Statement of Intent/ Concept Statement
With this stop-motion production, my partner for this project and I aimed to emphasize the simultaneous contrasts and similarities between our two songs. After exploring our combined music selections, Cynthia chose to use the song Atom by Sleeping at Last and I chose Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns, both classical songs that have many interesting parallels to dive into. The video begins with two paths of squiggles extending out from diagonal opposite corners of the frame, both slightly different, yet still organic in form. The paths converge in a spiral together, before disappearing and bursting into a combination of the two energies, each returning to their initial starting points. The sequence of frames is designed to show the coming together of these two songs, and most heavily employs qualities of movement, form, and contrast to create a visual depiction of the ways they combine and diverge at different points within the music. The video begins with two squiggles extending out from diagonal opposite corners of the frame, both slightly different, yet still organic in form. The paths converge in a spiral together, before disappearing and bursting into a combination of the two energies before dissipating back to their initial starting points. We each choose a color to represent our song, Carnival of the Animals being represented by a light, airy blue, and Atom being represented by a brighter pink tone. These color decisions were primarily made based on the energies of the two songs, as the blue communicates the serene, more traditional and almost somber energy of Carnival of the Animals, whereas the pink communicates the more energetic, contemporary interpretation of classical music found in Atom. The two colors also provide a strong contrast to one another, yet still stand in harmony within a composition together and help to emphasize the core whimsical and almost elegant feel shared between the two classical pieces.
Ideation
To start off the ideation process, my partner and I discussed our music tastes and types of music we each found interesting. We mainly focused our conversation around the energies we tend to be drawn to in music, and were able to find many of our commonalities there. Our music tastes were fairly different, but much of our suggestions referenced popular our memorable music from movies and TV shows, and how much it contributes to the feel of the production and can make something feel particularly memorable. One of the main commonalities we found was our shared love for listening to classical or instrumental music when studying or relaxing, and how this type of music also appears in certain films on our list. We were both especially inspired by the energy of the scores of the older Disney films we watched growing up, such as Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, The Aristocats, etc.
From our classical music selections we were able to identify one of the themes that influenced many of our design decisions throughout the project, which was a whimsical, softly flowing energy. We decided to focus on classical music for our song selections, as most of our combined interests led towards this route. Next, we created a collaborative Spotify playlist and added some of our favorite instrumental music songs, most of which we sourced from our respective study playlists.
The first exercise we did as a class focused on associations between shape and sound, specifically pertaining to examples shown in stop-motion animation formats. We were assigned to choose a song we were interested in and create our own visual depiction of the music using Illustrator. I chose the classical song Gymnopédie No.1 for the exercise, as it was one of the songs I was interested in for this project that had come up of Cynthia and I’s playlists as well.
We were given the opportunity in class to do some physical research into paper mechanics at Thompson Library, where we were able to see and play with books that utilized different “pop-up” -like mechanisms. When I was going through and looking at these many of them sparked my interest and it was definitely helpful to see the potential some of these applications had to potentially contribute to our design. We did additional in-class research on paper mechanics, where we used cutfoldtemplates.com, a website full of tutorials for different structures and individually chose some that could potentially work with some of the different songs we were considering.
Paper mechanics definitely had some interesting potential, however, after some testing with certain mechanics, my partner and I agreed that stop-motion animation resonated the most with our concept and the energy we were aiming to communicate.
Iteration and Production
We started the production of our final piece by continuing to brainstorm and record ideas, now with a more narrowed line of focus; stop motion inspired by two different instrumental songs. We each listened more to the songs we’d chosen, and were each able to narrow-down to two songs we were between by the time of our next class meeting. Both of the songs that we were each between ended up making perfect complementary pairs to one-another, so we discussed their most prominent similarities to help in making our decision. The two songs I had narrowed my focus to were Trois Gnossiennes and Carnival of the Animals, and my partner’s were titled I wanted to leave and Atom 1. The first of each of our pairs of songs possessed a slightly darker, even ominous energy, whereas the last two both took on the whimsical feelings we were both excited about. With this, Cynthia decided to use the song Atom 1, and I chose Carnival of the Animals.
