creative-collaboration-casebook

[creative-collaboration-casebook]

Creative Collaboration: Poster Design and Illustration.

For my part in the promotional materials (EPK) of the Creative Collaboration film, Thin Ice, I took on the role of designing the A3 poster for the film.

I first started by drawing in my sketchbook. using my fellow teammate Hung's thumbnail sketch designs as well as old 1930s cartoon posters as inspiration for my own designs.

I created three design sketches, one that was loosely based on a sketch Hung did of the polar bear stuck between two icebergs, and two others loosely inspired by some golden age era cartoon posters. namely, the posters for MGM's Magical Maestro and Springtime for Thomas for the minimalist background design (apart from watercolor splotches to imply light), and the other from the overall design of a poster for the Merrie Melodies cartoon Robin Hood Makes Good. As well as the simple colour palette designs of various Popeye cartoon posters such as the ones made for Bulldozing the Bull, Wotta Nitemare and Shakespearian Spinach.

I ran these designs by Dennis and Hung. Of the three designs, they preferred poster C. Dennis liked the use of silhouettes and the overall dynamism of the piece, and Hung thought the audience would be drawn to the mystery made with the shadows. I personally liked the first design with the Polar Bear reaching for the Seal while trapped between two icebergs, but I ultimatly went with the third design as I agreed on the other two's points.

With the design set, I uploaded a picture of the sketch to my computer and opened up Adobe Illustrator. I first created a layer where I would place the original sketch, then I created a layer for the character silhouettes. I later edited the colour on the pen I was using to a slighlty warmer black as to contrast the blue background elements like the iceberg and ocean.

With the silhouettes done I did the rest of the background. One rather frustrating thing about working on Illustrator was the way the layers worked. Sometimes I would click on a layer in order to work on it, but then for some reason sometimes whatever I drew a part of a layer, it would show up on another layer. Illustrator had many quirks like this that lead to frustration in some places, but I felt I needed to get this poster done by the end of the week and couldn't waste time trying to learn the finer nuances of the software to fix some of these smaller problems. So I simply did my best to work around them. When I have more time, I will research Adobe Illustrator more to work out some of these kinks.

With the painting done, I made 3 versions of the poster: one without title text, one with it and one with titles plus some logos of the lightwaves partner companies in the corner.

There were aspects of these posters I had to correct or refine, such as some minor name spellings or changing the presents subtitle from Lightwaves to The Human Aquarium. Apart from this, I'm Happy with how this turned out. I feel it convey's that classic cartoon feel we are going for and is a striking image. I can see this piece being a good way to advertise our film while also being a nice piece of possible merchindise.

[intergratedpracticecasebook]

Intergrated Practice: portfolio presentation

for my latest creative collab class, we were tasked with giving a presentation on what we each wanted as a career in the animation industry, which animation studios we could/wanted to work for in the future and show off our portfolio video as well as links to our artist social media.

I unfortunalty was so busy with other projects that the presentation homework completly slip my mind. Luckliy, I got up at around 9 oclock and my class started as 1 pm, so I had time to cobble together a powerpoint presentation to post to the blakcboard shared area.

When my turn came to present, I mostly made up my speech as I went along, mainly going over what works im most proud of, what studios id want to work for (mainly Kilogramme Studio for its 2D work and Mackinon & Sandarsfor its diverse stop motion), and how, while mainly specialising in digital 2D and stop motion, didnt want to be put in a box as an artist. Showcaseing in both my presentation and my showreel that I can work in a diverse aray of mediums and styles, including live action puppetry.

My presentaiton was well recived. My teacher particularly liked the inclusion of my live action puppetry work. He commented on how that was a unique medium to work in, and I agree. Much like animation, I personally feel live action puppetry is a very unique medium with a vast amout of potential for creative visual storytelling. Potential which, in my opinion, has been relativly unexplored in the medium of cinema. I would very much like to make more short films using exclusivly live action puppets and puppet sets.

After class, as one part of Intergrated practice project, me and my teammates from the creative collaboration project are tasked with fimming material for a behind the scenes documentary on the short film were making. This also includes making promotional materials/merchindise such as posters.

