Growing Up On A Bus

Here is the final animation, with the music I created put to it.

I have called the piece "Growing Up On A Bus" because for me this is a journey that has given me a lot of confidence and made me grow into a person who can do more with his day to day life and think more positively towards my future.

This was the journey I was hoping to portray in this animation. 

A Very Private Installation

After completing my piece I thought about how I would want to display it for others to view, ultimately if i had enough time I would have wanted to set up an installation space and lay it out like a bus so that the views could feel how I felt with the uncomfortable music playing through speaks behind them and the animation projected up into the front of the area or out of the sides like windows on a bus. 

But time was getting tight so I settled for a less ambitious installation with just the video projected onto a wall for people to view as in an exhibition.

Another but, with the deadlines for the 3rd years also being on the week I was trying to get an installation space at university I had to think up a contingency plan. Whilst I was thinking about how I could display this I thought how this was a very personal subject for myself to exhibit. With this in mind and all of the factors facing against me showing it in university I decided to have a very private showing for my friends and family, unfortunately my father could not get to the showing as it was at late notice to get suitable transport in place, but my friends and brother were able to come and watch my video. 

Here are some pictures from the evening 

The Final Composition

After finishing the piece I played around with many types of music, originally using a song by the band múm as a place holder I then listened and watch the animation to get a feel for what I had created. I liked the way the music was calming but at the same time quite eiree and discomforting.

Here is an example of my piece before I had added the final pieces of footage with the song involved.

I really like the effect this music has on the piece, but I would like to call this piece my own, I want to recreate the same feeling as this song but I want to create it myself.

So using ableton live I have been able to create this, in my view anyway.

I used an arpegiated bell, along with an organ to create a nice but eiree sound, the use of recorded voices with reverb and reversing effects enhanced the feeling of being on public transport.

Growing Up On A Bus Song

Creating The Journey With After Effects

As I said before I would be expanding from my original ideas I created in after effects.

I remade my original animation but lengthened the time line to 3 minutes so I could effectively experiment with the footage I had gotten.

As you can see from the picture I have got 7 layers in the final composition, The first two are the effect overlay which I have created using many different effects; Channel blur, wave warp noise, wave warp wave glow, noise and the 3d glasses effect. I am doing this to add more of an authenticity to the animation and make it seem less placid. as you can see from my earlier animation test it looks far too 2d.

With the 3d glasses layer paired to itself on a 3d layer it gives a slight effect of movement especially when working with wave warp effects. This layer acts as an overly for all of the layers underneath it.

The basis of the rest of the animation is very similar to my tests, but with the addition of my footage, i have used the main piece of footage of the reflection of myself in the bus window that will always be seen throughout the moving lights and colours and then layering my other footage of the moving lights and cars outside the window on 3 separate layers. (And obviously masked these layers to be only visible inside the original circle)

The reason for the 3 separate layers for the movement footage was so I could experiment with rotating and moving the footage whilst it is playing. By doing this I feel i have create the idea of movement and also with how the light sometimes erratically changes and moves can add to the uncomfortable feeling I am trying to create. 

as you can see I experimented with the rotation tool to create the movement, and also adding a radial blur to each of these layers to make the lights movement blur into a solid movement or motion.

After The Journey

Im still alive, the fear of me getting on the bus on christmas eve was taken over mainly by the feeling of ultimately being with my family. 

Most of the day I was worrying and looking at the time worrying that the moment I had to get on the bus was getting closer and closer, but every now and then my thoughts became clear and I could think rationally, which is a hard thing to do when your mind gets full of negative thoughts. 

As I waited for the bus, I could feel myself wanting to run away from the stop, but I stayed and got on the bus.

The journey was a mixture, there were sometimes my mind was feeling positive and that I could do this, and other times where I felt I needed to be off the bus (I want to represent these changing emotions with light as I said before) but I managed to do it and spend christmas with my father.

Thinking about what else I  want to do visually to my animation, I want to create the feeling of movement obviously to represent the journey but at the same time I want to reflect my personal side to the movement.

I want to use colour, movement and music to make the viewer feel as uncomfortable as I do on a bus.

I have gotten some footage from outside the bus window on my trip and also a few clips of the reflection of myself sitting on the bus, if I can experiment with after effects and use these two pieces of footage creatively I can expand my animation tests to become a very interesting but abstract piece.

Happy New Year

Personal Approach

After doing some animation tests in after effects I especially liked experimenting with the use of colours. I want to create a piece with the simplicity of my tests but with meaning, a more personal response to the brief.

Thinking about topography and the meanings that it can imply, I thought about journeys I had been on.

Other than holidays and standard trips I couldn't think of a trip I could make personal something that would relate solely to me as the creator.

It was a coincidence that on Christmas Eve I would have to get a bus to my fathers house to spend the holidays there.

To anyone this might not seem like a hard task.

But after a car crash when I was 13 getting on a bus causes some serious issues for myself.

After the crash I was diagnosed with a stress and anxiety disorder which has impaired my everyday life greatly (see kinetic typography animation below) and there were some things that I avoided doing to make myself feel comfortable, for example, going on a bus, to the cinema and sometimes even leave the house.

There was a lot riding on this bus journey, it was either get on the bus or spend christmas alone, as my brothers all have their own lives now and my father is too ill to drive.

so this time I had no choice.

I decided this could be an interesting journey to document. Especially for the sense of topography as I will have the literal idea of a journey from being on a bus, but also a more personal journey of me working through my stress and anxiety to get to my fathers for christmas.

In doing so I can monitor my anxiety and represent how I am feeling with the use of colour. For example green for good and red for bad.

Short Experiment With Colour

In preparation for making my animation, I decided to start testing out some ideas on After Effects, I wanted to recreate the visual idea of a literal meaning of topography before I start to explore some personal meanings to fit the brief. 

Using a black background with a white circle in After Effects, I used a spotlight that would change colour and move around the circle on a 3d layer on the time line.

As you can see I made it so the light would be continuously moving using the position key frames, and changed the light colour and intensity to have a transitional effect of the coolers changing from red to blue to green.