The Brief
“Conceive and produce an animation to accompany one of the two selected audio files that will clarify, energise and illuminate the content.
The RSA believes that everyone should have the freedom and power to turn their ideas into reality – we call this the Power to Create. Through our ideas, research and 27,000-strong Fellowship, we seek to realise a society where creative power is distributed, where concentrations of power are confronted, and where creative values are nurtured.”
The Script
Curiosity is a muscle, use it or lose it!
It’s something that we consciously have to nurture in ourselves, in our families, in classrooms, at work. Sometimes I hear that curiosity and creativity are killed by too many facts, but actually the opposite is true. The more you know, the more you want to know. Not only that but the more you know, the more connections you can make between the different bits of knowledge that you have in your head and therefore the more ideas you have, which is why curiosity is really the wellspring of creativity.
Technology is replacing routine work and that’s what technology replaces first and has done throughout history. So intellectually curious people, people who are capable of learning throughout their career, or asking questions – good questions – of adapting and collaborating with others from different disciplines, people who are capable of really thriving in this world of non-routine work, in other words, are the people who are going to do better
It’s something that we consciously have to nurture in ourselves, in our families, in classrooms, at work. Sometimes I hear that curiosity and creativity are killed by too many facts, but actually the opposite is true. The more you know, the more you want to know. Not only that but the more you know, the more connections you can make between the different bits of knowledge that you have in your head and therefore the more ideas you have, which is why curiosity is really the wellspring of creativity.
Technology is replacing routine work and that’s what technology replaces first and has done throughout history. So intellectually curious people, people who are capable of learning throughout their career, or asking questions – good questions – of adapting and collaborating with others from different disciplines, people who are capable of really thriving in this world of non-routine work, in other words, are the people who are going to do better
Influence & Example
Over the years with visual narrative I’ve had a little experience and a lot of influence. Most recent influence is from an digital artist called “Beeple”. Here are some examples of the style of visual piece I would love to create for this project.
Music
From past interest and learning I have been able to create an musical piece to accompany the narration and push the themes further. The music parts were created in Ableton Live. The correct BPM (tempo) of the track was picked to sit well with the narration vocal. The narration track was cleaned up and a high quality reverb was used stubley to give the vocal a little more depth and character. Finally the musical track was given a side chain, multi-band compressor to help ‘duck’ or ‘dip’ the music out of the way when the narrator speaks.
Developmental
Here are just some of the various Maxon Cinema 4D scenes used to create the final animation.
Rendering & Compositing
After the tremendously large file footprint of 620gb, I gathered the assets back into Adobe Premiere Pro before creating an Adobe After Effects project. The rendering process was achievable to Cinema 4D’s ability to manage one single render queue amongst how many computers that also have Cinema 4D installed on the network (LAN). The rendering took around 3 weeks of 6 or 7, i7 & E5500 series computers. Adobe After Effects allowed me to apply various compositing techniques to gel the entire edit together. Additions like lighting effects, flares, depth of field, masking, sharpening and frame movement were added.
Animation Posters
The brief required additional assets, one of these assets were 4x A3 sized promotional posters each linked below.
