Creative Studio - Brief

Over the past week I have been writing up the brief for my next assignment. It made me realize something which was discussed in class. The limitations that I am creating for the conversion formulas from baking recipes to character design and animation are something that would help the artist because it gives you specific guidelines to follow, which usually generates more ideas and creativity. Having too much freedom can hinder artists and make them feel stuck or like they have no ideas, like the famous art block. Following the conversion formulas for my assignment should spark good ideas and create some unique character designs.

Creative Studio - Synthesizing

For the last exercise I teamed up with Phoenix for Synthesising. We chose to do embodied thinking and I chose patterning for the last trans disciplinary exercise. We both decided to create a texture in Photoshop which we would then give to each other to find patterns for the topic of "What society looks like when it's working at its best"
So this is my image from the picture that Phoenix gave me. I saw patterns of lots of people within her texture so I created this. I drew kids running around playing to show they are having a fun and happy childhood, and the adults are doing things they love, walking dogs, spending time with loved ones etc. I drew the trees in the scene to show thriving life, also with the birds and the nest.
I think society works at it's best when it's happy, surrounded by the people that love and care about them.

Creative Studio - Exquisite corpse

Here is my animation for exquisite corpse, end frame is Sam's. :)

Creative Studio - Animation Process for Brief

Translating Baking process to Character Design through ingredients list and recipes.

Ingredients:

Base (Race, if multiple combine the races)

Standard Flour- Average Human

Self Rising Flour- Giant

Wholewheat Flour- Robot

Cake Flour- Magical Human

Pastry Flour- Fluffy Animal

Oat Flour- Bug

Bread Flour- Sea Creature

Semolina- Alien

Oats- Goat
Ground biscuits- Reptile

Yeast- Beast

Sugars (Personality Type)

Granulated- Wants to be liked by everyone
Cane Sugar- Natural, the hippy
Light Brown Sugar- Likes to hang out with the cool people
Dark Brown Sugar- The romantic

Raw- Rough

Coconut- Laid Back

Syrup- Intense

Sweeteners- Easy Going
Caster Sugar- Very Social
Confectioners Sugar- Sensitive
Pearl Sugar- Hard edged, strong personality
Sanding Sugar- Super nice
Demerara Sugar- Always wants to have tea and a scone with your grandma

Main liquid (Age)

Water- Young (0-10 yrs)

Buttermilk- Teenage (10-20 years)

Milk- Young Adult (20-30 years)

Soy Milk- Adult (30-40 years)
Almond milk- Middle Aged (40-50 years)

Condensed milk- Elderly (60+)

Coconut milk- Immortal

Fillings (Style, can be mixed if multiple)

Apple- 70's

Orange- 80's

Banana- 90's

Blueberry- Childrens Book Style

Strawberry - Colourful

Raspberry- Pixel Video Game Style

Feijoa - Fantasy Style

Kiwifruit - Vintage Style

Cherry- Romantic/Sweet Style

Lemon - Steampunk

Lime - Cyberpunk

Mandarin - Neon

Pineapple - Tropical/Island Style

Blackberry - Dark/Gothic Style
Other fruits- Grayscale

Chocolate- Cute/sweet Style

Nuts - Horror Style
Sprinkles- Fairy tale style
Coconut- Gangster

Flavour enhancers/essences (Unique Item/Accessory)

Vanilla - Sword

Rum - Flask

Coconut - Wood based weapon (staff, wand, practice sword etc)

Cinnamon - Book

Ginger - Unique Bag

Brandy - Talisman

Lemon - Alien Artifact

Raspberry - Ancient Artifact

Peppermint - Precious Item

Orange - Glowing orb

Strawberry - A piece of technology

Dairy (Purpose)

Whipped cream - To enjoy the world

Heavy cream - To discover/learn

Light cream - To raise a family

Greek Yogurt - To travel

Plain Yogurt - To help others

Butter - To follow their dream/aspirations
Margarine - Doesn't know their purpose

Other (bonus)
Oil - Likes fried foods
Food colouring - Colourful hair (or something else if no hair)
Baking Soda - Wakes up early
Baking Powder - Goes to bed late
Eggs - Has a pet chicken
Cream Cheese - Only eats cheese
Honey - Obsession with honey
Vegetables - Likes gardening
Peanut Butter - Favourite animal is squirrels
Jam - Loves sweet food

Baking Processes - Determining the animation of the character

Mix ingredients together in a bowl - Idle standing animation
Mix wet and dry ingredients separately, then mix together - Pulling a standard pose animation
Place all ingredients in a blender/food processor - Energetic animation
Beat the eggs/cream with a mixer - Dancing animation
Let the dough stand for a certain amount of time - Sitting down/sleeping animation
Melt ingredients - Happy animation
Boil ingredients - Angry animation



Baking the ingredients (background/weather, doesn't have to be detailed)

Preheat oven~

Layer ingredients on top of each other in prepared pan/dish- Home
Place the mixture into a cake/muffin/loaf/slice tin- City
Spoon batter/mixture and place on baking paper- Forest
Shape the dough and place on a baking tray- Sunny
Chill the prepared mixture in the fridge - Rain
Freeze the prepared mixture - Icey wind, snow

Cool the finished baking product on a wire rack- Wrap up the animation, add any finishing touches

Spread icing/topping on the finished product - Add sparkles

Creative Studio Brief

For the brief of my assignment I will be creating a formula which can be used for both character design and animation.
I will be sorting through all the common ingredients used in baking recipes and more and I will be allocating them to different processes in the animation pipeline, and I would also like to do the same for character design. That way, for following the brief of my assignment I will be giving myself the task to pick any baking recipe that I choose, follow the formula I developed and design a character and create an animation by following the recipe.
The animation processes for the ingredients for example will be something like this:
base ingredients such as flour, oats etc will be the base of the animation, could be something like the genre or the theme or style of the animation, the main thing that will happen in the animation.

