with the live brief i felt no other connected with me quite like the molly Fairhurst brief.
music is something so import to me and i wanted nothing more to take one of my favourite songs and tell a small story through lyrics and images. I'm quite new to animation my main work being that of flip notes on the ds when i was a child. however the concept of the analogue animation seemed relatively easy to me and i knew how i would take it very quickly.
the song i chose is called airhead, its written and produced by an artist called Picon ft the vocaloid voice hatsune miku.
I've loved this song since i was about fifteen and knew the genre of music would fit perfectly with the analogue style the brief asked. the song relatively means a lot to me due to that but i also love the concepts the song deals with. the song can be interpreted in quite a few ways but i feel like it is about some form of substance abuse. at least that's my take on the songs meaning and i want to be able to portray that within my art.
so the first thing i decided to do was go through different music videos for inspiration and frame ideas, i wanted to go for whacky and absurd imagery to complement the music style, so i needed some help with ideas in that category.
first music video: 暴徒 - written and sung by Eve
what i liked particularly with this video was the character design of the strange hatted figure like character, the way it looks is similar to what i want a character in my music video to look. i just all around love the vibe and randomness to it as well.
second music video: 逃避行 – written and sung by Eve
what i liked in this one was defintely the use of colour, it really stuck to blues and orange and i love complimentary colours. it also cut to random imagery at times and broke away from the manga look it sticks with. particularly the room being in the main character dungarees for one frame, i thought that was really cool
third music video: Literary nonsense – written and sung by Eve
Video by Mah
this was one of the first video sthat came to mind when i thought about looking into this artist for inspiration, the tall hatted character again being what i want to draw alot of inspiration from. the video beijg centered mainly around the figure and one other smaller character was what i was thinki9ng of with my video. and the fact the style is messy, along with in just black and white i think my video will use similar themes.
forth music video:
Song- new normal.
Written, sung and animated by Jack stauber
one of my favourite thing about jack stauber's work is how far the meaning of both his lyrics and his visual choices go, each frame tells such a deep story and yet there so bizarre it takes a moment to understand what they mean.
Fifth music video:
Song- The End
Written, sung and animated by Jack stauber
and the same goes with this video, the way its aesthetic works the way the colour is used, the framing of the face of the character its just amazing to me. he works with clay as well as animating and adore how he uses it to create a more finer picture within both the lyrics and subject media.
sixth music video:
Song- cooking with Abigail
Sung, written and animated by jack stauber
there's little more i can express about jack staubers work that i haven't stated before, his depiction of imagery against his lyrics its always so well done and will continue to inspire me for a long time.
seventh music video:
I CAN'T SLEEP!!! – animation music video by skyewei
this music video was one a friend directed me to. when i said i was looking for interesting imagery for inspiration he sent this one straight to me and i was glad! the video portrays quite a lot within the small amount of time it runs for and i found a lot of inspiration from it.
eighth music video:
DARE – gorillaz
and when talking about crazy music videos its hard not to bring up the Gorillaz. another band from which i used to listen to a lot when i was younger this video was always a memory for me. i love the strange use of the singers massive head for the whole video and want to use that for sure in a frame for my work. i just love all the bizarre things that the character gets up to in the video.
ninth music video:
Music video for the song Airhead by Picon
and to finish off i think the use of imagery in the original music video for airhead is honestly also top tier. just from this alone i had already had quite a few ideas running through my head. the colour use is a big one for this video to, and the way there's just a focus on different coloured apples? i find it so interesting alone one could unpick that for hours.
~
next came scribbling down character designs! i knew i wanted to have two main characters, one being a small girl and the other a more mysterious figure like being that towers over her.
the style i was going for was very scribbly and i decided early on that i wanted everything to be in black and white. the scribblier the better! it would be easier to crank out frames for the boiling technique and really help me manage time better as an animation is a big project.
what was going through my head as i was drawing was, i wanted to create some kind of innocent looking little character that is very much contrasted with the much taller mysterious figured character. the plan was to have this figure be the embodiment of addition perhaps? and have it so throughout the story its helping her doing the things she does until it just disappears and just shows that all along it was just herself, this innocent looking character making all these horrible decisions.
i also didn't want to give her any identity other than her name simply being apple girl, i wanted her to be really just a representation of anyone's possible experiences and it wasn't tied down to an experience this once character in a story has had but something maybe someone could relate to?
