new little film. beatabet 08

Beatabet experiment from rob blake on Vimeo.

Animation old new comparison

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qo1d6ttbAq8 (animator vs animation)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HaZOXF83zBghttp://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HaZOXF83zBg (Betty Boop)

Betty Boop is from a very different era to Animator…, (it was banned, possible because of drug references, or is smokey black? This is many years before the civil rights movement). It is made frame by frame, drawn on cells (film). The music is played by a live band (Cab Calloway), with sound effects probably dubbed live as well. It would have taken many man hours to create and been quite expensive. It would have been shown to kids, with probably a good deal of adult cross over (CAB calloway was a big star, interesting television was limited and Betty Boop was a bit of a looker).
Animator… was almost certainly made entirely by one person, in a few months at most, it is digitally made, with many parts being made with tweens and movie clips, which were not available to the makers of Betty Boop (though walk cycles for instance, are reused or looped). The sound would have been taken from an online database as opposed to being made by the producers. Aside from time and the original outlay for a PC this would have been free to make, and potentially could have been made by anybody with access to this equipment. It’s audience is entirely online, sadly there is little opportunity for cross over to other media for animation of this kind.

The two are similar in that they are highly exaggerated and surreal, the ghost sequence in Betty Boop is bizarre,dark (particularly the electric chairs) and highly stylized. Animator is a surreal concept from the offset and is full of impossibilities and suspension of belief (as is all animation really).
These two animations are very different in style but similar in that they are self aware, they are cartoons and don’t try to be realistic, they convey realism through exaggeration.

some of the places i went to as research for the ubiquity project

Ubiquitous project...

The trouble and beauty of this project was there were so many things to focus on; transport, genetic engineering, medicine, food, art etc…
Everything is affected by, if not based on, technology.
I’ve enjoyed this project because I spend a lot of time chatting with mates about future technologies and how we will live/survive with it. So this was just visualising those conversations.
Technically it was quite slow and awkward because I had to send .FLV’s through flash because I couldn’t find a converter. This was no major problem but slowed down the process considerably. The quality of internet film bothered me too, it looks awful, even at ipod size, but short of cleaning everything on magic bullet, which seems like overkill, what can you do.
I’m OK with the result, I’m pleased with some of the research, and a couple of the edits. The voice needs changing, the text to speech is an obvious and slightly irritating element. This would work better with a presenter, in a more standard documentary style, and to be more concise and focused.



http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8nTFjVm9sTQ

radiohead

http://www.motionportrait.com/e/about/

face motion

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=tjGR9_pg3EM&feature=related

rabbit in headlights.Unkle

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.getlofi.com/uploaded_images/speedhorseoutside-733498.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.getlofi.com/2006_01_01_archive.html&h=768&w=1024&sz=119&hl=en&start=17&um=1&usg=__j-D473wqHldA_xWS-gEwLZkRK80=&tbnid=kuI-bhVgVdHtPM:&tbnh=113&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dretro%2Bwalkman%26imgsz%3Dxxlarge%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den-us%26sa%3DG

synth blog

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=O8WXNPn1QKo&feature=related

colossus computer

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lwvTyC7m4LQ&feature=related

robot arm balance

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gTbO2CX8ZDo&feature=related

juggling robots

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_hiz-Kx0kM

solenoid concert

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7Bkrypxzs4&feature=related

rotary subwoofer

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=veoN1mh7RME

synesthesia

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VAnhFNJgNYY&feature=channel

ENIAC (FIRST COMPUTER)

ubiquity project (or look at www.youtube.com/robblakeartist to avoid that logo)

flash banner web intro for "pylones" gifts website. bounce the birds by dragging with your mouse

Flash Banner…

This was fun to do, I chose the cutesy gift company Pylones, because I wanted to play about with characters and colour.
One of the most enjoyably parts was recording the audio for the birds, thanks to Ben Waddleton for being a bird with me.
Basically I took the elasticity element from an online flash tutorial. I was really excited about making the telephone cable bounce, but this proved too tricky for my limited flash skills, and was mainly in AS3. Though it’s a bit of a fudge I think I’ve gotten away with just making the birds sit on a static cable.
I was going to write a piece of music to go with it, but I think it would have been too busy. I could have pushed this project further, with more characters, and objectives, but the simplicity is nice I think, and the website itself is flashy enough to make up for it.
My main problem with this was that the Pylones logo is shit – Italic Impact font, it should be a handwritten thing or an animal picture, I found this very difficult to fit into the piece.