At my time at the flip festival I watched short films, had lectures and I had a scriptwriting class.
Scriptwriting class
I had the pleasure of going to the scriptwriting class which was £20 which i thought wasn't bad really, at first the lecturer who was one of the mc leod brothers, first we had watched some animations that had inspired him but also made me think, there was one animation i forget what it was called now but it was of a man trying to get a cockroach and then a bigger version of him would come and try to catch him making it look like its him he is catching all the time, why animation he had asked which was a good question the video could have been done as a normal video shot but why choose animation, i think its because you ( as long as you know what you are doing) are endless with possibilities with animation, you are only limited to imagination. We got help in coming up with ideas and was given newspapers and had to decide in groups what story we chose and come up with a animation to it, then we had to do an exercise where we would write down a random name, where they live, where they go on holiday and something unusual about them which helps to create personality in the characters, you dont have to stick to the exact things but it certainly create your imagination and create a spark, we created another character to and had to interlace them, so the outcome was very interesting in how to different characters that have no relation to each come become friends, enemies or brought together. We then watched some animation as to get us used to some techniques used in animation and what we could achieve, which is anything so long you have got an idea. At the end of the scriptwriting class we all had to make a one minute animation that may have got made into a animation by the brothers and shown at the festival, mine wasn't that good as my creative juices didn't want to flow that morning but alot of the others animation were really interesting. I felt that the class was good and i would go again, the only downside that i have is the fact that i would have like more on organizing my script since im pretty messy and could do with some pointers, apart from that i enjoyed it alot and i think that i have learned more than when i went which is a bonus :)
Seeing sound, hearing animation
We were watching all these different animation to try and get how sound can affect an animation for the better and worse, how sound affects mood and helps to tell the story.
If you want to watch any of the clips just click on the title of the short.
There isn't a lot of sound in this just the rambling sounds that are morph and his friends voice, even though it isn't actually speech you can tell the feelings from them just by the pitch of the sounds whether they are confused,happy or angry.
There not being much sound complements this short i think since i think it would just clutter the animation and you would miss the point of it, they have kept it simple and it worked.
Like in the morph animation there is hardly no sound, all you can hear is the penguin on the bike and when the polar bear chucks the fish into the penguins mouth, hardly no sound made this animation work better, i think dialogue would have ruined the whole comedy effect of the animation and the whole subtle way that the animation was played out in letting the audience figure out what was happening.
There was no dialogue but the sound, movement and emotion was good enough to portray the harsh environment that they are in.
I liked the animation because you can tell that the bigger sister looks after the little one and you can by the wqay the little sister acts, tugging on the bigger sister to ask if she can have him like a child does to a parent.
The sounds are great as well, you really feel that you are there, its better because they have created an atmosphere that reminds people of places even though it is alot harsher.
The sound of this animation was close to comic effect so that even without looking at the screen you know that its not something serious, the upbeat nature of the sound go with the quirkiness of jeffrey who is trying to help you to survive in the wild.
The panel then moved to talk about the process and pipeline and that sound should be one of the first things that you consider when you think of an idea ( how hard to get sound, how will it fit etc)
Fetches sound add comic value, the panel were trying to get across how sound can be used when a character is off screen and on, the basic story line is that a man is trying to get his dog to fetch things he throws, he brings back a hang bag and a old woman starts to hit him with things that break and then the dog passes more stuff to hit him with, a chainsaw then gets passed and thats when you see end but you can still hear the animation, just before the chainsaw goes down and you hear the noises you hear a yelp from the man, it worked have worked if it wasn't for that yelp because you wouldn't have known if he was still alive or not.
So mess around with off screen sound as well as on screen.
We were then shown an animation that showed how unedited sound was used. the soundtrack for the animation was made by a conversion of the director and his son, the dad asks a question and the son gives an answer to it and the scene changes to correspond to what he has said, the sound doesn't sound rehearsed which gives the animation its charm especially when you see the boy thinking and the dinosaurs are waiting for him to give an answer before they can react. Also the way the bigger dinosaur was green as to distinguish him as different from all the others.
The animations were all good using sounds in different ways to display different things and how by watching these have changed my view on sound in animation, sound is a very powerful tool, it can create worlds and scenes, and help us achieve what we are doing... trying to make something believable.
So if we see a beach but we dont hear any noises to make us recognize that it is a beach then you couldn't believe it as much because we all use a whole range of senses to make us believe what is around us is real and in animation we have to make that up as close and not so close to reality as we like depending on what you are trying to do, sound is just as important as everything else and you cant just leave it to the last minute.
Origami killer
One of the students work and the sound for this was brilliant added to the tension well and created a sense of urgency, the low bass lets you know that something bad is going to happen but you dont know what so it builds the suspense up.
Axis Animation
Axis is an international team of talented producers, directors, designers , artists and animators based in glasgow but does include a lot of freelance staff.
The studio creates CGI animation and visual fx for commercials,games,broadcast and film.
The first part of the interview was to get to know him and his role in the company which was good because he didn't go to creative university and instead got a degree through a YTS scheme. It was him and tree others that had set up the company.
Some of the interview i felt was unneeded like when he asked him how he came up with the name of the company which i felt was really irrelevant to the whole point of the interview i thought which was to give the people watching a better understanding how animation is evolving and what standards are set by the company. axis tends to focus on 3d animation using different software when needed not just confining and limiting to one.
We then watched some of what the company has produced, one of these were a trailer for killzone 2, axis dont make games but made the trailer for the game which was very striking as the animation was stupidly real and the scene had only had one constant camera without any scene cuts or changes.
Sound played a very important part to create the atmosphere at the start you hear the voices before the person appears then you see the eye of the person first which adds to the drama because you see the emotion in the there, it then zooms out to the face, the voice starts off calm and slow but continues to get faster and more louder as the face is shown.
Another trailer i watched was for rogue warrior which i think is very sound dependent because its the sound that creates the tension.
Axis mainly employs freelance staff so that they get a wide variety of talent for the project that they are working on, he made the fact that you need to get yourself out there to be known and that work experience is very important.
You never know everything is what i learnt from this and you are always on a learning curve.
