Animation Messy 2

This assignment has a theme - Weight of the World

In class, we were given an introduction to 2D puppetry... although due to my grad film ideas limiting how far I explore with mediums I didn't partake in that medium for that week.
Instead I tried to develop more exploration with sand on glass.

As far as this week's theme went, I tried to focus mainly on the words and the emotional weight it brings.

Words that come upon contemplating
Weight of the World:

heavy

dark

difficult

trial

grand

purpose

desperate

suspense

destiny

I couldn't exactly cover all of these words but they definitely added fuel to the process.
I started by aiming to capture the rough, heavy texture of the black sand.

This test added an extra element of visual chaos to the Weight of the World - Successful

This was another test in capturing the heavy texture, again showing chaos - Not so successful

Another stab at the texture, this one speaks more to the vision of my film - Kind of successful

This test speaks to desperation, and in my eyes also to destiny - Successful

This test is purely experimenting with the vision of my film -  Not Successful

Here's me experimenting with the footage that I have in After Effects to see what happens to the successes and the not-successes when they are added together.

Doing these tests was good insight into the possibilities of my film and also into the possibilities of the medium in general.  There are some things I would like to keep developing and some that I think I won't mind putting behind me for now.  What I am hoping for, the more that I think about it, is to become competent enough to execute a few select ways of animating sand to be able to take that into a more commercial context... although right now I would also be content letting the sand take over certain parts of the film.

What I will definitely take with me is the boiling texture from the first test, and perhaps develop a texture from the 2nd or 3rd test.  But the hand and the top view of the tornado can be put aside for now... but if the urge returns I'll use it and attempt variations of these tests.

Just as long as I give myself the time to set up and clean everything up again.  That took a while.

Overall, I definitely have more appreciation for the works I've seen that were done using the sand-on-glass technique and feel excited to have partaken in a similar fashion.