Saturday 15 December 2012

Abstract Animation Project: Good Vs. Evil

The "Abstract Project" mentioned in my last post has finally landed! It has been a crazy couple of weeks between writing extensive "Animation as an Art Form" essays, working on this project and late night feeds I've had no free time to work on any of my personal animation projects. I still have an animatic to get done for January for my Narrative class, but asides from that I have a bit more time to get back to a bit of 2D work.

For this project, we chose a 30 second sound clip created by the sound students and were tasked with creating an abstract animation that matches the sound. Sound and sight are of major importance with this blend of both music and animated imagery. This animated piece conveys war in a very simple form, representing both sides clearly using only colour.



Good Vs. Evil - Link to better quality video on Vimeo.

Overall this project wasn't as bad as I first thought it would be. As my main interest is in character animation, I didn't feel insanely motivated by the assignment. However, once I got started, and incorporated a bit of plot and character into it, I found it much easier to progress. I looked largely at Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940) when researching for this project, as well as the extensive abstract works of Norman McClaren, Oskar Fischinger and Walter Ruttman.
"Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" with "Nutcracker Suite"

"Ave Maria"

These particular scenes from Fantasia were of inspiration to me. The "Dance of The Sugar Plum Fairy" scene motivated me to use the glow effect in Maya when it came to texturing the bullets and the "Ave Maria" segment encouraged me to have lights on the "soldiers" in a couple of scenes.