I will need to create a proposal for my idea in which will be 500 words describing what it is i have chosen as my theme for my project and where i reflect on the journey of my practical work in a professional and critical manner.
My idea for this project as a starting point is to potentially explore the theme of 'Mother Nature' and the beauty of landscapes and to explore the wonders of the earth similar to how planet earth documentaries show this wonder and marvel and inspire viewers to appreciate the magic of mother nature. I could consider personifying mother nature also whilst still showing the beauty of what 'she' is capable of.
The end goal or purpose to this idea could be to encourage viewers to perhaps think more about caring for or appreciating the nature around us.
This footage shows some beautiful Icelandic landscapes that i could use as reference to or inspiration for my piece.
Flying over Iceland (Part. II) from Yannick Calonge on Vimeo.
I should consider styles for the animation of the landscapes, this video shows a brief example of a potential style idea as the shapes and colours are different and interesting. I could consider using different colours from normal to create a feeling of magic and ender:
Fireflies And Forest - Motion Graphic Project - Cartoon Animation - TYKCARTOON from tykcartoon on Vimeo.
This is a short piece by IDNworld was a Tailor-made animation for IdN 15th Anniversary. It shows another potential route i could consider with the creation of landscapes as it is an abstract metaphor of landscapes and environments made using typography. I should consider all route or direction to go with this idea which include using not necessarily straight forward depictions of landscapes:
Typography Landscape from idnworld on Vimeo.
Paradise In The East - 3D Animation from Hui Fila on Vimeo.
I like the styles and colours of this short piece, this is something similar to what i am going to incorporate into my work.
Think About It from Middle Mouse on Vimeo.
The Approximate Present from Filippo Baraccani on Vimeo.
After watching this piece i have decided to maybe explore the idea of showing the effects humans have on the environment and showing a "dieting" world with the landscapes showing this effect perhaps.
The Girl and the Fox from Base14 on Vimeo.
WWF Hungary - Paper World from Paper World on Vimeo.
I love this piece created by passion animation studios for the wildlife conservation festival in 2016.
looking at other art forms expressing the issues of human impact on the environment:
(i could consider making an animation to a poem or using a poem or short piece of writing as inspiration to broaden my inspirational resources)
Kenneth Cassar
I hear the funeral bells ringing
It's the death of Mother Earth
A mother who loved us dearly
But we treated her like dirt
She gave us all her self
Her land, her sea, her sky
But we decided to murder her
Without a reason why
We've killed her living creatures
Polluted her wide seas
We did not care for nature
We filled her with disease
Some day will come in future
We'll end killing ourselves
Cause death of Earth means death of us
For us the funeral bells!
Issues relating to the environment to the present date that are happening that i could bring into and inspire my work around:
Dakota Access Pipeline The Dakota Access Pipeline is a 1,885km crude oil delivery pipeline running from Bakken, North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois.
If completed, it will transport as many as 570,000 barrels of oil per day.
However, the construction of the line has been delayed by protesters calling themselves “Water Protectors”, and organising under the banner #NoDAPL (No Dakota Access Pipeline).
They argue that the construction of this pipeline infringes on Native American land, and has the potential to damage the water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.
The tribe has previously tried to sue the US Army Corps of Engineers, who are involved in the construction of the pipeline, as they allege the pipeline threatens their environmental and economic well-being and would damage and destroy sites of historic, religious and cultural significance.
It would travel twice underneath the Missouri River, which the Lakota and Dakota people of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation depend on for drinking water, along with 17 million other people throughout the country.
Prayer ties on a fence at Rosebud camp.
Environmental organization Honor the Earth begins a five-day “spirit ride” to raise awareness about the dangers of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Pictured at far right: Lorna Hanes.
This would be a good subject to use my project on as it is a present day issue with a largely relevant underlying message that is also a very touching subject that shows the foundations of the harmful impact people are having on the world fueled by the desire and greed for money.
I was to choose this as my subject i would also consider looking into native american art styles and culture references to relate to the subject issues.
Just like music plays an important role in Native American culture, art has a very special place as well. The use of art has been used as a form of expression in the Native American way of life for hundreds, even thousands of years. Most art was created as a symbol, such as a bear, walrus, eagle, or people. The materials to make this artwork varied from rocks, feathers, cloth, clay, and fabric.
