This week we were adapting music into animation, essentially storyboarding music videos. We looked at a series of animated music videos, from Norman Mclaren's work to The White Stripes's Fell in Love with a Girl. My favourites were probably Take On Me by A-ha, just because it's a classic and the animation is really captivating with a fun story to tell, and Moving On by James, with animation by Ainslie Henderson, which I had watched before but a couple years ago so it was nice to revisit it and the emotions it invokes.
Ultimately what I often want to do with my own animation is to create an emotional atmosphere and attempt to move the viewer in some way so this music video is really inspirational for my work. I love the use of wool for the characters, it doesn't just create an appealing visual style but also ties into the narrative of the music video.
I really enjoyed thinking about what song to choose and then just drawing panel after panel sitting in the seminar. I went with Laura Marling's song Hope in the Air, it has a real narrative feeling to it, almost like an old epic being told around a fire, and I've always enjoyed how soulful her voice is. I went with a journeying narrative, we follow the main character, a young girl, as she travels across different terrain to get to a final destination where she battles a final figure. I didn't get round to storyboarding the battle, but it was inspired by the lyrics "If we are to battle I must not be weak" towards the end of the song.
On her journey, the protagonist ages upwards a couple of times to show the length of her journey, and meets others along the way, most notably she meets a young fox cub who then also ages up with her as it follows her along her quest. She also meets a woman in the woods who feeds her and provides her with a sword before she comes to the final battle. A lot of the story is inspired by the rhythm of folk tales and myths where the hero of the story encounters different obstacles and help along their travels. My storyboards are quite messy, which is usually the case with my initial storyboards, if I were to continue with this idea I would go on to make a more clear and readable storyboard so that I wouldn't be the only one able to interpret it. I drew out a quick sketch of what the visuals could potentially look like in a finished version of the film, when our protagonist uncovers the hut that the lady in the woods lives in.
Despite my use of Photoshop to sketch this out I think the animation would work well in stop-motion, maybe in a similar style to the music video of The Rifle's Spiral by The Shins. I really like the papery textures in this animation and I feel like those textures would work in favour of an animated tale. If not that then at least with stop-motion elements to build up a textured world.
I drew a lot of inspiration for the visual style of my storyboard from The Green Knight by David Lowery, which I saw in the cinema recently, a lot of the film is Gawaine travelling to get to a fabled destination, and so there are a lot of shots following him walking across changing landscapes. The idea to include a fox companion also came from watching this film, it's really stuck in my head since watching it. I'd love to be able to create something with that much atmosphere.
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