I will begin writing up the brief shortly and compile my list of ingredients and translate them to processes, and if I think I have enough time I will do it for character design too.

Creative Studio - Abstracting

So our task today was to design a character or a creature that represents our chosen discipline, draw a 3/4 front and back view of the character and have it cleaned it.
I sketched out a few designs in my book ranging from weird looking pokemon type creatures to little fairy things. I decided to go with the last one I sketched and draw it up in PS.

Abilities:
-With the wave of her whisk she can make any number of baked goods appear in the blink of an eye, but it's completely random what will appear.
-If she looks at a recipe she will learn it straight away and it's added to the list of things she can make~

Cleaned up drawing of my baking character:

Initial sketches and ideas:

Creative Studio - Modelling

We were given an exercise to try to show all of history in some kind of image or animation without using numbers, symbols or sounds. The first thing that came to mind was trees, they have been around for a very long time and can be the symbol of life. The rings inside a tree represent their age and trees live for a very long time.
I animated a tree growing and creating a cycle of life.

Creative Studio - Transdisciplinary Project

After the talk with Dane I have a much better idea of how I want to direct my project. He gave me a lot of good ideas on how I can start to think about translating the process of my chosen discipline into animation.
I wrote down some notes for my planning and ideas:
-Could be something about things of different sizes and shapes combining to create something new.
-Different ingredients could represent different character traits, physical traits that come together to create a new character. Recipes can be formulas for character design.
-Different  processes such as mixing, sifting, chilling, etc can represent different animation principles, storytelling elements or even character traits.

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Baking Processes versus Character Animation Processes:
-Baking requires following the recipe precisely for the best result
-Preparing and gathering the required ingredients beforehand to make the process smoother
-Measure the correct amounts of each ingredient
-Mix the ingredients together in the way the recipe states it and in the right order
-Use good quality ingredients
-Ensure that it is cooked properly at the right temperature
-Cook before slicing and serving if needed

Character Animation / Design
-What type of character is being designed? Are they a plain human, an intergalactic alien or a talking turtle? The base and foundation of the character lies here.
-What is the world that this character resides in? The ocean, suburbia, jungle etc.
-Personality of the character needs to be thought about, this can determine how they interact with other character and the world they are in.
-The characters purpose and drive in the world, what are they doing and why.

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I think that the processes of baking can be translated to animation. I will have to write out a big list of possible ingredients for a large variety of recipes, divide them into sections that represent a certain part of the animation process.

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The main sections I thought of are:

Baking:

~Ingredients: ~
-Base (flours, oats, ground biscuits, etc)
-Sugars (brown, raw, white, coconut, syrup, sweeteners)
-Fruits (fresh, dried, candied)
-Flavour enhancers/essences (vanilla, rum, coconut, cinnamon, ginger)
-Other fillings (chocolate, nuts)
-Main liquid (Milk, soy milk, coconut milk, condensed milk, almond milk, water)
-Creams (whipped, heavy, yogurt, butter)

~Mixing together ingredients~
-dry ingredients together
-wet ingredients together
-blending/processing certain ingredients
-chopping ingredients
-whisking
-melting

~Preparing the pan (different types per recipe)~
-cake pan
-muffin tin
-loaf tin
-slice tin
-mini muffin tin
-baking tray
-cookie cutters

~Oven Temperature
-100 + degrees etc

Animation:

-The world (society in the world, views in the society, social norms, landscape, wildlife, plants)
-The main character (the characters personality, beliefs, temperament, special abilities if any, physical attributes, species/race)
-Side characters (friend of the main character, enemies, family, acquaintances)
-The story (what's happening in the world, evil characters, prophecy, social movement, etc)
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Creative Studio - Embodied Thinking

My short quick animation for embodied thinking -

The description was of Phoenix going to adopt a dog with her family members, at first she was bummed because they weren't going to pick the type that she wanted, but then once she saw it she was really happy.
I wanted to emphasise how happy she would have looked after seeing the puppy, I imagined that since she was little, the sight of the puppy would have made her incredibly happy and she wouldn't have cared what breed it was. I also used bright, pastel colours to emphasise the look of a happy childhood memory.

Creative Studio - Trans-disciplinary thinking

I have been thinking about the project for crossing something with animation to create a new and hopefully exciting animation process. I have been stuck for ideas as we should be doing something we are already knowledgeable and passionate about.. I really like baking so I thought maybe using the topic of baking could be a good idea. Maybe finding something within the process of baking and crossing it with animation could produce some different results. I will talk to the tutor about it and have a bit of a think about it.

Creative Studio - Patterning

The idea was to find some kind of pattern within this water video and create an animation out of it. I saw a tornado ripping through a small town and destroying peoples houses.. so I animated that. :D

Creative Studio - Remixing

I tried making something fun with this comic but I don't think I made it that funny..

I used a character from One Piece on the skeleton and changed up the text.

The Flavour of a Konjac Brown Rice Roll

Experimental Animation test - Animating the sensation and taste of food

The taste of the Rice roll had a really smooth after taste, but its crunchy, with a kind of sand like texture to bite into. Kind of like when you step of half wet sand and it kind of crunches under your foot.