Depression

Ok, this may be the alcohol talking, but it's often said that you should write about what you know. I've already expressed before that I wanted to do a story about a depressed man but now I've decided to stick with it. For definite.
I have so much personal experience and quite a deep understanding of depression on the whole and every time I think of ways to communicate it visually I find it so appealing. I want to apply narrative theory to it however I want the monotony and the never ending cycle to be apparent so I'm not sure how that will convey itself. I'm thinking of ending it on a suicide - the new equilibrium.
This being said, I've decided that I may need to keep a diary of day to day events that occur with me, making notes of my feelings and mannerisms for ideas and inspiration. I'm going to take half an hour every evening to reflect on the events of the day. I won't be publishing that online obviously but I will probably have to hand it in with the rest of the prep work. Once I've got a fair amount of reference (perhaps two weeks of analysis?) then I'll examine the diary for little gems to incorporate into my animation.

So here's to being a miserable fucker and inflicting that misery on the rest of the world!
Seriously though, I've thought about the intent of this animation and I don't think it has to show hope or that there's a way out or anything like that. I think the most important thing is for people to be able to see it and relate to it and know that they aren't alone. I've heard it said that it takes seeing your own flaws in other people to begin to change yourself for the better (or something along those lines). I think that if people recognise a mopy bastard who is endlessly unhappy and only sees the downside to everything then they might think "Fuck! Am I really like that?!" and try to change themselves.

With all of that in mind, I've developed the title for my animation:

Glass Half Empty.

Here's a video of the sort of music that I'll probably have over it. I'm still adamant that there will be no vocals in this animation, except perhaps for inaudible crowd sound effects.

After effects tutorials part 2

I've done all of the basic tutorials that I mentioned in the previous post now so I have a fairly decent grasp of the most basic elements. I started making a silly puppet out of my tomato too just to see how hard it is to animate limbs and it wasn't too tricky. While this is all very interesting I shouldn't aim to produce something too far out of my depth for this unit. For instance here is a video overview of some tutorials that a great animator has put together. It looks like A LOT of work.

Here is a little screenshot of my angry tomato too.

The more I think about it the more I want to keep this animation as simple as possible. As with David Firth's videos, the content makes up for the simplicity. That's what I need to aim for. With that in mind I think I'll spend the rest of this week focusing on my story and making that as good as possible.

After effects...

I'm currently the only student in during the easter holidays. I spent some time browsing Lynda.com to find some decent tutorials but I'm finding a series of youtube videos much easier to follow at the minute. This is the very first one I watched that is helping me come to grips with after effects.

I'm just gonna whack through a lot of these today and make notes. Hopefully by the end of the week I might have some additional skills. I've done 10 tutorial videos today over 3 hours and here's a screenshot of what I was working with.

I know what I'm doing!

I think I've figured out what my animation is going to be about. The character that I was exploring is going to have several experiences in his day to day life that lead him to veganism. This came to me as a series of images in my head. The catalyst for his transformation will be seeing a "livestock lorry" transporting cows to an early grave while he's driving along. He will make eye contact with one of the terrified individuals and it will hit him. Throughout that day he will continue as normal but it will be on his mind constantly. Eventually this will lead to removing meat from his diet and eventually he will remove all animal products from his life and become an active vegan... I think. I took a quick snap on my phone of the first image that came to mind.

 Below are two horrible lorries that actually contain live animals. These images make me sick but this is what my character is going to see so I thought it would be worth keeping a couple of references for when I get to animating.

I don't want there to be any dialogue coming from the man. I want his internal thoughts to be represented by his actions and subtle body language. I'm not sure if he will be a depressed man any more either. I think he might be lethargic and I may even put that down to his diet just to add a little more veganism into the animation. He will notice a great improvement in his health and life in general once he settles into the diet.
Finally, I think that the point I'm trying to make is that ANYBODY can change and that, to quote Justin Timberlake dressed up as a large block of tofu, it's never too late to do the right thing.

The weirdest thing...

I put my character into photoshop this morning and coloured him in. I made his arms slightly longer so that they extended behind the torso so that I could make a quick gif of his arms flapping. In the heat of the moment I also moved his legs which makes it look absolutely diabolical but quite funny, almost like he's clicking his heels. Anyway this was a very strange little test but I don't think it's going to help me when it comes to after effects. The manipulation of body parts works entirely differently in that program after all, but I just wanted to see what he'd look like moving.

Sad man character designs

As you can see, I've been developing my sad man. I'm starting to think more along the lines of him working in animal testing or in some kind of job that allows him to change his perception towards the way we exploit animals but I still need to develop that idea. Clark also gave me the idea of him eventually finding happiness but having it taken from him or ruined in some way. These are all just initial thoughts at this point but it's all going to be useful in developing the story.

