Visual Language Module evaluation

What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

My skills have developed a huge amount through this module. I really took into consideration at the beginning of the module when the brief was given, how at this stage I thought I was a graphic designer. From last years Final major project on foundation I found that my imagery side of creating any piece of either video or photography was strong so I wanted to make enfaces on that , and stop motion I felt was appropriate as i had such a long period of time to investigate it. this was defiantly the best decision i have made it in the year so far as I am very confident in this technique now and eager to learn more about it and develop my skills. Because this module didn't have a specific final piece to create, the resolution was my main focus, which effectively was to try and show all the skills I had learn over the weeks and put it in a sequence that made sense. Creating an effective piece of imagery that had a meaning I found hard in this task and later realized that actually the question of whats a line could more simply be answered through visual language and sequence of objects that was anisially asked in the brief. Overcomplicating this aspect may have potentially lost me time in the brief, but It was still all trial and era at that stage and can definitely be seen as investigation towards the final resolution.

What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

My method started specifically with the stop motion and photography so this was a consistent form of research/development into the final sequence in itself. At the start, we were given the perspective classes alongside the whats a line work that we were doing, so i combined them as earlier sequence and photography work fitted in well with it. Story boards were also a major factor to all my development research and towards the end I began to find more effective ways of doing these without needing to necessarily draw the idea out, which i am not confident in doing.

What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?

This module has defiantly allowed me to develop and find my style, as far as imagery and message is involved. Creating concepts and meaning was were my attention was focused and now i have got into a routine of having to plan my idea, then test run until it effectively works. I also found that especially with this kind of stop frame animation that was being created, it was good to take a step back sometimes and either analyze or get other people to analyze the work I was beginning to create. Thats why crits were so important to me this module. Photography skills have been improved because of this module, which is definitely evident after looking back at the first stop frames I had created. Being very influenced in music I kept trying to bring this element by figuring which kind of sounds and imagery worked the best together. I felt some actually worked very well.

What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?

I definitely dint use this module to my advantage in practicing my drawing and simple imagery work. This has always been my poorest element of design, and I really regret not using the opportunity to try and create work in which the class could give me feedback on. This kind of process would have perhaps given me focus in this area, encouraging me to use a more drawn based approach to my work from this point on. Saying this I do not regret the obsessive nature and excitement I now have when it comes to video animation as this has given me a good focus and even a fun hobby to have now throughout my graphic career.

Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

1.Definitely use the oppertunity to be abkle to draw more and even screen print, with such a long project, I should have used the opportunity to focus on elements I vitally needed to progress on

2.I would use more of a brainstorming stage at the begining to experiment and see what visually works best with what Im trying to say. Explore anisial ideas more

3.I would document my work as I go along more. Story boards via the computer are easy to achieve, I should have realized and focus on detailed accounts of work like this at an earlier stage.

4.asked opinions more about what works the best. The work is better assessed by a completly new person who hadn't seen it before, so i should have created surveys to try and receive effective feedback.

5. Not panicked as the process went along. I compared my work to other peoples a lot in this module. Effectively it made me work harder because peoples physical drawing and painting work made me think I had done no were near enough work, were in fact I was on target and it was going fine.


This is how I'd grade myself in the following areas:

1. attendance -5
2. Punctuality -5
3. Motivation- 4
4. Commitment-3
5. Quantity of work produced-4
6. Quality of work produced- 3
7. Contribution to the group-3

Final piece for what's a line

So I finally completed my final piece which was a huge improvement from the second to last one I made were I was having multiple problems with many important factors such as the resolution of the photographs and the ay the sequence was generally put together. Saying that Im glad I tried to spontaneously create it otherwise some issues may have been resolved too last minuet for me to sort out. Before I got to the final piece stage I also back tracked a little to try and resolve issues and generally lay down thoughts onto paper in the form of mind maps and brainstorms. Doing this definitely helped me and its something I realized I potentially should have done at a earlier stage, to help me decide on key points early on. All the way through I was having problems combining all the ideas I was having after seeing sequences and other animation which had caught my interest. I eventually decided to keep to the same objects and idea but simplify what I was trying to create.
Concepts that I wanted to successfully develop was a successfully transition between stop frame animation and the work I had started to create as a sequence on photoshop. This was way to ambitious for this stage and is something now im actually going to teach myself throughout the holiday. Although I created far to many stop frames then were necessary, I see them all as being as part of my research which enabled me to make decisions on what I wanted to say.

