Photo from Che Men's Magazine - Complements of adverbox

I chose a men's magazine ad for analysis.

Surface Meaning:

Most of the image is filled by a woman. The woman is wearing a green top, carrying a purse, wearing a white skirt with tabs that have numbers on them with red text that says "My number". The woman seems Caucasian, and has brown hair. It seems that she is walking toward some sort of train station. At the bottom of the image is a logo in red and white with "Men's Magazine" written under it. To the left of the logo, white text reads: "Let us keep dreaming of a better world." A gradient darkens the top of the image.

Advertiser's Intended Meaning

"Let us keep dreaming of a better world" implies that if women were more like objects and their numbers were more easily accessible, the world would be better. The gradient, darkening the top of the image, is not a polarizer (which is commonly used to darken bright skies). The gradient also darkens the top of the girl, leading the viewer's eye to the bottom of the image. The brightest part is where the audience's eye automatically is drawn. The brightest part of this image is the girl's butt, and the red text, on her butt, emphasizes that it is the focal point of the image. This ad is clearly not being serious. They are playing on a stereotype of men. Part of what makes it successful is the fact that the ad is not attempting to be taken seriously. It is an ad for men, making fun of men.

Cultural / Ideological Meaning

The image's focus is on the girl's butt. The camera isn't just focused or angled toward the girl's butt, it was taken at the level of the girl's butt, rather than her face. Also, the girl's face is not even shown, implying that she -- as a person -- is not as important as her assets. Showing bits of her butt and a lot of leg further objectifies women. The girl is wearing a small purse and a bracelet, as if she is going out. [Middle class and upper class men usually pick up girls that are going out, rather than the girl with the big purse who has a life.] This image is full of hair, skin, and butt and asks the audience to keep dreaming of a better world. It's obviously intended for men. Arguably, the only people who would understand this ad are a class of people who would see an ad with tabs like the one that the girl's skirt is made out of. So, this might be a middle and lower class ad. (Maybe the higher class wouldn't know so much about these tabs?)

Favorite Ad Campaign

My favorite ad campaign is Apple's Apple and Itunes campaign. Visually, they stick with the simple aesthetic that drives all of their marketing campaigns. They keep a simple aesthetic, but the effects are actually very complex. The color and contrast [lights and darks] are always well balanced. Every little detail is accounted for, and controlled with precision.

They started with a one color background with a dancer silhoetted. The iPod, in the videos, as well as the headphones and headphone cables were silhoetted as white [good branding].

Technologic

Are You Gonna Be My Girl

Hey Mama

Feel Good Inc.

Jerk It Out

Later, they took things to the next level with gradients, shapes, patterns, and textures [that move to the beat of the music and that are coordinated with the dancers' movements]. The animation eases in and out, and it all looks very controlled. These are, by far, my favorite commercials in this campaign.

Shut Up and Let Me Go

Wolf Train

Mi Swing Es Tropical

They even decided to pair up with artists, featuring their songs. They didn't focus on the ipod, as much, in these videos.

Work That

Viva La Vida

This ad campaign, for their products, has made a universal connotation of music to their brand. To the group of creatives responsible for these videos - if they are one group - my hat is off to you.

How do you learn?

In school, intelligence is measured in one way. For the most part, teaching is geared toward one to two types of learning styles, and children who do not learn in the same way that is being taught are classified by grades as being less intelligent. I wonder what would happen if we looked at all of the different aspects of intelligence and appreciated people's non-traditional intelligence, as well as creating environments in schools that weren't just geared toward one type of learning style.

Learning styles describe the discrepancy between the way people learn. For instance, I might learn more efficiently by seeing a diagram of how something works, while my friend might learn more efficiently by aurally hearing how it works, while a mutual friend of ours may find it easier to read about it in a text. These are all legitimate ways of learning, but for the most part, students usually don't have all of the options when they are learning in school. They learn the way the teacher chooses to teach, and are, by grade, classified in terms of intelligence.

I don't feel that my learning style was really catered to, growing up. So, I will need to work on how I intake information and learn most effectively to increase the rate at which I learn during educational experiences that don't suite my learning style. Based on two learning style tests that I took, I am very clearly a kinesthetic learner. This means that to intake information, I use all of my senses, and I learn best with things like field trips, laboratories, examples of principles, real life examples, hands-on approaches, trial and error, and solutions to problems. I am the type of learner that remembers "real" things that happen, so I can easily remember facts or theories when they are applied to real life. To improve my learning experience, I can take note of examples, or relate what I'm learning to real life situations. I can use pictures to illustrate ideas, which will help me visually remember things. I can also talk to other people like me about what I'm studying to help solidify information.

