APD Week3 -PLAY and OBJECTS Theme

Theme 

PLAY AND OBJECTS

Context

When it comes to this week's theme, and in relation to the term “play”, I thought of how objects are considered as alternatives to create animation sequences rather than using them as characters (like the way they have been deployed in stop animation).

And speaking of that, it appeared that Henry Van Hovenbergh had his way figured in 1882 with his technique of using notebooks to make moving images.

https://www.flippies.com/flip-books-history/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJbg_yirB5vm9VKn5yLGCKw

Inspired by the flip book animation art works by Andymation, I came up with the idea of trying to create some hand drawn animation on blank pages for the first time.

Method

Creating a short 2D animation by using flip book method with a few simple rules: 

1. No rotoscope  or pre-animatic from other digital apps.

2. Limited numbers of 3 books, 2 pencils and 1 eraser as materials.

Response

I didn't get lucky at the first attempt. The character that I tried to draw seemed to be on and off in changing shapes, since it is hard to measure and keep the proposition consistent when I came to a completely new blank canvas. 

I also ran into the problem that I found the position of the character was unstable from page to page. And after a while I believe I wasted a couples dozen pages of a notebook.

The second attempt seemed to get a bit better, since I chose a book with grids and lines. I also got a ruler to make sure the positioning is more accurate. Things went pretty well with this, even though it took a bit more time consumed than usual. It comes annoyingly to the point that if I made mistakes, it took more time and effort to fix them rather than pressing a button in digital devices.

Once I felt like I was done with the drawing, I used the phone camera  to record the flipping process to create the movement. Since there was no one to help me out, I had to use my mouth to hold the phone and it was terribly shaky. After a while I managed to make a small tripod to hold my phone (and that was the first time I actually appreciated the phone selfie stick).

Flipping part was surprisingly difficult for me, even though it seems so satisfying to watch people doing that. I realised that not every notebook is meant to be used as flip books and that something that I overlooked since the beginning. After struggling for a while and my fingers were sore, it got better and I should be able to film this.

Watching the images moving in reality and when they were filmed on camera was so different. The animation looked bizarre when I flipped the pages with the same speed. Then I tried to flip them with different frequencies and it seemed to work. I also have them flipped in reverse and reverse the video in the editing apps. 

Reflection

I actually had a good time trying to do this for the first time, even though I kept running into problems that I didn't think of. 

The exercise actually takes me to look at how I have been depending on digital application, and that seems to narrow my way of thinking of other alternatives in solving problems.