Hanyue Liu

Month: January 2024

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Narrative Structures & Film Language Uncategorised

Week3 Narrative Structures & Film Language

In this class we talked about the concept of abstraction, the Futurists Surrealists, Tartarists, Cubists, all left their own innovations in the form, language and conceptual approach to film.
Nigel left us with many links and documentation of experimental film.

A short film that fits the definition of experimental is Witness. From a classification point of view, this film could be considered an experimental animated short. It may relate to art animation in terms of genre, with an emphasis on emotional expression and viewer interaction with the story.

In terms of form and function, this film is presented in a non-traditional narrative form, constructing the plot by repeating scenes in such a way that the viewer is plunged into a cyclical experience. Through this form, the artist attempts to convey themes about time, fate and cycles. At the same time, the audience’s participation is emphasised in the work, as they need to observe the nuances in the cycle to reveal the truth of the story.

In terms of process, the film employs special animation techniques and styles, such as scene design in the form of a Möbius loop. These techniques not only provide a unique visual experience, but also reinforce the work’s themes of endless loops and time. The artist’s goal seems to be to challenge traditional animation narratives and convey deeper philosophical and emotional messages through experimental techniques.

Overall, Witness, through its experimental format, deep themes and technical innovations, engages the viewer in an animated experience that transcends the traditional while watching the film.

Before I begin, I clearly define the thematic area of film that interests me as narrative studies of circular cinema. This subject matter was so evocative to me in the films and television series I had previously viewed that I decided to research it, so the theme was defined in such a way that it helped me to narrow down my search and make it easier to find literature relevant to my research objectives.
Since I had majored in graphic design prior to this, I had read fewer papers in animation, so I first set out to read papers in the direction of either film or animation.
Keywords: cyclical cinema, narrative structure, modern cinema, narrative style, experimental cinema

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Week2 Narrative Structures & Film Language


In the second lesson, form was talked about, form refers to three dimensional objects and in the world we live in is almost made up of forms, so we must have a strong understanding of form. In order to create the illusion of form when painting we can understand how light reacts on an object.
After that it talks about colour, which is the element of art that reflects light, we need to understand that colour theory can be divided into three parts colour wheel settings and colour schemes, understanding colour theory allows us to better understand the importance of it in our creations. The colour wheel has three different colours consisting of primary, secondary and tertiary colours. The primary colours are red, yellow and blue, the secondary colours are orange, green and purple and the tertiary colours are made by mixing.
The second part of colour theory is colour value, which refers to the darkness or lightness of a colour.
The third part of colour theory is colour schemes monochromatic colour schemes are made up of one colour, and its shades and tints complementary colours are colours that are directly opposite to each other on the colour theory triads are made up of three colours on the colour wheel. Finally colour theory terms and definitions.
The element of art – space – is covered next. Our goal is to create the illusion of space. The use of space in art was covered There are six ways an artist can create the illusion of space on a two-dimensional surface.
Next, we talked about some of the terms used in art, such as positive space, negative space, illusion of form, illusion of depth, and perspective.
This was followed by texture in the elements of art, which refers to the way an object feels when we touch it when it is touched, and several descriptions of texture were introduced.
This is followed by line in the elements of art, which in art is now considered to be a moving point can be used in jade combing, line is most often used to show the end point of an object, line can also be used in painting to create the illusion of form, and can also be represented by crosses, shadows and shapes, next several types of lines are introduced, vertical lines, horizontal lines, straight lines, jagged rows of straight lines curved line variations, textured lines, and directional lines.
Next is shape, this line creates a shape when it is closed, shape is one of the expected elements of art, shapes play an important role in the creation of art, they contribute to the complexity of drawings and paintings influencing composition all shapes are two dimensional which means they only have a length and a width all shapes can be categorised into two types geometric shapes and regular shapes the shapes defined by an object are positive shapes the shapes defined around the object are negative shapes.
Value is one of the expected elements of art, colour value relates to light and dark.

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Week1 Narrative Structures & Film Language

In the first lesson, we need to start conceptualising the idea of choosing a topic for the research we want to do to write a dissertation.

When choosing a topic, we need to consider whether the topic will inspire me to research and discover and whether I will be able to apply new knowledge, Nigel also provided us with a framework and structure on how to write a good dissertation.

It also provides us with some ways to find academic resources.

The potential goals of our research, the need to explore areas that are helpful in time, or areas of interest to ourselves, as well as highlighting existing research and historical and contemporary contexts as well as adding new and original knowledge for practitioners and academics.

At the end the teacher said that we needed to present a speech to show the results of our assignments.

After the class, I went to the school library and searched for books on film, books on animation, or books on animation that I was interested in, but I haven’t found a specific point to think about yet.

