⤷ Animation Skillz ୭ ˚. ᵎᵎ
- freyamanning0
- Oct 27
- 16 min read
WEEK 5 -
objectives:
- research into Len Lye
- do research into the animation principle follow through and over lapping action
LEN LYE (*≧ω≦*)
Len lye was a New Zealand artist who was based mainly in England and America. He was a leader in experimental film making but not using a camera to film the images but instead scratching into the film that would go into the camera for the film. His techniques were used a lot in film making and he directed and made a lot of films during 1930-1980's. When he worked in America he worked in New York and created kinetic animation which was making sculptures that moved, he also wrote poetry, painted, did photography and just made general sculptures that were linked to his animations but created the concept of "Art in Motion" to show the feeling through sculptures and paintings and the forms of how people experience the world. He's not that known but he did a lot for the overall art industry developing loads of different forms of things and there are foundations that are specifically made to promote his work and the power he had in the art world back in the 1930's/80's.
When he was young he lived his life in a lighthouse with his stepfather, mother and brother.
This is where a particular foundation who I am using for information believes where he got his interest for the form making and the flowing shapes for his art/animations.
Most of his career was spent in the UK or America but he did return back to New Zealand and pretty much worked on sculptures and physical art instead of animations until he pretty much died. I mean he still helped direct films but he was old and making sculptures was something he enjoyed. During his time when he went back to New Zealand he worked with another artist in New Plymouth and they hold some of his biggest statues and exhibitions that he ever created, making him pretty famous over there.
Most of his animations were/are classed abstract and played into surrealism but they were used everywhere to advertisements to just regular films, his art was so experimental that it was pretty much shown around the world to other artists to get them inspired as well. His animations he believed showed 'body energy' which can be clearly seen through his sculptures and when he worked on the kinetic animation that he did. Most of the work he. crated was all experimental, sketches or quick sculptures and his work is a moment in history of experimental artists blooming into something much bigger and being recognized. Due to Lye's love. of many different mediums of work his most famous animation "The colour box" he made to show the harmony that visual media and music have and create.
As he would draw and scratch into film tape as he got more famous he used stencils to create more human shapes and show more complex stories. His animations are all around 10 minutes long and his work is a form of stop motion technically as he is scratching it into physical things, not digitally. Another one of his famous animations used film from other films that was scraps and not being used and would go over it and paint and scratch and draw all over the film tape to give it more of a unique ike feel. As he continued with his career he wanted to make sure people all around the world could relate to his artwork and animations so he made sure that his animations lended toward more of motions and feeling so it wasn't directed to just one demographic he wanted his art to connect others and regardless of the language there be no barriers. He just really enjoyed capturing the movement and the moment people when through in all of his work regardless what the medium or what he was making as long as it had that movement feel to it, he deemed it a good experiment.
To make sure I understood his work properly I listened to some old interviews that he did back in the 1960-70's when he was an old man. To be honest his work to me sort of makes no sense, it's very modern like artwork and interpretive, when they say abstract I didn't realise that it was that abstract. Though the work he did with the kinetic sculptures I really like, simply because of the sounds that they created. In the interviews he only showed one of the sounds that he had for his kinetic sculptures and it was really cool. I understand the point of his work but the way it looks I feel like it just isn't very pretty or cool looking. I know that art work doesn't always have to look cool but personally I prefer that for me I like to look at work for a long time. I mean I suppose I could look at his work for a long time but when I do I just feel a little bit confused.
During the interviews Len lye seems to be a very eccentric person explaining things in a pretty funny way and I quite like it, seeing his work the way he is a person who really works for the style of his own work. Now during the interviews you can sort of see the way his work has progressed to focus on the motion I really liked how he showed his work from when he was 19 and younger than when he was recording the interview, because he called that work, work from his "new brain" where as you get older you conform to a more rigid way of drawing and lock the "primitive" art of drawing away. Though when he did his work as he got older he stopped doing life drawing completely and just worked on getting the feeling that objects and people gave him. He is super inspired by what he called "black art" (art from literally anyone that isn't a white artist) as their work focuses more on the way the body feels than looks. I completely understand he showed in his slideshow interviews image of African art with things like the fiscal portions exaggerated and the way Lye explained it with if you were to close your eyes and focus on that part of your body you would focus on the feeling of it all and he's right the way that work looks is the feeling not how it really looks in real life. What is really cool about this Lye interview that I watched was that he inspired by children's art work he calls their art work the "old brain" work and he like how children are just expressive and looks at things around the nand if they are going for how things look they takes shapes instead of realism and feelings they get from things. Looking at his actual like drawn work just honestly looks like brain/nerve cells and even he explained them as that and he links a lot of his drawings to the natural world and how we are all connected. He just draws his feelings, which I believe is a super hard thing to do, to break from what you are taught to have a realistic approach to just lines and waves on a paper that are all flowy to show how it feels.
I did like how his sculptures looked. I just liked how they worked and the motion, but luckily that's what Lye wants. He said himself that it's better to go see his sculptures in person to get the feel of them but I can't, so sorry Lye, I gotta go with the resources I have. I like how they move and create different sounds as it's all metal wiggling and bouncing around. He had an idea to take all of his metal kinetic sculptures he did and put them in this lake called the temple of lightning where all of his sculptures would interact with the water and tell a story about the sun, earth and water. It seems pretty cool and I enjoyed seeing how he planned out his work with models and sketches to then put it against how big he really wants it to all look like. I sort of wish I could go see the temple of Lightning simply because I want to hear the metal interact with the water all around them. The way that I personally view his kinetic sculptures is almost like a real life animation. Of course all animations are from real life but what I mean by that is that you can physically be in the animation, feel it be in the animation yourself and feel a part of the movement and emotion that Lye aimed to create.
For my last bit of research I thought it is probably best to look into his animations that he created to understand what he did for those so I went onto Youtube and looked at a few of them (links below) and I believe that his work is very interpretive. I mean that is what the research I looked into said but I didn't expect it to be like that. The animations that I looked into was:
"Tusalava" 1929
"A Colour box" 1935
"The birth of the Robot" 1936
"Rainbow Dance" 1936
Now I liked the animations I watched in their own respectful ways. They were all very unique, kind of difficult to tell that they were all done by the same person, but I suppose that's what you get from someone who is an experimental artist and many different things. I thought it would be good to look into 4 animations considering his animation ranged quite a lot of different topics, like focusing on sound or adverts or explaining something in a unique way and that certainly is what his work did. "Tusalava" was honestly kind of awful. It wasn't badly animated no it was just really unsettling you can kind of tell when it was when he was looking into African art and trying out his own feeling and style for work, I really didn;t like it at all the music which I wouldn't really call music it was just random sounds that were super eerie was bad and the animation gave off bug vibes? I mean a lot of his work where he would just doodle to look sort of natural and earth-like and from this animation you can really see the earthy feel in this work. I mean for how unsettling the music was the animation does work well with it, I did enjoy the techniques used for it though, it was black and white film that had been scratched of to make these weird look ameba looking things that felt like they were swallowing everything and they gave off an evil vibe.
Maybe it was the colours that did that but I did like how everything reacted to the music and even with just using black and white there was still a lot of contrasting colour usage and tonal value in the animation.
The rest of his animations that I looked at I quite enjoyed. I liked "The colour box" for a short amount of time but it is super over stimulating. It is a depiction of the music in visual form, it is awesome. I really really liked it. My favourite thing was all of the wiggly lines as when I think about music I view it as wavy and wobbly lines so it was really nice to see someone else show it off like that. It was super fast paced and there was so many different colours but none of the colours felt wrong they all conveyed the emotions of the music that you would feel, up beat, lively and just overall a good kind of feeling. "The Birth of a robot" is actually an old ad for the Oil company shell, it follows Venus the goddess and how the world used to be powered by hand but now a new world needs new ways so oil helps to make things fast with machines. It was all stop motion animation and I really liked this one, the characters still reacted to the music in a feeling way and I liked how music notes would appear from Venus's harp.