With this, I went onto pinterest and collected some images for inspriation for my group. As our film takes heavy inspiration from classic golden age slapstick cartoons such as The Loony Tunes series of shorts, I decided to primarily look at promotional posters from that era.

30 Golden Age Cartoon Posters ideas in 2023

Nov 9, 2023 - Explore Brianna's board "Golden Age Cartoon Posters" on Pinterest.

while I was able to find posters for many cartoon series such as Mighty Mouse and Silly Syphonies, posters for Loonytunes shorts from that era were suprisingly harder to find. many posters were either materials made after the shorts (i.e. posters for vhs and home media releases made years after the shorts first debut). But I did manage to find some.

I'm overall happy with how my presentation turned out. But I am aprehensive about my role in the Creative Collaboration project. Due to some minor miscomunication on my part, I'm confused as to what part I now have to play in terms of production art. I thought I'd make the backgrounds and maybe some thumbnail sketches for poster designs, however, It seems my teammate Hung has done a few of those already (mainly the poster sketches) and I'm still unsure if I should be doing the backgrounds. Hung has made one in the groupchat, but I'm not sure yet if its a place holder and I'm expected to do the real BG's, or if hes doing any himself. I also have several other projects, namely my Performance and Character project, which I need to catch up on, so adding background art and posters to my mounting list of work to keep track of might be too much for me to handle. Nevertheless, I will try to fine a balence and comunicate further with my teammates to clear things up.

[creative-collaboration-casebook]

Creative Collaboration: Character Concept Art

I continued to further elaborate the polar bear character design through sketches.

After drawing the basic model sheet, I started to explore the character and his personality through various facial/body expressions.

I am proud of how these expressions turned out as I felt I stayed true to the character design while being able to push the physics of the body and the emotional range. I feel I was able to capture the similar expressive and zanny energy of the classic Loony Tunes comedy films I was attempting to emulate

Along with this, I experimented with warping the proportions and figuring out how they would move in cartoony squash and stretch physics.

My teammate Dennis suggested I try drawing an expression where the polar bear yawns like he does in one scene of the film. However, I struggled a bit with trying to make this expression. Not only did the head shape not look quite consistent, but I found it difficult to not make the jaw and teeth look too threating or too cutesy.

Along with all this, I also made sure to document my sketching through filming on my phone. As in Intergratd Practice class, we were assigned the task of creating a 'making of' documentary about our Creative Collab project.

Now that i've done some character designs, Dennis, who will be animating, attempted his version of my design. I liked these iliterations of my design and thought he captured the cartoony spirit well. Though I would tweak certain aspects such as making the snout shape more rectangular than curved, and making the legs shorter/making the chest/upper body bigger.

[creative-collaboration-casebook]

Creative Collaboration - Production Art and Character Design

During these past few weeks on Creative Collab, my two teammates Hung and Dennis created a rough storyboard and a rough soundless animatic.

Going forward, the tutor Annabeth suggested I do some work on the production art, such as chracter and poster designs. Since Dennis has done most of the heavy lifting on art so far, I felt this was fair and took on this role.

I first started by making some character design sketches. For my design, I not only referenced Dennis's design in the storyboards and Hung's rough animatic, but also the chracter models and artwork of Chuck Jones, so as to lean into the classic Loony Tunes inspiration of our intial concept. Taking note of the simple character shapes, the fur textures, and how Chuck Jones's character designs emphisise the eyes and pupils.

For the Polar Bears character design, I took a character model of Loony Tunes's three bears, specifically, Baby Bear, and took the fat off them in order to create the polar bear's frail emaciated frame.

I sent these initial designs to the group chat on whatsapp and Hung suggested I make the Polar Bear's face "more stupid"

I wasn't sure what "stupid face" was actually supposed to look like. Still, I tried to take his advice and experimented with giving the bear a more dopy, lethargic expression. With eylids uneven and eyes slightly crossed.

