Experimental Animation - Tests

I found it difficult to originally come up with ideas on how to create my experimental animation, which is led it be inevitably difficult to get started. But after I point I decided to just throw myself in with whatever ideas that came into my head whether simplistic, strange or complicated & tried to consider using different media.

One of the first ideas I had come up with was creating a stop motion style animation of make up on a female’s face creating patterns or changing her facial expression or style, however upon trying this I discovered it was near impossible. As I had to keep applying make up to the model it wasn’t possible for her to be in exactly the same position in each frame, so she was constantly jumping around the frame. So I scrapped this idea.

I decided to begin experimenting with the use of paper in different ways. A more simplistic idea I created was the use of cut outs – in this case I chose butterflies - & made them move around frame & appear to flutter their wings subtly. This was slightly difficult due to the overlaying of the movements in their wings & such, making things more difficult to move & although I liked the subtle style of animation, I felt there wasn’t enough movement.

Ripping up pieces of bright coloured paper to create movements & morphing was the basic idea for my second experimental piece. Although difficult to create the exact shapes I wanted & difficult to move shapes once created due to the nature of media, I found it effective in creating interesting morphs & also found the highly contrasting colour scheme appeared effective.

My third test was probably the most simplistic of the three. Involving a thin layer of grains (quinoa in this case) lay over a brightly coloured sheet, where I then created patterns but creating space in between the layer of grains to allow the coloured paper underneath to show through.

I’ve chosen to take the idea of using ripped up pieces paper further, as I think it will enable me to experiment with using the idea of morphs from different things to others, whilst maintaining an interesting visual style due to the bright colour scheme.