Final Major Project Week 1 Day 2 (Research Week)

I began the day with a visit to the library and try to find 'Dream Worlds' by Hans Bacher,  which I had been highly recommended to read. I also took out two other books which are on character design to help me build strong characters; 'Creative Character Design' by Bryan Tillman and 'Alive Character Design For Game, Animation and Film' by Haitao Su and Vincent Zhao.

 'Dream Worlds' by Hans Bacher  is a stunning book, which is full of concept Art for Disney Animation Productions; it is a marvel to look at. I have learnt a tremendous amount from this masterpiece. Bacher demonstrates different composition rules, with advice to markedly improve your animation. I am enthralled by the variety of art styles and find this book inspiring. Bacher’s work has highlighted to me the importance of composition.

His work really inspires me to be more careful with my compositions and try come up with original compositions for my animation. Looking at different point of views makes the story more interesting and a marvel to look at. You can also see the amount of work put into the animation and the time the producers took to choose and create the perfect composition for each scene.

Fig 1 : Free Birds poster (2013)

As an animation introduction to the theme of integration, I decided to watch a film called ''Free Birds'' which is about Turkeys. A Turkey goes back in time to stop thanksgiving. This theme links to integration through the fact that this turkey integrates into the human world and is treated like a king, however when he is accidentally sent to the past through a time machine he needs to integrate into the Turkey tribe in order to save them and stop the invention of thanksgiving. I loved this film I thought that the storyline was really original and the animation was really detailed. I especially enjoyed the scene where the Turkeys visit outer space. We can see from this film that they have a invented a whole new culture, which is something that I would like to work on for my Final animation piece.

I also looked at Tim Burton's concept art and I read his book ''Tim Burton'' by Tim Burton out of curiosity, as his character intrigues me. I am immensely inspired by his work. He creates completely original characters and monsters which I find fascinating. I wanted to find out where he gets his inspiration from. Throughout this book Tim Burton is interviewed about each of his films and his past as a concept artist for Walt Disney, which he hated. This book made me realise that he is an extremely psychological thinker and has a strong opinion about every artistic decision he makes. His work is inspiring and reminds me a little bit of German Expressionism which I also adore. I was also intrigued by how he explained what he was like as a child and how fame changed him.

Fig 2: Concept Art Metamorphosis- Tim Burton