Bee

-1st Year LSAD Student- Exploring Movement through Growth in the Transgender experience

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01|05|22| Project Statement

This semester was dedicated to learning some basic foundational animation work and I enjoyed every bit of it.

I've been having a lovely time these last 5 weeks. From getting to know new people to team building activities and to Fota island, I think there was at something for everybody this semester.

My favourite project to have worked on this semester mustve been the animated poster. There was something about the process of finding a poster and brainstorming ideas then leading to the puzzle filled activity of actually bringing the piece to life, that really instilled a confidence of what I can actually achieve in the medium with enough patience.

I'd pick a least favorite but it wouldnt do justice to how much fun I had in the several areas we worked in, everything had something to like.

I know next year wont be as "easy" but I'm really hoping I can keep up the confidence and enjoyment I carried throughout this semester into the future.

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01|05|22| My Experience with Teamwork

So far this semister, Ive had two strong experiences with working in a team on a project.

I worked as a director, voice actor,and Editor on the stop motion fruit project

24|03|22| Stop motion team project

Animation collaboration with the main target being animation with fruit or vegetables. Director + Actor - Bee Mulvihill Actor + Writer - Liw

As well as working as an Actor in the pixilation workshop project

1|04|22| Pixilation workshop

Our pixilation movie ended up consisting of over 400 frames of pure action. Staff consisted of: Karina - Our fantastic director Emilia - H

Both of these experiences couldnt have been more different when it comes to how I contributed to the team.

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Fruit project

I like being a director or at least a writer on a project, its where I feel most in my element because no matter what, Ill always have some dumb idea I wanna impliment. So in the Fruit project, I was the sort of glue bringing things together and making sure its a serviceable product. It was a fun expereince despite being a bit nerve wracking considering it was the first time I had met my teammates.

My only comments on that experience might be that I'm disappointed in myself for not being able to look people in the eyes in the project. I've never been able to look people in the eyes as I suffer from aspergers, but when youre team leader.. you really need to connect with who youre working with. Because if im not connecting with people then its gonna affect the experience for everyone else.

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Pixilation project

For this project, I found myself in the role of an actor which is the complete opposite of something i'd like to do. That in effect made it a more cementing experience in my opinion.

It felt strange to not be too heavily involved in the creative process because thats what I'm good at. But being an actor was surprisingly a better expereince than I thought. I took orders and did the best I could to be as facilitating to the vision of the director and camera operative. It took a bit of time to get used to but as soon as I saw how talanted the people I was working with, I knew they didnt need my help beyond acting as they were fantastic and more than capable.

In reflection, I found the expereince enlighening and it showed me I could take part in a project and NOT be the one behind the camera for once.

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01|05|22| Art Research - Art Trade

"Lain" from Serial Experiments Lain (1998 - Triangle Staff)

As of late, I've been completely entrawled with the art and animation world.

Due to this, I decided to join an art driven server filled with very talanted people who have the same artist taste and style as I do and just talk about art together. Its been a really great experence.

One person I met there is an incredibly talanted artist in their own right and once I became friends with him, I asked him if he would be interested in an art trade with me.

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He asked me to draw Lain from Serial Experiments Lain, and I asked him to draw Stocking from Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt.

For this piece, I really wanted to hone my editing skills and improve working in photoshop. The unsung backbone to the piece for me is the radial blur as I find it really draws you into lains face as the focal point, mixed with the red swirls and I think this is my best piece to date. If I cant draw then I know I can at least colour, and I think thats a big factor with my satisfation too.I said I would share with school as the context that it comes from is a huge part of my inspiration right now.

His side of the art trade, isnt it so cool??

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01|05|22| Research - SMILE !

"Cheese!"Ever since I heard from yvonne that when people turn, they blink, i'd been obsessed with that fact haha. It made me think how animators and artists have to see the delicacies of the world in order to reproduce them.

As such, I referenced a turning and smiling video but tried to put an emphasis on the fact its an animation, so making it lively is my number 1 goal.

I'm happy with the result and think I captured what I had in mind. I think its obvious that I got comfortable as time went on.

Which is interesting in the sense that I dont draw side profiles much so its obvious im referencing something at the start... but I am very comfortable drawing faces looking forward, so my style suddenly jumps at you.