Native American creativity is boundless
and sacred. Artistic expression has been
a way to worship the gods. Art for
art's sake is not part of the Indian
psyche. Their artistic designs have
beauty and care motivated by their love
for nature.
Native Americans created many shapes and geometric designs for their art and these were
repeated and became representative symbols that transcended tribal language barriers.
Native art designs became a language in themselves, a form of communication. The harmony
and oneness sensed in their art is real, and it provides serenity to those who experience it.
We hope you enjoy our collection of Native American artwork, which is beautiful and
expressive of all Native American art.
and sacred. Artistic expression has been
a way to worship the gods. Art for
art's sake is not part of the Indian
psyche. Their artistic designs have
beauty and care motivated by their love
for nature.
Native Americans created many shapes and geometric designs for their art and these were
repeated and became representative symbols that transcended tribal language barriers.
Native art designs became a language in themselves, a form of communication. The harmony
and oneness sensed in their art is real, and it provides serenity to those who experience it.
We hope you enjoy our collection of Native American artwork, which is beautiful and
expressive of all Native American art.
Southwestern Indian Sand Paintings
The Navajo are known for their beautiful sand paintings, which are created from images stored in
the collective memories of their traditional healers. These memories have been passed down many generations from previous healers who were charged with making sand paintings for ceremonial healing purposes. The Navajo have created this ceremonial native art to heal the sick for hundreds of
years. Sand paintings are used during healing ceremonies as a means to communicate with the Spirits
who are thought to have power to cure illnesses.
(this could be an interesting and unique way to do my animation, through the appearance of sand paintings)
An idea for a futuristic world of what could be. The aftermath of the negative impact of humans on the world. (humans being foreign to the world as they are destroying it (like a pathogen inside its host, feeding off the earth until it dies for their own survival).
Artist Chet Zar has noted that thinking about apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic scenarios fuels his imagination.
(source : http://www.pantheism.net/paul/history/native-americans.htm):
The Indians viewed the white man's attitude to nature as the polar opposite of the Indian. The white man seemed hell-bent on destroying not just the Indians, but the whole natural order, felling forests, clearing land, killing animals for sport.
Seealth, chief of the Squamish, 1854, as reported by Henry Smith in the Seattle Sunday Star, 1887.The old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.
Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky and water was a real and active principle. For the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept the Lakotas safe among them and so close did some of the Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends that in true brotherhood they spoke a common tongue.
The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his youth close to its softening influence - Chief Luther Standing Bear, Land of the Spotted Eagle, Houghton Mifflin, Boston & New York, 1933.
Idea for animation:
wasted toxic landcaspe (indian style) potential picture reference:
Show shadow characters of people looming in the distance
show rivers running black (reference to the DAPL) and trees falling down (reference to palm oil destroying amazon rainforest)
show references to urban structures also decayed
show toxic gas in the air (animals suffocating)
show
Base on the idea of how native americans must have seen the westernised people that invaded and destroyed their land as almost alien or monstrous. this can be how i portray these figures in my animation.
Native american predictions from the Hopi tribe that i could use within my work:
4. “The land will be crossed by snakes of iron” (The creation of railways).
5. “The land shall be criss-crossed by a giant spider’s web” (potential of chemtrails).
6. “The land shall be criss-crossed with rivers of stone that make pictures in the sun” (Highways and roads).
7. “You will hear of the sea turning black, and many living things dying because of it” (The 2010 Gulf Oil Spill).
compare how western society cares for elders etc compared to native American and comparisons in life style etc
verbal history of information with indians not written down and how this can make things get lost (symbolise how the tribes are also dwindling)
Wipe out life style and history origins of culture by slowly changing generations assimilated into western culture.
totem poles (research)
last of the Mohicans (films
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwuI9TsUMqA (modelling characters tutorial)
Current issues for Research references to inspire topics i will use within my piece:
Toxic air and killing of animals reference:
US Airways Flight 1549 encountered multiple bird strikes and both engines failed as a result.To prevent similar incidents, workers from the United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services and the city's Parks and Recreation Department and Environmental Protection Departments captured and gassed 1,235 Canada geese at 17 locations across New York in June and July 2009.The Agriculture Department undertook another goose control measure by coating 1,739 eggs with corn oil, which kills developing goslings by depriving them of air.
