David Bunting 22/2/2017

David Bunting: Freelance Storyboard Artist and Animator.

David gave us a very interesting talk about his career and experience. There were a lot of examples and previous work of him shown to the class which were all explained in great details about the technique or filming methods he used/thought is a good template for us to study from.

-He said that every single image gave an information to the audience, including the building and the sets. I have been trying to incorporate this in all my animation after his talk and I think my current Extended Practice animation has achieved that, no exceeding sets and environment and every frame is part of the story.

-He showed us the opening scene of Rope by Alfred Hitchcock. Stressing the importance of cutting and montage. Encouraging us to experiment with various filming methods and angles like Hitchcock did to the scene.

-He also raised a question of how much information audience received and needed to understand the story? It reminds me of the line animation we saw in MAF, everything is developed by a line, very simple and no much background but very effective and powerful

-We see films through characters

-The meanings of shoots:look down=empowering; look up = losing power.
-Always cut when you need to:
1)have a new story point
2)Showing power
3)showing an effect of the cut on the character or showing emotions and which is usually close up.
Always cut into important line!
-The closer you are with the characters, the more connected to them so close up pulls the audiences and story together!

-What is more important is to know your characters. Do the research on their living habitat and do not cheat the audience.

There were some more stuffs he talked about researching on characters but all those points are the essences of the talk personally. I think the animators creates a close relationship to the characters also the story. For example, I slowly bonded with the dad character in my Extended animation, I worried about what and how he feels and how would him show it. I also think about floor plan in detail this time which is something I have never done before which makes my head clearer to figure out the layout of the scene also putting characters to where it makes most sense. Really appreciate this talk and very inspiring. Definitely revisiting this blog and Fraser's blog in the future!

Fraser MacLean Talk

Fraser MacLean- layout and background artist who has worked on production such as “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, “Space Jam”, “Tarzan”, “Little Dorrit” and the Animo animation software package. It was absolutely an honour to be given a talk from him. The 2 hours talk went so fast because every thing he said was so inspiring and informative.

-He started from very small jobs like doing shadows on characters and this is what we young animators should not refuse to do. 

-He told us how vision works, how we receive information from pictures which relates to the layout of it.

-What is best to do in the industry:having creativity, develop skills, develop technology and tools, concentrate on certain idea as well as having some money to carry on. 

-He encouraged us to se more things during young age

-Organisation and discipline is very important in film making

- We should accept new technology: either you ride the wave or the wave rides over you.

-He also stressed the importance of sound and advised us to build animation on sound not to putting sounds at last.(This is what I am doing in Extended now, so I really feel for this point!)

I remembered this particular slice when he talked about his early school work and how materials were so limited. This did not stop him from creating and in fact I think his work is absolutely stunning.  I especially love the idea of the bottom right picture which is a drama act, using a stick to separate the space into reality and the reflection of the mirror. Replicating every objects and generate the illusion that the audience is the actor or we are seeing the reflection of the actor on stage. This technique blows my mind and it is so impactive to use in theatre! It is a shame how we are too depending on technology and trapped by the internet. As Fraser said he finds working in pencil and paper is his favourite media but many of us work digitally now so which is a shame. He showed us his sketch books which are AMAZING! and I started a life drawing sketch book after being inspired. 

He is very charming and humorous. He is also very supportive to students as well. He told us the importance to understand art history and to look at the layout of a picture in order to tell a story. How characters enter or exit the scene directly affect the story telling and the atmosphere as well as the camera angle. He showed us so many examples of his work explaining each and I learnt a lot from the talk.