Recollect and the Remix Process

Returning to the earlier topic of my honours project, I thought I would post some more visual examples of my work and talk about the context behind them.

The discipline of motion graphics was a useful field to situate the project within. This is because the unused work being repurposed was all illustrative, whether completely finished pictures or simple concept sketches in a diary. So it had a strong illustrative bent. One of my goals was to take implied narrative, suggested by static single images, and create overt narrative by adding motion, depth and time (among other things, such as visual effects).

The boundary between animated film and motion design remains indistinct. According to MotionPlusDesign, the difference lies in whether characters express themselves directly. The exact definition remains the focus of some argument amongst practitioners due to its all encompassing parameters. But this broadness is perfect for dealing with animation that is not strictly cel animation. This kind of work is made possible of course through the use of software, in this case Adobe After Effects.

The remix process (in this instance) works quite differently to a normal animation pipeline. In general the animation pipeline is a streamlined and well-tested method, to smoothly move from beginning to end. It begins with an initial concept and proceeds through the various stages of scriptwriting, concept art, storyboarding, animatics (rough animations based on the scanned storyboards), and an intensive production phase, leading to the finished work (see Animation Pipeline video below - an excerpt from a motion graphic presentation made for my Honours seminar).

Animation Pipeline: © copyright Zak Waipara on Vimeo.

By contrast, the remix process starts without a specific guiding concept, but begins by assembling material and asks ‘What do I have?’, and ‘What can I do with it?’. (see Remix Process video below - another excerpt from a motion graphic presentation made for my Honours seminar).

Remix Process: © copyright Zak Waipara on Vimeo.

In my own project, given that the raw material was created in a variety of styles, and loaded with meaning from their prior context, some way to link them all was required in order to create a cohesive motion graphic series. When gathered and compared, some illustrations seemed to naturally group together into themes. What determined the theme were a few key pieces that strongly suggested a particular genre, and once decided, other pieces could be altered to fit. One thing that became apparent early on is that time spent creating motion graphics is disproportionate to the final runtime of the product. When remix is added to the process this increases even further. A significant amount of time was spent on the repurposing stage, which was possibly more time-consuming than just starting afresh: the work was physically altered, by way of changing colours, redrawing sections, adding or removing material, and separating into layers (where the material existed in a digital form). When a file had disappeared, or if it were an unused sketch, then it had to be built from scratch.

Screen grab from the 50s Horror genre motion graphic.© copyright Zak Waipara.

Despite this, the melding of disparate pieces worked remarkably well. In the end nine distinct genres emerged. I plan to post more examples of artwork from each of these genres later on...