Tales by the Night - Animation of Folktales directed by Michel Ocelot

I happened to come across an article in Varoom about a french director who had directed a film based from folk/fairy tales through animation!! I thought this was great as this links to both my studio and research report ideas and this is new example of how traditional tales have transitioned into the digital age. This animation comprised of a girl, boy and elderly technician meet up in an abandoned cinema to then act out the tales. Using just silhouettes and the backdrop to create the environment. Brightly coloured to determine place and mood.

Here are a few stills I captured when watching the film: 

It was really interesting to watch this animation and see how you can very simply act out a story through simple means. It has also given me a lot to think about. During the collaboration project one group made a stop animation, which was very simple but the finish product was really interesting! Could I look into this for BA8?... And also regarding my research report this is an exact example of how a tale has now adapted to the world of the digital. Great starting point to now work from. 

African Folk tales - animation

The Deamon, the Woman and the Bird

Another animation I found on youtube illustrating an african folk tale... I do not like the way this tale has been illustrated. This is because I don't like the look of the characters particularly. They are realistic but not interesting to look at and the colours are bland with not much body to them. When I illustrate my chosen tale I want to do something better than this! Searching on the internet there is not an overly massive amount of illustration for African folk tales... why not?

• Click here for the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeNw0hOh0hk

African Folk Tales - animation

A Story A Story

An animation I found on youtube of an African folk tale. I like how pattern and line was used in the animation and it shows how drawing has then taken that step forward to portray the tale.

• The link to the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a7U08B7TY8

African Folk Tales - Children's Show (Tinga Tinga Tales)

Tinga Tinga Tales

Thinking of areas to look at about and research into African Folk Tales I came across and young children's show animating simple tales. Tinga tinga tales! Portraying tales about why the elephant has a trunk, why the hyena has short back legs, why the snake has legs and so forth. By simplifying the tale down and creating an array of brightly coloured patterned animal characters, children can learn stories based on morals, learning from other's mistakes, holding their attention and focus to the programme. Here are a few stills from the show:

See here for one of the tales: "Why has the elephant has a trunk": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3NMg06XV3E

You can see from the stills how the characters have been illustrated - based on simple shapes, colours and patterns. Thinking about my research report is there a way to link it more to my studio work? How folk tales have been translated into digital means?... animation! Children's TV programme!!

Animated Folk Tales - TALES OF THE NIGHT

Since my tutorial and looking at animations of African Folk Tales, I started to look into how or whether folk tales have been applied to digital applications. I happened to fall on an article in Varoom about a French director Michel Ocelot who has made an animation of folk tales! Called Tales of the Night. 

• See trailer clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dX2k8w766U

The film uses black silhouettes with amazingly colourful backgrounds to illustrate the folk tales in an exciting digital way. The full film is available to borrow at the library and is 84 minutes long so I will take this home to watch and analyse! Which maybe could spur on my research report...

Tutorial about Research Report Ideas

(28.10.13 - tutorial with Glyn):

Mind-map of ideas...

• Can you link your studio project with research report?… how a story/tale has transitioned… written/illustration/animation.
• Look at how the next generation may learn because of digital technology's advancement.
• Kindles, iPads, apps… is there space for illustration? 
• Problem for many illustrators is the shift to digital means, they don't know how to.
• Article in Varoom Magazine - Conference about Boundaries in Illustration.
• Look at James Brocklehurst.
• John O'Reilly. 
• Is there a place for meaningful illustration in a consumerist society?
• Maybe look into folktales and how have they been applied to digital applications? Adaptation into games? - Find a particular example, for instance a tale portrayed very different in appearances…
• Need to narrow ideas down - refine and focus. Research more focused on something specific!
• For the 10,000 word option need to have a very strong and clear focus, something with enough to discuss and explore.
• Problem with look into how illustration is incorporated with the kindle etc is that it is very new. Therefore very little has been done so not many have discussed it or it has not been done at all.
• Idea at the moment is too broad.

*** For friday bring in more focused research for report and work done for studio project so far for another tutorial.

African Folk Tales

A few thoughts:

Over the past week I have been reading two books I inter loaned from UEA Library containing African folk tales. The things I noticed about them is that they always contained a moral, both humans and animals were key characters in tales and generally they were about 2-4 pages long. Shape-shifting was also talked about and that the animals were referred to with personalities of humans. Both the Hare and the Tortoise were cunning characters and always tricked others in the tales. There were some stories about stealing the sun and also how the sun and moon shared the days and I thought these could be particularly interesting to illustrate thinking about the visually exciting and full text that these tales contain. Over the weekend I am going to pick a few tales that I particularly liked and break them down to see which one I think will give the most visually exciting stimulant to produce illustrations from. Reading these tales it has made me think how I could move this project forward into BA8. By extending my illustrations into a number of tales and responses, which could be a great way of moving into the final unit!

