Stop Motion (Final) - Behind the surface of Bradford

(slow wt) Behind the surface of Bradford from Junaid Arshad on Vimeo.

City In Flux - Further Idea Experiment

City In Flux Stop Motion (opening) - Final

After looking back on the test piece for the animation, for the final thing I decided to move the location from the ground of the mill to the roof of the mill. I also chose to change the size of the black line in the animation. I also have kept the speed of the animation the same in this video (0.1s per frame) but this is something which I may change in the final one  and I will probably make it faster. I have also made this video black and white and I really like this effect although I still may keep it in colour when it comes to final one. The music used in the animation will stay the same.
City In Flux Stop Motion (opening) - Final from Junaid Arshad on Vimeo.

First test on my Stop-motion piece

After getting the equipment together for my stop-motion piece, I headed down to the location where I was going to shoot the animation, which is an old abandoned mill in Bradford. I felt like this mill was a great location for this project as it epitomised the story which I was trying to show in my stop-motion piece. The topic which I'm talking about in my City In Flux project includes how buildings decay & new ones take place and how people only recognise the new buildings and forget the old ones when thinking about the city they are in. The mill has a history itself of once being full of people and being known as a part of Bradford, but now since it has been wrecked and abandoned, people only think of Bradford as the place where the National Media Museum is and where the first IMAX cinema was made.
This video is only a first draft to see how the footage in video looks overall and is meant to show us what we can change next time for the final thing.
City in Flux Stop Motion 1st test from Junaid Arshad on Vimeo.

City In Flux Stop Motion production - Storyboard re-draft

After having an assessment on my work so far with my tutor, I got some advice from him on my stop-motion piece in terms of what it should show, how it should look, where it could take place. After taking this into account, I made a rough re-draft of my storyboard.

City In Flux - More Idea Experimentations

City In Flux Idea Experiment (further experimentation)

Here is another one of my city in flux experimentations. With this piece I started off with the top  picture and then messed around with it just to see how would it look. At first I wanted show that besides City Park in Bradford (a well known and popular hub in Bradford for people) there are other areas in Bradford which are full of rich culture (Great Horton Rd, Ingleby Rd, Leeds Rd)

City In Flux further idea experimentations

These are some further experimentations for my city in flux project...

My City In Flux stop motion - Storyboard

Here's the 4 shots for my stop-motion piece for the City In Flux project.

I've created a storyboard to give a rough idea of how my stop-motion piece will look. I have chosen to use the wall of my house as the canvas to do the stop-motion piece. This is because it is easily accessible to me. The piece starts off with blobs of paint emerging on the wall which eventually widen and create the skyline of the city centre in the heart of Bradford. This skyline then starts to pour down the wall and drips emerge. From some of these drips, a certain aspect behind Bradford shows through (such as a silhouette of a mosque, a road sign etc) and these then pour onto the pavement and eventually drain down into the gutter.
The message I'm trying to show in my stop-motion piece is that cities such as Bradford are labelled (Bradford being the City of Film), and most people only relate the city to certain aspects. For example, Bradford being related to as the city which has the National Media Museum or the first IMAX cinema in the UK, or Liverpool being related to as the city in which the Beatles were born. However, there are lot more aspects to the city than just these few, but the majority of people don't see these because they are not as highly praised as the other things. Bradford for instance has rich cultural heritage, it has beautiful moors and countrysides, it is the Curry Capital of the UK, it used to be the wool capital of the world, and the list goes on.

Friday meeting (week 5) Animation starts to come into the picture

Once we started our meeting with Sarah, our whole group showed what we had done so far. I showed my 4 test pieces which I had made and Sarah told me that she loved the 'dripping silhouette' piece (shown below)

and told me that I should try and stick to this kind of visual look (simple, but clearly displaying my message of the different aspects which make Bradford).

I am still going to be experimenting with different visual looks to portray my vision of the concept on Photoshop or Illustrator. Also, in this meeting, Sarah showed us examples of an animation storyboard/mood board and told us how they worked. We were shown 4 slides from the Sherlock Holmes film opening title sequence. We were now told to make our own 4 shots/scenes for our animation on City In Flux showing the transformation of the animation, from it's sketch to how it will roughly look in the end. I have been looking at different visual styles which I can try and use as inspiration and have ended up choosing the music video of Coldplay's 'Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall' as my main influence. The stop motion style of the video exaggerates the visuals and music, plus, the stop motion technique can create a different kind of vibe depending on how the video is edited and what type of music is played along with the visuals.

Coldplay 'Every Teardrop is a Waterfall' from Pulse Films on Vimeo.

Friday meeting (week 4) (Development on my sources)

After gathering many photos for my City In Flux idea it was time to try and create some experimental  visual development to try and see what would look right. I started off on Photoshop as I know my way around this software. I tried to experiment with a couple of my photos and wanted to visually show my message of the city of Bradford being labelled as the city of film and only being popularly known by the National media Museum and the Alhambra Theatre. None of the pieces are fully finished, they were just done to give an idea of what the piece would visually look like.

