I have to be honest now, with the other five week project i have been struggling to keep working at this one - now o know three weeks is a long time to forget about something and it is definately something im not going to do again!
I can just say that it was knowing that the other project was due in sooner that made me focus mainly on that one rather than this transcription one.... a sily mistake... so for these few weeks i have not alot to show. I did manage to get some scenery images completed with colour like snapshots for my final piece. I can see what i want to create so very very clearly in my mind, the colours composition and camera movements around all of which, although i cant always create the best representation of this in my design process or at least all of the detail i know i want to include - but explaining it face to face with someone i can get all of the info accross. I did design my smaller robot character aswell and so the final images from 'him' are below.
This is the first stage of the music machine. It is a slightly updated version from a windup musical machine on a larger scale.
It provides the pretty much constant sound in the background and is the introduction to the whole song. After the switch is turned on it activates the cog on the end to start to turn and windup the machine. As the central cog turns the small raised sections nock on the metal poles and create pitched different sounds.
There is also a static sound playing in the background and this is coming from the stacks of broken television sets in the corner stacked like you might find cars at a scrap yard. As the electricity gets going it powers up a few of them but with no channels it just gives off the crackling sound.
The main bass sound for the whole piece is made by a similar design to the insde of a piano but against a wall. Instead of pressing keys small hammer type arms tap the central section and create the sound. Different length wires give off different pitched sounds. There is a hinge at the top which allows the hammers to move. At first only a few hammers move but after a few bars more join in until the beat has built up.
Below is the link to my animation i created to give me the timing for when these keys need to be hit. (it was slightly to large to be uploaded directly onto 'blogger.com')) Its very basic but gives me all the info i need visually. I can hear the sounds in this song seperately but needed to find a way that i could break it down into smaller chunks visually enabling me to look at the seperate sounds. I also felt i needed to do this as then i am able to work out what machine makes what sound and when and also if i have missed any sounds off.
this spoon mechanism makes the twanging sound, the spoons are mounted on a rotating cog that turns them and as they spin the pluck the strings. They are slighty offset which means that 'twang' is in time.
When i first heard this song it was the way that the song builds that interested me and so i need to keep this very clear in my animation.
Just like in 'STOMP' you can see how every sound is made....
The link to my animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5h1ZR8L2P8
Development of my initial animation mechanism - THE BEGINNING......
As I have already said earlier in my blog it is the rain that starts the animation and so below is my finalised diagram of why and how this gets the music started. The running theme of the mechanics in this project is similar to the domino effect, where everything happens as a result of the previous, and without it nothing moves at all.
The hole in the ceeling provides the place for the leak... This then falls into an empty fuse box which is hanging on by only one screw... As this fills up it overflows onto a mug that has been placed to start a circuit...
This is done so that after the robots power has run out the curcuit can start again when it rains so he can 'powerup'.
The mug is a regulation army cup (1940's) that has a bullet hole mid way up. As the water over flows into it it fills up the cup and makes it heavier. As it gets heavier it weighs down the sea saw mechanism and presses the button to start the 'music machine'. As the hole is only half way up the water is continually flowing out so as it stops raining that cup rises and it all stops... allowing it all to recharge.
This week has mainly been looking at my research into parts of machinery and trying to come up with a more successful robot design. Below are my sketches that I have drawn up taking you to my final idea but i just want to go through my thought processes with the design beforehand.
My design idea for this robot is that he is totally self dependant, built entirely from scraps and bit and pieces he could find (how the building process ever began from nothing is not important in this project – just the fact that he is ‘alive.’) So taking his into account the final design would have to be very collage like, with components together only because they fit and not for any aesthetic design reasons. I really want the viewer to have the, ‘is that a...?’ moment when they look at him noticing everyday things or old things are making him up.
At first i had the idea of incorporating a cassette player into his body but then after researching that i found that cassettes were not designed until the 60’s, remembering that he is born out of the 1940’s that was an obvious problem! So i thought about using a record player. This was within the time period, plus it would have a certain amount of comedy to it when seen in the final animation, by this I’m not expecting a roaring laughter but more a smile.
Another point about my character is that he lives entirely for music, his life depends on it and it is his best friend so this had to show through in his appearance. I wanted him to resemble music machines for this reason and so his is why it features so largely in my final design. Although below i have said it is m final design I feel that he is still open for development or changes as this project progresses.
(i used this design for the chest section as you can see - it is a 1940's radio. I also tried to incorporate the amount of buttons and knobs into the robot design )
(1940's record player - for the heart/chest section on the character)
(I did have all of my previous storyboard ideas but i have lost them as hard copies (sketches)and also the memory stick that they were on - i was hoping to find them before posting but ill add them at a later date however annoying it is!!!)
My final story idea:
The first scene starts with a mechanical sun and moon moving accross the window outside, they start off after some rain and them start moving fast to show the changing of days, then finally slow down. As they do it starts to rain again in front of the mechanical sun.
Inside, the camera pans accross objects in shadow and follows wires all linked together stragely until it reaches the corner of the room where there is a very small work bench. Above the work bench in the celling there is a hole that is letting water in from the rain, and below which is a small circuit designed to press a button once the convieniently placed cup is filled. The idea is that the machine that has been built in the room was designed for charging up the main character - a robot. The machine and the robot can only charge to a certain amount (indicated by lights) and then they both switch off so the robot has to have a way of re-charging even after he has run out of power - hence this strange circuit. Once the button is pressed the machine starts which is all custom made by the robot using objects from the 1940's, including himself. The lights also become brighter at this point. As the machine powers up so do the sounds building the beat. All the sounds are made from all of the objects i mentioned earlier that make up the machine.