Right at the beginning I had used anitial photographs of toys that I actually found very effective in terms of relating back to the brief. From the simple title of what's a line..... I automatically saw sequenced and colorful imagery in my mind. Not remembering objects Id seen or any kind of imagery of my early child life, I began to think about what kind of weird illusions i could potentially have seen as a youngster. Everything would be likely to be big and colorful and fantasy-like.

Throughout my work I have tested and in my opinion found solutions which take simplistic and relatable toys and make them into visually interesting pieces for an older generation. The pieces such as Intergalactic, makes use of trying to investigate what looks effective to an older audience. The green play dough which gradually changes from a babies face into a green monster with arms, makes the image quite disturbing and the old school beastie boys soundtrack makes the piece only really effective in the more knowledgeable eyes of an adult. This effectively has made a piece of language anisially started as investigating for a smaller and underdeveloped audience, into one for a much older one. It almost mimics how we see Imagery in patterns and sequences.

Last mock up--- i promise

So today I was determined to completle the finish product for my whats a line...... but usual senario..... mid way I decided it was right so attempted to carry on then just move to the next subject. At this point though I had now decided on the

subject..... toys... all the ones that worked well in this sequence... the barbie, play dough and the ball
song..... mr scruff.... great choise... no lyrics but fun, different and upbeat
photography... the white wall worked the best... either the bit on the shelf or on the white window ledge... a lot of light made that image work well

More research- via stop motion

My next step was to fnd exactly how I wanted to create my pice. How I could I use this transition of showing a distinctive layer change which would provide the piece to change its tone or motion half way through. For this piece I just used a contrast level to test this variation.

Text or not text

At this point in my build up to the stop motion finale, I had to decide what exactly was my context and what I wanted to put in the final piece...
I new a few things for sure.
1. it would be based on scale---- perspective imagery was strong now
2. The imagery used would be small toys. As was used throughout this project.
3. It was going include music--- but no lyrics to whatever song it was.
4. There would be some sort of transition between adapted photoshop or illustator created image, and simple photographic stop-motion.


At this point I begin I looked back at all the stop motions I had done.... The one named "my first try at stop-motion" was by far the most effective. It had sequence which showed the line in some sort of context which the others didn't seem to do.

Heres a advert I found on you tube. Similar sence in humor- similar problem of createing video in context.

Interesting look at stop motion

I found this stop motion which unlike the others I had found and seen, was a bit dark. There were needles and scary looking animations which were simply made out of objects such as gloves. I found this was a bit similar to my childish approach to what happens when you cross a line. Simple child-used objects I find makes a piece of film lot more sinister and offbeat. This animation used a good correlation of the film and objects used with the music that was chosen. Although the tone of my pieces normally work very well with the music, it also can create an instant confusion to the message I am trying to create when the music has lyrics. On this note (no pun intended) I will choose the music for the piece a lot earlier on in which I can then create a mood, and then scene by scene set up how and what I am going to film. Hopefully this will help me create a direct link between the line project and what I am trying to say, something that has been evident to me to be a problem in past films.

3 Rules and Statement of intent

3 Rules from this point on about my "What's a line brief"....

. No more stop motion for a few days! Focus on drawings and new Media
. Story bored and plan everything you do. So far there is not much logic to work apart from blog work. Now illustrate whilst progressing the themes
. Think about context more. Specify exactly what you want to get out of the brief as well as identifying what the problems is. This has to relate back to the body of research.


