a-ha - Take On Me (Official Video)

The famous 1985's hit, Take on Me by the a-ha's music video received several awards for the creative animation that was portrayed throughout it. In the video, we see a young waitress reading a comic-like book story which eventually comes to life. The music video, being during the 80's, was seen as extremely creative and impressive dealing with animation sketches going back and forth between the real life versions, it's extremely remarkable. I remember watching this music video when I was younger and being really intrigued with how they were able to create this. To this day I still think its incredible the creativity of this music video, it's so simple and yet extremely difficult.

Dazzle and Sparkle: Everything You Need For A Magical Film

Cinderella 

I am a huge Disney fans, as far as I can remember I have always idolized Disney princess for their beautiful dresses and amazing elegance and grace. As I grew older I became more aware of the issues people have against Disney princesses and why they can in some ways ruin a child's perception of body image and identity. However, despite those issues I have found the princesses to be inspirational. I recently went to see the new Cinderella movie and I was absolutely astonished and amazed by the beauty and perfectionism in the editing and graphics in the film. But most of all I was obsessed with the costume designs and the art direction in the film, I mean I was literally jaw-dropped at how beautifully crafted Cinderella's ball gown was. I watched a couple interviews with the  Academy Award winning costume designer Sandy Powel to see her inspirational and how she went about designing the costume choices for Cinderella. 

 When I am first approached to design the costumes or be the art director for a film shoot, the very first thing I do is request a script from the writer to (1) find the time and setting of the piece, (2) extract the emotional appeals intended for the audience, (3) meet with writers and directors, and (4) find colors and clothing choices to fit the piece. I was pleased that Sandy Powel takes on a very similar approach when designing for a film, her sketches were extremely detailed and beautifully crafted... the amount of hard work, dedication, and precision placed in the designed sketches between Powel and Swarovski definitely show in the film. Cinderella's dress is nothing short of fabulous and truly timeless. 

 

Open Processing

While searching for Processing ideas, I came across this website called openprocessing.org. It is a website where you can share your processing sketches with the community. By browsing through the collection of sketches you find not only the finished product but the source code that created it. This is a great tool because if you find a sketch that you find interesting you can see the code and try to decipher it. You can also create workshops or classrooms within openprocessing to teach people and share knowledge. There are also collections of work, separated into genres like particles or geometry. The site is very easy to navigate and it's really cool to browse through the projects. Many of them are extremely complicated and I couldn't make any sense of the source code but maybe we will all be able to in the near future!

The creation of Jack Skellington

Sarah posted about claymation earlier in October, and the video she put up about the making of Wallace and Gromit intrigued me. Everyone is familiar with the concept of stop-motion, but I don't think anyone that hasn't been involved with a claymation project realizes how much work goes into the creation of each and every frame, or more specifically, how a single character alone is created, brought to life, and then moves and changes within each frame. Because of this I decided to look into the making of one character in particular, Jack Skellington from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Below is Tim Burton's original sketch of the character:

After creating the look of a character, a story has to then be developed before the creation project can even start. This link goes to a picture of one of the many storyboards created for each scene of the movie.


Then comes the true creation process, the molding and making of Jack:


The intricate detail that goes into each and every one of Jack's limbs to give his character the perfect shape isn't lost on me, nor is the incredible amount of both facial and body expressions that have to created or positioned just so to bring Jack to life and make him smile, frown, stand, walk, or sing. Below is a video about the Facial expressions of both Sally & Jack.


The final product of the beginning of the song 'What's This?' is below. All that work, just for one quick scene!