Patterns In Art - Finale
Hello there!
Welcome.
To...
Documentation of the final task - Patterns in Art
I'm a bit unsure of what I should write here, so I will describe my work process and what it was like to create a 4:37 minute video in approximately 3 days while juggling other final course projects and getting around 4-5 hours of sleep each night because I have... let's call them character flaws. Without further ado, let's get to it.
Ideation
Because of the topic of my blog, it went without saying that my final task would be an animation or animatic of some sort. And after scrolling through the topics we had discussed during the course, the one thing that still really piqued my interest was the Epagogix, the use of formulas in stories and how "nobody knows anything".
When I was reading the article about these for the first time, I immediately recognized myself in Lord Kames - not because of the title, but because of the way he saw rules and patterns around him. As someone who loves to watch detailed hour-long movie reviews on YouTube, I believe there are reasons behind everything, behind each success and failure. And because these reasons often correlate with one another or appear in same contexts, there has to exist some type of rules or recipes for success, prosperity, interesting stories, animations etc. and these are the things I want to learn to understand.
Another reason why I guess related to "being a Kamesian" was the mentions of being an "outsider". I think most people see art as purely subjective, like what Hume saw, which along with other beliefs and worldviews I have are why I sometimes don't see a future for myself in the field of art. Am I just chasing a hopeless passion, wishing I could someday become a professional artist as an outsider?
...Please wake up! I'll go into the final task now!
At first I didn't know what kind of animation I would make out if it, but eventually it all started to come together into a small-form video essay with comedic bits sprinkled in for not making it too serious or boring. Animation is supposed to be entertaining and interesting after all.
Regarding the Script
After finishing the final task for scriptwriting course, I began working on the script for Patterns in Art. First I divided the script in paragraphs according to their content - such as introduction and closure - and what part of the video they would be in. Then I listed out some bullet points that I wanted to mention in each part which worked as a springboard for the writing process. I chose to write my video in scriptwriting format partially because I was inspired by the course on it, but mostly because of how conveniently scripts measure time as is proven by my video script: from my four-page script was born a four (and a half) minute video.
The greatest annoyance about this task was recording myself reading the script. I think the script was fine but the problem came with me trying to read it in a clear and confident manner. I do not like the sound of my voice at all which, coupled with living in a student flat with neighbours, made the recording process very awkward and uncomfortable. This is all apparent in the final product that my voice just doesn't have that video essayist charisma to it but sounds more like awkward blabbering.
Like with animation, you need to now what to cut out to emphasize what's important. There were some verbal gags that I had to leave out to keep the video under five minutes. But there were also editing bits that I didn't have time to edit in, or like the thanks in parentheses here, I had to cut out for different reasons...
Planning the visuals
Some of the visuals I had planned in my script notes and the others I wrote in to the script itself. One of the first ideas I had was written in my script bullet points: to have a counter for each time I said "patterns" during the video. Later I realized I unfortunately didn't have enough time to edit in. But luckily I was able to put in some of the other ideas from the script, such as little corrections, "The Chancellor/patterns is behind everything" at the beginning, the Drax bit and Thomas and Johnston admiring their work - the basis of my blog - while I goggle the beauty of it on the side.
But with the final script ready and recorded, it was time to start drawing sprites for my avatar. I love to plan projects beforehand, so before getting to work, I first read through my script and thought what kind of poses I would make if it were a traditional presentation in class. Originally, I had a checklist of 15 poses to draw most of which I could use on multiple occasions on the video. However at this point of the production I had two days to not only draw the sprites but to edit the video as well.
Because I can only control the quality of my work and not myself, I managed to finish nine different poses altogether and had to really overuse some of them as was evident in the video. Overall it was a lot of fun to draw my avatar (not having drawn it as much as I did during this task before) and especially to think of how the antennae would move depending on my moods.
Some of the sprites used for the final video
Compiling the Video
Compiling the final video was definitely the most stressful race against the clock -part of this task's process. Mad credits go to Chris for letting me present as late as possible! But even with the hurry, I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy editing this.
I'd say the biggest portion of ideas for the visuals came up on the fly when editing the video - mostly due to the realization that I still needed to find specific images or sound effects for a specific part of the script. I started editing by arranging the audio files and formatting the length of the video with it. Then I scattered my sprites on the bits where I planned to have them and pretty much the rest of the editing process was me going through the audio footage with black screen on them going: "we need some action here! Hey, how about this funny meme? We need more patterns!" Although some parts of the final video don't even have my sprites on it, I was able to fix the problem of a boring solid colour screen by playing blurred video of my upper secondary school media diploma project, the pilot for my story idea "Inmates", on the background.
When people were already presenting their final tasks, I was still searching for images fitting for what I was talking about for the video. On the side I was able to watch some of the other students' presentations and boy were they all absolutely great, I could see that everyone had put so much effort and thought into them! And while it made me even more nervous for my turn - you know the "how am I supposed to go after that?" type of nervousness - they also made me even more eager to put pedal to the metal and finish the task on time to present at last. And after me forgetting to inform everyone what my task was about and hastily playing the video as well as cringing at my voice during the whole video, it was finally over. I want to thank you all for the sweet feedback and nice words, I hope I was able to entertain you or bring up some thoughts about the use and implementation of patterns in media!
Conclusion
Although I will try to update my blogs with animation practise, I hope you enjoyed reading or even skimming through one post on my blog. Hopefully I was able to teach you something or entertain you - hopefully you gained something positive out of your visit to my domains here. I certainly enjoyed going through the principles of animation and learned that I take time. Too much time. This experience will surely help me in my future endeavours - whatever those may be.
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