I think that this is a very important lesson for me, specifically because I am interested in education and sharing knowledge. Knowing how other people can potentially learn will help me make sure that none of my students are left behind because of something that I missed while teaching. I really appreciate what I consider to be good teaching, but that might just actually mean that I really appreciate learning geared towards the way that I learn best from someone with a similar learning style. I hope to use what I've learned about learning styles to help myself learn more efficiently as well as help create the best learning environment for my students.


To take the tests for yourself, follow the links below:

http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire
http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html

My Favorite Animation

Even after learning the basics of animation, my favorite animation (3D) is still Final Fantasy VII Advent Children. In fact, learning how animation works makes me appreciate it so much more. The art of every single shot looks tasteful. It’s like putting all of the best choreography, camera work, art, models, and coloring into one movie and having – instead of one – multiple “best parts” of the movie. Usually, I can figure out – in a movie or show – what an artist could do to achieve certain effects, but there are still some things in this movie baffle me.

In particular, there is one fight scene that is one of my favorite animations of all time:

One thing that this clip really shows is how much you can do to add to a normal action scene with camera movement. If you tried to imagine this scene from a distance, it would seem nothing like the final result. Some animations don’t take advantage of the unlimited camera movement in a 3d world.

Another thing that this clip uses is time remapping. To me, related to the original Disney principles, time remapping is like the squash and stretch and exaggeration applied to time. Actually, if you look at a line or graph editor of time, that is precisely what you are doing: bending, squashing, and stretching a line representing time. The time remapping mixed with the smooth camera shots, combined, make a great effect.

One thing that I’m learning more and more as I animate is that it is hard to fully take advantage of the 3d space for cinematography while also maintaining taste. My initial inclination is always to try something crazy, thinking that it will look just like my vision. But it never is, and watching a scene like this makes me really appreciate a few things:

1. The decision of how close and far away shots should be for which parts. It is very easy to miss some of the action and disorient an audience when whipping a camera around in circles and flying around a room. But, the shots are framed in ways that you can tell what is happening as well as get up close shots of parts that are happening. The shots are framed so well, in fact, that almost every 15 seconds, you could go through and take a still frame of the animation and use it as a still picture. (The cinematographer follows the rule of thirds well in most shots and breaks it well in others.)

2. The decision of what movement is appropriate for what shots. There are a number of ways that you can move a camera to get different effects. The camera movement enhances every part of what they are trying to convey to their audience. Fast turns and zooms give the idea that a camera man is having a hard time keeping up with the action. Shaking the camera gives the idea that there is a physical camera shaking because of the power of something hitting the ground or a wall.

3. The cuts. After all is said and done, having five or six cameras swirling around a fight scene, how do you decide when to cut what and where to cut? Some are timed with the beat, and others are timed with an action. The practice of a successful cut in an action sequence is to cut in the middle of an action so the audience is focused on the action and doesn’t notice the camera changing. That is the aim, to change shots without distracting the eye of the audience. They do a phenomenal job with cutting in this scene.

I’d like to say just one more thing about these three things combined in animation. Now that there is more control with cameras in 3d environments, Disney’s principles to exaggerate life in animation can be transferred to a camera for shots to give the same effect. For instance, instead of making a hand bigger for a punch, an artist could use a wide angle lens and get up close to the hand as it passes. This has been done very well in 2d Japanese animations; however, they have to emulate a wide angle or fish-eye lens instead of using a “real” fake fish-eye, like in a 3d program. Another thing, which I mentioned already, is the shake of the camera. The shakiness of the camera mixed with time remapping can make a powerless scene very dramatic and powerful. Last, the scene with the girl landing on the wall, while going into slow motion, is one of my favorite shots. She squashes to the wall, while complying with her realistic body and rig, and there is not a whole lot going on because she is just on the wall in slow motion hardly moving. But then the camera moves back quickly to see the flowers go up in the air in front of the camera. It is almost as if the power of her landing on the wall is not shown through her landing on the wall, but through the camera and the flowers in slow motion and fast camera movements. This prime example of what I am talking about.

