Final Project Self Assessment

The final project was one that appealed to me because it was a new program that is good for animation. Whenever I have a chance to learn something new about animation, whether that be a program, technique, artist, etc. I am excited because I want to improve on my own work. This semester was divided up project-wise in a way that I was only able to work on animation at the beginning and the very end of it. I didn't find anything wrong with stepping outside of my medium. I liked working in alternative output even though I was skeptical at first. Expanding on or transcending a comfort zone is important not just as an artist but in all fields in order for improvement. That being said, after the third project of that sort I was ready to get back to working on animation. 

The idea initially was to project on the bike hanging in the campus center, so that's where the subject matter came from. The finished product doesn't really deviate from the original idea, which is usually not the case with my work. I usually end up with something that's different than what I had in mind during conception. In this case, I was able to materialize what I saw in my head in the beginning, which I think is a plus for an artist. In some cases it's good to experiment and stray, but I feel most gratification when I can translate my ideas absolutely. The only experimentation that I did was when I got into the software and saw what kind of effects I could use. That made for a pleasant surprise when I saw that I could make smoke easily and wouldn't have to draw it out by hand, which probably saved me a lot of time.

I really liked using After Effects. At first it was a little bit challenging, but I didn't find it to be particularly unintuitive. In fact just the opposite: after working with other Adobe products and Final Cut, I found it was more natural to navigate After Effects. I did have to use Youtube tutorials a couple of times but I was able to find my answers quickly on there. And in terms of actual animation, After Effects is far and away the best program I've used. Effects aside, it's timeline is the best constructed: simpler than Final Cut and it skips over all the tween issues that happen in Flash. And it's logic is more intuitive than other programs. For instance it was able to recognize that a leg is attached to an ankle which is attached to a foot, and those things stay in line even if I want the foot to rotate at a certain point in the motion. I also really like the parent tool, the motion tracker, and the ease with which the nugget tool can manipulate multiple movements at once without over-thinking itself. 

The concept of the work is about rhythm, pace, and variety. The rhythm is created by the movements, the music, and the speed of the cuts. The pace is also created by the movements and the music. The variety is in the subject matter- the stark differences of subjects even though they are all in the same discipline- along with the music that accompanies each one. 

I'm very happy with how this project came out. It actually exceeded my expectations. The idea of just having a couple of different kinds of bikes on a screen isn't exactly a cause for excitement. But as the more I worked the more it just seemed to come together. I think what made it work so well was 1) the music and 2) the variation in styles. I didn't stick to just one style of drawing, one style of motion, or one format. I ended up using very contrasting ones. It wasn't really something I planned, but it definitely came out well.

Jamie Hewlett- Artist Research

        Jamie Hewlett is the artist behind one of my favorite bands, The Gorillaz. The Gorillaz are a British duo consisting of Damon Albarn (formerly of Blur) who comprises the music end, and Hewlett, who is the art half. 

Hewlett grew up in Britain. As a youngster his artistic skill quickly became noticeable. At Northbrook College he collaborated with two fellow classmates to create a fanzine called Atomtan. This was his first real break into the professional world, because it brought him to the attention of Brett Ewins. Ewins invited him and a colleague to work on material for a magazine called Deadline. Deadline was a magazine that featured a mix of comics and articles on music and culture. Hewlett created a comic strip called Tank Girl for the magazine. The strip instantly became a hit and catapulted him to new projects with bands and other magazines. 

By 1992 Hewlett had become a major player in the comics industry. He worked with Peter Milligan on a number of comics, one of which turned into a trade paperback. He was also involved with DC comics. Soon, Tank Girl was optioned to be made into a film by MGM. The film, unfortunately, was not successful and drew criticism from fans who said it didn't capture the essence of the original strip. Hewlett actually had little to do with the film, only doing some animation sequences, but it was his first taste in animation.

