Initial Planning | Charlotte E Animation

Final Major Project

The Brief

For my FMP this year, I get to choose my own theme to explore with my project, so to begin I will come up with a few themes that interest me and see what different contexts they could have before choosing one. Once I have my theme and direction, I will create my project proposal, reflect on my previous work and make a work timeline to inform the rest of my project. For my research and development, I want to delve into lots of different mediums and styles so I have a mixture of inspiration and information, to allow me to experiment more than I have with any other project I have done before. Lastly, I will make my final designs and evaluation, as well as regularly evaluating myself throughout.

Earlier Project Feedback

To start, I want to look at my previous FMP and my feedback for my individual environments project earlier this year to help inform the decisions and my focus throughout the project.

I received a merit on my FMP last year focused on consumption. Here I compiled all my feedback points that were in the merit category instead of distinction. Firstly, my feedback on my project proposal was that I narrowed down my focus to making an animation quite quickly and that there should be more focus on my journey. So for this project, I will find my theme and the areas that interest me within it, but think more broadly about what I could create with it. My project proposal will just focus on this exploration, with my final piece decisions coming after more in depth research. Next, this is something I often struggle with so I want to put lots of focus into this from as early as possible and that is including more varied research. To do this, I am going to start with my project proposal and coming up with research ideas that span modern and older sources as well as outside of the box mediums like music, paintings and books. Once I have proposed research in these categories I will complete research on them and if I find anything else from them I will research those as well. Additionally, if I make a survey I will remember to say the demographics and population size of the data for added context. Finally, while there isn't a specific piece of feedback in this category, I will put more focus into my designing stage with different mediums and even more initial design work.

For my environment and game design project earlier this year I got a distinction. The feedback I received was to focus a bit more on initial ideas and show more of my level design plan. So for this project I will make sure to put extra time into my initial designs and designing phase, like I said with my FMP feedback, and if I end up going the route of a game, I will show off more areas of the game design with graphics and writing.

Now I will start my project by evaluating some different theme ideas for positives and negatives and what kind of project, including research and design, I could create surrounding each one.

The Brief

Theme Exploration

My first step is to choose a theme that suits me, so I am going to look at a few different theme ideas and make mood boards and mind maps for each in Milanote. These will include all the interpretations of the theme that I can think of, images to go alongside them and a review of how interested I am by each.

Nature

The first theme I looked at was nature. I decided to look at it as it is a very broad theme as the natural world makes up everything around us in some way, as well as there being many visual traits to explore. Things like just animals and weather didn't grab my attention that much, I do love natural aesthetics visually as there are so many ways to go. I am drawn to the colours, textures, brightness, light and patterns that occur within nature and the variety of them that I could take inspiration from. From my points, I am most interested in the features like exploration, growth and decay and the way people and nature interact with each other. I think what interests me the most about nature are the relationships we build with it as humans and by looking at these points, I could explore this in more depth. If I were to choose this theme I could research topics such as global issues, biodiversity, natural visuals, artists who use nature in their work, biomes, how nature is humanised through things like mythology and different ways we interact with nature. Here I have made some pros and cons surrounding this theme and how I could apply it to my project as well as some examples I can think of that would relate to the research themes:

Pros:

There are lots of interesting visuals to be inspired by in form, colour and texture. It leaves lots of opportunity to experiment with design.
There are lots of different natural materials and environments that I can reference and potentially use in design work and research.

Cons:

It feels too broad, I think I would prefer to focus on something more specific with nature themes.
Lots of the ideas in my mood board that I listed feel boring and a bit basic to me.

Proposed Research Sources:

Different environments and the biodiversity within them.
Artists who are inspired by nature:
- Ana Mendieta, nature photography and sculpture
- Katerina Apale, colourful still life paintings of nature.

I want to analyse some of these research sources that I have proposed so far to get a deeper understanding on my theme idea and directions I could explore in regards to my design.

Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta was a photographer and sculptor, most known for her earth and body works, where she used her own body and then the absence of her body in natural landscapes as a way of connecting with nature. She often used organic materials such as fire, water, earth and flowers to create her works.

I really like how she incorporates the natural materials and the contrast in colours used with them. I like the pieces where she uses a vivid colour like bright red paint or fire and the contrast it has on the background where the colours are more desaturated and cloudy. She looks at a variety of environments like beaches, tide pools, marshes, fields and woodlands leading to a wide mix of compositions and textures in the images. I like the naturalness of her photography as well, it looks as if someone has just come by and casually taken a photo of the scene rather than a clean layout and I find that adds a lot of personality to the images, especially in correspondence to nature and the wildness of it. I like the incorporation of her body in her work and find it ties into the things I would like the explore about nature and humanities interactions, so I could get some inspiration for my own design work if I picked this theme.

