Chris Doyle: Hybridity

His Style:
Chris Doyle has a very interesting style of art. He combines 2D and 3D stills and video then projects them into real life. This approach is very different than many of the mainstream animation media we see out in the world, all due to how he uses hybridity. This adds an allure to his art unlike others. His art is also very consistent. He knows what he likes to do. Either he is animating something about nature and man, or he uses organic shapes and patterns to leave the emotion's evoked by his art up to the viewer. He very much likes to use bright and vibrant colors that catch the eye. Many of his art pieces, especially the animations, use vibrant reds, bright greens, and deep blues. The use of such lively colors allows the eye to travel from point to point without needing directed. You are left on your own to decide what to look at. He also likes to add black as a bold color that still somehow stands out against the bright colors. It is a sort of silhouette look, like an old Chinese painting and the thin lines in his 2D art also resemble old Japanese anime from the 80s and 90s. His art is also ever changing. The video will start out as something and be completely different in the end. It shows a course of time and how the world he is depicting is changing. Even with his more organic ideas, in the end the shapes or patterns they were in the beginning will be a whole new ones by the end of his creation. His art is easy to enjoy and understand because you constantly see something new that invokes your interest.

Analyzing:
Chris Doyle's short film "Waste Generation" shows the relationship between man and nature. It starts out with showing a junk yard, but over time it changes. Nature then starts growing and it turns into a lush habitat. It uses juxtaposition to compare the two stages the world was in. There is the age of waste and the age of nature. Especially when showing the growing age of nature he decides to use 3D art as well as 2D this form of art is common in his work and is a form of hybridity. I enjoy his original techniques and it stimulates the viewer differently than if it were just 2D or just 3D the whole way through. He also uses patterns and organic shapes to create the sense of the world changing. They slowly change as you look at them and add a hallucinogenic effect that seems to warp your sense of reality, which if fitting to the story his film portrays. Overall, it was quite interesting and new. I liked the feeling of watching something I've never really seen before.

My Application:
Over the summer I actually had thought about using hybridity myself. I planned to make a film combining both real footage and 3D animation. So, I find it quite convenient we are studying this now. That is why I chose Chris Doyle. His art was the closest to something I would want to make. Art is a platform where nothing is wrong and you can do anything and that is why hybridity is important. Many people stick to the cookie-cutter one genre and one art form, but for me I just don't know if that's quite what I want. I've always just enjoyed too many things. I love all forms of art; I love to
draw, write, act, paint, animate, and make films. So, why not put them all together. Chris Doyle challenges the norm and I'd like to try so to. Maybe I can do something great, or maybe I will fail, but either way I will learn from what I have done. Studying people who have done things like this before me also inspires me and let's me know that I'm not alone in feeling that I don't want to stick to one genre or art form. Everyone starts out somewhere and needs to test the waters to see what they enjoy, so I plan to use hybridity and everything I've discovered while researching Chris Doyle to start my art making.

 

Shape Key Practice

Daydream: Actions Animation

Actions Storyboard

In Progress Self-Critique

There is a girl. She is at a cabin and is walking. The sky is red and the ground is white. She sees a white butterfly and runs after it. She stops to take a breath then goes back to running after it. The butterfly leads her to two big red and white trees. She walks through them. 

Color is used for emphasis. The girl’s shirt and hair is red but the rest of her is white and gray to stand out against both the white ground and red sky. The butterfly is white because it stands out best against the red sky. There is a lot of formal balance throughout the animation and informal balance. In the beginning it is all informal balance but after the girl meets the butterfly there is formal balance. 

What is going on in the story is that a girl alone living in a cabin meets a butterfly. This butterfly leads her across the desolate world to two trees and she is lead through them. The use of emphasis and simplicity helps the story develop. You can easily follow the two characters throughout the story. You can also tell the world is unnatural and lonely by the harsh red and the white ground with little to no plant life. 

One strength I feel I have with this project is my color choice. I really feel the simplicity and my use of only two colors adds to the story. What would happen if I tried making the butterfly red? Well I originally wanted to make it red but then I realized that it blended in to the sky too well. What if I emphasize all the plant life in the world? Then the two trees at the end of the animation would feel less special.

Colors And Story

After the Grand Budapest Hotel exercise I learned more on the effect of color on a scene. When watching it in black and white, then told to create a color scheme we only really had the storyline to base our colors off of. I had thought that due to the, what I thought to be, playful storyline the color scheme would be very bright and saturated, although that was not exactly the case. Many scenes were very colorful, but the lighting threw everything off. The colors were darker but still saturated and some scenes so dark you could not make out the people. This made the clip from the movie seem very serious although when I watched it in black and white it was playful to me.

From this exercise I learned more about the importance of color on the storyline. When watching it once in black and white and the other in color I realized a significant difference in the story. Although the storyline was playful the director chose to make the color and lighting more serious which threw me off. Honestly, I didn't like the artistic choice in the color scheme and preferred my own. Colors have a grater effect more to a story than I realized. Therefore, to get the story across in my animation I will be sure to take colors into account.

I have decided that in my animation I will start out with a lack of color. Mostly white and have accents of reds and oranges to emphasize my character's actions and certain important items in a scene. This I feel is useful to get my point across to the viewer easier using simplicity. The second half of the animation I want to use a lot of color. I want the viewer to be taken by the color, just as the character in my animation will at this part. At this point the character will still be emphasized but I will allow the viewer's eyes to wander as this part of the story is more explanatory. This was brought to my attention due to the distraction I felt by the darkness and use of so much different colors in the Grand Budapest Hotel scene.

Critique Reflection

In my robot animation most people enjoyed my audio. I also remember people commenting on my scene and how the lighting was nice to give the emotion I was trying to convey and how they enjoyed the designs and texturing throughout the scene. When I was putting the animation together I was trying to get this lonely and solemn feel and I'm glad it was communicated through my warm to cool lighting. Also, I enjoyed that they were able to see the little things I added into the scene, such as the papers and blueprints of the robots on the desk and wall. Although I did have my problems, the comments were all positive.

Personally, what I felt I did best was creativity. I feel I really was able to create a little world for the robot to live in. Mostly I feel this way because I stuck to a certain style where everything had a sort of cartoon-ish look. Through my editing I also felt I was able to convey they loneliness of the robot and his calmness. I especially liked how at the beginning of the animation I decided to have the room be lit with warm colors, but when you hear the human leave and the lights go off the lighting in the room becomes cool. Overall, I feel my animation was well thought out and executed with only few flaws.

My strengths are definitely story creation and editing, but my issues lie in technical. There are many scenes where looking back now I notice the robot moves very badly. I think I had given up and that disappoints me. Some of the animation of the robot is very rushed and choppy. If I were to do the project again I would definitely focus much more on smoothing out my animation. Some things to make even my strengths better would be to focus on audio. When I had made the audio I didn't realize how low it was, so when watching it in class we were unable to hear many of the beginning noises such as the footsteps, door close and light sounds. In addition, I found some discrepancies in the story that don't add up, so next time I need to watch out for that. Though, for my first real animation I feel I did quite well and I am proud of myself.