What keywords lead you toward articles and texts that are relevant and interesting to your investigation?
Stop Motion VR
Animation in VR
Haptic Processes
Touch - Come into or be in contact with, handle in order to interfere with, alter or otherwise affect. an act of touching someone or something, a small amount; a trace.
Embodied Memory - The former includes all activities which are helpful for storing and retrieving information: Photographing, writing, taping, etc. The latter implies skilled performances which are sent by means of physical like a spoken word or a handshake
Haptic visuality - (embodied spectatorship) A sense of physical touching or being touched engendered by an organisation of the film image in which the material presence is foregrounded and which evokes close engagement with surface detail and texture.
Tactility - The capability of being felt or touched. 2 : responsiveness to stimulation of the sense of touch.
Tangible territory
Stop motion VS Digital
Digital vs Hand made
Digital VS Traditional
Authors/ people
Which authors reappear in your reading?
Michael Breymann - head of kaleidoscope - worked on mad god
Anthony Batt - executive producer - Wevr - Mad god
As part of the MA I need to define where my work stands in relation to academic content within animation practice. Finding other professionals and academic studies in animation will help inform my own practice. To do this I need to first research different areas that may link to my own work and ideas.
I first read some books about practice related research to define which type of practice related research my idea would follow. As my project will use different processes to generate a new understanding of animation practice within stop motion and VR, I identified that my own project would fit into the practice-led category. In Practice based research - A Guide, Linda Candy defines practice led research as:
“Practice-led Research is concerned with the nature of practice and leads to new knowledge
that has operational significance for that practice. The main focus of the research is to advance
knowledge about practice, or to advance knowledge within practice. In a doctoral thesis, the
results of practice-led research may be fully described in text form without the inclusion of a
creative outcome. The primary focus of the research is to advance knowledge about practice,
or to advance knowledge within practice. Such research includes practice as an integral part of
its method and often falls within the general area of action research. The doctoral theses that
emerge from this type of practice related research are not the same as those that include
artefacts and works as part of the submission.”
I then looked at areas within animation and academics that I could link my practical idea into, I found that the premise of my project would fit well within these areas:
Haptic processes
Value of hand made
Relationship between digital and hand made
Stop motion vs 3D digital
This has allowed me to situate my work in an academic context.
As I continued to refine my idea and plan the intended outcome, I realised that the project was still overly ambitious in the time frame that I had. I looked at the areas I had suggested changes and evaluated which would fit the desired outcome better. From this I have begun to update my list of areas I need to research and started to narrow down software's, techniques, professionals, existing media and the idea for the finished practical outcome.
The updated changes I have made are now that the finished practical outcome will solely focus on interactivity in VR spaces using stop motion, and how I will achieve this. I will need to research where my work fits in an academic environment and find some links to it as well as how the practical work will be produced.
As the idea for my project has developed I needed to change the list of areas I will research. The below list will constantly change, it will act as a reminder to myself of areas I need to investigate.
Reading
Lists
Keywords - What keywords lead you toward articles and texts that are relevant and interesting to your investigation?
Authors - Which authors reappear in your reading?
Themes - What themes recur?
Questions - What questions repeat?
Research Academic
Haptic Processes - Importance of the touch in making of animations. Ideas around haptic processes as part of meaning making in animation - look at Teresa Stehlikova Tangible Territory PhD Thesis - Haptic process becomes part of the meaning - This could be a way to anchor it into an academic foundation.
Search - animation in VR - Create a keyword and articles list.
Research Practical
Phil Tippett - Mad Gods VR stop motion, approach and ask questions about how it was produced.
Wes Anderson's - Isle of Dogs behind the scenes, approach and ask questions about how it was produced.
Different possible pipelines - such as animate in stop motion or scan puppets in and animate in 3D, Look at how different approaches impact the movement/quality of a character. Match frames - How might the idea of ‘match frames’ for non-linear interactivity change or influence your approach to character design and/or storytelling. Plug and play - match frames - drop frames in if an action happens - code in actions Existing VR -Stop Motion in VR, Interactivity Softwares - Playmaker which is a visual coding software, Unity, Unreal engine, Touchdesigner. Dragon frame - How to shoot stop motion footage in dragon frame for VR? Green screening - How would you green screen stop motion footage for VR? Photogrammetry - How to capture the footage for a VR environment. How do I need to shoot the footage? Software? Recap, Mesh room, Lidor, cameras?
