Loop De Loop

A short experimental animation of a flying bird

Film analysis

REFLECTIO

In this project, I created a 20 second film based on my impressions of my mother. ​

She is a very admirable and kind person who I am close with but cannot say fully understand. In the video I used elements such as paper masks, 2D animation combined with film footage, portraying my mother as a witch who loves flowers and preforms magic while cooking. ​

In most films, witches are stereo-typically portrayed as a wicked evil woman, witchcraft is often associated with bloody sacrifices, animalistic body language and insanity. But in reality, most Western films that shaped the stigma of voodoo and spell casting are heavily defaced for propaganda use during the eras of African colonization. Such as the Pet Sematary and Poltergeist. As time progress, and culture appropriation came to justice, it is time to break the stereotype for misleading witch images. Recently there have been more global recognition for health benefit that comes with meditation. Manifestations of beliefs are widely approved in areas of mental health; us humans also subconsciously practice every day. Voodoo rituals are mostly used for good luck, protection and connecting with nature. Rituals and potions was a median for manifestation and sometimes meditation. Sure, there are curses and evil magic, however as someone who personally enjoy lighting candles with crystals, meditating in moonlight, this project urges the audience to recognize the brightness of Witchcraft, overcoming the imposed  evil light cast on  women. ​

I have always associated my mother with nature. She always dreams of a garden full of flowers and her ability to grow anything makes me wonder if she uses plant magic. In my memories she is always in the garden, during covid time, she even made friends with a Robin that was attracted by our flowers. As she talks with the bird and her plants slowly fill the world with green my mother appeared magical to me. The second element in my film is food. In the context of witch-crafting, I associated her cooking with potion making. She enjoys experimenting with all sorts of delicious healing food. It is also a big part in my Chinese culture. Food is a symbol of connection. Love and respect is expressed through food. In this film I aim to include magic and share my admiration towards her strength her kindness. ​

In this project I experimented with filming and 2D animation. This is my first filming project where I tried to use montage and thinking about composition. I have always been quite dissatisfied at my own camera language. I watched a lot of short student experimental films and analysed the proportions of frames, people and their positions. The style I intended to appeal to is quite abstract, full of jumpy empty shots to make the film playful. Therefore, I added a lot of flowers blossoming in the video. Originally, I also wanted to try time-laps to record the process of the blooming of a flower to indicate beauty of plant magic, however due to the time restrains it wasn’t possible. It was also made more difficult to narrate a full story due to the 20 seconds time constrains, which resulted having to cut a page in the story board and minimize the connection of my mother with witchcraft to only potion making and plant magic (there were originally a section of using stop motion to record a portrait of her being painted in progress, which was too long and too unfocused). ​

There had been many difficulties in pace control to make the film concise but not rushed. One factor that I realized in all the student films I researched in was that no shot was longer than 7 seconds to engage the audience with a mix of flashy images and longer, continuous shots to contrast with the central important story-line. After editing the film, I edited them in premier adding effects, later importing them into Photoshop to draw on top of the video using a video layer. I used 2D animation to differentiate the stereotypical image of witches with my mother’s powerful, kind image. I used opposite colour, mainly green and purple appeal to the mysterious light, also asked my mother to wear a mask made of black paper then later unmasking herself as a symbol of revealing the truth. ​

The result fulfilled my visions in terms of colour and storytelling. although I am quite dissatisfied with the 2D animation as I re-watch them it still lacks power and precision in the line art which will come with practice. Overall the result of this project was pleasing. ​

This project collaborated with Angelo Dotollo Callueng in Group B, who was in charge of 3D modelling the background and music composition, editing and 2D animation created by me.

The story illustrates a girl who envisions and transforms her unfortunate into a dazzling fantasy world. The concept of this piece is derived from escapism in the modern world. We used an ironic, omniscient tone to respond to the inhumane societal pressure and the neglect of individuals. We fixated the keywords on ‘Light, Pity and Vision’ during the brainstorming process. The sadness lies in our main character’s acceptance of her misfortune, relying on unrealistic ideas to release pressure, which is more common than fighting back. As a Chinese student, I have witnessed many friends of mine going under immense pressure from the hard-working environment, high expectations and fighting for a future. Success did pay off from their effort; however, within this process, some of them learned to internalize their voices simply because there is no way to change the world. In this animation, I hope to present the conflict of dream and reality, especially knowing that a single person cannot change society. 

 In this film, I transitioned several distinctive styles of animation inspired by ‘Sailor Moon’, ‘Kim- Possible’, Pisacco and my own. Through this, coupled with bright, lively colours, I hope to create a dazzling ‘forged reality’. The girl imagined herself to achieve all kinds of success and beauty in elegant colours to satisfy her unachievable fantasy. Each scene reflects her desperation of celebration for recognition, attention, love and attraction demonstrated by the teddy bear audience, fancy dress, blowing a kiss and the composition in each of her appearances. Suddenly, as the upbeat electronic music drops, reality hits. The girl sees her reflection in a mirror at the end of her hallucination. She goes back to being the ordinary person she tried to escape from; therefore, the transformation repeats. The music is inspired by Vocaloid, a Japanese singing synthesizer with an anime girl icon. Her music is usually upbeat, sung in an electronic voice. We believe that this narrates her personality very well in terms of the ‘unrealistic’ dreams and non-existence singer. In the beginning, I wanted Jazz music, imagining a grand show behind the veils with saxophone and trumpets. Still, we analyzed the character traits and agreed that electronic music could reiterate the fantastic vision more.