Katerina Apale

Katerina Apale is a multidisciplinary artist who has works in painting, drawing and textiles. She mainly creates still life pieces with motifs like florals, texture, bright tones and vibrant colours. She also works with lots of different materials for backing and the work itself.

Lots of her main focus is on vases of flowers but my favourite pieces of hers are the ones of koi ponds. These are painted in oil and I find the texture this creates adds a lot of interest to the scene which compliments the bright colours and crowded layout with the fish and lily pads. The random lines and lack of blending for texture is something I really like in artwork and inspires a lot of the work I make. The vibrancy of her paintings inspires me and reflects the colourful visuals I picked for my mind map on the theme which drew me to picking nature in the first place. I like the in motion feel of her pieces which I would love to reflect back on for my projects design work, especially if I choose this theme.

After this initial visual research, I have found while I originally was drawn to the theme due to all the directions I could go, I think I want to be a bit more specific than the whole of nature and the world. I really like these artists and the visuals from my mood board, but looking deeper has helped me see that I am most interested in humanity and natures interactions and themes like growth and decay. Based on these observations, the next theme I am going to look at is time as I think there will be some overlap in what I have found interesting so far or it will help me clarify my direction further.

Time

I chose to look at time next as the elements of decay and interaction I was interested in from my nature mood board tie into this theme interestingly. It is also a bit more specific while still having room to explore as looking at the past, present and future are all so different. After making the mood board, it has made me more interested in the topics I mentioned before like growth and renewal so I will definitely make a theme mood board focused solely on these themes. Some other ides that come to mind with this theme are ideas of time and space together, where I could think about the expansiveness of the world, and the magical ideas like chronomancy, superstitions and time travel. For this theme, I could research topics of history, the future, growth, ageing, life and death, space and artwork that reflects these ideas. While I have my interests in the topic, I am not that bothered about history and typical future depictions of high tech sci-fi worlds, but I could just not look into this. Here are my pros and cons for this theme:

Pros:

Feels more specific than nature which I like.
I am drawn to the ideas of growth and decay and time is an essential part of these. The time imagery has got me more inspired surrounding this topic.

Cons:

I am not drawn to the rest of the parts I looked at in this theme like the history, futuristic and time travel ideas.
I am unsure of how I would want to depict this theme in my project, I think the few ideas I do have would suit a better theme title.

Proposed Research Sources:

Ageing in humans and nature
Artists who explore time, focus on surrealism maybe

For this theme I want to look at the contextual ideas more so than the visual to start, so here I am going to look into why ageing happens and what this looks like in different contexts.

Ageing happens as a result of two factors: cellular ageing, where your cells eventually lose the ability to function and cause biological processes to fail, and environmental ageing, where an individuals lifestyle affects how they age including factors like UV exposure, alcohol consumption and air pollution. There are different theories as to why we actually age. Firstly, some programmed theories of ageing say that we are designed to age and lifespan is apart of a species biology. Some examples of this include gene theory - the idea that genes turn on and off over time and endocrine theory - the idea that ageing is caused by changes in your hormones over time. Another type of theory are error theories, which suggest that the cellular changes that cause aging are random. For example, genome instability theory is when aging happens because the body is eventually unable to repair DNA damage but these theories lack scientific evidence more so than others. There are more theories including ones related to individuals genetics, evolution and natural selection, and biochemical reactions within the body but I won't go into all of the sub theories here. Although getting older is something that will always happen, lifestyle factors allow humans to live longer. Things like nutrition, exercise and knowing your health history give better chances for a longer life.

I also wanted to look at ageing in nature, and while animals cells will also eventually decay, many plants have extra processes that protect them throughout seasons and in their final stages of development. Senescence is a highly regulated developmental process in plants that moves nutrients and minerals from the rest of the plant to the seeds at the end of their life. In plants that live only one season, this happens in preparation for death but there are some long lived plants like bamboo that can live for decades before dying, so it technically isn't an aging process. Another example comes from Autumn leaves as this isn't the death of the entire tree, but the leaves are left to die in order for nutrients to be stored in the trunk and branches for longer living in the Winter. While plants have the potentially to become ancient like some grand trees, most end up dying as a result of exterior factors like competition for light and resources. I like the ideas and visuals of plants withering away and looking at humans for comparison but I am not as bothered about lifestyle and sciences in this case, so if I did choose this theme I have a clearer direction from this research.

