Research

Artist Research and Influence. 

Don Hertzfeldt

The artists I'd like to focus on, on this projects are Don Hertzfeldt and Jamie Hewlett.
I feel like they have a lot of influence on my work when it comes to creative style and the ideas that I produce.

Don Hertzfeldt's work tends to focus on the absurdity of life and often times brings awareness to a lot of things that people tend to overlook with Dark humour, one example of this being his 2012 film, It's Such a Beautiful Day which follows the character Bill through is usual daily activities and the slow decline of his memory, before finding out that he has a terminal illness.
While this came under the genre ' Experimental Black comedy-drama animated film ', it brings attention to things that people often don't think about with a friendlier approach which is far more original than the typical "Black comedies" you would usually see.

His work is simple yet effective and I like the aesthetic of his work because of it's abstract nature and not over whelming.

Don Hertzfeldt has inspired me in the past when it comes to the simplicity of a scene in his animations. For my final major project in a previous course I created a light-hearted animation about two siblings and how they're always fighting with one another with just a basic background and minimal use of colours, the characters themselves, too have a simple design.


Here is Double Trouble, an animation I have made in the past.






Here are a few short clips from the film It's Such a Beautiful Day :

Jamie Hewlett

Another artists I have been looking at is the illustrator/ Comic book artist Jamie Hewlett, mainly because of his contribution to the virtual band Gorillaz and since there is no record of the animators behind the band and the secrecy behind anyone who has worked on it, I decided to base my research on Hewlett himself and the band Gorillaz as the artists.

As well as the work of Don Hertzfeldt, I'm very much drawn to the animation styles of the music videos produced by Gorillaz and their use of a mixture of methods mixed in one, mainly being 2D animation, mixed with live action video.

The look of the characters in Gorillaz are a product of Jamie Hewlett and I love the comic book style of them too.




























Jamie Hewlett is best known for the face behind Tank girl and a number of other comics, I like how he draws his characters and the somewhat displacement in the way that they all could move.










Here are a few videos by Gorillaz:


The research on the two artists have already given me the ideas to start experimenting with mixing Live-action video and 2D Animations together.

In conjunction with this I have also been looking at some topics for experiments in the near future to go along with this research, focusing deeply on some similar things that features in Don Hertzfeldt's Animated movies.

Topic.

The topics I want to focus on in particular are mental health, as much as there is a rise in awareness for mental health in the recent years and that slowly extinguishing the stigma people both know and fear, I want to look into creating an animation in this topic in the near future that will feature a Live action animation, for me Live action Animation has a somewhat symbolism to it, in the fact that the animation in question either doesn't belong in the world of live action, for example, 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit', or said animation character is internally feeling like they do not particularly fit into the live action world.  I think that this will provide a very powerful message to any audience.

I like the idea of two worlds blending, or mixing, as previously mentioned,  Who framed Roger Rabbit features two separate universes that spill into one another and there is a lot of prejudiced within the film between the two worlds, I think that  this too is a very powerful message and also a lighter hearted approach to bring light to audiences about serious matters.

More work that I have been looking at is works by Animation Domination High-Def (ADHD) and Adult swim, mostly because of the satirical nature of the animations and their general focus on Dark comedy, both mostly operate via Youtube and have many animators that collaborate on their channels. I was mainly looking at their focal point rather than the style of animations, but they do have some bits that are remarkably similar to the things that I have already been researching.

Live action Animation.

Development