Animating on Live-Action Footage

In today’s session with Shaun we looked at various artists who use animated character on top of live-action filmed / photographed backgrounds. Or who manipulate photographs into collages and rigged characters. I was particularly interested in Christoph Niemann’s (Abstract Sunday) work (below).

His work is simple, yet experimental and unique. The simple forms move in the real world and give a feeling of unease – because they don’t belong. But at the same time look sort of quirky for the exact same reason. They’re familiar to a human figure, yet so different – doing things a person would, yet in such non-human-like ways.

His work very slightly reminded me of doodles where arms or eyes are added to animals, or inanimate objects, or of Jeremy Nixon’s work.

Given half an hour to film the scene to work with, I quickly drew a bath – I knew I wanted a simple, calm scene that I could easily finish during the 3 hour lesson. (I used Listerine for colour, and washing up liquid for foam. Also, cold water trying to waste as few resources in the moment – in the future I’d hate to waste water, so perhaps I would film similar scenes when actually making a bath for myself).

The footage ended up a bit shaky, unfortunately. Personally I didn’t like it and re-shot the scene, but Shaun showed me how to track and parent footage, so I could work with it if I ever run into a similar problem in the future.

I normally don’t like filming out and about without a tripod, but now I feel like it wouldn’t be that much of an issue. It could even add more authenticity and interest to the animation, if it ‘shakes’ along with the footage.

I began working on the short animation, which took longer than expected as I ran into some trouble with Animate CC (my brushstrokes were disappearing, but reappearing when I moved the frameback and forth) despite trying to troubleshoot, the only thing that worked was restarting the program.

Despite this, I persevered and got a simple animation done. I’m actually really happy with how it came out, as i feel it would work well as a looped gif or video. I really like the nose sticking out, as I think it’s a little detail that adds personality to the character.

It still seemed a little bit flat, though. And so I’ve decided to record some water, foam and splashing sounds.

Once everything was put together, I am actually very happy with the result. The animation is actually quite personal to me, as I find bath time and sounds of water relaxing and something I often look forward to after a long day.

I think it’s a successful piece of work and it let me explore a new style that I didn’t think was ‘for me’ initially, but that I actually grew fond of and heavily enjoyed working in. Most likely for the same reason I was drawn to Niemann’s work – the weirdness yet familiarness of it.

I think if I explore this further, I would like to add different actions / scenarios – where maybe the character blows a bubble, or swishes their hand in the water.