Assignment 6: Underground Cultures

For this client-led open brief, Transport for London have commissioned you as a creative practitioner to create a storyboard for a 20 second animation that they will display on video screens at major tube and train stations.

The animation will celebrate an underground culture - something that may be rich in heritage, niche, or new, but is less visible to the masses. Your audience will be people walking along the concourses, corridors and stairwells of the Tube and sitting or standing on train platforms, so design your storyboard with that in mind. In 20 seconds you need to have a simple set of images or text that changes as you view it, that is simple but dynamic and gives a sense in words and images of your chosen culture, whether it’s art, film, food, fashion, places or objects.

Research your chosen culture, select an aspect from that culture that you can represent, choose any words and/or imagery, and get busy storyboarding. If you’re technically aware, you could even create your own basic animation, but you can also present your proposal as a storyboard using a combination of sketches, photos from books or online libraries, and your own images and designs.

Research

I wanted to get an idea of the different underground cultures there were before I decided which culture was the one to jump out at me.

What are Underground Cultures?

Underground Cultures are groups of people who take an interest, style or ideology in something that isn't necessarily mainstream, with out society today we celebrate differences and sometimes one aspect of one culture trends and is still used among "modern" culture. The type of known underground cultures are:

• mod culture

• hippie culture

• punk culture

• rave/techno culture

• underground hip hop. 1

Looking through each culture, the one that stood out the most was Hippie Culture, there's a lot of that culture that has intertwined with what's currently going on and their fashion style is really pleasing.

Hippie Culture

In 1940's, the word 'hippie' was originally coined as a saying to describe someone fashionable sense of style and the trendiness of their outlook as African-American jive slang; this term was then popularized to describe the "free-thinkers" and nature lovers.

Hippies created their own communities where they celebrated life, listening to psychedelic music while doing drugs and embracing their sexual revolution. Their way of life was a great influence in pop culture, influencing music like The Beatles, and literature and the arts; multiple festivals celebrated this ideology across the world and continues to this day.

Hippies were known for their beliefs, believing in a world where we are free and with no use of war and nuclear weapons; they embraced the ideas of peace, love and freedom.

Eventually though, the New Age came around and they soon made their own families while holding their own beliefs, the new term was called "zippie", that describe people who believed in New Age policies and liked electronic music. 2

Today was see hints of what was left behind, the messages of peace and no war run throughout the world as the governments turn a blind eye to whats really happening. The fashion too has reappeared (for the time being), which I will go into below...

Hippie Fashion

For my assignment I'm going to use fashion as main aspect of the animation, so I wanted to take a deeper look into what the hippie fashion was and what influenced them.

Fashion was all about feeling free, so there was a lot of loose tops, dresses-- they can included floral designs that were embroidered. Mainly, it was simple clothing and clothing described as "European peasant costume, american pioneer clothing and ethnic styles", simple but they added their own individual touch of either tie-die and embroider.

For women, long "Edwardian style dresses" were worn with natural colours; or long skirts, some changing their jeans and resowing them to denim skirts. It was all about recycling and up-cycling, something that is trying to be more recognized here as trendy clothes get thrown away after one season of wearing. For men, simple bell-bottom denim jeans or bring printed trousers were used, with a simple top; sometimes wearing just a jacket with tassels adorned with necklaces.

Earth-toned colours were mainly used, but in some instances really bright colours were integrated into their wardrobe.

Shoes were simple, clogs and boots being popular among the sub-culture; "Birkenstock sandals emerged in 1967" and were mainly worn by hippies. 3

4

Story-boarding

I just wanted to briefly go back over story-boarding, exploring the do's and don't's of creating a storyboard.

Several important tips I've learnt from my research is to think about where the focus is, blocking is a great way of bringing focus to the character and doing it correctly can effective communicate a story. The crop is also important too, having too much coming out of the frame can make it feel tight and overwhelming; having characters in the away from the edges of the frame means we get a sole focus.

Lowering the horizon line is also really important, it makes us feel like there is depth to the scene and it'll avoid flatness in the panel.