During 1996 Hewlett moved into a flat with Blur's Damon Albarn. The two artistic minds came up with the idea for The Gorillaz. It was to be the first "virtual hip-hop band". Albarn would compose the music while Hewlett would come up with character designs. Their first EP was released in 2000 followed by their first album, the self-titled "Gorillaz" in 2001. "Gorillaz" was a huge success. Then in 2005, they followed up their success with their second album "Demon Days". The band performed live several times in 2005, and after this they planned a world tour that would feature Hewlett's designs. 

Hewlett has created an entire universe that the Gorillaz characters exist and play music in. The characters consist of: 2D (lead vocals, keyboard and melodica), Murdoc Niccals (bass guitar and drum machine), Noodle (guitar, keyboard and occasional vocals), and Russel Hobbs (drums and percussion). The fictional universe is explored through the band's website and various music videos, as well as a number of other media including cartoons, merchandise, and live shows. The style of music is very unique and covers a wide range of genres, including hip-hop, rock, electronica, and even pop. 

In 2010, the band released their third album "Plastic Beach". Then their latest album, "The Fall", was released in December 2010 as a free download on their website. Albarn created the entire album "The Fall" on his iPad while on tour in the US. Unfortunately for diehard fans such as myself, Albarn revealed just recently that The Gorillaz is unlikely to continue due to disagreements between he and Hewlett. Of course if they work out their differences, there's always hope for future records.

Hewlett's art in itself interests me because of its style and because of his mastery of animation. Over the years, the Gorillaz music videos have become more and more complex and advanced in their animation. What started out as 2-D cartoons have become 3-D and very lifelike in their appearance, movements, and in the settings, even including some live action in their most recent videos like "Stylo". His animation was always very clean and smooth, even in their first videos. 

The design of the characters themselves is also something that catches my interest. They seem to be very befitting and germane to the style of the songs that the band created, which is a mix of music that creates a final product something of which I've never really heard before. The characters have a certain eeriness while also being very likable in their cartoonish nature. 

One of Hewlett's main inspirations is Brendan McCarthy. McCarthy is a British cartoonist and graphic novelist. His works are very busy with bright colors and elaborate designs. His work is much louder than Hewlett's, but one can see the resemblance between the two.

As someone interested in animation, I view Hewlett's work as the being the pinnacle of the field. His 2-D work is so smooth and effortless and his characters exude such a perfect vibe in relation to the music. His 3-D work is a style that I've never really seen before. It's not the same as the Pixar type animation that is seen in Disney movies, it's a lot more lifelike but still with the feel of being cartoonized, and it's something that I would like to learn more about so I can ultimately be able to create something like it. 

Bonny Pierce Lhotka

Bonny Pierce Lhotka is an artist who works with transferring images onto different materials. Her work is more abstract and concept driven than my own, but her processes and outcomes and comparable. 

Some of her concepts include: time, memories, and identity change. Her pieces are very fractured and eclectic, showing only a glimpse of certain images and using the material that they are printed on to the fullest.

here is her website: http://www.lhotka.com/bonny/Home.html

Self Assessments

Self Assessment- Remix Project

My idea for this project of what material to print on was guided by the image that I was given by Anuli. It was a picture of her that had been digitally altered using some filter probably on Photoshop. I thought that her brown skin would look good on a brown piece of wood. After I decided to print on wood, my next decision- that being the composition of the project- was determined by the piece of wood that I selected. It was about the size of a playing card relative to Anuli's image if she were a figure on a face card. So my plan was to mirror her image to make 2 of them and then put them on opposite sides of the piece of wood and make it into a playing card. 

As I've learned from previous experiences, the vision that you have in your mind is rarely what your finished project turns out to be. This can be a bad thing or a good thing, depending on how your original idea changes on the way. When I put down the image on the super sauce, a little bit didn't stick. Also, I miscalculated how long the piece of wood was and where I would need to place the image to make it look like a playing card. So after drawing out what I thought a playing card would look like with chalk, I decided to erase it and do something else.