Standoffish eyes turn big and embracing when she sees you

Referenced video

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01|05|22| Sketchbook Showcase

My quant little sketchbooks get the red carpet treatment and are showcased with my David Attenborough narriation as your guide

Notice: Compression might affect the quality of the video so apologies if theres issue

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29|04|22| Warm down Animation

Weeeeeeee

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Animating the walk cycle had me excited to keep on drawing some animated figures, so I doodled out this character and made them spin. Not very technical but lots of fun to produce.

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29|04|22| Walk Cycle

Walkin'

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Today I worked on some walking cycles for Yvonne.For my first attempt, I heavily referenced the Richard Williams referenced walk cycle found in his book The Animators Survival Kit.As the Richard Williams walk cycle did not include arms, I referenced this arm cycle by Dermot O Connor and combined it with the walk cycle.

Richard William's walk cycle

Dermot O Connor's arm cycle

My Character for the second walk cycle's reference Drawing-For the second walk cycle I conducted, I wanted to capture the swinging of the sleeves to make the character look kinda dopey. To do this, I used the famous video of Bigfoot walking as inspiration for the cycle and combined it with a simple enough character design. -I noted how bigfoot only kept his hands alwyas facing downwards and had a large swing span and used these in my cycle-My main reference in this was the first walk cycle and aspects that I liked, I kept in the second walk cycle, such as the bobbing of the head and the shaded left leg

Bigfoot walking cycle

My own walking cycle video

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28|04|22| Research - FLCL Credits

I have been watching the anime series FLCL (Studio Gainax - neon genesis evangelion, ghost in the shell) and when I saw the credit sequence, it heavily reminded me of what we've been working on as of lately.

The sequence features stop-motion which is something I've rarely seen in anime much before. Not only that , the footage seems just as amateurish as something I'd make which I believe is an advantage as it makes the footage charming and down to earth, just having fun with the resources they have.The stop motion sequence is not particularly technical, but it really emulates the surrealist comedy and style the anime has in bulk. So as such, I think it fits perfectly within the boundaries of the show.

The 2D animation parts of the credits is absolutely exceptional to me and I adore it to pieces. I'm obsessed with how well the Vespa is animated in motion when the character Haruko does tricks on it. The sense of volume and weight draws me in. Then mixed with the music, I feel this outro is just so full of swagger and character that its hard not to like.

Another sequence in which the animation team show exceptional skill at executing weight and volume in their work

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26|04|22| Fota Island Zoo Trip Sketches

My Sketches

On Wednesday, we all climbed on a bus and headed off to Fota Wildlife park to sketch up some of the animals.I had a surprisingly great time considering I've never found much to be excited by when it comes to the zoo, but being surrounded with great people certainly does help.

I enjoyed so many things from the trip, though my favourite moments had to be seeing the tigers make funny noises because they were in heat, as well as getting to see some fish, gotta love fish.

I wanted to translate the fun I was having in the sketches so I included how I was feeling and joking about alongside the sketches. My favourite animal to draw was the rhino I think. Their skin looks like a suit of armour which I found really cool to try and emulate, as well as the fact they're such an identifiable shape, I didn't have to try very hard to make it look like a Rhino. After that I think the Tapir I drew was good and translated well how absolutely sleepy this big guy was.

It was an incredibly warm day, so id say the only downside of the day was the fact that I was melting out in the sun, but besides that I had a great time. The animals were lovely and my sketches are something I'm happy about.

I wish I could've drawn more fish because I enjoyed them so much, but the tropical facility was incredibly warm so there was no chance I could set up shop in there without becoming a puddle by the end of it

Overall, a fantastic experience and I'm glad I could go with everybody :D

My people

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25|04|22| HEELLLOOOO

For the workshop with Yvonne, people had built clay models for them to animate lip syncing onto. I had been out so I decided to do a makeshift traditional lip syncing model on the spot and I'm happy with the result I learned a lot about lip syncing today and getting to work on my own pieces to explore the skill is a great feeling when everything is said and done

The phonemes sheet I used as reference for this piece

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25|04|22| Artist Research- PERFECT BLUE

Recently I sat down and watched Perfect Blue (1997) and found it a fantastic but thoroughly horrifying movie.

I rarely get scared from movies, especially animated movies. But this movie went one step closer and disturbed me in many areas of the film.

Its very psychological based, and extends itself to showing us a first person perspective on the effects and feelings that go along with dissociative identity disorder.

