Workload for First Semester

I recently got my first four briefs for the current semester up until Christmas, from the looks of it we are going to be introduced to animation in a pretty hands on and linear way, we're doing workshops every week in which we practice our skills using different software such as After Effects and Dragon Frame, I've wanted to try out Dragon Frame in particular for a while so I'm looking forward to this. It also seems like the lecturers walk us through the steps and help us grow in these areas, this is pretty reassuring for someone as new to this as me.

I'm gonna go into a small amount of detail on what each of the briefs I've been given requires me to do, I'll most likely go into more depth and explain my initial ideas in full for each of them in their own separate post and from then I'll keep updated as often as i can on my research and progress towards the final product.

Brief 1: Life After God

The first brief is based around the book 'Life After God' by Douglas Coupland, it's basically very self explanatory by the title that it explores the apathy and disenchantment of a society in which people are raised with no particular belief in any religion, I'll go into my opinions on it a bit more in a later post as I'm sort of conflicted on whether I like it or not. What we have to do is similar to what is done in Tom Phillips 'The Humument' where he takes a few unconnected words from each page in a certain book and forms a sentence out of them, he then illustrates over the words on the page that are not in the sentence using paint, making an image that is relevant to the meaning of the sentence. Below you will see an example of this.

Basically we have to do the same for 'Life After God' and we are assigned a certain chapter to work on. After that we take the sentences we create and form them into an abstract storyboard, which reflects the meaning and flow of the sentences. If you want to check out more of the author Tom Phillips or his unique book 'The Humument' head over to this website here www.humument.com.

Brief 2: An Introduction to Animation and 'Moving Sound'

This module is more to introduce us to the basic life of an animator, this will mostly revolve around partaking in workshops to hone our skills in the software, coming up with creative concepts for our own animations and trying out a range of different animation styles which we will compile into a portfolio.

All this will mostly take place within the first few weeks, after that we will begin on our final animation dubbed 'Moving Sound' in which we will be given a music track, we will have to create a thirty second animation which embodies the mood, rhythm and pace of the assigned song.

Brief 3: Film analysis

This is a year long module based around multiple lectures that will take place over the year, we will be primarily be learning how to read a film: it's mise en scene, cinematography etc. I am personally quite interested in this one as it links to my passion for writing stories. For the first semester we will be making a video essay around a certain movie based subject, apparently we will be working in groups of 8-10 to create this.

Live Brief: Papillon Translations
For this final brief we have been asked to design a advert in the form of an animation for the company 'Papillon Translations' we have been given five countries to work on that we chose randomly, for each we have to research the culture, trends and visual style of those countries in order to cater the advert towards them.

Confessing Existence

Hey welcome all, this is the blog of Malcaligo where I will be posting my art, animations and concepts as well as many of my ideas from now on. First off I think it would be best to talk a bit about myself and where I currently am in life and where I intend on going if all goes according to plan. After a few years of setback I am finally studying animation at Nothumbria University in my hometown of Newcastle Upon Tyne, the course is super interesting and it had me hooked on the first day, I am however in my first year and currently adapting to the insurmountable workload that has fallen on my head like a piano would a cartoon character, no question its hard but uni is great so far and I hope to make many good connections.

As I am a student I will try to keep this blog updated with most of my progress at uni, displaying my research and development into a final product, however I also hope to keep this blog updated with a large amount of personal work as well all be it in a less correlated style, this will mostly include the stuff I do outside of animation and my personal interests, such as my comic illustrations mostly revolving around fantasy character, and world design. I always try to make my characters iconic, creative and for their look to reflect their personality, the worlds I enjoy creating are surreal and epic, they take large influence from the works of Chris Riddle the illustrator of the children series of books 'The Edge Chronicles' in which the world is completely unique and has no bearing on reality (or physics). The only passion I have stronger than this would be story telling, the way that writers present a story has always fascinated me to the point of wanting to creating my own, the medium in which I like to express this is through comics, which I find also gives me a chance to express my illustration skills in unison with my writing skills in which they blend together and complement each other. The comic I respect most would have to be the Japanese manga 'One Piece' but my range in interest also stretches to many western comics such as the recent 'Saga' and 'V for Vendetta'.

Well now that that you know a little bit about me, I'll start posting my work, I hope what I create entertains and inspires you, any criticism is totally welcome and I look forward to hearing it, i'm also looking forward to sharing my ideas and projects with you all :)