Thank you, Cameron.

THIS is my final piece for the Critical Roles project.



I lovingly and happily used Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, and a spot of GarageBand... Not torturous at all...

I hope you enjoy the dulcet tones of Patrice Thomas, Philip Mason and Tali'eh Bonner. Thank you to them for all their help.

Now, GO AWAY.

Hello Final Cut Pro.... and such.

These are my workshop tasks using After Effects and Final Cut Pro.



I'd never used After Effects before, so this was my very first attempt. I made text appear! Hurray!

The photograph is from the Parliament Square protest and shows the point in the evening when we were burning out own placards for warmth. Nice.



...And this was my first attempt at using Final Cut Pro. All the photos were taken by me, again, at the Parliament Square protest in 2010.

I have been asking both students and non-students what they think about the state of education in preparation for my final piece. I want to animate a selection the of voice clips I have collected using text.

Dreamy.

I keep coming back to these kinetic typographic animations. But I want to make mine look more handmade. I've decided to use an alphabet I have drawn in Illustrator for important words, and then a letter press style font for the surrounding text.

I'm still trying to master After Effects...

Billy's Balloon.

A nice example of hand drawn animation. Well, when I say nice, I mean that in the loosest sense. I think it'd take a miracle for me to pull this off, but it's worth noting.

Disgusting.

There are so many examples of the protests on the internet, so here's one for you. Disgusting.




And while we're at it, here's a little animation and article about how cuts should be made to the BANKS, not EDUCATION and the things that really deserve good funding...

ONE GOOD CUT.

Oh Let Me Be Your Sledgehammer.

A lovely stop-motion animation for Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer'. Brilliant.
And Michael Jackson's 'Leave Me Alone' video. Lalalalove.

Oh David.

Dali.

I was thinking about how David Cameron and his government of idiots are ruining access to education, and how this will ultimately destroy dreams of many young people. The idea of dreams made me think of Dali and his surrealism, which in turn made me think of this Dali animation. Handmade, voice synced, and wonderful.

Parliament Square 2010.

After Millbank, there was Parliament Square.

On the day the government voted on the raising of university fees many of us went on the protest to show them how much destruction THEY were causing. Thanks to the media, however, WE were labelled the destructive ones.

This being my first protest, I was all excited. Lots of marching through the streets of London, chanting and sign waving. Like minded and thoroughly outraged people coming together, talking to each other, sharing opinions, peacefully showing our feelings to the country. Ending up at Parliament Square, it wasn't long before a few people decided it was necessary to knock over the metal fences and move across the grass, getting closer to Parliament.

Still, things were peaceful; people were just gathering in a larger space. We'd done our marching, we'd reached our destination - all agreed with the police, of course - and now we waited for the vote. And we waited. And waited. Surrounded by rows of police on foot, riot police and mounted horsie police, the atmosphere changed as word of kettling spread.

We tried all possible exits from the Square, but all were blocked. And hours later, we were still in very much the same situation. Unsurprisingly, people were not happy about being trapped in a confined space for hours on end, no food, no water, no warmth and no toilets. Call me stupid, but I was under the impression these were basic human rights.

Inside the Kettle.

A wee look inside the kettle at the 9th December protest, and the views of the peaceful majority.




"I think it was done deliberately. I think it was done deliberately to rid us of all these troublesome thinkers and artists, and of conscientious people. I think that if Thatcher could have done it, she would have done." - Stewart Lee

UCA Protest.

In November, a few UCA Maidstone students - including myself - organised a small protest in the town centre. We met at university and marched down to the office of our local MP, Helen Grant, to deliver a petition asking her to speak up against the fee rises and education cuts.

We were featured in the Kent Messenger (above) and you can see us on their website, HERE. I had the cowbell for extra annoyance and attention grabbing...


But what did our MP say? Not much really. Cheers, Tory bastards.

Western Spaghetti.

This is a lovely animation called WESTERN SPAGHETTI, and you can see it right here.

The whole thing is very clever in the objects it uses and the way it is put together in a smooth, stop motion production. Well done, chaps.

Nom.

All I Want is You.

This is the title sequence from the film Juno. I like the hand-crafted animation style that provides it with a humble feel and sets up the atmosphere of the film perfectly.



I really like hand-crafted style because of the unpretentious, almost modest feel it creates. I know it's not simple to created, but it feels a lot more accessible and more personal. I want to bring that into my animation...

This advert for the Audi Q5 from 2008, I think illustrates this point well.

Amazon Kindle.

The stop motion adverts for the Amazon Kindle are brilliant.

Just sayin'.

Kinetic.

I've been looking at a lot of videos made with kinetic typography, such as the above one. It uses a voice clip and displays it really nicely in text.

Now, all I have to do is learn how to hell to use After Effects...

I Had a Nice Time.

These two animations are by Juila Pot. Illustrated and super lovely looking. In an ideal world, I'd be shitting this stuff out.






This is another hand drawn animation from a student at Kingston University. It's lovely, too.

Monkmus.

The music video for 'Travel is Dangerous' by Mogwai was created by the artist Monkmus. It depicts alien creatures fleeing their crumbling planet through textured illustrations. Monkmus also created the video for 'I Will Follow You Into The Dark' by Death Cab For Cutie.



While this isn't stop motion animation, I LOVE the simplicity of telling a story through still drawings within a moving video. It may be worth a try.

Critical.

Hiya.

Welcome to my Critical Roles project for Graphic Design.

I'm looking into the recent student protests regarding the rise in tuition fees and the cuts to education, with this as my starting point:




Police arrested an 18-year-old on suspicion of attempted murder last night after a fire extinguisher was thrown at officers during the Millbank riot. Scotland Yard said the man was detained in Southampton yesterday. He was being taken to London to be questioned by Metropolitan police officers. On Friday, a 23-year-old student at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge was arrested then released on bail on suspicion of violent disorder. A Met spokesman said: "This arrest follows an investigation into public disorder where a fire extinguisher was thrown from the roof of Millbank Tower."

From The Guardian.

I think the media managed to miss the point to the "riot" completely. Well done. Another triumph for media misrepresentation.