From this research and making my pros and cons, I thought about what design work or stories I could create within this theme and I can't think of any ideas that really interest me. I have the topics of decay and renewal I'm drawn to and I think they would be better as a stand alone theme rather than a subsection of nature or time. I don't want to limit myself to these topics immediately though, so I am going to find a few other themes that aren't connected to these previous two for my next boards.

Disruption

I chose to look at disruption next as it felt more chaotic and less natural focused than the other themes I have looked at so far and I want to branch out. I like the ideas of it being a positive or negative thing depending on context and how much it can help people - for example is someone causing inconvenience as a protest a more helpful or harmful thing and for who? I am less drawn to the digital and consumption side of things I annotated about as that feels too similar to my last years FMP theme. Visually, I am drawn to the elements of bright colours, contrast in brightness ans shape, jagged edges, unnatural layering, overlapping patterns and saturation. If I choose this theme, I could research protests, war, music, sound, digital disruption like hacking and glitching, disasters and rebellion. My pros and cons are:

Pros:

As I said I like the chaos of this theme in both the contextual reasons for disruption and the bright abstract visual pieces I found while making the mood board.
There are lots of ways I could go with this theme that interest me, I think the idea of disruption being a positive or negative can be applied to lots of topics.

Cons:

It feels too similar to my work last year in some ways, especially the digital aspects and I want to do something completely different this year.
I feel like I would have to get more specific quite quickly and I want to stay as broad as possible with my ideas in this early stage of my project.

Proposed Research Sources:

Famous man made disasters, war bombings, fallout etc.
Protests and reactions to them throughout time
Graffiti artists

For my initial research on this theme, I want to combine my thoughts about war and artwork and look into the impact that war and conflict has on art with some examples. While war brings destruction and pain, it has been an inspiration source for art throughout history by inspiring new movements, reflecting peoples responses to it and being a tool for propaganda or resistance.

Start of New Movements

New movements are started during war due to the emotions that come from it that inspire artists to explore new practices. For example, dadaism developed during WW1 as a nihilistic anti-war responses. The artwork here is from Hannah Höch, who used randomness to reject conventional aesthetics and reflect the pointless nature of war. Surrealism also rose after WW1 where artists made dreamlike and mysterious artworks to critique the current social and political issues. In our modern era, current conflicts have also lead to lots of political art that critiques the current political climate or calls for peace, for example conflicts in Syria and Ukraine. There are reoccurring themes in lots of pieces such as suffering, trauma, patriotism and reflections on war once it has ended.

Propaganda and Resistance

Governments often use art as propaganda during war by censoring, manipulating and hiding it to serve certain narratives about enemies or use as an attempt to rally citizens. Opposing this, art has also been used as resistance tool with underground art movements used to critique government policies and show the reality of life under oppressive regimes. Hope is also a theme in these artworks, with messages about healing and memory of the conflict and those affected by it. If I pick this theme I would like to explore this topic further and find some more examples, maybe including those outside of visual arts.

Looking at this research and my mood boards, I have found I really enjoy researching different interpretations of the same ideas and the different opinions people have on topics, and with disruption as my theme I would be able to really get into that. Though I am not as sure about the rest of the topic and would rather apply that want to see other perspectives to a different theme. Next I am going to look at another theme that feels separate to the others, before trying to compile my main interests into one topic.

Reflection

I chose to look at reflection since it feels more emotion and human focused than the other themes I looked at so far. Visually, I like the brightness, light and colour of some of the images I picked and the ideas of controlling and bending vision to reflect a certain message. Although, I feel there isn't as much I could do with this theme compared to others I have looked at - I can't think of anything I would research for this theme other than artists who use reflection in their work. I think it is very visually appealing, especially with the motifs of shattered glass, distortion and refracted light, but in terms of making a narrative or analysis there isn't much to work with.

Pros:

Pretty visuals to be inspired by with the lights and shapes.
The human focus is something I can be inspired by as it is not something I looked at as much in the other themes which have been more environmental.

Cons:

It doesn't interest me enough to put all my time into it, the main motifs like mirrors and distortion don't excite me as much.
Similarly to nature, it feels a bit basic to me and the ideas I put in the mood board feel a bit boring.
I am struggling to think of anything I could research on these topics.

Proposed Research Sources:

Artists who use reflection and distortion:
- Yayoi Kusama, mirrors to create long distorted rooms
- Jan van Eyck, famous painting of couple in mirrors

For this initial research, I am going to look into Yayoi Kusama's work as I have looked at mostly painting when doing visual research on my other themes so far and the works of hers I am interested in looking at are of interiors and sculpture.

