Midterm Project Idea

Theme:

Overwork. Or rather, working to the point of exhaustion and how even then, the next job is always waiting leading to a "burn-out".

Story:
Beginning in a manufacturing plant, workers have constructed a large Construct Creature, which is brought to life and ordered to go out and rebuild buildings. The creature goes out to the city and begins to knock over buildings and reconstructing them larger and better (subjective). It continues to knock over and rebuild buildings, developing certain deformities and ticks as it progresses without respite. It eventually stops after knocking over a building, and topples, breaking apart. Workers gather around and look at the broken Creature, before using the remains of the creature to construct the buildings it was going to renovate.
Alternate ending consists of them just literally building on top of the dead creature. Either way works though the message of building off the backs of the worker becomes more literal in the second idea.

Characters:
The Construct:
The character is a construct which is devoid of emotion and mostly devoid of personality. It has a single desire, which is to build. A small figure, which exerts its dominance over the creature, points in the direction of the buildings to reconstruct. It doesn’t know why it rebuilds these structures, but it continues to work. As soon as it finishes one job, it immediately seeks to regain its purpose by shuffling to the next building. It never takes time for itself, as the next job is always waiting just a few feet away, and thus it begins to fall apart.
*built in order to build, and that is all it desires to do
*emotionless and doesn’t feel pleasure, mearly seeks to get the job done, but a new job always waits right next to it
*never questions, merely follows the orders given to it

Concept

My concept for my midterm is to have my construct character, which will be giant sized, going through a town in the same manner of Godzilla or the 50 ft woman. However, he would be tearing down buildings, and rebuild them larger. I would use cutouts to construct a town to be “rampaged” in, and have cutout civilians where necessary. I would also like for it to have a similar visual quality, as far as the actual film quality, as movies like “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman”.
The structure will be simple 3-act structure, with the creation of the construct, the “rampage”, and the fall of the construct. The fall will also be tied in with the falling action.
To begin with, I want to have different workshop tools performing various tasks, culminating in actually showing the constructed character. The character will come to life and break out of the building and commence in its “rampage”. It will culminate with the construct running out of steam and toppling. Once it has toppled, either new buildings or plant life will begin to grow out of it.
The primary relation to my research lies in the idea of constructiveness, or rather the idea of being contructive in the manner of making better use of something. It was the most common idea that came up in the books and articles that I went through, as most of the time I was reading how to make things more organized, and even menial, in order to increase productivity and management.

On an unrelated note…I need to watch a move called “Village of the Giants”…it seems stupid ridiculous.

Research

My general idea hasn’t changed all that much, or even at all really, after doing research, however I do now have some ideas and tools to use as the semester progresses. The primary thing that came out of all this is the idea of constructing the construction equipment and then collaging all the new equipment together to create architecture, construnct man, etc.
Another idea that might be worth pursuing involves the idea of “constructively”. Half of the resources I dealt with involved the idea of making work more constructive and productive. This inevitably led me to books/articles on industrial robots, and needless to say an idea arose to have some kind of contest between robot and human.
Lastly, I also came across the constructivist art movement, which I had forgotten about until now, which dealt with oddly shaped constructions. I, of course, looked more at the architectural and sculptural elements of this movement, but some of the drawing ideas could also be used.
Those are the ideas torn down to the base, but that’s essentially what I got out of the research. That and the realization that while I haven’t visited a library in years, it is still full of people.

Research:
These two are both related to the same item:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/15/radio-tower-campaign-russia-foster
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIxZtJy_rok

http://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag02/janfeb02/ross/ross.shtml
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,922173-2,00.html

Books:
Manufacturing Process Reference Guide
Industrial Robotics: Selection, Design, and Maintenance
Textiles and Fabrics: Their Care and Preservations
Concrete Construction Handbook

Original word/idea: Construct

1. 40 related words:
Build, Form
Create, Architecture
Stack, Draft
Compile, Design
Construction, Measure
Assemble, Equipment
Arrange, establish
Plan, erect
Function, location
Material, develop
Organize, outline
Shape, plot
Ornate, foundary
Mill, layout
Scale, habitat
Support, compose
Masonry, girder
Fabricate, fashion
Model, forge
Make, manufacture





2. 40 opposing words:
deconstruct, demolish
destroy, disaster
dismantle, disestablish
melt, implode
break, ruin
disrepair, undo
raze, disorganized
divide, separate
scatter, tear down
disorder, knock over
flimsy, disorganize
shapeless, disassemble
tumble, break down
throw out, burn
topple, wreck
end, crush
trample, neglect
ignore, fall
consume, deform
expunge, explode

Beginning in AE

This project has shown to me that somethings are significantly easier to do in After effects, like manipulating clip art and getting everything into place. However, at the same time, it is harder to get a walk cycle down, or rather I'm still having trouble getting the velocity vectors to work as intended. I can't get the cycle to look as smooth as I can in toonboom, but then I've also spent more time in toonboom.

I'm not sure why youtube did what it did to the video, but it doesn't happen to the one's offline and honestly, it looks funny so I'll stick with it for now, until i can ask a question about it at least.

The video can be seen at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWR1rTdBk0U

Proj 2

I wanted this video to represent the idea of things building up and then falling to be replaced by even larger buildings. THis relates to my solo play experiment in that during that time I used unstable objects to build larger and larger structures.

The most frustrating thing about this project was the velocity graph, which seemed to need wide sweeping motions in order to have a noticeable change. Also, the ever frustrating photoshop which seems to hate me and consistently crashes while I work. Otherwise, the general process wasn't all that different to working in other programs. It was somewhere between working in FCP and Toonboom. The one thing that made me mad was not being able to discover how to make it so the entire workspace could be seen, not just the box where the video is.

Pitch for Dynamic Imaging Project 1:

After spending “play time” building up a stack of books and movies into what resembled structures only to have them fall over and over I decided to build my first piece around this idea. It would also be something to pursue throughout the entire semester, of course.
Each time the structure fell, I was able to build up a little bit higher the next time. I plan to show this in my first video by starting out with a normal landscape scene with a single tree in the center. The action begins with a leaf falling from the tree. As soon as the leaf touches the ground, the whole tree falls over. A building erects out of the ground. The camera begins to pan upwards and never stops doing so. As the camera pans up, the building falls and another building rises in its place. This building falls, a cloud of dust rises up, and another building, larger, rises to take its place. This process continues, possibly with airplanes, clouds, and birds flying in fore/background, though they aren’t important and are more there just for the layering. Eventually it ends with a skyscraper being erected and destroyed, but nothing rises to take its place.