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MayaUE5 Uncategorised

Maya Week10

I’ve been tweaking the walking forward animation and the sitting down animation from last time.

Throughout the whole semester, I have benefited a lot from learning animation, I have learnt how to adjust the movement of objects through curves in Maya, I have learnt animation techniques to make the character animation look more flexible, as well as I have learnt about the trajectory of running and how to balance the whole body, which has laid down a very good foundation for me to create more movements in the future.

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Maya Week9

This week we needed to animate continuous body movement.

During the critique process George pointed out that the hand movements are too redundant, and that the hips should move in an arc when sitting down, and both legs should be visible in the side view. The character’s head should be raised and then lowered when sitting down, and then lowered when approaching the chair.

In the forward walking animation, the feet should touch the ground when landing to adjust the position of the feet during the movement.

Based on George’s input, I removed the character’s hand movement from the reference video, pulled one foot forward, adjusted the angle of the hips as they fall into an arc, and adjusted the head lift as he sits down to make him look more normal and appropriate.

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Maya Week8

For week 8 we had to create a blocking animation of an entire movement to investigate body mechanics.

George asked us to refer to a lot of animation footage or do an action shot to get reference footage to make our animation reference better and better understand how the action moves, need to spend more time studying our video references to understand how each limb moves George provided us with reference websites and how to turn it into a 2D animation test based on the action reference. George provided us with the reference website and how to translate it into a 2D animation test based on the movement reference. Before making the animation, we needed to sketch a complete 2D movement process, which was much more conducive to making it.

After that there was a homework critique George taught me how to keep the character moving forward with regularity, adjusting the parameters on the Maya curve can keep it in the same position and height. Afterwards I refined this animation by making my own changes.

I chose to animate from standing to sitting in a chair to create this, searching the website for reference videos of real people to refer to, as well as filming the movement as I sat down. I found a video screen of the side as well as front movement of this action, which I drew as 2D keyframes before creating the video so I could better understand what angles I needed to achieve for each frame. I made one side and then turned to the other side during the production process, this makes the whole movement more reasonably adjustable with slight turning movements for each action and makes him look better.

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Maya Week7

In week 7 we needed to create a continuous animation of walking forwards.

In the subsequent critique of the assignment, I had no major problems with the modified side-step continuum animation. For the forward walk animation, I’ve adjusted the leg straightening on the first step and the body sinking.

Turning to the front is a little more noticeable, with some adjustments to the leg turns. Point out where the second loop repeats itself and modify it according to the first loop. Based on Blocking’s walk forward I created a continuous walk forward animation.

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Maya Week6

In week 6 we had to create a side step blocking animation that loops twice to move forward.

George showed us an animation he made of himself walking forwards to give us a better understanding of what he wanted. In the PowerPoint we are provided with a plan of how each step of the keyframes moves. This was a great help to us in animating it ourselves, we still needed to turn to the front to adjust the relationship between the hips and the legs after we had made the side view.

Afterwards for the class critique George made changes to my model where the foot landed and lifted.

At the end of the class, I created a complete continuous side walk based on the Blocking side walk I did the first time. In the process of creating the continuous animation, I found that I needed to exaggerate the movement of the foot when it was lifted, so that the foot would appear to be softer and more flexible.

After that, I started to create the forward walk animation. It was easy to create the side walk animation by comparing to the flat forward walk diagram provided by George, but when the camera turned to the front, I found that there was a big problem with the hips and the stride which needed to be adjusted and then adjusted again with the idea of maintaining balance in mind. The side-to-side wobble.

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Maya Week5

week5

For the fifth assignment, we needed to create a video of a blocking motion of a character stepping sideways, and three poses showing the contour lines of its movement.

Afterwards, I watched a video of how someone else animated a simple side-step based on a video provided by George, which was very helpful and helped me to understand that the movement could be a bit more exaggerated when animating. When trying to make my own, I kept in mind the idea of keeping the character balanced for the chase, and then I made another one to put the three models in motion poses, which I referenced into a quick sketch once, with me understanding it better.

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Maya Week4

For week 4, we needed to create a continuous animation of a ball with a tail.

In class Geotge demonstrated how to make a Blocking animation, I realised that I had misunderstood the concept, it required all the movements of the model, to move on the same keyframe, so I revised it in class.

During the critique process, Geotge modified my tail movement and I found that the tail needed to be folded and bent more to achieve the desired animation effect and the ball needed to be more exaggerated to make it look more flexible.

After that I made a continuous animation based on the blocking animation, in the process of making the continuous animation, I need to modify some key frames that have problems, this tail animation has a lot of problems that need to be solved, how to make the tail look as soft as possible is a problem that I need to think about, I keep watching the video of the squirrel jumping and the tail trajectory after George’s modification.