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese contemporary artist who mainly works in sculpture and installation artworks. The piece I am looking at here is one of her infinity mirrored rooms titled 'The souls of millions of light years away' and is made of materials including wood, metal, mirrors, plastic, LEDs and water. I really like her mirror room pieces as I find the repetitive layout and look as if it goes on forever quite pretty. This one is my favourite though as it looks like you would be suspended still in space and time. One of the themes of this piece is the inedibility of death and the fleeting nature of life which is reflected in the quietness and vastness of the space. This message also works well alongside my favourite interests from my other theme research. I want to put focus in my project on looking at lots of different mediums for my research so if I picked this theme I would like to look into her work more.

I like the artwork I have looked at but my main takeaway from this exploration is I want not a focus on not just environmental stories but also human ones, which is something to consider when I pick my theme. Although I am not drawn to a lot else within this theme as I feel like there is not a lot of direction other than visuals. Now I have made these four mood boards, I am going to make a board about renewal and decay as I feel that is the idea I am most drawn to based on the information I have gathered so far.

Renewal

With this theme, I am drawn to the ideas of cycles, nature, decay and time within people and the world, which combines the ideas I have liked so far. Something I thought about after I made my annotations was that lots of these images remind me of apocalypse and time passing, which could be something I look into in more depth. Additionally, the way humans and man made structures are affected by renewal and decay interests me. I am drawn to the natural visuals in the same ways I was with my nature mood board, especially with the images of plants growing around human bones and structures. If I choose this theme, I would research cycles, life and death, environments, representations of change and if I went the apocalypse route I thought about I would look into media that draws from those stories. I think this theme is a good summary of what I liked from the others I looked at as I can take the natural elements from nature and time, human emotions from reflection and I could explore different perspectives on renewal and decay that I liked from disruption. My pros and cons are:

Pros:

Combines my favourite aspects of the other topics so it gives me opportunity to look at nature, time and humans.
I have a few ideas for inclusions of fantasy and magical elements which I really enjoy using in my work, such as the apocalypse themes I mentioned.

Cons:

Could be a bit boring unless I put a narrative onto it as things just passing and changing doesn't have a lot of agency by itself.
Again, I will have to be more specific soon as research feels very broad on the topic.

Proposed Research Sources:

Gwend of the World, apocalypse themes
Annihilation, renewal and decay in an environment
Adventure Time, apocalypse themes and a nature filled world
Abandoned buildings, photography

Looking at my cons, if I choose this theme I would want my project to focus on a story about the theme rather than an exploration of it, but I am not too put off by that, I would just need to find some interesting research sources that also have this as a theme. Overall, I am still most drawn to renewal as my main theme despite the cons, which I will have to propose ways to deal with in the project. This will be the theme I go with for my main initial research, which is why I have skipped out on that for now, so I can explore these ideas in more depth, see what project ideas come to mind and how the theme might relate to me.

Theme Exploration

Initial Research

For my initial research, I wanted to look at the areas of renewal that interested me and related to me most. I started by making a mind map detailing the areas that jumped out to me the most and based on this I am finding myself drawn to humanity and how we interact with the natural world, how decay plays into renewal and branching off into fantasy and supernatural stories that play off of these themes like apocalypse stories and witchy curses. I also looked slightly at how growth works as a person in your emotions and while I want to look at this a bit more, overall I am more interested in the world and environmental aspects. Next, I am going to look more at these points and come up with some potential areas I could research based around them and where they overlap.

Here I came up with some research ideas along with images that link into my theme. To inform this I watched some videos on the topics of decay and apocalypse stories as well as calling on my own knowledge of media. I wanted to look at a mix of media so I chose some animated shows, games, comics as well as thinking about how I want to find some photographers or painters that explore this theme and in different eras. I also want to branch out my research choices so might find some books and articles to read that explore these topics, for example while searching for ideas I read an essay that I enjoyed about longtermism and plan on going into more detail on later. I've also been thinking about what primary research I could include and came up with images of abandoned areas near me, such as some buildings near the train tracks in my town, images of different environments near me, a survey about my theme and I am soon heading to a museum where I could get some inspiration from. I want to look at lots of different things as some of my feedback from last years FMP was that I narrowed down my idea to an animation too early on so I want to keep my options as open as possible while I do my in depth research and project proposal.

My next step is to write my project proposal which will outline my ideas for my project so far and the steps I will take to complete my goals. I will also make a timetable for my project with each week up to the deadline and what I plan to do in each one.

