Right just to explain the workings, ideas and engineering behind this project so whoever’s watching can have a boarder understanding of why they’re been made. The original idea sprouted from getting into a habit of reading the Guardian Newspaper daily motivating me to understand into how the readers react to what they read. After reading an article that grabs and routes you to the spot you can be left on abit of a cliff hanger wanting to read more of the article to find out what happens next. This gave me an idea to write a short narrative to the stories which had the most impact on me, using the stories more like a guideline to base the narrative around rather than completely copying the article and elaborating slightly.
From what I red, I had the curiosity to look at previous articles engrossing myself within the science and technology section where I came across articles on NASA and previous space missions such as the Chinese space program leading a lunar exploration on the moon (link below).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/feb/02/lunar-us-china-race-moon
After reading through this article I became interested furthermore within the American Atlantis and Discovery shuttle launches, where I felt to get the creative ball rolling I started to animate Atlantis taking off with audio. I continued to research into space suits, and found other images from music videos like Darf Punk’s Digital Love creeping into my work (although I didn’t realize it at the time). The whole animation’s based in space I found myself drawing parts of the spaceship, which I replicated within LOTD “Space Adventure” .
Above, Space Adventure frame (left), Digital Love frame (right).
The title “Later On That Day” took me a while to come up with and figure out, as originally I had no idea where the project would led me and what would come of it. I find when I’m struggling to come up with a brief I have to keep on chipping away until the right exploration and experimentation gives way to the main core of the project, so making short animations like “Brad and Ange” arguing, helped give me the insight into how people would act their true personalities if they were put straight into the boots of somebody else just like a gripping book can do. While making this project I was engrossed in a science fiction novel by Stephen Baxtor “Ark”, exploring the possible motive to relocating mankind somewhere else in the universe, which at the time acted as a tool assisting me in making “Space Adventure”.
Stephen Baxter, “Ark”: www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/…/ ark.htm
The title LOTD is used to spit the short animations into 2 sections allowing a time gap to grant build up and suspense in a short interval before the second half plays. It also allow the audience to pause for breath and take in what’s been seen, but not too long to avoid boring the viewer too much. At the end of each animation appears the words “How would you react?”, which is because I wanted the viewer to fill in the rest of the story with their imagination or even put the idea of how the story could have unraveled inside their heads instead of just mine. I wanted to put a different slant on to the viewer’s mind giving them the opportunity to explore the articles through fictional narrative and putting forward possible circumstances the characters within the articles could in reality face.
Media and Mediums
Every time I create work I normally start out with line drawings which progress into storyboards, then become animatics accompanied by audio, but every time I try out something new. With Space Adventure I used painted water colour frames along with cell graphics and within Ange and Brad’s divorce I used charcoal to empathize the rawness of the situation.
This project is a series of three animations, although I won’t have time to make them all as full animations, but I’ve made animatics for all of them, so you’ll have to use your imagination to create a feature version!
