Month: January 2023

What is sustainability?

Sustainability is the avoidance of destruction to natural resources. Being sustainable means fulfilling the needs of the current environmental state without compromising future needs or increasing long term care for the environment, for example, many companies have reduced their use of plastic to keep the oceans clean (Kuhlman and Farrington, 2010).

What is ethics?

Ethics are the moral principles that alter a human being’s behaviour. Ethics determine the right or wrong behaviours of a person. If a person found a wallet on the floor and decided to retrieve it back to it’s owner, that would be the ethical thing to do (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2015).

The chosen subject for the classical animation piece will be ethics. The animation will focus on the abandonment of pigeons. Pigeons were domesticated by humans thousands of years ago, they were used to carry and deliver paper messages. Pigeons were heavily relied on in the world wars to carry messages as this was the only form of communication to fellow soldiers who were distant. Carrier pigeons have saved lives throughout the wars and received medals. These birds were then used for sport purposes such as pigeon racing. Pigeons have been heavily neglected by society, they are seen as disease riddled birds that have to fend for themselves. Many pigeons are also physically abused by today’s society because as a generation we have never seen them to be useful for our needs and are now considered pests in towns and cities (Karlis, 2021).

As a generation, it is ethically wrong to have neglected and abused pigeons so the classical animation piece aims to send a message to show how heroic pigeons used to be so maybe as a generation they can be start being respected and cared for.

The 20 second animation piece will show a pigeon walking through a timeline of history, showing what pigeons used to go through. The first scene will be a war zone with the pigeon being handed a message, the next scene in the timeline will show the pigeon being used for sports. The timeline will eventually result in how pigeons are perceived today with insults being hurled at them. The last scene will show an abandoned landscape to emphasise how humans have abandoned pigeons, there will be litter and empty drug taking supplies around to show what it’s like for city pigeons.

The chosen audience for this animation piece will be teenagers and young adults. Having a young audience can be helpful when trying to teach the importance of something. Younger people will not know the history behind pigeons so this is a good message to educate them with in hopes that they grow to respect pigeons.

References

Karlis, N. (2021) Humans domesticated pigeons, then abandoned them. Is it time for a reappraisal? Salon. Available online: https://www.salon.com/2021/10/26/humans-domesticated-pigeons-then-abandoned-them-is-it-time-for-a-reappraisal/ [Accessed 15 Mar. 2023].

Kuhlman, T. and Farrington, J. (2010) What is Sustainability? Sustainability, 2(11), 3436–3448.

Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (2015) What Is Ethics? Canada.ca. Available online: https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services/values-ethics/code/what-is-ethics.html [Accessed 15 Mar. 2023].

The initial animation design will show a singular pigeon focused on the centre of the screen while the background will be slowly going by as the pigeon walks. The background scenery will transition through history, starting from the World War and finishing in the present day. The idea behind this is to show the reliance of the pigeon in earlier years, such as both world wars.

With only 20 seconds to show the importance of pigeons, the background transitions will only show significant events throughout history. This will still get the message across in the short timeframe. The conceptual design within the animation will be the background transitions. Each frame will be linked to the previous frame by the path, sky or clouds, this is to maintain a smooth transition.

This is the first sketch up of the animation sequence. The story board shows the visual scenes that will take place. As you can see the pigeon remains centred throughout and the background will change in each frame. This sketch will be enhanced digitally and eventually created into the classical animation sequence.

After digitally enhancing the storyboard sketch, this was the result. Digitally enhancing the sketch creates a detailed visual to the thought process behind the animation. The first two frames show the world war scenery with a message being strapped to the pigeon. The conceptual transition behind this animation will be the background e.g., the sky and clouds. Starting off with a very dull sky to show the brutality of the world wars and emphasise the pigeons heroicness during this time period. Moving onto the third frame, this shows the grey clouds clearing and buildings appearing, now the pigeon has moved out of the war time zone and is slowly entering the modern world. The fourth frame shows the pigeon being caged, this is to show the pigeon racing that still takes place today. The next two frames show a blue sky and people appearing, this is to show the audience that the pigeon has now moved into towns and cities. The blue sky is a metaphor to the pigeon’s emotions, its happier coming into the present day because the wars have ended. The last two slides show the way pigeons are treated today. Having to fend for them selves in litter and drug riddled areas as well as having abusive comments hurled at them. In the last slide the grey cloud is slowly coming back, this is to show that the pigeon is no longer happy and is starting to feel sad again.

