much much the idea of repetition present in my concept.

Friday I visited IMS to see the “3 Ensaios Visuais” an exhibition of photographs of the city of São Paulo and the people on it-it’s characters- from different periods of the city’s history. This exhibition was very well related with my project, the photos of the daily lives of those people made wonder of how their lives was I even made me think about the live we have nowadays and how live has changed since that time. 

             

On the afternoon of this day, we had a crit, but most of the students did not manage to have the time to talk about their projects on that crit- I included-. Therefore I could not take much from that crit regarding my own project, but I tried to give useful advice to the students that actually presented their works. 

In the afternoon I used my time to research animation techniques that I think that would be suitable for each of the animation ideas. For the clock one, I think illustrator and after effects will work just fine for a primary test since the clock has fewer elements to animate. For the animation in the idea n.06 (sketchbook), that require more details and care on the animation process I think I will experiment with rotoscope animation using photoshop because it allows me to have more control over each frame of the animation.   

The drawing that I was supposed to have finished by the morning actually took me the entire day to get done. I think the main reason for this is the size I am working with. To draw in A3 paper worked well for yesterday one, but it had fewer details and elements to put in the drawing. Today’s one was a lot more detailed and technically more complicated to be done in terms of perspective drawing. Since I still have lots of drawings to do before the end of this week I’ll try to work in A4 so that I can finish the drawings more quickly.

The first thing I tried was to apply an effect in after effects called “cartoon”, that I learned with Alex. This effect creates lines over the elements of the footage, that makes it look like a drawing. I found the effect very interesting. On the software you can test different lines (bold, thin, lighter, darker, etc). I found the bold lines to be more interesting as they are more visible, I also chose to keep the original footage behind the lines so to preserve colour, that I found to more appealing to the eye than the “lines on white canvas one”.

The video was interesting but I still wanted to test animation (specifically rotoscope, that I found about during the research week). For making it I reduced the frame rate of the video down to 8 frames per second, since rotoscoping in 24 would take forever. I ,then, exported it to photoshop and created an empty layer above the video, were I drawn over each frame. And so when you delete the original footage, all that is left are your drawings. Again I found that just lines over white canvas was too simple (and I still want the “urban scenario”, present in our routine, to be on the work). So I exported one frame of the cartoon effect tests  and used it as background. Environment problem solved. New problem: the animation is now almost invisible. I rudely applied a solid colour behind the animation so that is visible. Strangely it looks cool, the loose way the color is behind the animation makes it look almost like a brush blending well with the animation style. Still I need to test more ways of mixing the background with the animation in the front.

I also made a visit to Split Studio that was very interesting and helped me a lot to understand the process in which an animation is made from concept to final piece and how the studio organizes itself to meet deadlines, maintaining a standard quality. One thing that was said in there was that the studio has as a daily task to produce 5 seconds of finished animation in a day. This way they can calculate how long a project will take to get done, allowing to organize teams, schedules and middle production deadlines that really help keep things moving.  I can apply the same to organize my project.

Daniel made it clear that it was not a problem if the animation was completely digital since I had reflected on it and came up with a reason for that. And that is what I am going to focus on the next days of this project, I need to figure out rather the animation will mix real and digital world techniques or not. I have to test with both worlds and then reflect on the pieces and make my choice. 

The lost week have delayed me, truth, but I still have time to make up for it. When I visited Split Studio on October 9, I learned that one common thing in the industry is to make a “style frame” before actually getting to work on the animation. A single frame that summarizes the general looks, style, mood and aesthetics of the animation. This is fantastic, if I work just on a single frame, that would allow me to really push forward on experimentations, testing techniques and styles far quicker than if making short scenes (what I made on days 13 and 14 of the project). This is what I’ll be doing the beginning of next week.   

From this next weeks, I need to organize myself and ensure that this situation won’t be repeated.  

On this day I have worked on the creation of the style frame of my animation, that must be finished at maximum by Thursday, so to ensure that I'll have time for animating. Testing possibilities for the scenario style of the animation, I have tried drawing with a new pen making thicker lines, which worked for some parts of the drawing and not for others. The thick lines are good for giving emphasis on a certain element of the image, but when used in the entire drawing, it looked too stiff, rigid. Then I experimented with watercolour shapes and shades, but no lines. Visually the result was pleasing but was a little confusing for the viewer (this a assumption of mine, that I confirmed asking people to say if they could understand the drawing, they couldn’t). to use a lineart in these watercolour shapes might just fix that issue.

