Issues of Representation

Essay

I decided to begin research for my essay before thinking about my animation, because I wasn't completely sure of my topic yet. I knew I wanted to something related to how women are represented in animation, but I didn't want to just focus on the negative representations we had discussed in class, like Disney princesses or Red Hot Riding Hood. 

The first female character that sparked my interest and helped me realize what I wanted to write about is Daria. Daria was an inspirational example of a female character, as she was intelligent, intellectual, and skeptical of the world around her. She didn't fit into any of the boxes that many animators have put women in. After researching a bit more about Daria, I decided that my essay would consist of the negative examples of women in animation, since it is important to acknowledge the history of female representation, and then a contradiction of those examples with positive ones, like Daria. 

Other positive examples I researched were shows like The Wild Thornberries, As Told By Ginger, Bojack Horseman, the Powerpuff Girls, Sailor Moon, Bob's Burgers, and filmmakers like Miyazaki, Suzan Pitt, and Joanna Quinn. As my research transitioned into writing, I knew I had to narrow down some of my examples. At first, I was going to discuss the concept of girl power with the examples of the Powerpuff Girls and Sailor Moon, but I realized those shows had a lot of aspects that contradicted my thesis, and weren't completely positive examples of females, so I cut them out. I also cut out the Wild Thornberries, as it was a minor example without a lot of support. In addition, I decided to scrap my discussion of positive female sexuality in animation using Suzan Pitt and Joanna Quinn as supporting examples, since they were independent filmmakers and didn't fit in with my more mainstream examples. 

At this point, my essay structure was:

• Intro/thesis
• Negative examples
• Appearance: body image (i.e. women expressed as beautiful creatures, judged based on appearance)
• Personality: mothers, sexual beings/male gaze, damsel in distress, Bechdel test, Disney heroes aren't very heroic (i.e. discussion of popular negative tropes of women in animation) 
• Positive examples
• Daria, As Told by Ginger, BoJack Horseman, Miyazaki female heroes (i.e. discussion of why these examples are positive, direct comparison to specific negative examples given in first section)
• Conclusion 

After rereading my essay and trying to cut it down to a more tight structure, I decided to only keep Daria, As Told by Ginger, and Miyazaki's films as positive examples, as they contrasted and complimented my negative examples best and made my essay make the most sense (while I found BoJack did not as much). 

Animation

When my essay topic was finally solidified, I was able to begin brainstorming ideas for my animation. I knew I wanted to interview people about how women are represented in media and film it, and then incorporate animation into the videos with mixed media techniques. Eventually, I came up with a list of interview questions: 

• Do you think women are misrepresented in media like movies, TV shows, the news, art?
• If so, in what ways?
• Where/how/do any examples come to mind?
• Do you think these examples are relevant to real life?
• Why are they good or bad?
• Why do you think the portrayal of women is important to think about when producing media/art?
• How do you think images of women influence children watching/viewing them?
• What do these representations teach children about the female gender?
• Can you think of females you saw in media as a child that influenced you or your ideas about women?
• Did some inspire/anger you?
• Do you think media can have an influence on real life gender equality or treatment of women?

Although I planned the questions beforehand and used them to guide my interviewees, I made it clear that the interviewees can discuss anything they like in relation to the topic and are free to to share anything that comes to mind. The questions were only there to give them a little push. 

Once I had collected enough material to begin forming my documentary, I looked through the video footage and only kept the most interesting points and the sentences that evoked images in my mind that I could animate. In photoshop, I created a background for my video using drawings I made. I made a little TV that would house my videos, and put it on the right side of my background, so the left side would leave room for my animated sequences. 

Documentary background

After watching the videos and putting them together in an order that flowed, I came up with three questions that fit better with the footage I chose to keep. 

Title and questions, made with cut out letters from magazines I found online

I then began storyboarding the animated segments of my documentary. 

Storyboard/ideas from sketchbook for animated segments 

During parts of the interviews where I found the inspiration to animate, I made little animations in Adobe Animate that mostly consisted of images morphing into each other. 

Screencaps of animated segments

Glasgow Women's Library Project

Charlotte Mannya Maxeke

For my project for Glasgow Women's Library (GWL), highlighting the story of a woman from the suffrage movement, I decided to animate my video with a fun, experimental method I had barely touched on in the past. Stop motion is my favorite animation technique, and I have animated a lot of films under-the-camera. However, other than a quick experiment I made when I was younger, I had never animated with sand before. I decided that for my GWL project, I will animate Charlotte's story with sand, as well as spices that will add some color. I went shopping for spices, and bought bags of turmeric, red pepper flakes, citric acid, lentils, basil seeds, and coffee, and ordered bags of sand online. I made some loose storyboards where I drew the basic images I'd like to include in my animation, using the voice over GWL provided as a guide, but kept my mind open to experimentation that will arise while animating. 