After being assigned to watch ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ orchestra piece, we were asked to take a psychometric test to determine which team player suited each other. Unfortunately I didn’t attend the teamwork session so I took the test independently. The test resulted in me being The Whistler which I was happy with. The Whistler isn’t a leader but is the vital ingredient in the orchestra, they are the most memorable piece to the puzzle. In this case, the whistler is someone to rely on with ideas and solutions.

In class, the team developed a flipbook storyboard inspired by ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ a children’s book, written and illustrated by Eric Carle. Although I wasn’t present, the teamwork was fantastic and the storyboard created became very helpful guidance for my independent flipbook.

Flipbook animation was one of the first forms of animation, it is created using a sequence of images that are rapidly flipped through, giving the illusion of an animation sequence (What Is a Flipbook Animation? (with pictures), n.d.). Flipbook animation is a cheaper solution when animating, it is also a great way to visualise the animation before enhancing them digitally.

Above is a flipbook animation showing the first scene of the team storyboard, this was designed independently. This flipbook shows the caterpillar entering the screen from the left side and a piece of cheese entering from the right side. Having the cheese come in from the right emphasises the movement of the caterpillar coming towards the cheese. The caterpillar then curls itself around the cheese, entering and exiting the holes of the cheese before moving on.

This method of animation is very time-consuming and can consist of many mistakes. The flipbook created above includes 37 pages and took roughly an hour and 30 minutes to develop for only seconds of animation. It is not my preferred method of animating but it was definitely an experience learning the technique.

References

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – The Danish National Symphony Orchestra (Live). (2018) www.youtube.com. Available online: https://youtu.be/enuOArEfqGo [Accessed 16 Mar. 2023].

What Is a Flipbook Animation? (with pictures). (n.d.) Musical Expert. Available online: https://www.musicalexpert.org/what-is-a-flipbook-animation.htm [Accessed 16 Mar. 2023].

The first animation chosen was ‘Pigeons’ by a youtuber called ‘Xander.mpg’. This animation shows a group of city pigeons creating music using their surrounding objects. The reason this animation was chosen as a good example was to show how the pigeons have been designed/animated, this animation shows the very detailed and characteristic movements a pigeon makes, like the fast blinking and head tilting. The animated characteristics of these pigeons are something that would be used in the personal classical animation piece.

This next animation is not related to the topic of the classical animation piece but shows is a good example for showing the movement of how the final animation will look. This video shows a bird-like cartoon walking and coming across yellow balls that it decides to consume. The character remains in the centre of the screen and path is moving in the opposite direction to emphasis the movement in the walk. This is how the final animation piece will be designed. The idea is to have the pigeon be central but walking on the spot and the path/background will move across in the opposite direction.

This final animation shows the transitioning of a whales evolution, again the animal remains in the centre of the screen as it changes appearance and its surrounding environment moves in the opposite direction, again to show the animal walking/swimming through time. This is relevant to the final animation piece because this animal is moving through a history timeline while remaining central. This animation can also be considered educational which is another aim for the personal animation piece.

The audio used in these three animations is very minimal, neither of the videos have a voice or narration which will be similar to the end result of the classical animation piece. The aim is to have an audio of a pigeon cooing and maybe some slow, acoustic music overlapped. Using minimal audio can draw further attention to the actual animation and having a certain genre of music can emphasis the emotions the audience will experience during their viewing of the animation.

References

Nuggets. (2014) YouTube. Available online: https://youtu.be/HUngLgGRJpo [Accessed 16 Mar. 2023].

Pigeons. (2022) www.youtube.com. Available online: https://youtu.be/a93DUkkJGQ4 [Accessed 16 Mar. 2023].

Whales evolution. (2007) www.youtube.com. Available online: https://youtu.be/8cn0kf8mhS4 [Accessed 16 Mar. 2023].

The Abandonment of the Pigeon

Royalty free audio used within the animation.