Armature supplies - where to source armatures for practice or making puppets? Upuno, animation tool kit, Mackinnon and Saunders
Questions to answer
Find where your work belongs in an academic sense
In terms of interactivity in VR what do you want to achieve? Stop-motion puppet will be responsive to user movement - need to explore what the scope of interaction might be.
To begin the 701 unit I drafted up a plan for my pitch bible. As my project is more research based it will work differently to others as it will not include a storyboard or character designs, but will outline the idea of the project, its audience and the intended outcome.
I first made a list of points I may cover
Literature, people who have done it ect
Aim of the project
Research and design method - data, testing, marketing, ethics, budget,
Proposed idea of body of research
Character designs/ sketches ?
Software I might use to make it
I then wrote out a brief project plan of how my work will be structured. This will help me write my project proposal as well as gather information about the areas I need to investigate further.
Project Bible Plan
Title:???
Contents page
Introduction
This proposal will outline the idea for my research project -
What the project is
What do we already know about this area
How will this project add to the industry
How it will assessed
Chapter 1 - Aim of the project
What is the idea of the project
What will I do
The intended outcome
Chapter 2 - Existing information
Existing knowledge about the area:
Phil Tippet
Isle of dogs
VR animations
VR games where you interact
Puppet companies - what will you use to test with?
Chapter 3 - Research and design method
How will I do it?
Talk to professionals
Look at existing games and how they are made
Source supplies - puppet, cameras, set, software
Software - UE, Unity
Photogrammetry how will it be done - meshroom, recap
Clean up - workflow cons
How to present/ market it - conferences - what ones?
How will collect data
Uses of the project
Ethics - sustainability
Budget
SOW - sced
Conclusion
??? is this needed?
Now I can begin writing my project proposal as well as investigating the various areas that I need to learn or refine my skills in.
As part of the 702 unit, we must complete a 5 minute presentation about our past work and our future aims as a way of introducing ourselves and our work to our peers. This will be followed in a month's time where we will present a 10 minute presentation about how our work is progressing and how our research is informing our practice.
For these 5 minute presentations we were given the option of producing a 2 by 4 or an academic poster, though we were encouraged to produce this using our own skills and interests. After looking at the example 2 by 4s and academic posters I decided that these were more appropriate for fine artists and did not suit animation and my work, I began to think of other ways I could link my animation practice to this. I knew that producing the presentation in stop motion (my main area of practice) would be a no go, as it is too time consuming to produce, I also know that while I could produce the work in 2D animation, again the time frame to complete would be an issue, 2D is also not an area in which I work predominantly so it didn't fit with the idea of introducing myself.
After further consideration I thought of creating the presentation in VR, this would link the presentation to my masters project. After confirming that it was ok to do this, I started to think of ways to include my past work and ways I could produce a presentation in VR. I decided to use Tilt Brush software to create the presentation. My original plan was to create a VR art gallery of my work, but I once again ended up feeling that this didn't fit animation. It was only after painting a VR environment in Tilt Brush that I realized this was the way I could link both my past and future work together. I decided that I would take screenshots of my past animations, import them into Tilt Brush and then paint a VR environment that was themed around each image.
I first drew these draft sketches of the plan for the layout, making a few changes as I progressed.
Draft sketches
Once the draft sketches were completed I collected my images, imported them into VR and began to paint the environment. I decided that I would paint an element that fitted each story of the stop motion and puppets that I created. For the puppets I made for an animation about a watch shop, I painted a shop with candles that when you looked through the window you would see the clock maker at work, as well as some painted street lanterns I also added an image from a Victorian street to make the elements feel more like they were in an environment. This section of the environment can be seen here:
For the palm oil animation I made I painted a tree and added the images into the branches, I linked this one with the snow white puppet (as the story was set in a forest) by painting rocks at the base of the tree, painting a fire and adding the image into the rocks. Again I added some surrounding images to make it feel more like an environment. This section of the environment can be seen here:
For the wardrobe animation I made I took an image of the wolf, painted a wardrobe door for it to hide behind, I added fog to make it seem more scary and then finished by adding an image of Boo from monsters incs bedroom to fit with the story of monsters in the closet. This section of the environment can be seen here:
Once this was completed I recorded a video of the environment as I was in it, I then exported this out and edited the video on Adobe premier and re rendered out the footage. I didn't add sound as I will need to speak over this while I am presenting. Here is the finished video:
While I am very happy with the resulting video I do feel the environment has a greater impact when in VR, for this reason I will present the video so all peers and tutors online can see it, but I will also have a VR headset set up in university so that anyone who wishes to look at it in VR is able to do so.
