Advanced Animation Final – Dream Food

My final animation project, titled “Dream Food.”

Digital Foundations 2 – Performance Video 3

Some chaos, some absurdity, maybe a little existentialism if you stretch it.

Field Drawing Final – 4 Day Challenge

To culminate the skills I’ve developed over the past semester in the Field Drawing course, I chose to do a series of “art dares”, courtesy of “https://artprof.org/courses/”.  The activities listed on the website proved useful in giving me structure for creating works, as well as structure in making a daily schedule for producing content. Due to the daily nature of the task, I imposed a time limit on myself, going as low as one hour to as high as four hours.

 

The first prompt involved visualizing a recipe from a New York Times cooking section, and thus, I took action. This proved useful in capturing textures and details that I’ve never attempted before. The dish I chose was an Indian dish that I was not dissimilar to food I grew up eating, despite me being of a different culture. The earthy ingredients were rustic, yet juicy, and and so capturing that detail in my time frame became the objective.

The following prompt was a comic strip, describing a memorable birthday. Now, I’ve had many a bad birthday, but I chose one with a main conflict that was short and sweet, my 13th birthday. Taking influence from the Fleischers, as well as Filmation, I designed the characters to be jubilant and sharp.

Next was Metropolitan Diary, taking an article from the New York Times’ Metropolitan Diary and illustrating the story in one’s own perspective. The story here is that of a woman on a date who spots a group of men in T-shirts with letters on them. The men indulge to her that the letters form a wedding proposal for their friend to his love.

The final day consisted of designing a bicycle for dogs. Seeing as I’ve never owned a dog, I took to doing research to see what things they might want on a bike if they ever had the ability to express it. I took into account a few basics to make the ride more comfortable. A bowl for water in lieu of a basket, a holder for the pooper scooper in lieu of a water bottle, and a more comfortable seat. Since dogs lack opposable thumbs to push brakes, I instead implemented it to the back so that the tail can hit it. Dogs wag their tail when happy, and the primary excitement when on a bike comes from the speed. The faster the bike would go, the more frequently would the brakes be hit, serving as a sort of speed cap. The dog’s own nature prevents the speed from getting too out of control.

Digital Foundations 2 – Performance Video 2

Themes included in this are futility, absurdity, and failure.

Making And Utilizing Drawing Tools

The following image is a result of cultivating meager objects in order to give them a new purpose, completely different from what it was intended to do. My tools were:

• A bottle of hand sanitizer
• Boiled/reduced soy sauce
• Toilet paper
• Paper towels
• Facial Tissue
• Two Allen Wrenches

With the reduced soy sauce, I essentially created my own paint, with the fabrics used as brushes. Some successes include the color and thickness of the paint, being able to create vivid, pronounced strokes in conjunction with the Allen-Wrench brush. Additionally, the color also serves to create decent contrast when left alone, with dots reflecting light off of the dark paste itself. The biggest weakness was time, as the paste tended to dry up quickly, meaning that strokes had to be quick and large from the beginning so that I could sooner get into the details using the smaller Allen-Wrench brush.

Digital Foundations 2 – Performance Video 1

For this one of three performance based videos, I decided to play with the concepts of chaos, absurdity, and futility. Especially in the present day (though not necessarily in response to it), cleanliness and water quality are a priority. There are some people, however, who do not listen to reason and take things to the extreme, resulting in misfortune for others and waste of the resources they cherish so much. People do this almost to the point of pure futility, which is what I desired to capture here.

Drawing From Moving Images

Jumping from program to program, I used my trusty sketchbook and pencil and captured quick, detailed likenesses of characters on the screen. While some are main characters, and designed to stand out, I made it a point to capture a few minor characters as well to see how they are characterized visually despite having less time on screen.

Memory Soundscape – Collected Sounds + Flow + Final

The memory in question is my overall Summer of 2019. I collected sounds from that era, as well as created some new sounds to make a representation of the time spent in Alfred during that period.

 

 

The Ephemeral Print Process

When creating prints, in order to get my feet wet, metaphorically and literally, I used water to make an imprint of shapes cut out on thick grocery bag paper.

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When paper proved too delicate, I experimented with plastic, and went along with having the shape print out as water, as well as the water being the outline. More trial and error ensued.

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The next step was texture. Using soy sauce and bread, I tinkered with the absorbency of the bread to try to create a solid shape using soy sauce as contrast. Using a plastic holder for a roll of tape, the borders protruding from the y-axis became a step in the right direction.

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Liquids became rather messy, so as I went on, I used powders for easy removal and solid imprints. Some shapes became pronounced, but human error prevented a perfect way to lift up the printed item without causing mess. Putting all of the steps together, I concluded that a combination will yield the desired results.

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Paste. Using flour and water, I made a slurry which I dumped on top of a pre-made shape. Placed on a baking sheet, it marinated in the fridge for seven hours before being removed. The goal was for the water to chill and lightly freeze so that the slurry would remain solid upon removal, resulting in a more defined print. The fatal flaw was the large ratio of flour compared to water, meaning that the resulting print remained somewhat similar to the dry powder print. Additionally, a mix-up resulted in me not taking a photo of the “after” print, making much of the project fruitless.

I remain adamant in the hope that with a thicker object as print reference combined with a more viscous slurry, the desired result can be achieved, and a solid print can happen.

Project 4 – Memory Soundscape Brainstorm

An assortment of ideas for recreating my summer 2019 through sound.