Rosner and Gascoigne

Damian Gascoigne

Tal Rosner

Two guest lecturers I really enjoyed was Tal Rosner and Damian Gascoigne. The Gascoigne lecture I didnt really no what to expect I had seen his work in animation but this was an area I am not to keen on doing myself as my story telling skills are limited. But the lecture itself was really good and very informal. It was very easy and enjoyable to watch and listen to and you could tell everyone was enjoying it even if your interest lay elsewhere.

I think I kind of new what I was getting with Rosner it is what I expected a lecture to be like. I think it seemed that if you wasnt very interested in his work or methods it wouldnt have been the most exciting lecture. He wasnt as out going and funny as Gascoigne although he seemed like a very nice person but he didnt seem as confident as Gascoigne who is obvisouly very comfortable. During Rosners lecture the room seemed a little more serious I really enjoy his work and working method and really related to methods he was discussing and thought he was a cool guy.

Tal Rosners lecture was very work based he started of discussing the nature of the lecture and how he has got to his place in his career. He was showing us alot of finished pieces and discussing in depth what he was trying to create it seemed more like he was presenting and showing of his work. Whereas Gascoignes was more about discussing his methods. He wasnt worried at all about showning us some unfinished pieces and disccusing pieces that didnt work, animations he is currently working on. He seemed really enjoy the lecture and seemed very natural and confident in front of a crowd.

There work differs alot as Rosner uses mainly live-action and real footage and seems to be more practical and proffesional although he is obvisouly doing something he loves it seems to be dealt with more seriously than Gascoigne. Rosner seems to be influenced more by rhythm, music and composition. Gascoigne seems to have a lot of fun with his work and creating ideas and work methods he seems to thrive of other people for influences his work. Although he probably thinks about music his work seems to focus on the animation.

They both constantly keep collecting research, such as photos, films, images as most designers from all areas will do. Where I think the contrast between them lies is that Rosners designs are very much graphical compositions as he discusses in his lecture the way he treats his work like a magazine layout creating a kind of flow and Gascoigne is very illustrative and I think choosing creativeness over practical and his work very much profits from this.

I think I related to Rosner more as his work method was similar to mine and his passion seems to lie in layouts and compositions and I also enjoy working with music and rhythm and having it as the basis for my designs. Whereas Gascoignes lecture was more fun and I couldnt stop listening

Damian Gascoigne

Damian Gascoigne joined Picasso Pictures in 1993, already an established illustrator and animation director. He is aksi a tutor for a degree course

When I heard Damian Gascoigne was are next guest lecturer I did a little research to see what work he did and really like his handcrafted sketchy style although it looks easy to do it is actually difficult to get it looking good and loved the 3-D he took into his style and think it looks cool.

During the lecture it was obvious he was very passionate and funny he was easy and enjoyable to listen to it was a very confident lecture and I think gave students confidents as it did me. The atmosphere was very relaxed and I think everyone enjoyed it.

The lecture itself wasnt just about talking about himself and his work it seemed in some parts like a fun lesson he would often give helpfull advice about working methods and creative ways. He talked about influences he has in every day life going on around us all, things that we notice but take for granted such as paticular situations, facial expressions on peoples faces. I really liked his working method he made it so enjoyable to listen to he gave us some really nice advice about getting into the habit of creating snooping around, doodling snapping and collecting. Obviously he is very passionate about his work and discussed very openly about characters he creates influenced from real people like his students, women he obsessed about general people he sees in the streets and situations he sees I also liked the way he had kind of an obsession with posture and described how generic pictures of people are always well postured and straight backs but in the real world we arent like that at all.

His view on 3-D didnt seem to be convincing he obviously preferred 2-D but he said the more like 2-D he could get his 3-D animation the more he seemed to warm to it his latest piece of animation "muso soup" is a prime example of him trying to get away from generic 3-D where everything looks real his his 3-D characters look very handcrafted and look very good. He was very passionate about design and creativeness and told us how much he dislikes generic 3-D design.

A character from his new animation.. as you can tell although it is 3-D it keeps the style, shading and amount of colors as in 2-D work and works really well creating his own style and I think is very pleasing on the eye

mini vegas

A company I really like the work of as they seem to use humour as a really big influence in there work. I have tried getting in contact asking them if humour does play a major part in there design at all but no reply yet.

rhythm

S4C channel idents that where Produced by Proud Creative and Mini Vegas. I like the way All visuals react directly to the presenters voice on each broadcast and it works really well. This links to the use of visual rhythm as it is the base of the voice that creates movement and light. This gave me the idea of using light appearing on every beat and the use of movement to represent beats.