I decided to go in a more abstract direction. While I was in the sculpture studio waiting for my image to dry I was flipping through my notebook for another class. In this class I tend to do a lot of doodling and scribbling on the margins of the pages. So I thought it might be a cool idea to incorporate some of these doodles into my project. I used a piece of chalk to sketch out what I wanted before I drew it with ink. Then I found a box of markers in the painting studio and used those to color in the lines.

My piece is meant to convey disorder, eccentricity and unorthodoxy. The image that Anuli gave me is of herself posing as Rosie the Riveter which in itself was an image that was meant to betray the norm and be an icon for the championing of women in the workplace. Then I flipped it and changed her facial expression, which is another deviation from the original image. The art on the rest of the piece of wood was taken from my sketches and represents my failure to pay attention in class. This to me is a physical manifestation of the disorder that goes on in my head while I'm trying to take notes. And from an aesthetic standpoint it shows eccentricity in its wild swings in color, shape, and subject matter.

I like the way the piece came out considering that I've never done anything like this before- this was my first work with transferring with super sauce. If I could change anything I would probably have used a different medium than chalk for the color white because I feel like it doesn't match up with the rest of the piece which is in ink. I think if I had used white paint it would look a lot cleaner and there wouldn't be chalk dust covering some of my marker lines. It would just have been easier to draw. Overall it was a good experience, I have no problems with super sauce transfer and would definitely be open to using it again in the future.

Self Assessment- Remix Project

My idea for this project of what material to print on was guided by the image that I was given by Anuli. It was a picture of her that had been digitally altered using some filter probably on Photoshop. I thought that her brown skin would look good on a brown piece of wood. After I decided to print on wood, my next decision- that being the composition of the project- was determined by the piece of wood that I selected. It was about the size of a playing card relative to Anuli's image if she were a figure on a face card. So my plan was to mirror her image to make 2 of them and then put them on opposite sides of the piece of wood and make it into a playing card. 

As I've learned from previous experiences, the vision that you have in your mind is rarely what your finished project turns out to be. This can be a bad thing or a good thing, depending on how your original idea changes on the way. When I put down the image on the super sauce, a little bit didn't stick. Also, I miscalculated how long the piece of wood was and where I would need to place the image to make it look like a playing card. So after drawing out what I thought a playing card would look like with chalk, I decided to erase it and do something else.

I decided to go in a more abstract direction. While I was in the sculpture studio waiting for my image to dry I was flipping through my notebook for another class. In this class I tend to do a lot of doodling and scribbling on the margins of the pages. So I thought it might be a cool idea to incorporate some of these doodles into my project. I used a piece of chalk to sketch out what I wanted before I drew it with ink. Then I found a box of markers in the painting studio and used those to color in the lines.

My piece is meant to convey disorder, eccentricity and unorthodoxy. The image that Anuli gave me is of herself posing as Rosie the Riveter which in itself was an image that was meant to betray the norm and be an icon for the championing of women in the workplace. Then I flipped it and changed her facial expression, which is another deviation from the original image. The art on the rest of the piece of wood was taken from my sketches and represents my failure to pay attention in class. This to me is a physical manifestation of the disorder that goes on in my head while I'm trying to take notes. And from an aesthetic standpoint it shows eccentricity in its wild swings in color, shape, and subject matter.

I like the way the piece came out considering that I've never done anything like this before- this was my first work with transferring with super sauce. If I could change anything I would probably have used a different medium than chalk for the color white because I feel like it doesn't match up with the rest of the piece which is in ink. I think if I had used white paint it would look a lot cleaner and there wouldn't be chalk dust covering some of my marker lines. It would just have been easier to draw. Overall it was a good experience, I have no problems with super sauce transfer and would definitely be open to using it again in the future.