Reference photograph of Charlotte Mannya Maxeke

Document I created for brainstorming purposes, with screenshots from inspiring videos
I found on Vimeo, and bullet points of materials and ideas for scenes

Notes/storyboards from my sketchbook

After animating Charlotte's story with sand and spices on the downshooter, I brought my clips into Premiere and began to edit them. I changed the speed of clips that need to be sped up/slowed down to fit with the narration, and made minor colour, brightness, and contrast adjustments. Finally, I added some sound effects from freesound.org to compliment my animation, such as crunchy sand sounds for sections where one image morphs into another, footstep sounds for when Charlotte walks on screen, the sound of clapping for when Charlotte gets her graduate's degree, or the sound of singing for when Charlotte sings. 

Screencaps from animation

I am very proud of how this animation turned out, and I had a lot of fun experimenting with my materials. It was definitely a challenge to animate with sand and spices, and there were many moments where I had to stop and problem solve how to successfully animate my vision. However, I'm glad I challenged myself with this medium, and I think I learned a lot from it. I hope I did Charlotte's story justice. 

Design Externality 3 Group Exhibition

29/01/19

Using typography that Gabe made of the title “Flipbook” that had a rainbow-y glitch effect, I tried to make an icon design for the promotional poster using Gabe’s design as a starting point. In Illustrator, I drew out the shape of an open flipbook and coloured it in. I added a variety of circles on one of the pages of the book, to imply some sort of animation. I then brought the Illustrator image into Photoshop and used Gabe’s textures and blending layers to make it more cohesive with the background and the title. I duplicated the book multiple times, changing the colour, opacity, and brightness, and put the multiple layers under the main book in order to create a trail effect. I also experimented with the hue a little bit to see which variety of colours looks best, then sent it to the group for feedback.

Design of book in Adobe Illustrator before bringing into Photoshop

Photoshop design

Hue experiments

29/01/19

I set up social media pages for the show, including an Instagram page, a Facebook page, and a Facebook event. I modified the show's poster design into a circular icon for the Instagram and Facebook display pictures, and added descriptions, event information, and links to Eventbrite page on all the social media pages. 

Icon for social media pages

Instagram page

Facebook page

Facebook event

The following weeks...

I continued to keep the social media pages active, posting reminders about the show, including promoting the fundraising event of the postcard sale. I regularly posted stories on both the Instagram and Facebook pages, in order to directly reach followers and remind them of the event. 

Promotional post of fundraising event 

31/03/19

I also made a trailer for the show to post on the social media accounts and for Mark to send to local event promoters. Everyone sent me an animation segment of their choice (one of the ones featured in the show), and I edited them all together into a snappy, exciting trailer. I edited the clips to a musical track that I found on the 10x10x19 archive after reaching out to Nils Neumann, the composer, and asking for permission. I then created an informational clip in After Effects to be inserted right after all ten of our clips flash by. I did this by bringing the text and image layers from the show's poster's Photoshop file into AE. All necessary information was included, like the title, date, time, location, UofE logo, social media pages, and credit to Nils Neumann. I then uploaded the video to ECA's Vimeo page, and then posted it on all the social media pages and reached out to my class for more aid in promotion. 

Screenshots of trailer video 

10x10x19

18/02/19

Float - Day 1

I animated my first 10x10x19 piece in After Effects using puppeting and composited images. I made a digital collaged background using disposable photographs I took, and edited them in multiple layers on Photoshop, making some color adjustments. Then, I created a panning multi-plane image on After Effects. I used a photograph of a stop-motion puppet I made last semester for the AE puppet, cutting it into body parts in Photoshop and then bringing it into AE for rigging. I then animated a video in which the camera pans up over the landscape and shows my puppet slowly elevating off the ground into the sky, flying upwards and waving back and forth. When it reaches the top of my background image, which is an upside down city landscape, gravity kicks in and sends the puppet spinning downwards and off the screen. Compositing-wise, I enjoy the overall look of the animation. I was intending to make my stop motion puppet into a digital one for quite a while, so I am satisfied with the results. However, if I had more time, I would work on the easing in and out of the puppet tweens in order to give the puppet a more natural feel that looks less robotic and digital.