I adored the animation from start to finish in this movie. From the terrifying floating of the imposter Mima to the quiet moments spending time with her fish, this film is filled to the brim with great moments.

I think this movie goes hand in hand with other Japanese animations from the period like Ghost in the Shell or Serial Experiments Lain, a fear of the internet and technology is an undercurrent in these films and I'm personally very drawn to this period in anime

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25|04|22| Lip Sync Workshop Extra

I couldn't fit another video to the master post, so here's the first piece we did when working with lip syncs

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25|04|22| Lip Sync Workshop

"Wario Dying"

Today for Paul we worked on setting up lip sync symbols in Adobe Animate for us to then implement these skills in making a personal work. I jokingly used audio of Wario from Super Mario Brothers exploding and dying for my work

During the process of lip syncing, I was surprised how well the auto lip-sync function on Animate worked.

My lip syncing sheetI found this workshop worked to heavily improve my view of lip syncing and the process that goes with it. More than anything though, I'm feeling very lucky for technology as it just auto lip syncs for me so I don't work on lip syncing for hours on end

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05|04|22| Erasing Painting Study

Ocean scene coming to life

We were asked on Friday to bring in 3 pieces of art for a mysterious project that we'd be working on Monday. I had a lot of choices to choose from but decided to go with 3 that I think would be fun to work on

Credit to:

Seascape: @_alariko Perfect blue: @fuko91507127

Erased by the light: @Milesjohnston

In class, Paul was drawn to the seascape painting as well as the Perfect Blue art. In the end we decided the seascape painting would have the best effect overall.

The work is done by starting with a finished piece, then bit by bit erasing it, As to fulfil a painterly creation when reversed. It makes you think about how people paint, and how its not just magically appearing but people start on certain aspects like outline, dark colours last, etc.

The final piece comes out to 413 frames of erasure, about 13 seconds of footage. 2 days working, roughly about 4 hours in total

Above: My workspace

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04|04|22| Monday Workshop - Animate ease in work

Today while with Paul in the lab, we worked on turning a shape and making it follow a line drawn by the pen tool.

The most important things I learned to do are

1: Turn line drawn into a 'Guide'

2: Use Classic Tween

3: Create keyframes right when the shape goes down a slope and select Ease in-> Cubic in the tween effects section to make it seem as though its going down a slope

4: Using "Orient to path" to make the shape change rotation as it moves along the line

Above: My workspace upon export

My tweening selections

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1|04|22| Pixilation workshop

Our pixilation movie ended up consisting of over 400 frames of pure action.

Staff consisted of:

Karina - Our fantastic director

Emilia - Hard working camera operator

Rebecca - The most attacked race car driver

Jason - Bully race car driver

Me - Very fair referee and professional door

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The overall experience was great, I tend to lean towards technical work like director or camera operator rather than actor but those two working behind the scenes did better jobs than I ever could, and acting wasn't so bad either.

I feel bad I couldn't come in the second day to help with editing due to a family emergency, but these lot did a fantastic job bringing the final piece to fruition. My favourite memory on working on this project was probably when I had to hold the door open with Karina for the camera as it was the stupidest struggle to hold open that door. Now I can say I've professionally acted as a door.

The idea was a massive collaboration between all of us. Our several ideas came together over the general basis of a race using chairs. It was originally going to be a race where they're sitting on the floor but once we noticed a red chair and a black chair we thought they'd be perfect vehicles for our racers to be on.

All these ideas meant nothing in the end considering all our best ones came out when shooting in the hallway

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-Behind the scenes work

-Vimeo link

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30|03|22| Ponyo Animated Poster

After several iterations I've finally completed my Animated poster task

The Japanese official poster animated fully using Adobe Premiere and photoshop

Above: Animated gif I made for the title

There were many reasons behind choosing this poster for the animated poster project.

-A big one was due to the colours on the poster being quite basic and easier to remove a background from which was a big effort in the piece.

-Its a favourite movie of mine so as such I was brought a lot of joy in the process of seeing this to life

-The Japanese poster was far better looking to me than the Western version we got during the films release.

While ultimately the same scene, it has far less action and movement going on. I felt the world of Ponyo was so important to the poster that going for the version that removes this would not bring forward the liveliness of the film.

Above: Western poster, My edit of the background with ships removed, and the photo of ponyos smile that I took for her smile in the poster

Tumblr GIF size version: