Scratchfilm Project

Imagine That Boards

Treatment for Imagine That

In translating the dialog of Imagine That into visuals, my choices were motivated by the absurdist and non-sequitur language of the sketch. Rather than following a literal approach of representing a gameshow, I opted for a piece that was part of a surreal landscape inspired by some of my favorite directors: Terry Gilliam and his cobbled together animations, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and his dark fantasies, and the gothic humor of Tim Burton. Using these inspirations, I have turned Imagine That into a darkly humorous mad tea-party, a gameshow with an imaginary audience and delusional contestants, presided over by an ominous all-imagining brain in a tank.

BBC Project Development

For this project I am animating an audio clip from That Mitchell and Webb Sound. The sketch I have chosen is Imagine That, a panel show full of non-sequiturs and general ridiculousness. Though the rapid and colorful language lend themselves well to kinetic typography, I want to try my hand at character animation, something I haven't yet attempted.
My challenge is to bring something new to the animation that works on a level beyond the pure spoken language. How do the visuals expand on what is already there as opposed to simply illustrating?
My ideas at this stage are rather straightforward characters for the non-descriptive segments, and Terry Gilliamesque sequences for the sound descriptions, which may or may not, include kinetic typography as a device.

Character Designs:

I'm fairly pleased with this character.


I'm trying to decide whether or not to give June some eyes. I kind of like the look of the Muppet's Dr. Bunsen Honeydew:




I'm still deciding whether to make the host a human being or a brain floating in a tank, a la The City of Lost Children:


Further Ideas:
I am also thinking of the word IMAGINE and how it is described as taking the GIN from Gin and Tonic and putting it between Ima and That. I like the idea of the entire show being imaginary in a sense full of labels such as

IMAGINATORIZERS
IMAGIDESK
IMAGINAUDIENCE (A phonograph that plays laughter.)
IMAGISTUDIO
etc.

I imagine the piece could be quite dark, actually. I like the idea of these 3 crazy people being asked questions by a brain in a giant empty room, with only a laugh track. I got a bit worried that it might be too gothic, but after watching their comedy, some of it is kind of twisted. After I started my designs, and thought about the aesthetic look, I found the credit sequence for That Mitchell and Webb Look and it actually has a sort of dark look to it that I really like. Unfortunately I can't embed it, so click here.


Further Inspiration:

I like this as inspiration for "the soft patter of angels' tears falling into a slurry pit."

Things I find funny.

Breaking News: Series Of Concentric Circles Emanating From Glowing Red Dot

Collaged Characters

JibJab - 2008 Year In Review
Uploaded by JibJab

Skip to 8:35

Brief 5 - Reflection on iPhone Project

I am extremely happy with the results of this project. I started off in a direction that was largely cosmetic, but ended up with a project that distilled several ideas into a clean and simple interface. For me, this project was about filtering. I started off with many different ideas for a ringtone with clock-like elements, and ended up with an alarmclock/calendar screensaver. Along the way I did research into different forms of measuring time. I looked at different interfaces, and the way people interacted with time management. Intrigued by the idea of physically interacting with the clock, I was inspired by an alarm clock I had seen at the British Museum, which utilized pegs and placeholders on dials to sound an alarm. Using this inspiration, I developed an alarm clock/calendar that used a similar system. By introducing different dials set within each other, I was able to display time on a scale of seconds right through to years. Initially thinking of an interface with inter-changeable skins, the focus being on user customization, I settled on choosing one skin to develop, the solar system. This was a natural choice, since the clock was partially inspired by planets aligning.
As I began to pare down the interface from a labored antique style orrery to a geometric abstraction of planetary orbits, and in turn changed the name from iConjunction (which my teacher Pete said sounded like "conjunctivitis") to the elegant and punny plan-it.
I decided to present the clock in the style of a commercial, and in doing so work on my presentation skills and approximate a tie-in with existing apple merchandising languages (I used the same font and the iconic plain white background from other apple commercials).
Though originally conceived as a gadget which could be used to set dates as well, peer feedback revealed that the interface may be too small to do that, and that the app might work better as a screensaver that is linked to events in the calendar and alarm clock.

Brief 4 - Reflection

"Pursuit" was developed after a strain of thought originating with research I did into the artists Fischli und Weiss. The final product is far removed from the initial spark, probably too far to say that I successfully achieved the goal of the brief. However as the deadline drew closer, I shifted my priorities towards completing a - for all intents and purposes - polished piece of work. The finished result is certainly not resolved, and I make no claims of that. Originally conceived as five different acts, in the end I only managed to finish one of them.

The large difference between this work and my previous projects is that I spent more time planning this one. I storyboarded before going in, which helped me a great deal in making sense of my ideas. Once I established my initial intent of illustrating and eliciting suspense, like that seen in "Der Lauf Der Dinge", I became more interested in narrative forms of suspense, and looked at scenes from Hitchcock's oeuvre, as well as other films that have good illustrations of different types of suspense. However in doing so, I moved further and further away from my initial inspiration. I looked at "Opto-scientific" as inspiration, which illustrated causation to great effect. This pushed me in a more narrative direction, as I attempted to distance myself. I liked the idea of a dot and a line interacting in some way, and inhabited a world of two-dimensions, with very little color.
However, as I continued to develop my ideas, I found myself moving further into a three dimensional world, and embracing depth and subtleties of color. I worked with light sources in After Effects, and found myself seduced by this world.

I ended up, predictably, with a piece of work much closer to my comfort zone of rich, deep color, however I think I benefited from making my first attack on this brief with simple planes and geometries. The concept came first, the embellishment last, which is not always how I've worked in the past.

I am extremely proud of what I created, and feel it has a lot of potential. However I can't claim that it currently embodies my initial desire to illustrate "suspense" with simple, no-frills graphics. The piece is neither no-frills, nor particularly suspenseful (my class-mate Gavin saw more flirtation than suspense, and I concur that that's what it finally became). But it has charm (I think), style, cheekiness, and has served as a wonderful way for me to develop my skill with the 3D camera in After Effects, as well as explore a bit of rudimentary character animation with dots and lines.