Universal Everything 3-D research

love the pace of this ident it was for MTV history of dance by Universal Everything. This animation reminds me of there work on Toonami. The way they have created different mood through color to represent each decade has been done very clevely but the fast pace remains. The ident moves away from the usual MTV rubbish and seems to create a very powerful animation and the way they use glass balls to refract the color streams which I am not sure they need but they are still very good. the music seems a bit intense but does actually suit the animation.

3D ident research

produced by a company called Spin they seem to really enjoy using 3-D but really nice in a suttle way its not all flashy and colourfull that trys to take over the screen. I like the use of the 2 tone colors and the fact the focus is still on the actual ident the nice dynamic movement of the objects gives it a nice proffesional feel

Portfolio site research

http://lukelarsen.com/ a site that uses the a really big area to move about in you can go left right up an down I think this is really nice and it doesnt limit you as much. Athough it does take a little time to load up.

http://adaptd.com/ a basic site with minimal design but looks very nice I also liked the way the details stay on the top so you never get lost while looking through.

http://digitalmash.com/work/print/ a really good site with very good use of photography although there is nothing really unique about the layout but his photography and visuals add humour to the site and it minimal design but very stylish and his use of layout text and composition is really good

http://www.parkvillage.co.uk/ really nice flash site for the production company Park Village as well as having nice layouts hey have a really good brand identity and they use it throughout the site the block colors are always there making sure you know what site your on. Although it does look fairly simple to make and have a retro feel it is very simple to navigate

shynola

U.N.K.L.E. Guns Blazing. Made for James Lavelle's NME Brat award acceptance speech.

Chris Cunnigham

Early work by Chris Cunnigham his work for the track Second Bad Vilbel. I love all his work but for some reason this one is one of my favourites. I think its because I can relate to the style it looks to me like layouts sometimes the composition looks really good as just a still frame although you cant quite make out what they. I think this gives it a kind of sinister look a style which he seems to have carried on with. The use of interferance in the tele that go with the rythm and the flash cuts give it alot of pace which really goes with the track and I think it would look awsome projected onto a wall.

some stills from the video that I think the composition and color is really good and I like how sinister they look

music videos

http://sputnik7.com/ loads of really good music videos to look at here good for research an stuff

3-D research

another video by BL:ND I seen this commercial which gave me a similar feel to what I wanted on my 3-D ident. I really like how smoothly it all seemed to move and the teh chaotic style as the blocks fly around the scene past and around the camera

BL:ND

An award winning multi media company that consists of 8 employees and have had clients from Honda to Nike and there work is really good and from what I have noticed a big majority is using After Effects. They did a really good video fo Justin Timaberlake as well a loved the style of it just really dont like the song. There site is well layed out and simple to use and there is so much work to look through. http://www.blind.com/

Passion Picures

found out they did work on the Mighty Boosh so followed it up by checking out there site and there is some really good stuff on it. I think the grunge style of some of there videos is really good and they use a mixture of 2-D and 3-D and it looks awsome
http://www.passion-pictures.com/flash.html#page=d15 I especially like the video "Mercury Craze" the style for some reason reminds me of "The cabinet of Dr caligari" the mixture of 2-D and 3-D is really good on this one.

SHYNOLA research

Athlete 'You Got The Style' this music video by SHYNOLA. I had recenlty seen the video when I started my Science brief and it is a mixture of live action and animation. When they look in the book a character and few other things begin to animate and it gave me the idea of making books fun to learn from. I was thinking using some kind of pop up book but animate it

Zumm-Creative

got in contact with Zumm-creative

doodle doo

got in contact with doodledo motion

mk12

3 videos by MK-12 helped me and given me alot of inspiration for my science brief not only the vector style which i used myself, but the way things were presented to you its like there is a bigger space than just the 2-D screen even tho its flat colours. I like the use of cameras we are being shown around the animation as it happens. I also like the way the vectors form and animate into the shape infront of are eyes

