Monday, 22 October 2007

Artist and Object, Pablo Ferro and Wheelbarrow

Pablo Ferro has been in film for more than three decades as a director, editor and producer. He taught himself animation and went on to specilize in Graphic design, special effects, sequences, main titles, trailors and print campaigns.
In the mid 50's Ferro began freelancing in New York for animation industry companies. His first job was producing black and white commercials.
He met and befriended the former Disney Animator, William Tytla, and recieved first hand training from him. He also began working for Atlas Comics with Stan Lee, the future editor of Marvel Comics.
In 1963 Ferro travelled to London were he conceived and directed American and British commercials, this caught the attention of filmmaker Stanely Kubrick. Ferro created the trailor and title designs for Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange'. Aswell as this he also created title designs for:
Dr.Strangelove, Woman of Straw, The Thomas Crown Affair, Napoleon Dynamite, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Psycho, Men In Black, The Adams Family and Beetlejuice.






The object I was given was a wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow was invented by Chuko Liang from china, he used it to transport supplies to injured soldiers. The first wheelbarrow had two wheels and required two men to propel and steer them. Wheelbarrows are generally one or two wheeled carts designed to be pushed by one person using handles. They are designed to ease transport of heavy loads and are common in the construction industry, gardening and for decorative uses. For this brief I am to create a piece involving both a wheelbarrow and Pablo Ferro. As Ferro mainly specialises in title designs I have decided to create a short animation with a title sequence that introduces the wheelbarrow. I intend to hand draw the frames, scan them into Photoshop and create the animation on either macromedia flash or adobe premiere, this I haven’t yet decided.. The idea to hand draw the frames seemed relevant as Ferro is well known for his hand drawn titles, as seen in Kubrick’s ‘Dr Strangelove’.
For my final design of my Artist and Object project I have created an animation. It features a wheelbarrow travelling across the screen with title designs on the screen.
I created the animation on Adobe Premiere, I hand drawn all the images and scanned them into my computer. I only hand drawn the wheelbarrow once and manipulated it on Photoshop to give the impression that the wheel is turning as it is moving. The titles that come up are ‘The Wheelbarrow’, ‘invented by Chuko Liang’.
My animation wasn't very successful, as when I transfered it onto disc the resolution was blurred, making it difficult to view. As it would have taken to long to redo all of the frames I made two additional final pieces.
This is a recreation of Ferro's split-screen effect he used for The Thomas Crown Affair, I did this with a photograph of a wheelbarrow:

Another recreation of Ferro's Woman of Straw:

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