Marissa Lim

A blog to write about my process in completing the Ba3a 2.2 RSA brief (Brief 8) at NUA.

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Welcome. A short intro.

This is a blog to write about my process on creating the video for the Ba3a 2.2 RSA Brief (Brief 8 - Animation) for Norwich University of The Arts.

This blog is to write about the process that I’ve taken when making the video and the changes along the way. I’ll be putting up short clips / WIP of the video as posts on the blog. Other research will be in the back up work/research folder.

The order of the posts are from the newest first, please scroll all the way down to the bottom for a chronological view. I’ve also categorised my posts as “Research” and “Development” for easy browsing. Development shows the progress made of the animation.

Due to partly changing briefs halfway through, there are some research on Tifanny Dufu - Not Enough Time on this blog, however it’s not very disruptive hence I left it in there.

My final video is the solution for Matthew D’Ancona’s “Post-Truth”.

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Here’s the final video!

(PS: For best results, please see the copy in the memory stick. There’re a couple of alignment problems in this video, it’s very minimal that you might not even notice it. I’ve fixed it in the final video which I’ve submitted a softcopy in the memory stick. However due to the upload limit of Vimeo I wasn’t able to upload it again, and I tried Youtube but the compression is bad.)

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The final part which is the ending of the video. I cross’ed out the letters that the politician should not say, and to convey “debasement” I made the letters explode, in which it transition to the end credit of the video.

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Two hands of very different styles coming together, and forming a new style : colourful line art. 

I conveyed “grown-ups” with using the swirl on the brain, as previously it has been depicted with paper. It’s to relay that once we recognise the brain isn’t fully rational, then we can change our approach to post-truth.

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Eyes are the windows to the soul. Hence I used eyes to convey “recognise the adulthood” by using the eye blinking as a transition from child to adult.

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Full video progress at the 10th of January

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Changed the style of the politician so that it’s consistent to the style of the icons at the beginning of the video. I’ve also tweaked the animation so that it has more purpose, showing the politicians juggling factual claims and emotional significance in their hands.

Also further developing the video, for the “shouldn’t sacrifice veracity to theatricality part”, using a tv screen showing news for veracity, and replacing performance for theatricality.

For the “disaster” part mimicked a bomb explosion without the actual bomb.

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Showed this video for tutorial on the 8th of January with Darren and Martin.

Main feedback that I got is that the politician looks puppet-y. Tutors asked whether it’s deliberate, it is not. Darren said that politicians are all puppets anyway. I might change it so it fits the style of the icons at the beginning of the video.

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Animation for “Politicians for example...” part of the video

Trying out character rigging for the first time using Duik.

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The same part as the previous video with the removed outline for the human figure at the speech bubble.

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Futher developing the video for the “emotional and rational imperatives” part of the audio. The heart conveys emotion while the brain conveys ration.

Not really sure about the human outline as it made the heart and brain smaller in order to fit.

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Further develop the next part of the animation since the previous video. 

Created a range of icons from one standard one to build a crowd.

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Decided to add another element to the animation which supports the “direction of the narrative” idea that I’m trying to convey.

Instead of the word “Post-Truth” emerging from the darkness, the animation start with a outline of the word, taking inspiration from colouring books, and showing how we humans “paint” the narrative of the things that we want to believe.

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Trying out if I could use 3D space to convey the “bombardment of more and more and more data” (part 2)

A test without motion blur, still wasn’t happy with it as it made “data” messy instead of the other way around.

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Trying out if I could use 3D space to convey the “bombardment of more and more and more data” (part 1)

The overlapping and motion blur makes it look like it’s puffing smoke near the end, not satisfied with it.

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Darren’s comment gave me an idea, since overlapping lines and things are to make things more difficult to perceive, it made me think of using noise to makes things fuzzy and unsharp, taking inspiration from old tv screens. 

I’ve also to further convey the post truth by basing the style on swirls that’s inspired from psychedelic art. 

I’ve also decided to set the “Post-Truth” era in a darker background, not only it conveys the bleakness of the post-truth era, it’ll also contrast nicely with the white background in the facts area.

For this first part I wanted to do a short “intro” before the audio starts, showing how post-truth emerged from the darkness. 

Right now I’m happy with this art direction, and it might be the direction I’d go with for the animation.

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For today’s last tutorial before Christmas Break I showed this to Darren and the group, 

The group liked the transition in this animation, however Darren wasn’t sure about the ‘painterly style’ I was going with because he was concerned whether it really reflected the word “post-truth”. He gave me a hint on how I used overlapping lines and text, which could make things undefinable and hard to see.

Taking Darren’s suggestion into consideration, I’m also thinking of another art direction altogether as I wasn’t happy with the current one.