So far, I'm happy with how these inittial designs turned out. I feel there is still some refining and exagerating to be done with the body and face proportions, but I will work on it over the weekend and next week. I plan on having a character model sheet done by at least tuesday to give to Dennis to use as reference in the final animation stage. As well as a promo image poster design akin to a classic Loony Tunes title card.

Also, I will try to film some of my process. As similtanously we were given the task in Making of: Intergrated Practice to film a documentary on the making of our Creative Collab project.

[creative-collaboration-casebook]

Creative Collaboration: Script Writing

For the creative collaboration project, I (Brianna) was assigned the task of writing the script. Or rather, writing a second draft for it. As my teammate Hung had already written the first draft.

I originally wanted to use the script writting tool Celtex for my draft of the script, as I had used celtex before for script writing my screenplay for the short film River Snake (2023) . However, I was using the free version and I couldn't make a new script unless I got a paid subscription.

Not wanting to pay for a subscription and not wanting to reuse the script I had by deleting my work on river snake, I simply copy-pasted hung's script onto a new word document and formated it to a script.

On reading the first drafty of the script I felt I needed to make some structural changes. These were: that the small moments of slapstick weren't landing as they should, as the polar bear doesn't get the chance to actually bite into somthing, get hurt himself or go through any kind of actual conflict. So I rewrote these so he does get into moments of discomfort (in the freezing water), the ice disappearing under his feet etc and his disappointment upon biting into what he thought was a good meal only to discover its a piece of inflated plastic. I also removed the flashback sequence as I thought this broke the flow of the comedy plus introduced a human character into what needed to be a piece set in a natural environment untouched by humans. I felt these changes best recreated the Looney Tunes ethos and that the flashback was an over complication and could detract from the comedic spirit of the piece.

With the script tweaked, I sent this draft back to hung and Dennis via email. Where dennis will create storyboards based on this script. Overall I'm happy with how this script turned out. If I could go back and tweak some things though, I would format it more like an actual screenplay.

I came across this through my film society from a video by Youtuber LocalScriptMan that this style of writing wouldn't translate well to a professional screenplay. I merely added these details to give our animator, Dennis a good idea of the overall tone of the short and assist him with ideas for concept art and storyboarding. But if I were to do this again I would try to format it better as a professional screenplay.

[creative-collaboration-casebook]

Creative Collaboration - The Presentation and Division of Tasks

for yesterdays lesson of creative collaboration, each group gave a presentation on thier idea. The groups were split into game development, who's projects consisted of virtual reality experiences, and the animators. Of which my group, group 3, was a part of.

The other animator groups were doing ideas around sculpture. With two groups coincidentaly creating sculptures shaped like fish that were made from plastic.

Our group was the last to present. As we were all busy with other projects during the previous week and were getting used to collaborating and communicating via whatsapp it was a bit stressful pooling our ideas together for the contents of the slides.

Making this powerpoint while having such limited communication with my team, on short notice, felt a little chaotic but ultimately we were able to produce what was needed.

Included in our presentation were picture references of polar bears in their natural environment, photos of the artic, our stylistic inspirations such as the animation/drawings of chuck jones and photos showing the effects of ocean pollution on wildlife. There was also a slide of character concept art created by Dennis of our main polar bear character.

To accompany the presentation, I wrote a script to memorise some of the main points of the pitch. Even though I didn't read this script word for word, only using it as a guide, I was able to communicate the information and tone of the project well. The respnse was very positive.

After the pitch, Dennis, Hung and I met and finallise our main roles in the project:

I will act as writer, editing a draft 2 of the animation script made by Hung

Dennis will be the conceptual artist and animator. Providing character and background designs, storyboards and animation.

Hung will be the editor of the film, putting the animation clips together and giving it titles and credits as well as sound design. I would also credit him as a writer, as he wrote the first draft of the films script.

Over the next few days, I will write a second draft of the film's script which I will try to finish by saturday so I can then pass it on to Dennis, so he can work on rough storyboards.

[creative-collaboration-casebook]

Creative Collaboration - Team Assembly and Pitch Development

At the beginig of todays lesson, I was was not already part of a team so I was feeling quite nervous and unconfident. My tutor suggested three options, which were: become the forth member of a group that already had three members, go work on our head tutor's project, or join up with two other boys in my class who also hadn't found a group and form a team of three.