Reflective Workshop (collaboration project)…

500 Word Reflection Summary on the Collaboration Project

Following Rachel Gannon's lecture reflecting on her own work, it gave me a number of things to look back upon over the two week starting project. To reflect back over what was successful, what was not and what I have learnt from the exercise.

Reflecting back over the two week collaboration project, it was a great exercise to get me back into the ways of working and thinking about my ides to come into the 3^rd year. Sometimes I have found that having such a long break can really push you out of sync and practice causing me to be un-productive at the start of the project. The collaborative project has warmed me up to BA7 allowing me to start thinking, producing and reflecting on my own practice again. Being randomly partnered with Rachel Peel was good as I have never really talked or worked with her before. Initially, it was difficult working with her as we are very different people through the way we work and our personalities also. I am quite un-confident about my own work and ideas so don’t always like to communicate about them, as I feel embarrassed and ashamed of my work. So communicating with her for me was very difficult at the beginning. But as we started to brainstorm ideas together I could start to open up and discuss ideas with her, rather than taking a back seat and going with other peoples’ idea which I tend to do in previous projects.  

Working with a partner is great to explore new ways of working and thinking. Experimenting with new processes and ideas and input that you may not come up with on your own. You also have to put a lot of trust into the other person and hope that they also give their input into the project. This can be a negative about working with other people as if they don’t engage in the work as much as you do and don’t hold their own weight it can make the project very difficult. This didn’t happen though unlike others in my year whose partners didn’t show up. I decided to work with the medium of collage and I have never properly worked with this before. Therefore collaborating pushed me outside of my comfort zone and being prepared to be playful and take risks. You can tend to play it safe and avoid exploring new ways of working, sticking to the ones you know work well in your own work but as I was also working with someone else I took that step forward.  

Reflecting over the two weeks there were a few ups and downs in the project… We brainstormed ideas first then went away and created work to discuss in the curated dialogue. During the second week though we hit a rut and didn’t know how to push our ideas and extend our discoveries into final outcomes. We tackled a rather large topic and then when we decided on what we particularly wanted to focus on, we explored the ideas fully quite quickly and was stuck in a position to wrap up the project or explore another route. But because of the timescale, practically it was not realistic to extend down another path of ideas, which left our final outcomes maybe not as successful as they could have been. Looking at other groups and how they produced animations, films, screen-prints… it felt like we could have pushed our ideas so much further. But even so, I still learnt new way of working! 

The lessons I learnt through this exercise was that working with someone else you must be open-mind and don’t be scared to talk about your own ideas and be pushed out your comfort zone. That you can produce a lot of diverse work when working with another person and it is a good exercise to free yourself up and work a fresh. To conclude, I think that working with another person that you also haven’t socialised with can really help you push your own work as its not just you, but another that you need to work for. I am pleased that I decided to look into a new medium because even though the project outcome could have been a lot more playful like others in year 3, it did give me new knowledge and new way of working that I may come back to in BA7. If I had not had the collaboration project this wouldn’t have happened. I think my partner did not find the project as successful as I did for the reason her work used watercolour which she works in regularly, but because I worked differently from what I normal do I think that it was a really important task that has got me started for my own practice in BA7. Leaving me raring to go and get working productively on my own brief!!

Reflective Drawing Workshop

Workshop

My reflective drawings… looking at the highs and lows of the project and also my personal space of working and pushing those boundaries.

Visual Research on African art/sculpture/masks....

Starting to collect visual imagery on pinterest for BA7 - illustrating an African folk tale. Making a research collection of African art, sculpture, masks, photography, patterns, make-up.... also a few children's book illustration pieces as this will be my target audience.

Here is the link to my board showing my visual research!!

http://www.pinterest.com/annabelosborn/ba7-visual-research/pins/

Review Day about Project Proposals

Tuesday 22nd October I had a group review day with Chris and about 10 other students. Bringing in my draft project proposal as well as my ideas for my research report, we all looked at each others and then made notes for feedback and then individually went round talking about everyone's ideas.

Feedback & questions to consider:

(Studio Project)

- Which tale do you want to illustrate? And why?

- How many illustrations?

- Why African folk tales?

- How much time will you take choosing the folk tale?

- Interesting theme lots of room for development.

- Research into what other illustrators have done for folk tales and see if you can produce something original.

- Will imagery be in the form of shapes and patterns or more realistic imagery?
- What characteristics do you need to make things recognisable? Animals = horns, tusks, manes, trunk... something to think about when making imagery.

- Look at texture and warm colour, perhaps collage would be a good approach?

- Think about relationship between text and image, and how they're displayed together.

- Consider the use of colour in relation to African culture.

- Incorporate African culture and art within work.

- Look at colour and pattern used heavily in african art.

- Different colours and patterns for tribes... Make-up?...