The stop motion puppet (used for Float) being used in a stop motion film I made

19/02/19

War Stories - Day 2

Back in January, I bought 4 old war comic books for 2 pounds at a thrift store, with the intention of animating them in the future. On this particular day, I didn't have much time to spend on the 10x project, so I decided to take the comic books to the down-shooter stations and see what I can come up with. I experimentally animated the pages of the comic book using onion skinning, starting with onion skinning different heads, then having them move across the screen, then onion skinning speech bubbles, hats, and finally the borders of the comic strip boxes on the page. I used the title of the comic book series “War Stories” as the title of my animation. I did enjoy experimenting quiet a bit, and was not as dissatisfied with the results as I thought I would be with so little time, but I do think that if it was a longer animation I could have pushed my experimentation more and used onion skinning to create more movement. I also think it would have been more interesting edited to sound.

20/02/19

Girl Eats Butterfly - Day 3

For my third 10x day, I decided to digitally animate a girl eating a butterfly in Adobe Animate, using a tablet and pen. The image of someone eating a butterfly is one I find very interesting/intriguing and have used in my artwork before, but was yet to animate. Pressed for time, I decided to rotoscope the butterfly flying using a reference gif I found online. I animated the girl moving on and off screen using tweens, then animated the rest frame by frame. I am quite proud of the animation, and am happy I could bring my idea to life. However, I did not have time to colour it as much as I would have liked, so instead I created a simple panning background of clouds over a gradient in order to make the background more dynamic.

Previous artwork I've made of a girl eating a butterfly, which inspired this film

21/02/19

Ocean Shave - Day 4

I had a lot of trouble with my fourth 10x animation. I knew exactly what I wanted to animate: Someone shaving their leg hair, but have the hair be garbage and the leg be water, like a metaphor for cleaning up our oceans from pollution. However, I was having trouble finding the right program to animate it on. I first tried Photoshop, but I wasn’t so familiar with the animation process and was having a hard time figuring out how to tween the arm movement using key frames AND animate the garbage disappearing frame-by-frame on the same program. I then brought the file into After Effects and tried to animate it there, but realized that AE is not good for frame-by-frame animation. I eventually figured out it would be simplest to animate it in Adobe Animate, where I can use tweens and frame-by-frame techniques. However, there was some kind of glitch in the garbage layer that was not letting me erase certain areas to reveal the water layer underneath. I spent a long time trying to figure out the problem, but with not a lot of free time left in my day, I decided to call it finished. Conceptually, I really like this animation and would like to develop it more, but I don’t think it feels finished to me considering all the technical issues I had, and I would like to come back to in the future when I have more time to problem solve and develop my technical skills.

22/02/19

Harryhausen - Day 5

Before coming to ECA, I actually had no idea who Roy Harryhausen was. In order to animate this, I had to do some research in order to familiarize myself with and understand Harryhausen’s work. I read some stuff on Wikipedia and watched a lot of Youtube videos, and the thing that popped out the most for me was: dinosaurs. I have never thought much about dinosaurs, nor have I ever drawn them, let alone animated them. So Harryhausen Day was actually a great opportunity for me to animate a subject that I am very unfamiliar with. Ideally, I would have liked to animate this using stop-motion, since Harryhausen is all about stop-motion puppets, but since I was travelling on this day and only had my laptop with me, I had to use digital animation. However, I still wanted to give Harryhausen’s amazing puppetry skills justice, so I made a dinosaur puppet in After Effects, using disposable photographs I took. I think the disposable pictures work very well in this case, because they create a faded, earthy colour pallet that is very present in Harryhausen’s films. I decided to put the sea in the background of my animation because, when watching Harryhausen on Youtube, I noticed that a lot of his animations take place near a body of water. Near the end of my animation, I decided it would be fun to have the letters that spell “Harryhausen” come out of the dinosaur’s mouth as it roars. So, I did just that, and I enjoy the way it came out. If I had more time, I would have had the dinosaur run off screen, but that would require a lot of research on the topic of dinosaur walk cycles.