Johnny Hardstaff and Black Dog Films

another video that had influenced my rhythm video. was created by Johnny Hardstaff and Black Dog Films a was created for the song Like Spinning plates its green tint an use of lights to symbolise the rhythm of the song gave me so many ideas. It also looks like it is still images which are animated which is kind of where I was going with mine. There was also the use of lights being used to draw 3-D images which reminded me of my own light stream alphabet I had created by using a slow shutter speed on the camera, it gave me the idea of using my alphabet with my rhythm brief

The Owl

Awsome tune with a really good video by emmanuel Ho. I like the way the tremblings of the frightened crow and the rope it is tied to symbolise the guitar riff. I also researched into his other work and found a kind of technique that inspired me in my own science brief as I liked the way it moved it just reminded me of files or documents or a box folding up

universaleverything

Matt Pyke is a painter, photographer, artist, curator, designer, animator, director, producer and lecturer. I found some of his very interesting especially his work for Toonami Ident. I love the flat colors but the obvious use of 3-D. When 3-D is used this well and doesnt look a millions miles away from what I think I may be capable of gives me confidence to try it.

Maxim Zhestkov is the 3-D animator who did this animation for the release of a new Nokia phone www.universaleverything.com/282 what i really like about this is how fluid and realistic everything seems and in the final part the colors coming together and bein refracted bye the glass balls looks great. there is so much to look at on there site www.universaleverything.com/

E4 launch

found this animation from when E4 was launched as channel 4 has spawned of a few channels I think this really works as it breaks into litle E4 logos which I think may represent the channel expansion. I also think it really expresses what the channel is all about a kind of fun little brother channel

Channel Ident research

after choosing channel M as my ident to re-brand I came up with the idea of constructing the ident or it growing as the channel itself had recently enjoyed some growth. Also as its a local community channel I thought this would resemble a community coming together, as people only interested in local things would watch it. I found a famous channel 4 3-D ident that gave me some ideas although i did want a more dynamic camera movement

Also found some MTV ident animations which use growing 3-D animations there are some organic ones but the ones I really liked are the metal mechanical ones although I am goin for a more vector based approach than the realistic style.

www.videocopilot.net

a site that has helped me with using the software After Effects giving me some challeging tutorials and some that where fairly easy but they are all very easy to follow its just a shame there is plug-ins needed to create some of the best effects

Zumm

I have recently been in contact with a company called Zumm at first glance they seemed to be just into web design but as I browsed the site I found some really good videos some were interactive and they gave me ideas for my own portfolio site. check it out this is there site www.un-call.co.uk/ it is a really easy and cool site to use.

UNKLE Music video

an awsome UNKLE music video for the song Heaven. The video was directed by Spike Jonze an american music director love the way its all film at a very high frame rate per second and some really good artistic camera angles creating a really atmospheric video. also like the use of the explosions and from what i can tell there is no CGI. Video can be found herewww.kovideo.net/music/video/UNKLE---Heaven/5129.html

Tal Rosner

I had previously seen his work and really enjoyed his music video Doppleganger and had looked to do something similar as I was doing a music video brief using rhythm. I liked the way he never uses 3-D in his work and his style suits it so no 3-D is needed although I do want to use it myself if possible sometime. He also shown us some of his live work using an installation similar to VJing. It was classical music one by an artist called Nan Carrow the visuals was all based on the music creating geometric shapes and lines. I didnt enjoy it may have been the music as his visuals were still very good. What really interested me was his working method how he came from a Graphics background like me and he wanted to use his layout or compositions skills he had gained in graphic design in to moving image.

"take all kinds of things I had learned in Graphic Design and kind of try to translate them to movement on screen, whether if it is composition or a sequence"

He explained how he would create the moving image sequence like layouts creating the begining and the end frame or "composition" first and fill in the rest as he went along. As I found out this method really suits me I like to create the storyboards like layouts creating a composition I am happy with but not frame by frame I break it down and use my layouts as a guide to how I want that frame to look after maybe a 100 frames or whatever. Using this method has really helped me find my feet in moving image because at first I had no method and was struggling with the whole moving image thing.

I like the way he broke it down it really helped me find my feet in moving image

MK-12

I came across a company called mk-12 and found many of my inspirations and ideas from there work as it is really beautiful to look at and watch, though they dont dabble in as much 3-D work there was a piece of work named resfest that uses 2-D and 3-D elements but with a very hand crafted look which was one of my inspiration for my Manchester 3-D ident.