Initial Research

Project Proposal

Rationale

My projects throughout the course have taught me new and valuable skills, like 3D modelling, effective game design, concept art work and animation. This past year, I found I learnt the most in my first project about game and level design as that was an area I haven't explored before. My second year on the course has helped me discover my passions within animation as a whole, which would be the 2D and illustrative pieces I have made as well as narrative. I have completed two projects this year, my game design where I made a vampire hunter action adventure, and our group project, a game about venturing deep into the ocean. I found a lot of success in these projects as the stories and design work were in genres that were interesting to me like character and environment design. Thanks to my projects from this year and last, I have expanded on lots of skills and solidified the ones that interest me most. I have reflected on my feedback from my FMP last year and project work this year and my main feedback has been to expand my research beyond what the brief has asked of me. To work on this, during this project I will do as much research as I can in the scheduled time, looking at a mix of primary and secondary sources as well as a mixture of mediums other than animation and games, like books, music and historical artworks.

Project Concept

I have chosen the theme of renewal for my FMP, with a focus on growth, decay and change. Last year, I jumped into the idea for my final piece too early so I want to leave that decision for later, but I know I want to do something a bit different compared to my last FMP. My strongest area of work is in digital design so my approach will likely be majority digital, but I have really enjoyed branching out to different mediums in my previous projects and workshops from this past year. In these I made sculptures, collage, dioramas and paintings which I would be interested in trying again in this project. My main approach will be 2D as I am not interested in doing any 3D modelling, but I may try some physical 3D techniques like clay modelling and dioramas to branch out. Usually in my projects I have done all my initial designs at once before going into each section, but with this project I think I will try organising these designs by section so I can put more adequate time into the areas I think will need it; for example, if I am struggling with a character design I can put more focus on those initial designs than something I find easier. Based on my initial research and themes I have enjoyed in previous projects, I plan on researching different depictions of decay and renewal such as how it relates to environments, to people, to nature and the stories and mediums they are shown in, like video games, animation, paintings and books. For example, I already know I want to look at the comic series Gwend of the World, the show Adventure Time and the book Annihilation. I also want to explore art with these themes across different movements, such as how the romantics depicted it compared to how abstract or 20th century artists did and make comparisons. In regards to primary research, I plan on taking a survey with questions surrounding the theme as well as taking primary images of derelict buildings, areas where nature has reclaimed buildings and different plants. Leading up to my final design, I will create concept work and experiment with different designs, stories and mediums. This year, my end of year show is also evaluated, so I will need to think about how I plan to present my project there. I want my display to be decorated and appealing so I will take the time during my design stage to plan out my show layout once I have an idea of what my final piece will be.

Evaluation

I will present my work throughout this project on these website pages, documenting what I do in chronological order. For my last years FMP, I found writing evaluations at the end of every two weeks to be an effective way of reflecting on my progress and deciding what to do going forward. I plan on doing the same thing with this project, but with weekly evaluations instead and I will include details such as my progress compared to my timetable, if I am on track according to this proposal, any areas I could improve in and what my next steps should be. I want to develop on what I did last year though and also include my next targets for my current area of work and make sure to receive feedback from either my tutor or peers each time. I also want to make a daily action plan that lists the work I plan to do and the work I completed as I go each day and I will display these with my weekly evaluations.

Proposed Research Sources

Theme survey
Primary images: buildings, nature, plantlife
Depictions of decay and renewal in artwork across different eras
Apocalypse themes: Gwend of the World, Adventure Time
Environments and transitions within them
Animation and games with these themes
Longtermism and prioritising the future over the present

I want to come up with a few more proposed research sources before I start my research, so I will make another mood board for these.

Project Timetable

Here I made my timetable for the project, including the dates from before now where I made my initial exploration boards. I have allocated time for my evaluations with my first being at the end of week three. All my references will be written as I use them and put in a final list at the end of my project as well as a research log explaining why I used each reference. I have allocated just under 5 weeks for my main research portion as my feedback is to include more and more variety, so I want to give myself as much time as I can stomach to complete it. If I need to, I will complete any additional research during my concept art stages so that all my designs can be fully informed. The rest of the time is split almost evenly between my project concept and concept phase and my final piece creation phase. At this point I am unsure of what my final piece will be so I want to give myself as much time as possible to work on it, as I find I am quite a slow person when it comes to drawing. For the final week of the project, I will work on my evaluation and work on any details or revisions I need to add.

Here I expanded a bit more on my proposed research sources and for now have organised them into 3 groups: decay and renewal, apocalypse themes and nature and environments. I will likely consider some more sources after going over the first few I choose and conducting a survey with some questions related to the theme. As I get more of an idea of what I want my final outcome to be about, I will have another look at what I could research that would be a more specific aid.

Next Section

Project Proposal