With the Venn Diagram above is some visual comparisons between our songs, focusing on where/at what points their climaxes combine with different colors to represent each song. We really wanted to explore how we can depict the coming together we found between the songs in a composition. These sketches show how we started getting into the idea of squiggles and swirls, which led to us finding how these could be distinguished from one another, and what they’re coming together might look like. We also explored color, and how the energies and interpreted contexts of each song could be further translated into distinguishing colors. The image below shows my notes and sketches of shape movements associated with my song, as well as some of the forms and compositions we discussed for the combination of our songs.
Wanting to use materials we already had from previous projects, we chose colors based on our research from the color options in my supply of construction paper. We assigned a light , faded blue to my song and a brighter shade of pink to Cynthia’s song. Not only did these colors reflect our research, but they also compliment and somewhat oppose each-other visually while still communicating the same overall energy. In addition to colors, we planned to use separate backgrounds for each of our songs, white for mine and black for my partner’s. These color choices reference the more traditional, airy feel of my song as opposed to the more contemporary feel of my partner’s. Each of our shapes would begin on their separate sides, then combine and bleed onto each-other’s backgrounds, as shown on the bottom right above. However, one of the colors in our composition being a fluorescent yellow-green that represents the glimmering, almost metallic sounds present in Atom 1 that we thought really blended with both of the songs and overall composition. This was especially a concern when we experimented with black light, as the effect not nearly as present on the white background as the black.
With this, we decided to keep the idea of the songs combining with each other from opposite sides, but to only use one background color for the entire composition. We decided on a black background in order to place a greater emphasis on the softness of the colors that would make up our shapes, and therefore the light and whimsical look as well.
This influenced our decision to no longer utilize black light, as the effect tended to be fairly insignificant given with the already strong contrast between the card stock and background. After making some of these major decisions we started on a rough draft of our composition to help us get a better feel for how our sides of the page would interact as well as any potential adjustments to make.
One of the main adjustments I made here was separating my shapes from one stretching path to separate squiggles, a decision that remained in further iterations and our final piece. This would have originally have been a part of the distinguishing characteristics between my shapes and my partner’s, but we felt that the differences in the energy levels and colors between our squiggles were enough to show their separation. This also helped balance out the overall composition. We next used plain printer paper to create another draft, which we practiced recording using the app “StopMotion”. We experimented here with adding more movement to the animation by slightly moving squiggles back and forth in between frames, as well as removing preceding parts of the squiggles paths (not sure what else to call them) as they moved further inward.
Linked below is a video of our draft of the spiraling portion of the composition. Here we added the previously mentioned movement to the animation, as well as a rough version of the “blob” that the two lines of squiggles explode into after disappearing to the center. This is a version of the ending shown in sketches pictured earlier in this post, as we wanted a way to show their combination into one mass consisting of each of their unique traits. This ending is something we really discovered through the process, and were really able to synthesize and depict the idea, even during filming of our final iterations.
Once we felt confident in the direction we had taken the project, we each starting cutting out our individual sets of shapes using a simple hand process, which allowed us to make adjustments and changes to our shapes as we later worked together in person and discovered the ways they interacted with each other.
As a last-minute addition, we decided to add a “credits” scene to the end of our video. To do this we simply made an illustrator file of our text, using one of Adobe’s available fonts with similar attributes to the shapes within our production. Next, we used the Cricut machine to cut out over letters and animate the scene one word at a time during filming.
Reflection
Throughout this process, I was able to not only gain the experience of collaboration with a classmate, something new to me in design before this project, but was also able to a explore a different way of thinking about and approaching imagery. A lot of the driving concepts in this project were similar to those of the Shape Grammar project from last semester, so it was interesting to be able to strongly reapply and practice some of what I gathered from that project, still with the additional challenge of more layers, with interpretation of a progression or movement of energies that comes with taking inspiration from music. Some of the craft and production elements were also new and interesting to me, especially with my partner and I’s decision to use stop motion animation. This added an additional layer onto the learning outcomes of this project for us when it came to sourcing and planning out our means of production through different apps and learning the logistics of stop motion and how simple changes in each frame can create such effective visual impacts.
Portfolio Project
The page showcasing my partner and I’s final Dynamic Page project can be found through the link below!