Mixed Media Animation

Our next assignment was one everyone was dreading... Mixed... Media....  *add lightning effects* DUHN DUN DUN!!! But yeah, this was an assignment that no one was looking forward to. We were shown animations by Norman McLaren which were entertaining for the first couple of minutes but got old very quickly. The videos didn't particularly inspire me but they clearly took a lot of effort and patience which i can respect McLaren for.

We decided to work in a large group which i was keen on as i hadn't worked with Cassie or Lisa before. We recorded a soundtrack ourselves with homemade instruments, Stuart was on guitar (not home made), I was on rice shaker, George 'played his face' by slapping his cheeks which made a pretty groovy sound and we all clapped and clicked to the rhythm. Seeing as we had a large group we made our soundtrack a little longer than the time specified in the brief. This meant everyone got an equal length of music, roughly fifteen seconds each.

Since nobody seemed very keen on having the first fifteen seconds (mainly because it wasn't very interesting and slightly out of tune, sorry Stuart, the rest was awesome :D), i volunteered to animate the start as i felt i hadn't contributed as much in the last task, the cut out animation. This was an important part of the animation as it was the beginning and would set the tone for the rest of the animation- if it was crap, people wouldn't pay attention to the rest of the animation.


Here are some of the abstract drawings i drew to my fifteen seconds...

Blue sticks appear with beat

Orange curls turn into plant

Plant growing into bird

I found the process of coming up with an abstract animation more challenging than i anticipated as every time i came up with an idea that i thought was good, i realised it was too close to an actual story. Even if a plant turning into a bird is a little crazy, It wasn't in McLaren's style, so instead i animated a plant growing and blooming, but streaks of colour flourish instead of a flower. There are also swaying leaves and blue pillars appearing in the background that match the rhythm. Here is the finished animation...

The 2011 copyright on this piece is shared between (in order of animation): Nate Jacquemain, Lisa Hignett, Bas Van Os, Stuart Jackson, Cassie Adsett and George Roberts. Click their names to visit their blogs!

Overall i was happy with my contribution to this task, unlike the last animation, i knew how to use flash a bit better and managed to produce something i was proud of that could compete with the other group member's efforts. Although some parts of the animation are stronger than others, i think we worked well as a group and produced a decent animation that didn't quite rival Norman McLaren's animations, but was done in a similar style. I wouldn't do anything different if we were to redo this assignment as i am happy with the outcome and the work i put forward.