The 3D rendered background (all credits to Angelo) was one of the most exciting parts of this animation. To emphasize a sense of powerless and pity, we mainly incorporated a reversed triangular background composition that should be used to contrast with illusion and reality. In the illusion, the girl is dominating, extravagant and delicate, whereas she is the polar opposite. Lighting was a significant part of the 3D rendering, where we had many versions of lights and decided the overarching colour was pink. We mainly used stage lighting to reiterate the superficial atmosphere. The style has completely changed at the ending to emphasize the pathetic state of reality. Although it is difficult to see under the dim lighting, the room is filled with trash and broken objects. The only light source is from the ceiling light and a broken TV. As we are both used to realistic or anime drawing to proportions, during the creation of the bedroom scene, we both had to remember to over exaggerate everything. Our first versions were too small and timid and lacked power in the final animation. Through this experience, we both learned to ask for a brand new perspective’s view for feedback and go out of our comfort zone to over enlarge everything. 

Mostly, the 2D animation blended well with the 3D background, to our surprise. I had some attempts trying to match both styles in various styles. Due to Adobe Animator’s setups, it is hard to create very detailed strokes with a lot of texture. The conclusion is that more obvious 2D tries to stand out better, it works. I believe our next step is to create more powerful, concise lines and simplify everything. Overall, our work is still immature and lacks depth, which can be improved by adding more layers in the foreground, especially the middle ground. Bolder outlines for the character is also what I would like to improve on. Although we had many versions of our character, I still felt that she was not memorable. Still, overall this had been an extraordinarily eventful and fun experience, trying our new perspectives, animating style and working closely with 3D worlds.

In this group project we visited galleries to find artists of interest and created a short video in response.

We choose David Kracov to research and each made a section of the video. When we visited the Eden Gallery, his work immediately reminded us the a nostalgic feeling of approaching the new world as a child.

David Kracov works with fragmented colourful pieces and incorporate into sculptures. the one we saw in the gallary was a book butterflies in pop art style flying out of a giant book. His works, so mesmorising which reminded us the excitment of reading popup book as kids.

My page was about the birth of a butterfly form a cocoon, which is what I think thoughts and imaginations are.

Week 1 stop motion group project

In this group project with April, Aika, Jennifer and Andy we created a short stop motion film of Totoro and Evil Fox.

The story shows the friendly Totoro returing our jewelleries stolen by the Evil Fox.

Although the jewelleries first appeared on the fox and was taken by Totoro, the hands in then end suggested a plot twist for the true owners of the goods.

We incorporated magic and comic relief in this project by including our hands instead the video, holding up emojis and sparkls. This created a childish doodling style adding playfulness to the visual.

Comic relief is created when the fox was stopped by a invisible shield of the prayer beads around the Totoro, who is a magical guardian of children and the forest. The prayer beads hints the holiness of the character, and the fox falls after hitting the wall.

We also managed to learn different camera angles, pacing and experimented with compositions. I am most proud of the transition of angle from the back of the Fox to its tail. It was

Web of connection

In my mind map, I thought of many ways of connection. The most interesting one may be ‘what if there is a wrong connection’?

In class practice

Theme: Winter

Mood board

In my eyes, I don’t see winter as a depressing and inconvenient season. The smell of the bittef cold air, burning woods and bright colours that seemed even more vivid in contrast to the gray atmosphere is the spirit of childhood.

Final design

This is the strangest Birth day card ever to be received. ”If you had three days left to live, what would you do?”

Fruit flies have natural instinct of reproduction. Cats and dogs survives on instant gratification.

Travelling feel like an outsider, eating generates reluctance for leaving. Loved ones know I love them and too short to create any legacies.

No idea. Hope someone can water my plants if possible.

Actually…. never mind.

Analysis

This story is created using the character we created in class ‘ Sunny’. Sunny likes to disconnect his emotions with the world, living without care or any goals. In a way, he is free. He likes to keep hygienic, has a few air plants on the windowsill, t shirts and genes made up the entire wardrobe. The only time he enjoys to stay connected, is when going online.

I remember first time going online

I remember being born

I remember last time watering Air plant was 4 days ago, still 18 more days to go

I remember people’s murmur

In this opening of Sunny’s transformation to in recognising his desires and exploring the world. We first used a nonchalant monologue calmly answering the strange birthday card. The use of almost scientific and stoic tone reveals his lack of interest in life. He precisely dissects his thoughts, observes them to grant logic to emotions. He refuses to feel and forces himself into the position of an observer of the world.

In the end, with the help of an online friend and his mother, he finally faces his wishes and desires. But still continues to live as he is.