Movie Feedback

This is the feedback I received on my show opener.

About the opener:

My goal with the concept of "Dr. Hydrogen's Atomic Comic Hour" is to have a show that appeals to fans of the comic book industry - whom range from the young to the old. I came up with the idea of  superhero/host type personality Dr. Hydrogen as a guide of sorts for both long-time fans and newcomers to the culture. Every week, Dr. Hydrogen leads viewers through numerous aspects of the comic book industry, whether it be current trends, looks behind the scenes, or tips from the artists.

I chose music that I felt evoked the feel of comic book drama, similar to the old-school tv show themes.

sound+motion:: opening research

I'm definitely very interested in pursuing a television opener piece for this project - I feel that this option would suit my topic of comic books more; a data presentation would take a far too logical approach to superheroes and the like, which could alienate its intended audience.

Purpose: television openers serve a number of different purposes - whether it be to draw the attention to the show, or introduce its main actors / characters. They can also help to set the tone of what the show is about, whether it be by virtue of music used, or perhaps narration.

Context: An opener's context would definitely be the shows that appear before and after it. It can be likened to a clapperboard in filming, it signifies to viewers that a new show it starting. It also definitely resides within the sea of advertisements and commercials that are everywhere in TV land.

Audience: Viewers of something like this would most likely be fans of comic books, either looking to learn more about comic books in general, or want to bask in the nerdiness.

Some media I've been looking at:

The STACK

GO Team Venture!

Batman TAS Intro

Batman / Superman Adventures

Batman Beyond

JLA Unlimited

DETHKLOK DETHKLOK! (Metalocalypse)

sound&motion:: nonlinear flash process

During the initial stages of this project, I started by looking at different examples of my source material: comic books. Materials which I looked at included classic comic books such as X-Men, Captain America, Spiderman, webcomics such as Looking for Group, Ctrl+Alt+Del, or Penny Arcade, or flash websites such as Eco Zoo.

Some of the ideas I played around with in these sketches included a comic book spread layout, or one which consisted of a pile of comic books; with panels which could be interacted with.

I later moved onto color tests and layout tryouts in Flash and Illustrator. After the flash demo, I was able to quickly realized exactly what kinds of object-user interaction I was able to do, given my limited knowledge of Actionscript 3.0

One of my first directions, where the objects I had were arranged into a comic book strip form.
Playing with the layout some more.
Over the course of the last few days, I decided to rework my layout into a more open form: that of an artist's desk, cluttered with items you might find associated with comic book nerds and the like. I liked this approach more because it not only grants the viewer a more open setting, but my objects didn't feel as "confined" compared to when I simple had them set into square frames.

At this stage, I was tinkering around with different objects present on the stage, as well as the overall layout and arrangement.

Final project arrangement.

sound&motion::final product

This project was definitely an interesting exploration on capturing motion, whether it be by virtue of digital or hand-generated means. It also forced me to consider the verbs and actions that I had chosen, and whether the way I portrayed them had to be literal, or abstracted in some way. Regardless of what solution I came up with, I also hoped to keep it still visually legible.

For my final animation here, I initially wanted to compose it entirely as a stop motion piece - but then gravitated towards trying to blend together both digital and analog means of animation. Working with the flash tools allowed for more fluid transitions and tweens, but I definitely also appreciate how less restrictive analog media can be - hence the presence of both here. And I guess in conclusion, I hope the two approaches might result in a harmonious blend to convey my three actions of sketching, ripping, and crumpling.


Questions:

1.) does the transition between analog and digital media distract from the three actions?

2.) would perhaps a less literal representation of the actions have been more interesting/insightful?

3.) Overall legibility of the narrative.

sound&motion:: animation

reworked some of the sketching animation since last class, along with the crumple finale.

sound&motion:: storyboards

sound & motion :: process documentation