Using Reference Footage in Blender

After much excitement and thought, I decided to just go ahead and try using reference footage in Blender, even though I didn’t really know how it would all work. I started by setting up two cameras: one camera from the front with the other at a 90 degree angle (side). I was looking for a few things while setting up the shot. 1. I wanted my subject to be distinguishable from the background. Ideally I would have set up white sheets behind my little brother (my subject), but what we had worked fine. Another aspect to this was lighting, which compensated for my lack of a solid background. 2. I was looking for enough space. I needed room above my subjects head and below his feet – enough for him to move around and jump without going off screen. 3. I tried to think of myself working in blender and what things I could do to make the process easier. I figured out that I should put the camera at about his chest area because that’s usually how I have my view in blender set up (ortho). (Also, I made sure that when my subject was in the middle of one camera, he was also in the middle of the other camera horizontally and then marked that spot for a reference.)

After getting the shots my next decision came: do I try to use both videos separately? Or should I edit them together and cut off some of the screen space to make it easier. I didn’t know how this whole thing would work in Blender, but it was all a learning experience to just get me to try this process out. So, for simplicity in Blender, I imported the video files into Adobe Premiere and started editing. During the shoot, I made sure to clap my hands on screen to have an easy way to time both shots. After getting them timed, I brought both of them to about 75% size and placed them next to each other. The front angle to the left and the side angle to the right (overlapping the front). Then, I took the overlapping video and added a 4 point garbage matte effect to it and made the overlapping video cut off in the middle so that both videos were cut equally. I exported as a .mpeg.

I looked up a tutorial that I previously posted on here, the Blender and Voodoo tutorial. I remembered that tutorial covering how to import a video and play it during an animation. What I had to do is add a background image and choose movie. Also, I made sure to click auto refresh or something like that to make sure that the video frame changed when the frame of my animation changed. It didn’t work. After restarting and going through the tutorial 5 more times, I tried something that I noticed was different from my screen and the screen of the tutorial. It worked! In blender, your video doesn’t show up unless you are viewing an Orthographic Perspective. Mine was set to User Perspective. Another thing to mention, is the video didn’t show up in any other windows. I was thinking that I could have done what I had planned on doing from the beginning: take two separate reference video files and have them in different angled windows. So, I would guess that if you open two separate background images in different windows, the process would be the same.

Next, I changed the size of the videos. In the Background Image Properties window, I changed the percentage of the size down to fit the size of my character. Then, when I zoomed in, the quality of my video was not compromised at all! So, I had my front angle to the left, my side angle to the right, and I put my character right in the middle of them where the video split. It was difficult to see the rig controls with all of the distracting colors from the video in the background, but I got over it. Now, every time I turned the camera in that window, the reference footage would disappear, but I would then just change back to a front (ortho) perspective to get it back. My last test before I started animating was to see if I could cover the other angle; it wasn’t looking too bright, because when I rotated my view the reference footage disappeared. I tried switching to a side angle (ortho) and it worked!! I was so proud of how easy everything was in Blender. Now, I could simply change angles and my character, in between both reference subjects would just turn to the side. It was perfect.

A few notes that I had from my first experience with reference footage..
I set up my cameras looking the wrong way. I had a camera from the front and to the left of my brother. I should have had a camera to the right of him so that when I changed angles in blender, I wouldn’t have to hold ctrl to get the other side, but it wasn’t that much of an extra burden. Another thing that I did incorrectly at first was set my brothers feet facing down. Like in a cartoon, if a foot is facing you, it points down a little and is lower than a foot behind it. I knew this wasn’t right, but I did it anyway. When I thought about it, my real camera was NOT an orthographic perspective, but a user perspective. When I changed my 3d view to User, the feet could be flat on the surface in Ortho and look like they were facing down and one higher than the other in User, like my reference footage. So, bear in mind that you won’t be working with orthographic footage if you use any normal camera. My last note is on keyframing. I decided to treat the animation like pose-to-pose rather than straight ahead. I started with straight ahead and it was taking forever. What I looked for in pose-to-pose was any change in movement or direction with different parts of the body. When I found a shift, I would set a keyframe. For instance, when my brother jumped, I chose the highest point in the air for a keyframe, but in mid air, his arms came up with his body and halfway through the jump stopped while his body kept moving higher. Because his arms significantly changed in movement, I set a keyframe there as well. After the main movements were keyframed, I could go back and work on more subtle things like some facial animation and other movements. (I didn’t do much with that yet because this was just a test, but it seems to be the best workflow for this type of thing.)

Economics!

