making the INVISIBLE VISIBLE by Povilas Uogintas 01_starting point

For this brief I have collected several audio excerpts but however I have chosen an excerpt from the interview with Mighty Boosh. I chose it because I know that comedy show thus I though that it will be easier for me to refl ect the theme of that show in my kinetic type animation.

Audio Excerpt

Are you like one of those rockstars that you hear about like Keith Reid, he went back home... Hes like hmmm Oh Jesus what I am going to do, man? And then hes like gotta to drive a milk fl oat into a swimming pool or something... /// cha cha cha.... a cha yeah... I wish I had a swimming pool cha cha cha I just can’t... its hard....

Audio Transcription

Personally I do not listen to BBC Radio 6 at all because I have other good sources for music. However, during this project I was nicely “forced” to start listening to this radio. And I found out that this radio is quite pleasant if you do not listen to all podcasts but to music. The music on this radio is rather diff erent from Radio One or other radios. As their motto states “Music brings together the cutting edge music of today, the iconic and ground breaking music of the past 40 years.” Thus this radio contains less popular culture music but rather time proven good music.

”BBC 6 Music was proposed in October 2000 as a “digital-only” radio station and named “Network Y”. The station opened at 7 am, Monday, 11 March 2002, with a show presented by Phill Jupitus. 6 Music attracted criticism for changing daytime schedules during late 2007 and early 2008. In response, Lesley Douglas, Controller of BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music at the time, said that the changes were intended to attract more female listeners. She claimed that men listened to music in an intellectual way while women were more emotionally attached. This in turn brought on more criticism of perceived sexism on Douglas’ part.” (excertp from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_6_Music) Well, even though the information is from wikipedia it still give me good quick understanding about this radio – its quite young.

BBC Radio 6_a bit of history

Going West / New Zealand Book CouncilAfter I chose the audio excerpt I started to look through successful animation and I have stumbled upon this one. It is a wonderful piece of stop motion animation where everything have been cut out of the book which is being read by the narrator. I’ve quickly became fascinating by the technique that this animation is using and in a sense decided that I will try to pursue similar goal for my kinetic type animation.

Accidentally even before the project has started I took a book from the library called 3d Typography written by Jeanette Abbink & Emily CM Anderson. In this book I have found countless typography artworks, including many which uses as its medium paper.

On the left side are several examples of what I was thinking at that point to do - playing with cut paper and shadows. Additionally I looked at more artworks (designer) from that book and looked through several animations but this is accessible on my blog.

I started to think about possibilities for me to do something that has similar technique and visual language, therefore I have decided to use stop motion technique as it will allow me to animate letters made out of paper and imitate them.

Research of Paper Typography

making the INVISIBLE VISIBLE by Povilas Uogintas 02_paper typography idea

making the INVISIBLE VISIBLE by Povilas Uogintas 03_paper typography idea

This idea is based on the paper typography that I looked at. The idea is that the words will increase in height (3d) due to voice loudness.

The letter will be cut out out of the mounting board thus I will not need to cut out a huge number of letters maybe the maxi-mum height will be 10 units of cardboard. In addition, I think I will be using projector as a colour lightning because I do not have any other good light source for that. The frame rate should be at least 14 fps then stop motion movement won’t be seen so much.

However, if I will use the textures then the textures will be dirty, dark and rough ones. This is somehow refl ecting few words that you can hear from their speech, as their whole interview is quite naughty and dirty. And if possible I would like to try some smoke / fi re eff ects on the paper - maybe it will give nice touch to the animation.

StoryBoard # 1 and Style Board

making the INVISIBLE VISIBLE by Povilas Uogintas 04_new idea

My experimentation with paper typography failed due to the vast amount of work and time needed for that. However, dur-ing it I experimented with various possibilities I come up with another idea.

thus my storyboard is more with numbers as now I have writ-ten on what time each word is being said thus then I will do the actual animation it will be a lot more easier. The reason of why the font will be diff erent as well the the colour is to give it a bit more nightclub theme. Because Mighty Boosh are stand up comics thus they spend most of their life touring through comedy clubs and nightclubs. Thus the bright / vivid colours will give this nightclub / comedy club feeling.

StoryBoard # 2 - new idea

making the INVISIBLE VISIBLE by Povilas Uogintas 05_experiments

On the left side are the experiments that I have conducted. In these experiments the text is projected through multiple glass barriers (invisible barriers) and due to glass dispersion properties the light is scattered in a unique, interesting way.

The second experiment is the result of trying to catch the light using the empty bottle. Idea was that light will be refl ected many time causing bottle to glow - result was that the bottle was glowing however text was to scattered across the bottle.

Experiments with projector and glass

making the INVISIBLE VISIBLE by Povilas Uogintas 06_outcome // critical evaluation

In a way I do feel that this project could be improved my numerous ways. First of all, there could be a better research of similar animations and video art thus the quality would greatly improve. Also, the two ideas although being quite diff erent could be merged in the future as one creating then a mesmerizing view.

The negatives things about this project I think are the story boards because due to the style of these animations there is not a lot of things to decide in advance thus making story boards quite pointless however because it is assessment requirement I have included them into this project and I feel that if I would have more time I could make these story boards aff ective.

Critical Evaluation

In these screenshot you can see the fi nished animation. Through experiments I managed to create ‘fl ames’ out of text and this was the main driving eff ect in the animation. However, because the speakers within the audio are speaking extremely fast most of the beauty of ‘text fl ames’ cannot be seen clearly. And this will be my task for the future - how to make the fl ames more visible.

Kinetic Type Animation