I decided to go with the third option, creating a new team of three. During our first meeting it was difficult to elicit very many ideas, although we did discuss the possiblity of producing a comedic piece - perhaps along the lines of a homage to Looney Tunes as a way of engaging an audience through comedy on a very serious issue. There was also some discussion regarding our skills in 2D animation.

My biggest fear was being forced to take on a leadership role - not because I was afraid to lead, but more so because I was fearful of shouldering an imbalance of the workload and also due to the fact that we all have three fast paced modules to complete before Christmas.

Luckly, thanks to a group disscussion with our tutor, we were able to flesh out our idea. We eventually landed on one idea of creating a slapstick cartoon where a polar bear chases after a seal in the distance, only to discover the seal was nothing more than a peice of plastic waste. While I'd be open to explore and brainstorm more than one idea, I feel this premise was a good balance between the other team members ideas of a comedic Loony Tunes animation while still having an underlying message of aquatic plastic pollution and global warmings impact on the environment. That mixture of comedy with an underlying philosophical layer, as pointed out by both myself and our tutor, would be reminicent of Loony Tunes shorts such as the Road Runner series, which could serve as a good key inspiration.

During the disscussion, we agreed to look more into the environmental education resources present on the module blackboard for further creative inspiration and possibly to generate more potential ideas.

At the end of the class, we were tasked with creating a powerpoint pitch for our idea no longer than three pages/slides. While we didn't get off to the best start, I feel somewhat more confident working with my group now that we have somewhat fleshed out an idea, and we will communicate egularly as a team via our new whatsapp group as we work on our pitch.

[creative-collaboration-casebook]

Creative Collaboration - Working in a Creative Team: Pros and Cons, and self assesment

In our latest creative collaboration class, we disscussed the benifits and challenges of working in groups. pros such as getting different perspectives and ideas from teamates, being able to spread the workload evenly, bouncing ideas off each other, and for the social elements. And cons including miscommunications, conflicting personalities in the group, time management difficulties, and the possiblity of the group not pulling thier weight and an excess of work getting pushed on to one person.

The other half of the session consisted of us identifying our strengths as artists and how we could apply those strengths to working in a group.

For me personally, I feel I have pelnty of strengths that could lend themselves well to working in a group; I'm good at bounching ideas off of others, I have a good imagination, an off-beat sense of humor and natural skills in stop-motion animation, with an intuitive sense of movement when animating. I'm also good at traditional drawing. So I feel I'd be good with drawing concept art for the Lightwaves installation.

Though, as of writing this, I have yet to secure a place on a team. And the people I desired to work with decided not to include me on thier team for creative differences. Never the less, I am optimistic for finding a place and contributing possitively to a team when I get the oppertunity next lesson.

[creative-collaboration-casebook]

Creative Collaboration - Powerpoint Research Board

For one of the first peices of homework, I was assigned the task of creating a powerpoint presentation slide on climate change. I gathered together several images, quotes from famous environmetal experts/activists, statistics about the various subjects and factors of climate change and the environment.

The Background was originally white, but I changed it to green which I felt was more in keeping with the enviromental theme and to make it more visually interesting.

With this done, I uploaded the powerpoint slide to Padlet on Blackboard. My tutor gave positive feedback. though she did suggest I add a few more statistics on climate change and related environmetal issues. I did some further research, then edited the originial powerpoint and uploaded the final version to Padlet.

[creative-collaboration-casebook]

Creative Collaboration -Brief

For the module, Creative Collaboration, we were given the brief to join up into teams of 3 to 4 and create for and work on a live exhibition for the Light Waves Festival in Manchester. with the theme being environmentalism in collaboration with Lightwaves and Yorkshire Life Aquatic.

I'm excited for this project. Not only am I strongly passionate about enviromental issues, and have done previous projects surounding the subject, but I'm also looking forward to working in a team. This is not something I have had the opportunity to do before and I hope this will help to build my collaborative skills. It will be interesting to access what I can bring to the team and to learn about the working practices of my team members.