See the screaming totoro here
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TvbpBGs0wXZzIZMxbbGJ1HxHJWV5yyaT
Theme:
Time as Material
Context:
I work on the idea fictive time-smear frame. I like smear frame and use it in my animation because it can save time and have good effect on the animation. I include the example mentioned in class (Chuck Jones) and found some introduction and examples of smear frame. I understood that there are different kinds of smear frame, take a pair of moving eyes for example, the smear frame could be either multiple eyes or just stretched eyes. My observation about smear frame is that a. it happens when things moving fast, b.it could look funny because of deformation and c. there si no rule for drawing smear frame as long as it looks that it makes sense.
Chuck Jones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpOPyjmB8SI
What does smear means?
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/smear
Amusing sometimes terrifying smear
https://imgur.com/gallery/7kJ38
smear frames examples
https://chicinlicin.tumblr.com/post/170330630886/some-quick-animation-smear-guides-i-put-together
Method:
Film a video with my phone, play the video on computer and screenshot some fabulous frames.
Response:
At first when thinking about time, I thought of art work The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory
I thought maybe I can do something with the concept of time is flexible, visible and soft. How can I visualize time? Then I remembered smear frame is kind of visualized time.
I looked for some information and examples of smear frame thinking what I can do with smear frame. I found some funny pictures of smear frame in ‘Amusing sometimes terrifying smear’ (context above). I thought my work could be a comedy? Maybe I can use some elements related to smear frame to do animation. Like this short film ‘Cubic tragedy’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOOynE1F4P4, it is a story using elements of tools in Maya.
How about I use only smear frame to do animation, there will be no in-betweens or every in-between is smear? Smear frame is supposed to show things moving fast, what if I use motion blur for something moves slowly? How about reverse time? Time travel? Captured time?
How about I combine some of the ideas about time? Thinking of something funny, moving fast and captured time, I suddenly thought of a video I watched before-- Aviad Balelli' -Really bored at work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iptUNUFdyas I knew there will definitely be smear frame hiding in the video. And I was right. I like the movements of the person in the video, it is very funny moving fast like that and there is rhythm in the movements.
What if I do not draw the smear frame? I captured it? I found the totoro dolls on my desk and decide to use it as main character in my video because I found that the dolls are some kind of captured time. The moment totoro in the movies is captured as a doll. Then I thought it could be nice if the background is a picture of the movie, because doing that I get many elements about time!
The final outcome was better than I expected. The beauty of experiment. I knew there will be smear frames as I move the dolls very fast. I thought they would be like motion blur. But I actually got one of the smear frames with multiple eyes just like the examples I found. I chose a yelling doll, and it actually looked like it was screaming with its face being stretched. I like the work so much and I think it is very successful. My work represents my anxiety and
Reference: My Neighbor Totoro by Miyazaki Hayao