One important note for me to remember is to not over-render, the point of the storyboard is to create gesture, direction and sense of story-- it is not an illustration, limit to monochrome and two, or three tones to get depth but keep it minimal and effective. 5

As I researched more, I found a really interesting video that helped key in elements that should be taken to create better storyboards; the artist explains that storyboard progression should have a rise and a fall, something should happen and then the reaction-- keeping it progressing.

Referencing should be used as it will create more natural movements, drawing out that reference will create more fluidity and allow for designer and directors to capture the full idea in that storyboard (and it can bring you more ideas for the scenes).

Perspective is extremely important to know for story-boarding, it can help create a narrative, it'll make the storyboard look pleasing...

Lastly, it's okay to keep it rough at first, just aim to capture the pose and the scene before adding elements of the actual character. 6

Mind-map

Inspiration/Photo board

Thumb-nailing/Story-boarding Part 1 (and character sketch)

Storyboard 1

Storyboard 2

Evaluation

This assignment was to create a promotional animation video consisting of still and text, I had to create it inspired by underground cultures; I originally was very confused on what it meant until I did a little research, and ultimately choosing the 'Hippie Culture' and focused on the fashion. I did some mind-mapping of what I could do, however I felt limited to where I can explore, so I stuck with composition shots of close-ups of different parts of the clothing, and including the ideals of hippie (wanting peace).

I did some rough thumb-nailing on my a piece of paper and went into the procreate dreams app where I transformed it into an animated storyboard that showcased what the moving poster could look like at an early stage. The border was inspired by art nouveau as the hippie culture took a lot of inspiration from that style for their clothing, keeping loose and flowing.

The first storyboard was finished, however I felt like it was too easy, and even though the brief asked for still images and text online I wanted to create a more appealing moving poster. Therefore coming up with the second animation, I wanted to add some moving elements that could capture more attention, simple but dynamic movement-- a hand moving across the embroidered clothes, a shoe moving slightly, a turning necklace, and shine hitting an earring, a peace sign, then a woman moving into a fun and expressive peace pose.

As this happens I wanted the text to grow like nature, and at the end the final image becomes still and colour grades to the classic colours, similar to the video-- a nostalgic feel.

I felt happier about the second animation than the first, I wasn't sure if the brief was asking for just still images and text but I really wanted to create something that would capture the attention of people walking by.

At the end of this, I'm feeling a little stumped; usually I have lots of work to show, whether I messed up the point of this assignment or if I've done something wrong along the process. I may have to rework this after feedback as something feels a little wrong.

I did the storyboard research before I tried to make proper sense of the brief, and ended up not being able to apply the research because I had to use still images and text, the aim was to be simple by dynamic and so I couldn't be too elaborate on adding backgrounds and expressive story-telling, but it was fun to research.

I really did enjoy this exercise though, it was really fun to explore story-boarding further and I'm looking forward to what's to come!

1 Wikipedia contributors, "Underground culture," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Underground_culture&oldid=1189189110 (accessed April 26, 2024).

2 Wikipedia contributors, "Hippie," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hippie&oldid=1219709523 (accessed April 26, 2024).

3 A Gill, Revival '1970s Vintage Fashion Guide- Glam Rock, Punk, Hippie Movement & Disco', Mar 24, 2022. https://revivalvintage.co.uk/blogs/news/guide-to-vintage-1970s#:~:text=Shirts%20and%20dresses%20were%20loose,the%20most%20popular%20British%20designer. Accessed Apr 26, 2024.

4 Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopedia. "hippie". Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 Dec. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/hippie. Accessed 26 April 2024.

5 DanielMtal, Youtube 'AVOID THESE STORYBOARDING MISTAKES', May 9, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuubC06CDrk&list=LL Accessed Apr 26, 2024.

6 Ethan Becker, Youtube '3 TIPS FOR BETTER STORYBOARD", Feb 14, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNPcSNIUoSs&t=78s Accessed Apr 26, 2024.

7 Kinolibrary, Youtube 'Late 1960s Haight Ashbury Hippie Commmunity, San Francisco, HD', Jul 10, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9a8qqUpI8A Accessed Apr 29, 2024.