YCN -- Development sketches

After some thought, I have decide to entitle my project "Experience the Opera". The idea is to create a short motion comic that, in a movie trailer style, describes the various emotions expressed in the Opera, and every emotion will be represented by a famous scene from an opera.
The emotions are Joy, Passion, Anguish, Anger, Mystery, Drama. Each emotion will be a hand drawn pannel, with a background and 2 frames of foreground that will be animated.
Here are some sketches; I will be starting the actual comic pages very soon.

Cadbury's Caramel -- An analysis of Animation in Advertisement

For my Essay, I decided to shed some light in animation in advertising. After some reserach I found that the subject was quite broad, so I narrowed it down to mascots and focused on one of my favourites: The Cabury's Caramel Bunny.
In my essay I explain in depth the character, her influence in society and her effictiveness as as an adverisement medium.

Here are a few examples of ad featuring the Caramel Bunny:



 


  


These ads where released in the 80s, but in 2009 she made a reapearence, with a campaign called "Caramel Nibbles".
Her design was very different, and she was limited to posters and still images:

 

      

I personally didn't like her new design, so I decided to create my own version and here is the result:

 

Here's a comparison image:

 

As a disclaimer, I would like to mention that my images have not been shown pubblicly or posted on any website to avoid copyright problems. They will not bee shown anywhere until I have obtained the proper perimission.

 

YCN -- Idea generation and Initial Development

With the brief, I really struggled to come up with solid ideas that ticked all the boxes. I searched for a few posters the were used previously by the Royal Opera House and found a few good ones.

But I still wasn't too sure, so after creating some layouts, I finally came up with an idea.
I'm going to create a motion comic that follows the rules of a movie trailer, highlighting the emotions that can come from seeing the opera. So far I only have a few layouts, but I will definetley start development work soon.

YCN -- Choice of the brief and research

After a small hiatus due to medical issues, I finally managed to choose a brief from the YCN Student awards and was able to begin my research.
Thanks to the profession of my parents and the knowledge they passed down to me, I chose the Royal Opera House brief. I found mysefl prticularly attached to this brief and got to work as soon as I could.
Naturally, I began with the body of research, focusing on the history of the Opera, The Royal Opera house and their advertisment campaigns, to get a rough idea of the artistic direction I'd have to take.

 

Here are some examples:

 

I will begin developement and idea generetion very soon.

Character Design and Animation -- Speech animation

In our latest Production lesson, we learned and developed how to make a charcater speak, using the right mouth movements.
Using x sheets, phonic sheets and a set piece of audio we created a simple piece of animation.

 

 Althoug the process its self is quite easy, at times it can be quite tedious and time consuming.

                                     

Workshop -- Sunbird Records Animation

In this workshop, we created a frame by frame animation using a rotoscope techniqe, but instead of animating the figure traditionally, each frame was an individual image, with words, drawings and textures. As an example, here is the music video for "Where are U Now" by pop artist Justin Bieber:

   

The style of animation is very similar to that that begins at 1:09 in the video.

We recorded 20 seconds of footage and decomposed it into 500 frames.

Each frame is a different, hand-drawn image.
Here is the final piece:


 
Today, They Are Older Re-release Stinger from Sunbird Records on Vime

Workshop -- Christmas Card

In the motion graphics workshop, the final goal was to create a moving christmas card and a very short animation loop.
Using the gifs found on this website, we managed to generate a few ideas following the theme of "snow"
http://christmasgifs.org/

 Using Illustrator, I created a character and a small scene; in this case, a snow elf making snowflakes.

 

Due to health issues, I was not able to complete the animation. However, I did manage to create this short piece depicting snowflakes, using various techniques on After Effects.

           
 Let it snow from Stefania Rebaudo on Vimeo.

Conversation -- Tests

here are some motion tests for the qustions asked to the partecipants of this project. due to technial problems, I 'll have to rethink how I create the footage.

 

 

Typography -- Developement

In our second session of our typography production workshope, we simply had to re-create the lettering on a larger scale, every letter per A4 sheet, to be precice.

Conversation -- Development

As I continued my work on the final project, I relised that I had a lot more work to do than what I thought.
Here are a few photos documenting the progress of my final piece.

 

The paper was created by ripping the sheets in irregular pieces and soaking them in tea. I utilized them to create the fixed backround for the final piece and, after some colour editing on photoshop, this is the result.

Character Design and Animation -- Motion tests

In this session we explored two main concept in animation: Squash and Stretch and the Walk Cycle.

Using the Photoshop timeline, we created these two simple test animations:



Bouncing ball test aniamtion from Stefania Rebaudo on Vimeo.




Walk Cycle test animation from Stefania Rebaudo on Vimeo.

After Effects -- Loop Animation

In this Production tutorial we focused mainly on rotoscoping and loop animation. Using footage I found of a houling wolf, I managed to create a short loop of motion. I created a background, using a mixture of textures to create an atmosphere:

 

And added the animation loop, mirrored to create an interesting effect. I will definetley be using this technique in my future work.

               

 Howl Loop from Stefania Rebaudo on Vimeo.

After Effects -- Texture and Motion Test

In this production, we focused on the use of textures and loop movements on After Effects. As a starting point, we used a piece by Andrew S Allen entitled "The Thomas Beale Cipher".

 
The Thomas Beale Cipher from Andrew S Allen on Vimeo.

We created something similar, though very simplified.


Texture and Movement test from Stefania Rebaudo on Vimeo.

Conversation -- advance reseach and sketches

As I continued my reseach, began to generate some ideas, and I decided to focus on "conversation with one's self", or rather self reflection. I'm going to need the help of my peers by asking 3 simple questions, and their answers will be recorded. I am still developing the visual sied of my final piece but I do have a few concepts I will focus on.
Here below are a few initail concept sketches. More, of course, will be developed.

Typography -- I am...

In this Process and Production session we focused on creative typeface and how it can (or in some cases, cannot) symbolize the words its portraing. We were given a structure, the words "I am..." and told to create a simple sentence, filling in the blank, so to speak.
I used the phrase "I am Flesh and Bone" and here below is the result.

Character Desing and Animation -- Nathan

Here are the intial sketches and the charater sheet created during the first lesson of Prodution. Though I struggled to jot down the initial idea, I'm pleased with the results.

Once I completed these, I created a concept piece digitally using my Wacom Tablet and Paint Tool SAI.

 

I also created a video documenting the process and uploaded it on my YouTube channel:

      

          

Conversation - Inital Research

I started my initial research for the brief, (Conversation), focusing mainly on TED Talks. I found that listening to various points of view, different prospectives and opinions, even those that I perhaps don't agree with, is extreamley helpful to understand and find faster and more efficient ways to generate ideas.
Here are the speeches I watched and took note from. I will begin writing the main research.

John Maeda: How Art, Technology and Design inform creative leaders:

https://www.ted.com/talks/john_maeda_how_art_technology_and_design_inform_creative_leaders

Joe Sabia: The Technology of Storytelling

https://www.ted.com/talks/joe_sabia_the_technology_of_storytelling 

Jamie Barlett: How the Mysterious Dark Net is going Mainstream

https://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_bartlett_how_the_mysterious_dark_net_is_going_mainstream 

Zeynep Tufekci: Onlie Social Change: easy to organize, hard to win.

https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_how_the_internet_has_made_social_change_easy_to_organize_hard_to_win 

Glenn Greenwald: Why Privacy matters.

https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters 

Clint Smith: The Danger of Silence

https://www.ted.com/talks/clint_smith_the_danger_of_silence