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For this project we are asked to create 10 GIFs showing 10 different movie tropes. I have never done any animation so this will be a new challenge for me.
This was my first effort at an animation done in the studio using Photoshop. I found it quite difficult to wrap my head around how everything worked with the layering and frames but I want to learn more through this project.
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Movie Tropes
For this GIF I decided to go for the hacker trope specifically of them saying, "I'm hacking into the mainframe" I wanted to also put the 'I'm in' but I decided that was too much. I chose a font that felt very computer like and the green neon colour that reminds me of the matrix.
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Manic Pixie Dream Girl
The Manic Pixie Dream Girl: "a type of female character depicted as vivacious and appealingly quirky, whose main purpose within the narrative is to inspire a greater appreciation for life in a male protagonist." The MPDG has been seen in lots of characters for example Summer in 500 Days of Summer, Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim vs The World and Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. For this gif I took the most inspiration from Ramona Flowers and Marla from Fight Club. I used the iconic scene of Marla smoking as my reference. I want to strengthen my illustration tools so chose to draw this one out on Procreate, I don't think it came out too bad.
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Superhero Landing
The Superhero Landing or the three point landing is something that often crops up in Marvel and DC movies. The hero falls from a great height and lands in this signature pose. It was made fun of the Deadpool movies and now in Marvel's own Black Widow. I rotoscoped this scene of Florence Pugh in the Black Widow movie doing the landing. I had never done rotoscoping before and found how time consuming it is to get all of the movements. I do really like how this came out and how fluid it looks. I also added a halftone effect to it to make it have a small reference to comic books.
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Rotoscoped scene from Black Widow.
Western Shootout
This one is based off that weird hand thing that cowboys do before they have a shootout/ duel?. I wanted to make reference to Saul Bass somewhere in these gifs as he is one of the great graphic designers for film, so I chose to do the hands in his style and have very flat contrasting colours. I also wated to pay homage to spaghetti western openings, specifically A Fistful of Dollars. Iginio Lardani was the designer behind the opening for this film and also The Good The Bad and The Ugly. I really like the black on red in Fistful of Dollars and the blocky style.
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In the style of Saul Bass and spaghetti western openings.
You Hang Up
The you hang up gag has been used in comedies for years now. For this one I wanted to try and do the puppet type mouths like the ones in the Monty Python videos. I also wanted to use found photographs of 'retro' looking people as i always feel doing this creates more of a vibe than just usuing modern stock photos. Originally I was only going to use the man talking into the phone but left the communication got a little lost so added the woman on the other phone. I used Photoshop to create this one and put them both on a split screen to show theyre on the phone and in two different places as well as putting them on the stereotypical blue and pink backgrounds. This one works really well as a cycle and also reminds me of those birthday cards with the vaguely sexist jokes on them.
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Cliff Hanger
For this one I wanted to do a Thelma and Louise type car jump off a cliff. However I wanted to limit myself and do only a couple of frames, I also wanted it to be more of a cycle so decided to go for the car teetering on the edge of the clif as though it had spun off. This also reminded me of The Italian Job and is a reference to a literal cliffhanger.
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Catch The Fly
Catching the Fly happens in films where a character wants to show off their reflexes by catching a small fly which is obviously very hard to do. Its been done in The Karate Kid, Harry Potter and The Amazing Spider-Man. For this I got my dad to pretend to catch a fly, as you can see in the video (I was on holiday when it was filmed hence the sunbathing people) I rotoscoped over his hand on Procreate and added the fly. Even though this is simple I do like the way it came out.
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Scream Queen
The Scream Queen was one I knew I wanted to do originally. Scream Queen: A scream queen is a term used to describe an actress who is prominent and influential in horror films; this happens either through an appearance in a notable entry in the genre or recurring roles in the genre. I wanted to make this one look like a 80s B movie horror. I also wanted this to look like it could be used for a magazine like Empire's website. I added text in a classic creature feature font and chose three iconic scream queens, Shelley DuVall in The Shining, Neve Campbell in Scream and Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween. I also got my dad to hold a knife becayse I had the idea for the stabbing knife to be the transition to add another actress. I added different texture blends on each frame to give it that film burn type look.
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Drunk Bar Montage
For this one I had it in my head but couldn't work out what it was actually called so I have decided to name it the Drunk Bar Montage. When characters go out drinking or are in a new city and neon lights of various bars float by a black screen to show that they've been to all of these establishments. My main reference points were La La Land and The Simpsons (although I'm sure it crops up in other films) I made my own interpretations of logos for some places in movies; Jack Rabbit Slim's from Pulp Fiction, Dorsia from American Psycho and Club Obi Wan from Indiana Jones (also referencing Star Wars of course)
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Spinning Newspaper
For my last one I chose to do a spinning newspaper which has been used in countless films to show the news spreading etc. I created a used the name The Daily Bugle for my newspaper in reference to the Spider Man films and used newspaper appropriate fonts for this one. I do wish the spinning had been a little more fluid but it was difficult to figure it out.
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