The chemtrail conspiracy theory is the unproven belief that long-lasting trails, so-called "chemtrails", are left in the sky by high-flying aircraft and that they consist of chemical or biological agents deliberately sprayed for sinister purposes undisclosed to the general public.
Palm oil (toxic air and deforestation):
At 66 million tons annually, palm oil is the most commonly produced vegetable oil. Its low world market price and properties that lend themselves to processed foods have led the food industry to use it in half of all supermarket products as well as household and beauty products.
The warm, humid climate of the tropics offers perfect growth conditions for oil palms. Day after day, huge tracts of rainforest in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa are being bulldozed or torched to make room for more plantations, releasing vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. As a consequence, Indonesia – the world’s largest producer of palm oil – temporarily surpassed the United States in terms of greenhouse gas emissions in 2015. With their CO2 and methane emissions, palm oil-based biofuels actually have three times the climate impact of traditional fossil fuels.
Palm oil is not only bad for the climate: As their forest habitat is cleared, endangered species such as the orangutan, Borneo elephant and Sumatran tiger are being pushed closer to extinction.
Destroying our medicinal recourses (deforestation):
Half of the top ten prescription drugs in the U.S. are of animal, plant, or microorganism origin. Our debt to the biosphere is even more dramatically revealed when we look at cancer medications: a remarkable three-quarters of anti-cancer drugs spring from the web of life.
Nearly 90% of human diseases known to medical science can be treated with prescription drugs derived from nature. The benefits to humanity of nature-derived medicines are incalculable in terms of longevity, relief of suffering, and increase in the quality of life. And think of the hundreds of thousands of jobs provided to those that discover, grow, harvest, process, and market these medicinals.
Nearly 90% of human diseases known to medical science can be treated with prescription drugs derived from nature. The benefits to humanity of nature-derived medicines are incalculable in terms of longevity, relief of suffering, and increase in the quality of life. And think of the hundreds of thousands of jobs provided to those that discover, grow, harvest, process, and market these medicinals.
Music for atmosphere build up ideas:
One of my ideas for my animation is to have a forest burning down. This tutorial could be useful if i decide to do this:
Style inspiration:
Mood Journey - interactive installation from Anya Shapira on Vimeo.
(potential fog tutorial):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyE9GHWns8Y
Chief Seattles speak script:
Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.
We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.
The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.
The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.
If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.
Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.
This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.
Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.
When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?
We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.
As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you.
One thing we know - there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all."
Wated futuristic landscape references for inspo:
last of us
bioshock
fallout
The Problem of the Wilderness from Tom Welsh on Vimeo.
Stylised world inspiration, taking the advice of steve swansburough, i decided that using an abstract artistic style would be most beneficial for my project idea as my skills with c4d are not high enough to create super realistic looking world or environments and so one way so as not to highlight this weakness is to created a stylistic approach of creating the elements i will use to build up the environments and elements use in my animation. This piece that Chris Moran at the neighbourhood suggested i watch when looking at what i and been working on so far with my project is a nice aesthetic that is a good reference to use when continuing building my animation. I like the foggy and simplistic environments and use of shapes within the elements used. I also like the simplistic palet of the piece and think that these qualities together make a very interesting and beautiful piece that i will be using to refer back to for inspiration while making my own work.
Forest Scenes Building:
screen grabs of rendered shots for forest aesthetics
Following script, Every mist in the dark forest:
script:
image si used as references ideas:
I wanted originally to try and create a fire in the forest like in this image but when trailing this myself i felt i could make a more impressive effect by making the trees particulate away as a more symbolic reference.
i liked the shape of these forest trees and decided to try and model some similar:
once i had made the forest for this scene i then started to model the wolf which is to go inside the forest to show the effect that destroying the forests has on the wildlife.
The lay out and look was a stylised version of the redwood forests in american (native american regions).