Gathering sources for my City In Flux idea in Bradford

I have just been around Bradford taking a mass amount of photos for my City In Flux project. Because I have so many, I cannot put them all up on this blog but here's some to give an idea...

Friday meeting (week 3) (Choosing 1 idea and development on it)

For this weekly Friday meeting with Sarah, we had to tell our 3 topics for our City In Flux project and then choose the strongest one out of them. As for my 3 concepts, Sarah gave me feedback and told me that my strongest idea was the topic about the city being labelled as one aspect. She told me to go and gather sources for all the 'different aspects' of Bradford and then in the next meeting we would gather them all up and try to develop them.. Basically, I had to go around Bradford and take photos of all the main places Bradford was known by to other people (places like Bradford City Hall, The National Media Museum, The Alhambra Theatre, The IMAX screening in Bradford (which was the 1st one in the UK etc) and then all the other places of Bradford which most people don't know about (places like its old industrial buildings, asian boutiques, take-aways etc). After given my task, I had another idea which involved sampling. In my spare time I often use the Garageband app on my iPad and create songs. The app allows you to sample sounds as well and so this got me thinking, maybe along with visuals of Bradford I could include sounds from Bradford and try to create a piece to go along with my photos. I told this to Sarah and got told to look at more artists such as Hexstatic and I chose to look at someone I already knew and this was the song artist, Mark Ronson.

Friday meeting (week 2) (Moving on towards our own ideas)

Every Friday, our group has a meeting with one of the tutor's for our course (our tutor is Sarah), and the main reason for this meeting is to show where we are in the project. For myself, in the first meeting, I had researched 5 artists so far and had looked at their influences and interests. Once all of our group showed what we had done, we got told to come up with 3 ideas/concepts to base our ideas on and develop on, and then in the following week we would choose 1 of these concepts to take forward. Throughout the week I had one topic which was based on the city being labelled, in particular, I looked at Bradford. I wanted to show that even though it is labelled 'The City of Film' in the UK, there is more to Bradford such as its countryside, moors, asian residency, cultural and industrial heritage etc.  My second topic was influenced by Banksy's and Shephard Fairey's work. This was to campaign about a satirical subject. After coming up with 2 topics, I had difficulty thinking of the last one, and so to help me think of one I listened to a podcast which our tutor (John) told us listen to. The podcast was called 'Urban' from the 'Digital Human' series by BBC Radio 4. It talked about how every week, a million more people move to live in cities and whether 'smart' cities are the answer to the city's constant expansion. After listening to the podcast, I came up with the topic of technology bringing a change into life (modernism). much part of the design as the bricks and mortar.

A trial piece from my city in flux artist research

 

I made this experimental piece after looking at Banksy's work. I looked at the different kinds of satirical topics he had portrayed in his works & also the use of black, white and minimal use of red colours in his stencil pieces. I also noticed that Banksy uses a minimal amount of words with his pieces. Then after all this, I tried choosing a satirical topic to base my experimental piece on and eventually came up with the topic of underage gun usage in America.
To make the piece I:
1 - Found an image from google images. However this image wasn't a straight-forward stencil, it had shading.
2 - In order to get rid of the shading I inserted the image into Photoshop, went on to Image>Adjustments>Posterize, then Image>Adjustments>Threshold and this made the image into a solid black and white fill stencil for me to cutout.
3 - Once I cutout the stencil with a craft knife and cutting mat, I went back on to Photoshop and did a couple of trials with the stencil image in order to see how it was going to look (i.e. what was the typography going to say, where was it going to be placed etc.) In the end I realised that what I wrote in the above picture was too long and just settled for, 'I'm Only 11' as this was short just like Banksy's work, and also like Banksy's work, this made people think about the phrase and how it linked to the stencil.

City In Flux Artist Research

After making my mind map, I progressed further into my City in Flux work by researching several artists. I had researched some of these artists before and so that's why they were some of the first to come into my mind. I had to look at what interested & influenced these artists and also how they influenced/how they could influence my work.

Here is some of their work:

KEITH HAIRNG

Keith Haring's art was inspired the graffiti in the New York City subways; the bold lines and colours.

LORI NIX

Lori Nix says she was inspired by landscape painters. She was interested in looking at the city in a different perspective. The above picture shows a library taken over by nature in a future where mankind is no more.

BANKSY

Banksy was inspired by local artists in Bristol where he was brought up. His works are often based on satire and the message given is usually anti-war, anti-capitalist or anti-establishment.

SHEPHARD FAIREY

Shepard Fairey has stated that he takes his influences and inspiration from other street artists along with films he has seen (such as John Carpenter's 'They Live'), and slogans/quotes from well known people (such as celebrities/philosophers etc.)

BARBARA KRUGER

Barbara Kruger said that she was interested in the power of words/typography and how a few words could convey a large and hard-hitting message.

City In Flux - Mind Map

Before starting out my City In Flux project, I made a mind map in order to help guide myself towards a concept to base my work on.