Critical Perspectives seminar 3: 29/1/15

Critical Perspectives Seminar 2: 15/1/15

Looking a “cultural text” in context

Critical Perspectives Seminar 1: 8/1/15

Critical Perspectives 12: 11/12/14 - The Intersectional Self with Jenny Rintoul

Critical Perspectives 11: 4/12/14 - Considering the “Other”, with Alex Franklin

Prep for Semester 2

Content: Assessed Work:

• Blog → Plays the role of a sketchbook (what are you INTERESTED in?)
• Poster → 2pm Feb 9th
• Essay → 26^th March

Assessed on these three things en masse

After Xmas break:

Seminars – program-specific → uses stuff from the blog

Leading up to poster

No hard-and-fast rules for the blog – just ongoing engagement

Reference EVERYTHING!!! (citations)

Have a critical perspectives folder!

Find a way to manage all this – don't get hung up on the essay

Better to have too much and edit it down

The seminars will help you write it

Use the UWE Harvard reference system – practice using it on your blog

One set title: “Present a detailed, critical analysis of a cultural text”

Identify a cultural text you want to know more about

Find one with a representation of an idea you want to explore

The “Anaconda” video is a cultural text! Not just written texts

Critical =/= negative; how and why things work

Resist the urge to boomerang back to familiar territory – you're here to learn NEW things

You can mention other texts (contrast) but don't go into detail

Identify the broader issue

Poster – inherently tied to your essay

Will be discussed in the seminars

All posters will be exhibited in February!

Posters in this context are junior versions of academic presentations

Seminars are at Bower Ashton – NOT Ashton Court

x1 hour session a week (Thurs.) except 22^nd Jan and 12^th Feb

SHOULD be on online timetable

There WILL be prep for seminars – tasks (see Blackboard)

Seminars make university university – STEEL YOURSELF; take part

A kind of luxury item – builds confidence

Office Hours will be posted after Christmas

Talk to a librarian about research

Action analysis: Quadruped Locomotion (secondary research)

I decided to focus mainly on dogs for this part of my action analysis, since I've always been interested in the differences between breeds' physiology and temperaments - and now, their movements.

I've found Vines to be an excellent source of animals in motion (the blog Actual Dog Vines is especially helpful), but I've also spotted a few interesting dogs on YouTube. Let's start with this slow-motion advert for root beer:

Look at the way the dog's flabby, loose skin trails behind him as he runs at 0:31! A perfect example of the animation principle known as drag.

Action analysis: Inorganic Things

Let's kick off this blog's action analysis (the study of How Things Move) section with a bit of fun courtesy of the blog capnskull:

"the drum is filled with hot steam and then sprayed with cold water. the pressure on the outside of the drum is far more than inside. the pressures try to maintain and find balance taking the drum as a casualty."

I really love the suddenness with which the drum "recoils" - it's as if it's alive and reacting slightly belatedly to the water, or as if the drum were an animated character and the animators were chemistry and physics themselves. I'll have to refer back to this drum next time I animate a character reacting suddenly to something.

I didn't have time to research this area in great detail, but I found two artificial lifeforms designed to simulate the movements of living things, and the accuracy (or lacktherof) of that simulation is fascinating. First is this robot, Spot, made by Boston Dynamics - you can see how it got its name, as it simulates a dog's walk fairly accurately. The part I find most interesting is the way it stumbles in response to being kicked at the 0:28 mark of the video - it briefly struggles to regain its footing in much the same way a real quadruped would.

While this isn't quadruped locomotion, it's too fascinating not to at least mention. These are computer programs that taught themselves how to walk - I found this GIF on Imgur and while I looked for more information about the project, unfortunately all I could find out was that Steve Grand, creator of the video game Creatures, is attached to it.

Even so, the learning curve these programs went through is evident in the GIF: Generation 1 obviously only manages half a step; Generation 20 masters taking a few steps but fails to keep its balance for very long; Generation 80 solves that problem by swinging its neck and tail to generate equilibrium; Generation 999 manages to walk without that exaggerated swing.

Generation 80 definitely has the most characterful walk. I feel an incredible urge to animate my character Ikki (see here) walking using it as reference.