On the afternoon was the time for the filters, I took some photos on the street (with a good camera this time) and test several photoshop filters individually and combinations of those. I got some interesting results, especially with the combination of different filters, creating noize and extracting colour shapes from the photos. Haven’t tested all the possible combinations, though, I’ll look forward to those tests tomorrow

On the afternoon I’ve made some more research on surveillance art, which has proven to be a great reference for my project (see research).

Now looking back to what I have done so far in this week I realise that I really need to focus on productiveness. Is not like I don't have a considerable amount of work, but I know I could have done more. I wanted to have already made up my mind regarding the scenarios, but I haven't yet decided which one I am going to use. Tomorrow I'll make sure to get to a definitive scenario, so that I won't have to delay the animation process.

During this morning I received some feedback on the style frames of the animation. One of the suggestions people made was that I could try changing the angle of the “camera frame” so that it could look more like CCTV footage, as this is one of my references. I actually don’t want the animation to just look like CCTV, in fact, I want it to be at the eye level so that to create the idea that viewer is seeing that place with his own eyes, not through the lens of a camera. But changing the angle of the scene might just work better for the project, so I’ll try it out.

1- having a interesting composition of streets or builds on a frame;

2- be a place with some movement (cars and people), but not too much, or I will not be able to rotoscope everything in time;

3- Be a place that I can go several times and take a camera to record the space and it’s movement without been too concerned with security (I don’t want to be robbed doing this project)

I applied this criteria to all the places that I have considered and visited today and choose the one that best suited these.

On this day I was questioned by tutor if I was going to play the scenes in sequence or not. I did not understood at first. When I told Sol that I had different recordings of the same place, but in different times, she asked if I was going to explore that characteristic of the recordings on the final “product”. Than I understood, if you just play one scene after the other people won’t know those things happened in different day times. If the idea of my project is to cause a reflection upon the theme of the routine, by showing a place and the different things that happen on it on different time periods. I should find a way to explore that in the video. 

I could consider it of the rotos as a time layer on the final video. If they are layers this means that they can be over overlaid on each other. Now, to distinguish one from the other, I could either work with colours or light. With colours, I could make solid colour shapes behind the roto to identify different moments, or even change the colour of the lines themselves. Both sound like solid ideas, but need to test them out.   

First priority is finishing the roto scene 2 just finished today, that leaves us to scene 3. This scene has a car and a person on it. Considering the time spent with previous scenes, I think I can finish it in just 2 days (by Thu). From there, I’ll have to apply colour the 3 scenes, what is way faster (in the self-publish project was), so I belive it will take maximum 2 days (by Sat). Composing the scene on after effects is actually really simple and quick, so one day should do it (by Sun). This would leave be two extra days to solve whatever needs to (if needs to) be solved.

By using the split-complementary colours of red, I found a colour palette that works, but still was not perfect. When I put the 3 colours on paper it just looked like to many things were happening at the same time, got polluted I think. To fix that I decided to desaturate and use darker tones of the complementary ones, this not only creates a sort of colours composition on the video, but also contributes for the “reading” of it by the viewer. 

After everything was done I looked to the video analyzing it, searching for problems and I yet am not sure about the background. It is too dirty, confusing quite out of focus. Since I still have some time before the deadline I decided to try one last thing before the end of the part 3. I tried the tracing technique again, since it was the other one technique that worked well. I used the filter background for this tracing technique. It worked. The traced background was looking way better, it was more clear and easy to understand. Specially the tree lines, that were more clear.

The scenes “come in” one by one and than “leave one by one, going back to the empty street that starts the video. This way the video can be looped countless times during the exhibition, the video starts just right where it ended, just like a routine, repeating, and repeating, and repeating.   
The different colours of the different scenes make it clear to the viewer that those things did not happened at that same time. This I hope will make they at least question what they are seeing. And in that question I can-through this work- make an exploration and  cause a reflection even if quick, on the modern world, our lives and the routine of a certain place.
       

I still got a few days before the deadline as I (somehow) managed to finish the work before I had previously planned. So I’ll use this extra days to work on improvements on sketchbook, research and reflection.