You can still see it has Lyles style with the way he altered film, with a sandstorm happening and it all becoming very. colourfull with all different textures and even though you as a viewer can actually feel the textures it is almost like you can. Finally "Rainbow Dance" was an animation that was shot with real people then going over it. IF I had to remake something like his I would definitely do something like that as it had the colourful and upbeat vibe that "The colour box" had but instead of being too overwhelming there was silhouettes to focus on and it made it easier to follow and ot be too much and to your face. i really like how he uses all different types of media in his work to create such feelings and different types of movement/motion but that is his whole aim for his work.
Honestly I would usually take something from these artists that I researched but his art is so much more different from mine, super experimental and some of it too me just doesn't really make proper sense at all or just makes me uncomfortable. I guess after researching him and looking into his work when doing my own work I should try to be more experimental, listen to what my brain says and don't make everything so linear and to the point it can be imaginative even with references and an already existing idea behind it. I would also just generally like to try out the whole scratching and painting of film tape as well because it just looks really colour and I love using mixed media.
"Tusalava" -
"The colour box" -
"The birth of the Robot" -
"Rainbow Dance" -
FOLLOW THROUGH AND OVERLAPPING ACTION o( ❛ᴗ❛ )o
Now follow through and overlapping action is one of the principles that make everything feel alive. Of course using all of the principle's together and just in general help to create a convincing and real feeling like drawing/animation/comic etc. But I would argue that these principles are super important. I think all principles are super important but these ones add gravity to things that you don't focus on if real life because it just happens naturally and having that natural feeling within animation or anything you are creating makes it just that bit more convincing that this story you as an animator or artist that is being produced can
convince the viewer into believe that it is real !!!
In class everyone watched this video that I will link bellow. With in the video it explained really simply what follow through and overlapping action is. They both describe the exact same
thing, just the same thing in different contexts.
Follow through is the movement when somethign moves and it contuines moving after the main action has stopped - for example when someone turns their head the hair will contuine to move after wards untillit settles as thats just how gravity works.
Where as Overlapping action is the off set of movement that the other part from the main action does - again when someone turns their head the hair will not move perfectly with the head at the same time it might move slightly afterwards as different things are different weights.
When animating I don't really ever think about doing these principles because they happen all the time in real life that I just don't notice, like if someone jumps their clothes might lift up and settle down as they reach the floor. But I want to improve and make sure all of my stories that I produce wether they be animated or not it is still important, because even in comics and story books or even storyboards for gods sake, the gravity that is expeirced by characters, animals or even objects. It may be small but it is still a big impact to keep you engrossed in a world that might not be real at all but has all the aspects of reality.
Here some examples of comics that have the principles I am talking about even though they are stationary images it is still important have it (sure it is more important for animation as its constantly moving and if something doesn't look right
us as viewers will notice but still) (＃＞＜)
Richardson. M, (2010), Mass effect, The complete comics, Dark horse comics (IBSN: 978-1-50671-919-1)
Walden. T, (2018), On a Sunbeam, Avery hill publishing, (IBSN: 978=1=910395-37-0)
Of course these images of my own comics that I have aren't the best but the way they do it in comics is usually also by action lines but with the movement of the hair and the clothing in these images gives you as the reader the knowledge that its windy or they are moving fast, there is a lot of power going on etc.
With in the work that I have done over these past five weeks, I didn't think of doing it but just watching my lecturer do examples and watching videos about other principles it just seems to be something that everyone does really. I didn't actually do it and it always made me wonder why when I am create a visual story that my work looks all stiff and just keeps you out of the moment but I think the best showcases of this principle would be last weeks work I did with the wave animation because to create the illusion of wave cycle the object or what even I am making "wave" has to have that gravity pull and the drag that happens when something moves back and fourth. I would also say that this weeks work that I am currently working on I managed to eventually be able to add the correct movements to make it feel more alive. I don't particually feel like the animation(s) I have produced for this week are the greatest thing ever but it is really difficult to make something that is 3d look 3d and also have all of the gravity aspects to it.