25/02/19

Dress Up! - Day 6

For my 6th 10x project, I chose to animate a dress-up doll game in After Effects, an idea I’ve wanted to animate for a very long time, having grown up on dress-up games as a child. Because I knew I wanted to do this for a while, I actually started building the assets for it before the 10x day because I knew I wouldn’t have enough time to design it from scratch and finish animating it in one day, and I felt very passionate about completing this one. I cut out the shapes from disposable photographs and other photographs of mine on Photoshop, then added some final touches for the body and facial features of the doll using a brush tool. I then brought all the layers into After Effects and used tweening, keyframes, and parenting in order to simulate the dress up game. I am very satisfied with how it turned out, and would find it even more exciting if it were an actual game, but I would need to learn coding for that. If I had more time, or if this was a more advanced project like a real coded game, I would have liked the “player” to have the option to change the race or skin color of the doll and have more options for hair. With Issues of Representation on my mind, I am aware that I chose a white woman as my default character, as I cut the shape out of a picture of sand that I had. I experimented with changing the hue and lightness of the doll on Photoshop, but since the photo was not high quality, I wasn’t satisfied with how the edited colours were looking, so I left it the way it is. Finally, I added some mouse click sound effects that I got off freesound.org.

Example of a dress-up doll game that inspired this film

26/02/19

Can't Sleep - Day 7

Using disposable and digital photographs I’ve taken, I used Photoshop to create an animatable house in a quiet neighborhood in the nighttime. The layer of the façade of the house has 5 cut out pieces for the 5 windows in order to reveal what is happening in each room. Behind the layers of the house's façade and the furniture in the rooms, I created colour blocks that represent the lights being switched on or off. When the lights are off, there is a black colour block behind the window but in front of the furniture that doesn’t reveal anything inside. When the lights are on, a yellow block behind the furniture lights up the room to reveal what is happening inside the house. I brought the house into Adobe Animate in order to frame-by-frame animate the figure in the house. Then, I brought the frame-by-frame animation in addition to the Photoshop layers into After Effects in order to key frame the lights turning on and off in sync with the figure’s actions. I really love how this animation turned out, and had a lot of fun making it. I am proud of myself for capturing the figure’s actions, despite the simplicity of the animation. I also downloaded some sound effects from freesound.org like footsteps, light switches, and chewing to complete the atmosphere of my animation.

House used in film

27/02/19

City Walk - Day 8

On this day of 10x, I knew I would be out and about in the city and wouldn’t have time to animate at home or at school, so I decided to use my iPhone to take a sequence of pictures while I was walking around Edinburgh. I started out taking pictures of the sidewalk, and then slowly moved upwards as I reached a bus station, and proceeded to take pictures out the window of the bus when I was on it. When I had my computer later that night, I brought the pictures into Premiere, added some effects, dissolve transitions and sound until I got the results I want. I really enjoyed the simplicity of this animation process and how I succeeded to finish a film while I was on-the-go, and I would definitely animate in this manner again in the future. It’s something I can even do daily, no matter what I do or where I go!

The photograph sequences used in my film

28/02/19

Above the World - Day 9

For this 10x day, I wanted to animate some type of a landscape using many things I see in my normal day-to-day life that I find interesting. This ended up including a playground, a crane, shoes hanging on electric wire, and a plane flying in the sky. I spent a long time drawing it all out on Photoshop and trying to get the colors and textures I wanted, which did not give me much time left to animate. However, the movements that the objects in my animation make are not too ambitious since they are inanimate objects mostly being moved by wind, so I used tweens in After Effects and a slow pan up the landscape to complete my vision. I see this animation as an exploration of an environment. If I had more time to work on it, I would spend more time perfecting the tweens and the eases, and maybe add more animatable objects. I think it would be interesting to create a pan over a landscape with hundreds of different things happening at the same time, so every time you watch it you notice something else. But that is a project for a later time.

01/03/19

O - Day 10

For my final 10x10x19 day, with the only restriction being that I must create something somewhat related to circles, I decided to open up After Effects and see what happens. First, I knew that I wanted the format of my animation to be in the shape of a circle, so I created a circle mask over a photograph of the sky I had on my computer. I used keyframes to move the sky photo around, behind the circle mask. I then brought into AE some old drawings and collages I made, masked them all into circle shapes, and messed with the hue and saturation. I then used key frames to have them vertically float down behind my original circle mask, and added some key frames to the circles' scales, making them slowly grow and shrink as they float down behind the circular border. I then duplicated the circles, changed the brightness and opacity, and made the new circles horizontally float behind the main, colorful circles. I had so much fun making this last 10x animation, because without any prior ideas or expectations, I had the freedom to play with my assets and see what happens. My final result reminds me of a lava lamp, which I really enjoy, and inspires me to maybe use this technique again in the future to animate a lava lamp. This little film was the perfect way to bid farewell to the 10x10x19 challenge, which surprisingly, I found more enjoyable than challenging. :)

The circles in my film