~
after that my next stop was just drawing out possible frame ideas, i really wanted to just get a little idea on howi could represent lyrics in smarter weirder ways than just drawing what i hear.
next i wanted to test out if my plan for animating woul work out, so i messed about with aa couple of quick frames to test out if the movement would work well. i feel like it worked out perfectly first try! i was very happy with the result and knew this was going to be how id animate alot of the video
this is just each frame i did next to one another
next i decdied i wanted to writee out the lyrics properly in my own handwriting whilst noting down things that came to my head as i wrote. the song is in japanese so i wanted to learn the lyrics in ewnglish properly as ive stated how imporant the lyrics are to the song and to the story i want to tell.
and so comes the animatic! i story boarded out what i was planning on doing for each frame, and how i could animate different parts that would require movement. i knew i wanted to repeat a few frames during the second chorus so that's why that part is a little blank!
this helped me so much to really see the video come together and what it could look like when i finish it, having this done made me super hopeful for the outcome!
i had decided to shorten the song just slightly by taking out the middle verse, so i would still very surpass the needed time limit but also allowing myself an achievable outcome, i knew i could finish the whole thing if i was just around 2 mins rather than pushing more to animate a whole other verse. it didn't seem realistic to me and i wanted a full video done more than anything. so i knew shortening it was the way to go if i was going to be able to manage my time well enough to do all the work i needed to.
and so on starts the process of animating!
as i begun i realised quickly just how lengthy this process was going to be. for each frame i was going to draw the same frame three times to create the boiling technique, i was going to stick to mainly sharpie and sometimes charcoal to keep that scribbly type look. and i would mainly be just taking photos of my drawings and cropping them, instead of any kind of scanning i thought that would bring it away from the emersion a little bit.
however the first challenge to overcome was truly getting to grips with just how much i was going to have to draw.
with this frame i used a funky and albeit overly convoluted method. so what i had done was drawn out the 3 frames of a walking cycle, taken a photo of them, then take a photo of the other side of the paper where the ink was thinner. then put those images into procreate and cut them out, placing them around the canvas to make the moving animation move along with having the two sides go through one another.
this set of frames was done by drawing out the character multiple times the cutting her out and placing them on top of each other which was quite difficult as the more i placed on top of each other the higher they started to stack, i was scared this might be obvious in the photos as i thought a shadow might start showing but luckily enough it didn't and worked out perfectly for me.
i did a similar thing with these sets of frames, in that the arrow was a cut out drawing and so was the apple on the girls head. i did this to make it a little easier to get that quick movement and so i didn't have to draw a whole frame of her with an apple on her head and one without. if anything it was an easy way to save time.
here i think was the only time i decided to use colour on the apple, to really create a sense of contrast and I'm glad i did, i think it makes the sequence just that little bit more special and note worthy. with the text i also draw those separately and cut them out, moving them around on the paper for each frame. i thought it would look way more bold if i did it like that rather than just writing it on.
how i went about this sequence was a bit roundabout as well, i took all the frames for boiling and drew the black blinking part on in procreate as i didn't have the means to use up all my sharpies on colouring a whole piece of black paper, i also had no black paper on me and wasn't able to quickly acquire some, so i thought this was the next best idea.
here is just more sets of frames repeated for boils, and such showing the in-betweens of each frame for animating.
here what was mostly of note was that the feet in these frames where drawn and cut out, and i placed them down for each frae to create the most fluid and quick movement.
messing with rotoscoping was next!
so this was a very first for me, but as i had sketched out in my story board, i really wanted fluid as possible movement for this section of the song, and i wanted to properly animate dancing i wasn't sure i could achieve that without using digital. so my way to combat that in the first place was to remove the background from the animated frames, make it into a gif, then paste it in a new video editor, take a photo of a piece of paper then put the animated gif onto that, to give the illusion it was still on paper. which i had thought was a long shot but i was stunned to find out that, i thought it worked perfectly.
i also did all of the movements myself for all the rotoscoping, and begged my friend to teach me how to waltz, so i could film us doing that and such for my animation. so all the rotoscoping was of my own filming and just of me and my friend.
which i am so pleased with how it turned out, i think that really its the highlight of the animation at some points and I'm so glad i tried it out, i even used smear frames for when movement was so quick which I've never done before, and i was so pleased to see it all work out perfectly.
ANOTHER INSTANCE I CUT OUT DRAWINGS INSEATD OF RE DRAWING THEM, THE FIRST ON THE FIRST FRAMES I MOVED ALONG THE PADE FOR ITS MOVEMENT.