Statement of intent from this point on:

With just under a month now I need to finish developing the logic of my pieces. This I found is best done by story boards and basic sketching. I need to do this anyway as my drawing skills need to be vastly improved. I have found quick ways of going about this planning and logging of illustrative ideas, and this will help me to use basic methods for planning so I can now focus still on the video making side of it. My problem to this point is that I have too many short films now that are actually just made as part of my research process. Now I want to take time for this last one as a method of resolving all these problems I had with the first few films. Its all been trial and error to this point and there's a few different kinds of ways I have already gone about it, now with this break of making the films, I can take some time to actually analyze which ones worked and went well.
An idea I had was to do a survey interactively regarding the short animations I had made. Ask my fellow colleges which animations works the best and why!

Ideas I had for these final resolutions was to literally do sequences illustrating what happens when you "Cross a line" or in other words anger it. These are quite fun to do and fairly understandable when the element of a toy is brought in too.

Crossing a Line

So I took this line thing to a new level.

. Create a charcter
. Create a setting
. Introduce the line
. Create a reason why the line would apparently be mad at the character.........

and you get this.............




The music I used is from the Juno soundtrack. As I was still creating the animations around childlike toys I wanted to support that with the music choice. The playful story has gone quite nicely with the indie sounding song.

Incase the story is hard to understand....... The Koala is stealing money from the bank, hence crossing the line. The line then begins to torment him making him run away. Doesn't make sense to you, BUT IT DOES TO ME!

Similar work in that of "adam and Jo" , two men who use a similar concept to spoof already made films and tv shows. They use toys similar to me and cleverly word their creations such as:
.Toytanic
.Furends- spoof of "Friends"
. Chew've Been Framed

I loved their originality and different concepts and themes in their films.

What next with my lines.......

So after some thinking about how I could next explore "what's a line" I wanted to try bringing in new creative elements to keep my interest level going with the stop motion and generally with subjects and areas of this I am interested in. My thoughts went into how I could create story lines and sequences with a focused theme of Lines..... The idea went then to progressing a line and theme and then it transformed into an other story of some kind. I would potentially like to combine photography stop motion with the kind of work I am doing on photoshop. The two kinds of animation in one sequence would show a huge separation so I could perhaps develop that into a fantasy or parallel world.... Shown through a line.

Heres a short montage of some of these ideas expolred via the photoshop animations. And on the end are other clips I hadn't used that to be honest just went wrong. Development work i will call it!






This similar theme of lines that are created into other objects or lines were taken from the opening sequence of catch me if you can. The film, made in 2002, was what made me want to go into art and graphics. I used to rewind the sequence so many times that I normally wouldn't end up watching the actual movie!

Visual language, statement of intent

For this project I hope to basically and effectively intend to create various videos which all have the theme of what's a line. Hopefully this whole module will develop my skills in stop- motion which I have recently found to be enjoyable to create...... so why not start an obsession.

For the time over reading week I intend to research many ways and more importantly many scales when creating the shots. My feedback in a recent crit told me that as an on going theme through my work, scale would be nice to experiment with..... So on those lines I intend to tell a story. Unlike the first few pieces that I made, this time I would like to thoroughly plan out and story board my intended sequence.

As I have the theme of scale, I had a quick look around my room and decided to look for all objects which were slightly unusual and odd. As a result a lot of the toys from this years christmas came to hand, So I began to collect them and think about developing them as story lines. A small toy water gun was the most effective of these. With a song in mind already It was only a case of figuring out how to combine all these ideas. Over reading week I will play with scale of these objects with a normal sized surrounding, maybe playing with the photoshop way of stop motion that I have already tried.

An other Idea I had that Im already trying out back in my flat was attaching a camera to the back to a skateboard. I intend to get images of just feet walking around and objects passing, using the perspective of a low steady angle as it slowly moves along the pavement. But this is just an idea and I just wanted to find new ways of getting very different kinds of shots which would potentially work effectively with music.