Once charged the robot 'un-plugs' himself from the machine and walks towards the cupboard in the back of the room. Inside there is a smaller robot that has been made by him. The main robot then pulls a battery from a case on his body and puts it into the smaller one. As he does this the smaller robots eyes light up and the main robots eyebrows raise as if to be smiling.
I explained to Alan the problem and he suggested that maybe I should chose a definite time period for which I want my scene to belong, and then start to look into basic components inside a machine and think about how I could re make the machine. Also to have a look at existing robots in film and see the methods and techniques that they use, in particular he mentioned the Disney Pixar film, ‘Robots’ as they were all comprised of object found from the same time period. After speaking to Alan, I refreshed my mind about what I was trying to create and had quite a few ides of further paths I could take in my development stages.
Within a few days I had started to generate quite a few ideas, I have chosen a time period – the 1940’s as I have a personal fondness to the time periods style and also to relevance of the war, which has similarities within some of the lyrics in the song itself, using words like ‘march’ referring to others as ‘sir’. I like the idea of maybe intertwining very subtle hints of the war, maybe in the form of a poster on the floor or a similar effect, and maybe not everyone would notice it but to have that aspect there would be brilliant for when it is noticed. I also made a trip to a local breakers yard to take pictures of interesting pieces of machinery, old pieces of car and the way they fit together.
I am aware that my final machines will not be made out of car parts but the way they are put together would follow a very similar technique. I was particularly looking at shape and texture and found myself being more interested in the older cars in the lot as they seemed to have more character. Maybe this was because their dents and scratches and alterations from how they were originally made told a story about the ‘life’ that they had lived – this is what I want my robot to be able to do!
Below are my images that I have managed to gather, i have put them in very short slideshows as i felt this was the easiest way to view them on my blog unfortunately they were too large to be uploaded here so i have put them onto 'YouTube'. The links are below....
A COLLAGE OF 1940'S MACHINES AND DEVICES: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0EmFEUIT7w
BROKEN DOWN MECHANICAL OBJECTS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWT6gpnnya4
CAR PARTS IMAGES - MY TRIP TO THE JUNKYARD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vmeKlTWZvs
When I first listened to the song a few things that it made me aware of were the composition of all of the different sounds, they are built up throughout the song, almost introduced one at a time. It made you aware of what you was listening to, and this was a point that I wanted to bring into my idea, but with a twist.
As electro was music made up of electronic sounds (or at least the majority of it) I wanted to somehow introduce all of the sounds from this song as mechanical sounds – following the same theme. I wanted to create a composition of sounds created by small mechanical devices, or mechanical recreations of existing instruments.
At first a group in particular sprung to mind that do a similar thing, with the same message that music can be made out of anything, and they are, Stomp. They are a group of people that have west end instrumental performances comprising of no known instruments. Instead they use alternatives, but the sound is just as impressive. I am going to try and incorperate the way they interpret music through a range of strange objects the same way in my work.
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It is all set in a small one cell room
All the objects have been made or built
There is an open door with light falling through it and one small window in the top corner of the room. Through it you can see a small mechanical sun, whose rays are being moved and controlled by cogs. Throughout the song the weather outside the window changes, sometimes metal clouds float by.
At the very beginning of the song, before the music starts you see the character altering his machines in some way or another (for instance turning a screw, but i need further thought into this). Then you are made aware of his power source becoming low – maybe indicated by small lights on his body dimming, and you see him plug himself in to the machine. As the music starts you will see indications of his power being re charged due to the music.
You see the majority of the animation through the eyes of the character but catch glimpses of his hands and body etc, which are all mechanical.
Towards the end, you begin to question the point for this character being here, alone (why doesn’t he just leave through the opened door?)
At the very end of the piece the character turns around and you see the power source he is plugged into and realise that if he were to leave he would become unplugged and no longer be able to power up; instead he stays and creates music.
At the very end the camera pans out leaving you no longer looking through the characters perspective but looking at him in this small room. The camera then pans out of the room, still looking inside. As it pans outwards you see that everywhere is desolate, and the only thing visible is the building he resided in and the mechanical sun placed on top of a huge pole.
The idea:
..is that you your made to believe that he is forced to stay at this prison but in fact it is all that is left, and it keeps him happy. I built this narrative from the song words and the sense that song could go on forever. Below I have selected the words in particular that I felt were most important to this song:
...There’s nothing in a world where the melody is broken ...There’s always some way to make the silence be spoken ...I’m found I’m looking for a place where I was once found ...for a mechanical fright ...Return o the nothingness and joy just might be right ...I’m a mechanical music man ...I’m a complicated being with love songs to beat ...mechanical museum ...malfunctioning being ...I’m lost I’m looking for a place where I can get lost
An idea that I’ve had for one of the sounds that is similar to rain is to have raindrops fall from a hole in the ceiling in his room and land onto different sized empty in cans giving a different pitch. Only the raindrops don’t break up when they land they roll onto the floor as they are made of metal.
This is the sort of idea that I want the rest of my animation to have.
I started to think about what my robot and its environment could look like as I had an idea in my head that seemed to be very ‘retro’, sort of, a room with all of its objects collaged together to function in the same way as before, but look entirely different.
For instance and amp (or speaker of some sort) but that looks like nothing you have seen before, made form only the basic components necessary for it to work. I stated to think about colours and further into style but it was very difficult without a clear understanding of what and how the objects in the room were to fit together – it was time for a tutorial!