AT THIS POINT IN THE story board i had drawn apple girl kind of of laying in a floating void and, as i was looking through the storyboard frames i wanted to bring something very new into the video. something that switches up the constant colour flow. the day was particularly nice as well outside so, i asked my friend if she wanted to go on a walk and i decided to make the background for her floating in the void places around where i live as i walked through Nottingham.
i am so glad i experimented with this because i think it came out so cool in the finally version all together. the contrast looks good and it brings something very different into play as the instrumental drags on.
at this point then i was really interested in bringing in a couple more live action frames, so i rummaged around my closet to fins something somewhat final to how apple girl looks, dressed myself up and asked my friend to take photos of my holding up an apple whilst looking back into the view of the mirror.
i think the drastic change at this point in the video makes it so interesting and i just love how it came out. i think it brings a that little bit more personal love to it as well? it makes it a lot more special to me as i really emerged myself into this video.
i think that small bit of live action also brings it that little bit more into reality, its not just a story with a cute looking character but one that speaks of true life experiences and such.
i also had to ask my best friend to come in and take the photos for me as i was unable to do it whilst holding the apple and looking in the mirror at the same time.
while i dont want to overly explain my choices in imagery and why i drew what i did in what way, because i think the whole point of this video is how one interprets it. i wanted to explain the slow move in the story. the first chorus depicts the mysterious figure opening the door for apple girl, dancing with her and then we see a small shot of a cigarette. this being quite a first step into substance abuse, something you would begin with perhaps. as the video goes on the figure then disappears from the chorus, leaves the girl to herself as she puts on the figures mask basically alluding to her accepting this addiction and then we jump to the much more harmful substances, that being a heroin needle. i then redrew the bow and arrow from with her instead of the figure. just trying to get across it was all in her head the whole time and this perception that a figure is telling her to do things was all in her own head.
and so the story ends similar to how it started except this time apple girl is smiling, her healthy apple now rotten and on the floor, a smile on her face as she accepts she cannot escape herself. she puts the mask on as she turns away from the camera and we're left with nothing but reality. she is like anyone else. just bones. bones that walk and move and feel but sometimes cannot break themselves from their own actions.
~
~finished animation~
personally, i love how the final animation has turned out. i love how the boiling ended up working, I'm so proud of how the rotoscoping looks and i feel like there is a subtle but understandable story to follow as the song goes on. i think the vibe and aesthetics fit with the song better than i could have ever imagined. i think the jumping between realism and cartoon like styles really works for the contrast of bringing the animation from a story to more of a story of reality.
there's little i dislike with the final outcome, i feel like i did have a lot of ideas that i could have maybe brought to the entire song, i would have liked to animate the entire song and bring in more of the strange live action frames i really liked how they turned out but it was more of a last minute set of ideas before i came to finishing the animation. i cut it short so i was able to have a fully finished piece but knowing what i do now i think i probably could have done the whole song and that's something i can remember for the next time i take on such a big project, setting assessable targets is smart but maybe i could have pushed the boat put just a little bit in order to be able to tell a bigger story.
~animation but with captions~
as far as the captions go i feel like it really doesn't actually take away anything from the animation itself. i think my choice of font works well and i do love being able to know what the lyrics are saying as the video goes on.
what i had feared was that they might take up too much space, or look a little daunting on top of the analogue animation but i think they worked just fine.
so what i used to animate was a phone app called inshot. in so i just kept repeating the photos taken instead of having an actual fps going on. sometimes i used effects or filters the app allowed me to use for specific segments. like the slow zoom out on a few frames, that was an inbuilt effect inshot allowed me to do. this may have made the process a little more difficult but i knew this app really well and knew i would actually be able to use it well for this project.
i also messed around with the music in the app to cut it shorter. basically the way the song flows is that the middle bridge shouldn't be able to flow back into a chorus as well as it does in my final piece, so what i did was take a cover of the song from the game project sekai, the cover was already properly edited to be shorter for the length it plays in the game, and i adore this cover so i knew all i and to do was cut around and make the middle bride of this cover play during that time in my animation, then cut it off just as the chorus would start again and have the chorus starting with the original version.
while a little bit of an all around way to edit the song, it still worked out fine and doesn't sound like there even is a cut. so it was an all around success.
~
my final reflection
in the end i am so glad i decided to do this project, i think this brief was perfect for me and gave me a reason to really get down and think about one of my favourite songs. being able to explore it with my art and ideas was so enjoyable to me and I'm very proud of the final outcome.
the worst part was how mundane some things became, drawing the same entire image three times for the boiling effect did start to weigh on me after a while, and then taking the photos of each one and editing and cropping them over and over really became quite painful. it really was a trust the process experience for me but i cant complain as the final outcome outweighs any issues i had whilst doing it. knowing now how much id have to do and how long it would take to just get a few seconds id go into it knowing what id need to do to shorten the process and though i think my time management was good with this project, i could've done even better and animated the whole song if i really put my head to it. that's something i know ill push to manage next time.
i know with more practice i could start being like to animate movement better with rotoscoping or even manage to animate without it, and get that fluid movement all by myself.