At home I am also looking forward to trying to re-create my little version f Ardmin animations. When I was 16 I stayed in Bristol for a week and was able to help and work on the set of "Sean the sheep" and the "Wallace and Grommit" movie. From when I went to their studios in Bristol, I will dig through the rubbish in my room in order to find out were my little "Morph" figure is. On the last day there, a very kind member of staff took me to the workshop were I created using a big clamp and show clay (much more work was involved), a Morph figure. As I still have this, and as long as copy right will allow me, I will try and see how movement works with figures which will help me in the research to my video.

The Juno video that COPIED ME

So my new aim for visual language was to create some sort of stop motion based work using scale as a theme. Because I was a beginner testing out all the elements of creating a video like this, I thought It would be wise to have a little look at other artists. Juno came to mind as the beginning sequence of the film reminded me of the resent photographic stop-motion work I had done. The indie off beat opening made me think I could now also begin looking at combining photography stop motion with my new found love of photoshop doodling on top.




on that note too, I had a brief look at an old Sony advert which I was told had the scale theme like I had in its concept.




Photography workshop:














Focus and exposure experimentation:

The start of my obsession.......

After a group crit on Tuesday where I was able to show my line project videos, I started to investigate how I could further my new obbsesion with animated videos and stop motion. Why not???? So I herd through they grapevine that I could apparently make stop- motion simply by using photoshop and saveing each still frame as I went along.. So I played around for a long long time.... and this is some of the randum stuff I produced. They were loosly connected to whats a line but mainly I wanted to work out how to use the program....

This one i like to call EATING A LINE:




And this one is called BURP:

My first proper attempt of stop-motion.

With my new found skills I then developed the idea, and found out how to add music into the sequence. A good camera and better lighting also helped....... I showed this to a few friends..... all of which said it reminded them of a advert for something.





Here are some stills from the video, just incase you thought this could have not possibly been Kate Fenton who made this.......
OH I can assure you it was........








Because I was unfamilliar with editing the stock frames, and to be honest it was a risk to do edit all 300 frames that I had taken, I tried my best to keep backgrounds and contrasts as simple as I could. I bought black card and kept to contrasting and effective objects.... The small bits of white tack ironiclly looked a bit like small balls of snow. It has snowed all day on Monday .

What is a line..... continued

So I had some images which were in a sequence that I decided to use for the purpose of a stop- motion animation which I had taken a while back in resurch towards the whats I line project. I took the images in lines and sequences which I gradually wanted to get to a more effective and fluid piece, using stop- motion.... Although its slightly poor quality and not very smooth, I felt the process was a good insight into how I developed my skills in stop motion. The last video of the tea bags I felt was the most effective... This then enticed me into the pattern with stop-motion field. Stage one of the obsession......

















I also took pictures in our flat of some decorations that had been left for the 4 birthdays in our flat and from christmas,
which reminded me of a line.... they are pretty too....

Early line project images

Being given basicly any direction to go with for our project for Visual Language I decided to use the oppertunity to create a project from an angle of art that really interests me, which is perspective. I began taking pictures of whatever I could using angles which in itself was quite fun, but then I wanted to add a theme.








From this I thought......... How do I see the world...... to make it a little more personal to me........ sure enough I found my answer.... before I new it I was next door asking my neighbours with their 2 year old toddler, If I would use his toys for my project. So I guess a simple childlike look on the world is what apparently descibes my personality. How embarasing for myself.



I created some lines of animals, like a safari type theme and effectivly photographed them once I had also stolen a friends Canon EOS 300D Digital SLR Camera just to make the image look a bit more sharp. i found the results quite contradictory because the expressions on the animals are humerous but It does genuinlly look like animals from a safari... Good bit of irony.





This then led onto my experimenting with other techniques and ideas with differnent kinds of childish toys..... heres some of th e results....