This is my first attempt at the head turn. Now I do like it yes but it goes pretty down hill from here, the character that I was drawing to begin with before I completely scrap this animation and try a different one is my own sona Celeste!!
personal drawing
what I did in class
She is a space bunny rabbit and just like I did last week I set myself something way too hard . Celeste as a character is literally one of my favourite characters to draw, but I havn't eve ngotten down doing human yet as a head turn so why did I think it would be a good idea to do a humaniod character, sure she may have normal features but I really, really struggled with doing this aniamtion. I mean to start off with as I started to plan the in-betweens a bit more somehow the animation moved from sort of the centre to the bottom corner and was in a really odd place for it to start. As well as I just couldn't get the ears right and it was just super hard. But with this animation I didn't give up I kept tweaking it and trying to create something I was at least somewhat proud of that could be my first attempt and then try again with the knowledge on what NOT to do for the head turn.
Here is where it started going really really bad. The lining. The planning of this animation was super messy the key frame where really confusing and I wanted to especailly make sure that the ears of here has the principle follwo through and overlapping to make her feel a lot more real. But where she was positioned on the frame and the fact that I just couldn't get and of her poropertions correct i the small corner she started in I just couldn't get it right. I hate doing this animation but I did keep trying until I had a kind of lined and somewhat okay animation. It really ins't my best at all and I don't like it but it taught me some important lessons when starting my new animation.
The new animation, I made sure for one I asked for help that was the first lesson I learn from my old head turn that I did in the first half of the day that I have these lessons on and in the second half I did this animation.
Secondly I made sure I did things in stages, didn't try to add everything on the character all in the first sketches I broke things down into sort of like building blocks to make sure that my planning of the keyframes to the adding the in-betweens was simple to understand and not super confusing trying to do everything all at once.
I also made sure that the character was in a between position on the frame because I wanted to make sure that I was actually able to show of the follow through and overlapping action properly without not being able to do it right because of the proportion's constantly being off. This character is also much easier to animate she doesn't have huge ears that I don't really know how I would move she is a human and just a human making the understanding of the body parts easier
Once I had the basic building blocks in I then went though and added details that where important but done separately and in differently colours so I could easily distingush them from everything else that was happening. the tracking path for the head also I make sure I didn't just make up and add randomly after seeing class mates work I understood that the tracking path was just like the path I used for the bouncing ball and using properly this time helped alot with porotions ansd making sure everything moved in the same direction and didn' t get all wobbly and weird.
Even though I know the task for this animation's the head turning and not this animation principle that I researched, even though the animation isn't the best and there are many things that somebody better could probably do this better that but besides that I really, really like what I have been able to produce especially with the overlapping and follow through actions on the hair and the hood, things move at different speeds and different times I am really proud of it :D.
This is the lined versions now I was super duper nervous about doing the lining because of what happened last time with the other head turn version it just didn't come out correctly. But instead of panicking and thinking too hard about the lining I just sort of went with it and made sure I didn't panick. Just going for it helped, I made sure I cheaked with people and teachers to make sure that it looked okay and I am super duper happy with what I have been able to make. It is so much better than the orignal try that I did and I even feel confident enough to do the colouring for this. I only started the colouring today and will be finsihing the rest next week but I really like the new animation. I want to quickly explain the characters that I have used for the second and better head turn animation.
The characters that. I have used (yes multiple characters) is these two people call Nexus and Jamie, Nexus is the weird spiky ball as thats his light form as he is an angel . Jamie is a character from a post apocalyptic world that everything is all sandy and really hot (which is why she is wearing sort of covering clothing to protect her from the sun rays. The characters in this world all get assigned angels and Jamie didn't get given a angel until later on in life where everyone else gets one when they are born which is why she so exited and looks over super fast.
(Pictures bellow of the characters)
personal drawing
what I did in class
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