This is a list of the nine economical ways that animation an build emotions in the imagination of the audience:

1. Rear View – for the audience to get inside the characters’ heads
2. Shadows – for suspense, drama, and interest
3. Shadows Over The Character – for excitement and dramatic action
4. Overlays – for adding depth to the situation through the movement of things other than the character (almost personified)
5. Dramatic Layout – for the portrayal of feelings of a character through the layout
6. Pictoral Shot – for setting a mood and saving yourself difficult animation through the use of an establishing shot
7. Effects Animation – for creating strong feelings by the animation equivalent of particle system effects
8. Held Drawings With Camera Moves – for strengthening expressions beyond what is normally possible
9. Offstage Sounds – for telling a story and or enhancing a story by sounds rather than or in addition to animation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2uuEOV5PhI


Shadows are used heavily to dramatize the shots, as well as overlays and effects though the names over people’s heads and gun shots. Held drawings with camera moves are used, however the frames are not still.

Points to remember when animating emotions:

1. Make sure the emotional state of the character is clearly defined.
2. The thought process reveals feeling. Sometimes it can be shown with a single, held drawing or a simple move. Other times, there should be gestures, body moves, or full action. Determine which is best in each case.
3.Be alert to use of cutting and camera in helping to accentuate the emotion.
4. Ask yourself constantly:
What am I trying to say here?
What do I really want to show?
How do I want the audience to react?
5. Use the element of time wisely:
To establish the emotion of the character,
To convey it to the viewers,
To let them savor the situation.
Don’t be ponderous, but take it away from them just as they start to enjoy it.

Rules and Guidlines of Animation

1. Appeal in drawing
Does this drawing appeal to an audience. (is it likeable)
2. Staging
Make sure that everything around looks good with the scene including the placement of the characters. (Interaction with stage)
3. Most interesting way? [Would anyone other than your mother like to see it?]
This one is great. Get your head out of the fact that you just created something and observe it as you would anything else that you would watch. Critique it like it's not yours. Is it plain or interesting? (Like appeal)
4. Is it the most entertaining way?
Could the same thing happen in a different way to entertain the audience more than it does now?
5. Are you in character?
Are you thinking as if you are the character?
6. Are you advancing the character?
Is the audience learning anything about the character?
7. Is this the simplest statement of the main idea of the scene?
Are you complicating a simple idea?
8. Is the story point clear?
You know why this is happening; will the audience know?
9. Are the secondary actions working with the main action?
The secondary actions are to supplement the main action, not fight against it for attention.
10. Is the presentation best for the medium?
Are you trying to do something that is not best suited for paint, pencil, marker, this kind of paper, etc.
11. Does it have 2 dimensional clarity?
Does the silhouette make sense?
12. Does it have 3 dimensional solidity?
Does everything look 3d equally?
13. Does it have 4 dimensional drawing? [Drag and follow through]
This is like squash and stretch over time, bringing a cutout circle to life by thinking outside of the box.
14. Are you trying to do something that shouldn't be attempted? [Like trying to show the top of Mickey's head]
Is it necessary to be attempting this? Could this be done in another way and be just as effective?


1. Inner feelings and emotion
Are the feelings and emotions of the character showing through?
2. Acting with clear and definite action
Does this look like a deliberate action or an accidental one?
3. Character and personality
Does this character have a distinguishable set of character traits and personality?
4. Thought process through expression changes
Can we see into the character's mind by watching mind turn?
5. Ability to analyze
Does the character show life through the ability to judge and analyze things for him/her self?
6. Clear staging
Is everything placed for a reason? Is it balanced and realistic? (Not realism)
7. Good composition
Does everything work together harmoniously?
8. Timing
Is the timing realistic and does everything work together?
9. Solidity in drawing
Does everything stay looking solid? Don't make things incongruent over a period of time.
10. Power in drawing
Don't make the scene or anything in it look weak unless intentional and or balanced by something strong.
11. Strength in movement
Are the actions of movement looking deliberate or accidental?
12. Imagination
This is an animation: are you getting the most out of it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUl0EPwo4ds This first example shows beautiful staging in very interesting and unique ways. I'd like to talk about how this uses the 4th dimension. A popular technique, time remapping, adds to this 4th dimension. It's like the classic drag and follow through the medium of time instead of actually seeing it. This allows for the equivalent of a drag and follow through to be applied to realistic a medium like film. Every aspect in the first list is covered well here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByMZYcDk18M In this example, more of the character points are covered, but it also covers the other points as well. The staging and interaction with it is great in the fight scenes. Also, the words and attitudes from the voice acting to facial expressions to the way that the characters move when they fight shows advancement of character and all of the other things on the second list.