This week we were adapting poetry, looking through what could be interpreted as poetry before storyboarding our own. Poetry is often focused on a moment, a feeling, sometimes it tells a story, describes a dreamscape, or stands for a political cause. The first sort of poetry we looked at was visual poetry- poetry without words, this would involve animating our own images and ideas to create the feeling of a poem, the example we looked at was A Bus Ride And Flowers In Her Hair by Asaf Agranat. It uses a mixture of real and imagined imagery to create a sort of dreamlike narrative journey on the bus.
We also looked at animated typography, representing the words of the poem in the visuals that pair with it. My favourite example of this was the poem Accents by Denice Frohman, made by KAPWA/Robertino Zambrano. I really enjoyed the textures of the animation and the constantly transforming visuals, the use of words and illustrations was really effective and matched well with the reading.
There were also adaptations that used metaphor and symbolism, as well as added their own interpretation or swing to the visuals, even if they weren't alluded to in the words of the poem. Patakiskola, made using fabrics, is a poem about a stream and the nature surrounding it, it doesn't mention a character exploring it at all, but a girl made out of felt is added in the animation to discover the landscape with us.
We also touched on children's verse, which I hadn't considered as an option before for some reason. The example of this were Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes adaptation, which I really like the style of, the sort of textured CGI is really full of personality, and they somehow managed to translate a lot of the drawings of Quentin Blake into the characters.
We then went into groups to discuss our poems, I worked with Moira and Non on the poem Bluebird by Charles Bukowski. We thought that it represented the emotions he didn't want to let out due to keeping up a reputation as a tough man. We all agreed that the sort of colour palette we'd all use was one of muted, muddy tones, neutral greys and browns, except for the bluebird, which would of course be blue.
Here are the sketches I produced whilst we were discussing the poem:
I had quite a clear idea of the sort of gritty nature the visual accompanying this poem would have, so when I got back home I decided to do some very quick animations of the sort of thing I was thinking of.
It could be interesting to pursue a poem further, maybe animating the contents of one without a voice over reading it out, creating a piece that feels abstract conveys expression without them being clearly written out for the viewer. I also think adapting children's verse could be very fun due to the character design that would be involved, and playing with what audience I'd actually aim it at, as I've played around with designs for a modern Red Riding Hood before during 10x10x21.
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