- See how you can adapt a folk tale so it is appropriate for children.

- Maybe involve children in work?

- Think of other ways of presenting work?

- How will you get primary research for the subject?

- Museum in Oxford or Cambridge (the Fox Pit Museum) has a good selection of African memorabilia.

- V & A have examples and images of African folk tales.

- Black History Month at the moment in NUA Library. Something to look at?

- Black History Month events: forum, festival in St Georges park in Great Yarmouth.

(Research Report) 

- Interesting points for sub-sections

- Huge subject, lots of info. Maybe focus on a specific idea? Apps etc...

- Discuss arguments for and against

- Interview digital/traditional artists, museum curators etc.

- Look at Varoom magazine, deviantart.com

- Has illustration been de-valued (monetary forms)?

- Can it like to studio project?

There were lots of great feedback about my project proposals to think about! This week I am going to choose a folk tale as some books I requested form UEA have arrived at the NUA library so I can take a look at them this week as well as some books I also got from the Millennium library. Regarding primary research, I am going to look at if there are anymore events going about Black History Month and I am also going to go to the Sainsbury Centre to get some observational drawing and photographs about African culture. I would travel up to London to visit some museums/galleries but I am getting increasingly aware of how short this project is! Also, I put into the proposal about how I would like my target audience to be children as I want to go into primary school teaching. Some people asked whether I could actually go into schools and see if I could work on the project involving children. This could be a good idea but I don't think it would be realistically possible because of the issues of going into the school and CRB checks etc. So for this project I want to stick with just my target audience being children. So I think that if I continue this subject into BA8 then I will go up to London in the next term. Plan is to firstly make a timetable to sort out what I am doing and then crack on!!

Research Report Ideas

(Possible questions titles:)

- How has the rise of digital technology affected Illustration?

- How has digital technology affected Illustration and other creative field?

- Is the affect of digital era a positive upon Illustration?

- How has the impact of the digital transition of society affected Illustration and the arts?

- Has the digital era brought an end to illustration and the creative world?

 Extended Essay // 10,000 word option

Summary of Points:

I am interested in how society has transitioned through the digital era and therefore I want to look at how it has affected Illustration as well as other creative fields/the arts. Digital technology has had a great impact on many aspects of industry but focusing on just the artistic world, points that I want to include are:

• Kindles/ iPads / E-books… affect on the Book Cover? Editorial Illustration? (Is there still a place for Illustrated book covers anymore? Articles also made to view on the Internet rather than physical page – completely different approach to artwork rather than just be looked at on the page…)
• Digital Software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign… impact on the hand-drawn and traditional art? Digital painting etc. Also factor of not only enhancing imagery but manipulating? = what is the truth in imagery?
• This impact on Photojournalism and Reportage Photography… how can you believe every thing you see? In the media especially.
•  Apps, instagram etc. everyone has the capability to be an ‘artist’?
• Impact on galleries and museums? Is there a place for the traditional? When you can just sit at a computer and see everything you want to find out about? Nostalgia...
• How illustration has been used in design for a consumerist society? Paperchase, evolution...
• Audience target age? Extremely accessible so are more people looking at art because it is more convenient and can sit at home and search?

I want to form sub-titles and create a number of sections/subjects to then talk and explore the question, which I want to spread over the 10,000 words option rather than 5,000 words. Come to a conclusion about the impact digital technology has had on Illustration and the arts, and whether this is a positive or negative one upon today’s society and the industry.

Project Proposal: (draft)

1. Project Proposal Title: Illustrating an African Folk Tale

2. Project Proposal Content:   I intend to research into African folk tales and then choose one that I would like to illustrate. Responding to the text I want to create a series of illustrations to portray the tale looking into the elements of colour and shape. I have loved working with these elements in my previous projects and would really like to develop my skill set, using the African tale as a visually exciting starting point to then work from.

3. Context and audience: My target audience for my work will be children or young adults, and as I am looking into Primary school teaching as a career focusing my work on a younger audience will benefit my future aspirations. I can look at ways children learn and what imagery needs to be successful in portraying a story.

4. Research Sources: I will research into African art over history, sculpture, masks etc. using the University’s library as well as the Norwich and UEA library resources and also looking to see if there are any museums or exhibitions featuring anything useful to my project.

5. Learning Methodology: I will begin by researching into African folk tales and by reading as many as I can to then determine the one I would like to illustrate. I will acquire new knowledge through looking into children book illustration as well as African culture to determine my imagery. I want to experiment with more materials at an early stage in the project and also build on my drawing skills to address some of my weaknesses in previous projects.

6. Work for Assessment: I wish to submit a collection or series of illustrations responding to the chosen African folk tale. I want to improve my drawings and extend my knowledge of materials I like to use, but also explore new mediums too to develop a good base for developing my work.