I think this lanky, pointy footed, angular faced man is more the style I'm going for.

I know I said I'd steer clear of David Firth stuff but one of my all time favourite cartoons of his is good inspiration for how I want my animation to look... sort of. 

Useful tutorials...

http://www.eis4u.com/2011/10/03/design-and-animate-a-cartoon-character-after-effects-part-1/#!prettyPhoto

This is a link to a really good tutorial for getting a simple character design into illustrator and then into after effects. I'm going to have to give it a go on the Macs at uni soon.

Also this is a clip to a Lynda.com animation tutorial that I found. Having access to that website is going to be so crucial throughout this unit. It's going to be a really tough journey.

Scribbler by David Firth - inspiration

I've been a big fan of Firth's animations for a long time. Scribbler is one of the earliest and is pretty similar in tone to how I'd imagine my unhappy character. I'm going to try to steer clear of Firth's work for the most part because I don't want to emulate him and I think I'm aware enough to avoid that. I guess the next step would be to draw up some character designs for my sad man, keeping in mind that the simpler he is then the easier he will be to animate. Here's Scribbler.

On a slightly different note, I think that my experience as a sufferer of depression and anxiety will be extremely helpful in creating an animation about a depressed, anxious individual. I can almost imagine it having the tone of a "day in the life of..." sort of thing, but I really need to think more about this before deciding upon it. I could also stick some anti consumerism propaganda in it. Ok, moving on. 

Another idea?

I was doodling the other night and came up with this unhappy character. He could truly make for a wonderful animation exploring his depression. I'd be able to incorporate a lot of narrative theory into it too. This is just in case I can't figure out how to make an animation to do with veganism. I actually prefer this idea at the minute though... I suppose I could make him a vegan of sorts and keep that a subtle detail. Perhaps he makes friends with animals that make him happy? I don't know. But I'm suddenly keen to explore him as a character.

Split-Second Persuasion: The Ancient Art & New Science of Changing Minds.

I wanted the above book on how to change peoples minds to inform my animation so that I can achieve my goals BUT the library won't have it available for another month! However, the basic lessons from it can be found anywhere on the internet and these are how they read:

SIMPLICITY: Keep your message short, sharp, and simple to convince people it's true.

PERCEIVED SELF-INTEREST: Con men agree it's the key to getting us to do something we didn't think we wanted to. (So be sure to focus on the benefits to the person whose mind you want to change, rather than emphasizing your own wants and wishes and emotional history. NOT: I'll be sad if you don't, BUT: You'll be happy if you do.)

INCONGRUITY: Surprise people -- tell them your cupcake is 400 cents rather than four dollars and they're far more likely to buy it.

CONFIDENCE: The more confident you are, the more we believe you're right -- even when we know your facts are wrong. (Think aggressive politicians and other salespeople.)

EMPATHY: Look people in the eye, nod when they nod, tell them you're from the same small town they are -- we trust people like ourselves. (We prefer to work with those who happen to come from a similar tribe, whether that means the same town or perceiving some other form of connection.)

I think I'l struggle with the "perceived self interest" aspect because most people will see veganism (my main goal) as giving something up rather than achieving something great. It seems that people are more concerned with their base pleasures than their moral obligations. I don't know how I'm going to find my way around this but I'll just have to keep looking.

Humour seems to be the way forward...

Here are some animal rights animations that I found. They all use humour to get their point across and the more I think about the more I think I've got to do that too.

Badgered by Sharon Colman - Inspiration

This is an animation that was recommended to me during the assessment of my last unit. I suspect that this was because I made a book about a badger but it's useful to see an animal animation for some early inspiration to the unit. I like the hand drawn appearance and it's got me wondering whether I can incorporate some humour into this serious subject.

Backwards hamburger - inspiration

Here's a little animation that runs as a sort of infographic. I love the little facts popping up and it's definitely something to take note of. During my assessment for the last unit we discussed how it is often better for a cause to show the ideal world that you would like to see. I do agree with this, however, I also think a more pressing and potentially inspirational approach would be to show how terrible things COULD be if change is consistently ignored. I also don't want to white wash over the horror that we have imposed on the animals we exploit on a day to day basis either so finding a direction for this animation is going to prove pretty difficult. Anyway, here's the animation I mentioned.

Initial research - Speciesism

Speciesism isn't a common word. In fact it's SO uncommon that there's a nice, red, squiggly line underneath it the two times I've already written it for this post. However, it is a word. This is probably going to be the starting point for my animation. So - just to clarify, here is the definition of Speciesism as providied by google:

The assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of animals.

Now here's the trailer for the movie Speciesism.