I model this wolf from a cube and extruded various segments and moved polygon points to make up the shape of the wolf.
i then moved the wolf model over into the forest scene i had made previously and coloured the model
I keep the textures of the wolf basic as the environment and colours i have used in this scene are quite stylised and i didn't feel like the wolf needed to be very detailed in this respect.
this is how i got this deformer to look after altering the directions and gravity etc of the deformer properties.
I also used the bend tool to create the movement of the tree before the explosion so that it looked more natural and fluid and less static.
i then cloned this tree and randomised it so that there were numerous trees all eating in the same way and etherfore the forest trees simultaneously bend and explode together.
(side view of the trees turning into particles and moving direction)
View from underneath the dissolving trees.
once i had set up the skeleton and the weights for the bones i could then start animating the wolf. I did this by selecting my position of time on the keyframe then moving all the bones into the first walk cycle pose. After this i would then key frame the actions and move to a point along the timeline further on and then move the bones to the next walk cycle pose. One i had made one walk cycle i just copied and pasted the keyframes to make it walk as long as i needed it too.
Reference to movements:
All Together:
i used an online tutorial to figure out how to get the water to dip when i moved my boat model across it :
i then added a displacement to make the water look as though it was rippling, and then i experimented with environment lighting.
I decided that boat needed to look bigger like oil rig boats often are and so the oil spill will not look as out of place, and the impact looks bigger.
I wanted the scene to look a bit less pleasant environment wise and a bit more sad to match the tone of the message.
This scene also needs an oil trail following it and oil dripping when the camera moves underwater.
To model the whale i used a reference picture of a whale to get the idea of the shape i needed to make and then i used n- side splines and placed them inside a loft and extruded them at various parts of the whale and scaled them to different sizes depending on the size of each section of the whales body.
i then started to try animating the whale in a similar manner to how i animated the wolf.
I placed the whale inside this environment to have it interact with and relate to the oil that will leak from the boat:
For the lighting underwater i used a disk that i placed animated noise over to create the rippling light effect and made the disk invisible to the camera using a compositing tag:
Next i modelled some trees:
And also made the tree sap by using spheres with the meatball deformer and the cloner and i just increased the number of counts in the cloner tool so make the sap drip.
so i started off with a small number of cloner counts and then animated the counts to make the sap drip. I also animate a sphere at the end of the counts so that the drip looked bigger at the end as though the weight of the drip was making it spill.
I then textures the sap and the tree and added a physical sky to alter the colour of the environment and i also added some landscapes in the background. I chose these yellow orange and brown tones for this environment to keep it simple as the content is fairly simplistic but also to relate to the sap its self.
Making the world that the animation refers back to at numerous points with the river that flows through the environment connecting to the oil fracking derelict.
I kept the lay out for this world again simple but closely to the look and landscapes of native american landscapes i have been looking at and made mood boards for in my sketch book. I created warm glowing colours and had a sunny glow to show that at this point the world is a peaceful happy place (before the impact of man).
the shot then pans over to a butterfly on a tree and i have animated the petals on the flower i have modelling so that it slowly opens to symbolise life and a flourishing environment.
i added hair simulation to the butterfly to give it a bit more realism whilst still maintaining the styalistic appearance due to the quality of the hairs.
I used the same tree that i modelled to use in the tree sap scene however i used the hair simulator to add leaves onto so that the trees also seem more full of life.
in the part of the environment where the horses are shown and the water starts to run black with oil i have made the fog harsher and more grey so as to reflect the change in mood once the camera pans over to this part.
i also modeled a fracking machine and some oil tankers to represent the polluting influence that man and man made machines have on the environment (there is no depiction of humans but due to the man made nature of the objects it symbolises man)
i photoshopped this picture to get a sense of how i want the last scene of my animation to look. (as i want the animation to end how it started but showing how the impact of humans has worn the environment and creatures out).
from this angle i can have the fracking machines in the background which could have more of an impact for the final shot.
Final Outcome:
There are still some small alterations i am going to make on this piece ready for my show as i want it to be perfect such as the particles on the flower at the end and some small glitches i can see in this piece i also what to add a title sequence animation to really make it seem impressive. However i am very happy with my outcome i feel like it addresses my brief well and has the emotional impact intended on my audience.
Making off:
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