THE SQUASH - Anthea Hamilton

We visited the Tate Britain to see Anthea Hamilton's THE SQUASH exhibition for contextual studies. I actually really liked this exhibition as it was incredibly strange. The performer is allowed to move freely around the room in whatever way they feel like on the day, they also pick their outfit from a choice of seven.

It was interesting to see how this strange Squash being was given so much character and personality. I was also surprised to find out there was more than one costume and performer meaning that the performance is always changing. The Squash interacts with the audience so everyone will come away from the exhibition with a different experience/interpretation which I liked about it.

Animation Project: Design drawings

These are some of my sketches that I used to plan out how I would make the real thing.

~ Floor tiles ~

~ Ceiling ~

~ Statues ~

~ Bugs house ~

Isle of Dogs exhibition & film

I managed to book an early showing for Isle of Dogs which I was extremely excited about. I'd have to say I've been waiting for this film to come out for a good few years now and it didn't disappoint! I'm a major stop motion and Wes Anderson fan so I thought this would be a great opportunity to analyse a professional stop motion feature film.
Theres's so many little tricks for special effects that use materials you'd never expect. They used tissue paper for fire and for water they used clingfilm on occasion.
When I found out about the exhibition on at The Strand in London I knew I had to go! Looking at the puppets and sets in real life really gives you a better idea of how its all made. Some of the sets were much larger than I had anticipated! I was also surprised to see similarities between how things have been made for the trash island sets and how I've made the set for our own animation at uni.

Animation Workshop

Today we had an introduction to animating with Andy Symanowski. We used software called Animate It! which was really easy to use. In worked together in groups to animate which was helpful because we were able to discuss and figure out how something would move and react with its environment when things got complicated.

Our first test was animating a ping-pong ball falling to the ground. This is what we used as reference the only difference was our balls wouldn't squash when they hit the ground. We then animated a canonball dropping which made us question how different this would be. The difference is there'd be only a slight bounce back as the ball loses its energy faster.

Next we animated a falling leaf which was a lot harder because leaves are so unpredictable due to their weight and how they catch the air. We looked up a video of a leaf falling for reference after our first attempt to give us a clearer idea of how to do it.

We then moved on to animating legs jumping and figuring out how two characters could interact with a ball.

I'm quite surprised and proud of how I did animating and the best part is playing it back and seeing a smooth believable movement. I really enjoyed animating which I glad of because I'd love to work in that industry in the future.

Animation Project: Storyboarding

I drew this storyboard up after our first discussion about our theme and basic story outline.

After a chat with Andy Symanowski we realised our story didn't really have a build up to a point where the old man changes his mind about death. We decided that the story needed more work and Ellie later came up with a new storyboard for our altered story line.

Scrapstore

Kerry had told us about the Scrapstore which is this magical place full of mostly scraps of rubbish essentially. There was so much cool stuff that I couldn't help but keep taking things that I didn't even have a use for yet. But you never know when it might come in handy.

The Scrapstore may be especially handy for the animation project coming up as we will be trying to save on materials where we can! Plus I think being resourceful when making a stop-motion can give it more character.

Things they have that may be useful:

• Fabrics
• Acrylic
• Card & Paper
• Plastic bottle caps
• Buttons, needles, wool
• Paint

Animation Project: Moodboards

Initial forest set moodboard.

Desert set moodboard.

Death character moodboard.