project 1

Self assessment- project 1

Henry Bernstein

Self Assessment


    This project was probably my most ambitious so far in my college art career. It involved something that I've never done before. But I've ventured into uncharted waters before in digital media- that wasn't the issue. The project was so daunting because I was doing something that I really didn't know how to do, that being animating over live action video. I didn't have any previous instruction and all I really had was inspiration from an X-Games commercial that pulled the concept off nicely. So I had to figure out each step on my own.
    The first step was really to plan everything out. I knew I would be using mostly photoshop and a lot of flash because those are the two correlating programs that I'm most familiar with. I didn't realize until the end that I would have to use a third program to bring it all together, and that would end up being final cut, which I'll get to later. The second step was to take screen shots of the video from youtube. Difficult in this part was deciding which screen shots to take. I didn't want to do stop motion so I didn't want to have to take a shot of every frame in the video. In order to make sure the animation matched up with the video I figured I would need to take a screen shot of the first frame and the last frame in each shot to determine where the animation would start and where it would end up on the screen. It turns out that this worked only for some of the shots. A couple didn't work, for instance the shot of his feet leaving the ground, because the path for the animation didn't follow a straight line. His feet went upwards in a corkscrew pattern.
    The third step was to draw the actual animation. For this I drew over the screenshots on photoshop. This part wasn't difficult, just time consuming because I had to get the positions right so I was continually erasing and redrawing. I always enjoy drawing though so it wasn't bad. Then I moved everything to Flash where I put them in the right sequence stop motion style. From there I realized that I would need a third vehicle to put everything together with. That ended up being Final Cut, because it needed to be something that used layers. I had used Final Cut before but didn't like it as much as Flash. But for this project it was perfect. The more I used it the more I got used to the motion tools and by the end I was very happy with my finished product.
    If there is a message in my work I would say its kind of a tongue in cheek response to the prototypical sports-motivational commercial/media outlet. But I don't mean for it to be in direct opposition to that genre, it's more of a playful take on it. When I saw the X-Games commercial I really liked it because of its craftsmanship and its loose style. Not every shot has animation in it and most of the animation is very subtle. I could see myself doing something like that as a career down the line. I would be very interested to see what their process is and what kind of software/equipment they use etc.
    Looking back on my project I think that I handled everything really well. I used my time wisely, which has often been a problem for me. I planned everything out from the beginning so that I was organized and knew what I had to do at each step. I'm also happy with how I expanded my software repertoire and figured out Final Cut. That could be a very important tool in the future. A few things that I wasn't satisfied with were two of the animation sequences: the feet blasting off and the can flying through the air on fire. Had I more time I could have probably fixed it by drawing more frames and using stop motion but I didn't and I didn't. So for the next project that's something to expand on maybe. I would like to continue with this video because I only did about half of the actual commercial, or maybe by the time we start the next project I'll have something else in mind.

Paul Glabicki

Paul Glabicki

    Paul Glabicki is a multimedia artist who works in animation, drawing, painting, filmmaking and photography among many others and many combinations of the aforementioned. He received a BFA in painting from Carnegie Mellon University and 2 MFAs in painting and filmmaking from Ohio State University. He's been a part of multiple film festivals, museum and gallery exhibitions, and has also taught art at Pitt for 26 years.
    Much of Glabicki's work focuses on the concept of time and motion. It also plays on the issues of juxtaposition and transformation, and pays particular attention to basic elements such as shape and line. His video "Five Improvisations" (1979) works with all of these issues masterfully. In it he takes apart five different short animations by their shapes and puts them back together all in accordance to music. The result is a pulsing orchestration of construction and deconstruction in repeat, offering quick glances at his drawings but not fully allowing the viewer to comprehend what he's seeing.
    His 1984 piece "Object Conversations" has a similar tempo to "Five Improvisations". It is fast paced and only allows the viewer to catch a quick glimpse of his drawings. To me this is interesting because his drawings are so neat and cleanly done. The lines are perfectly straight and the colors are neatly colored in, but you barely get to appreciate them because they are moving so fast. Also another important part of his piece is the music. The transition between frames is timed to classical music which gives it another layer of direction than if there were no music or maybe a different song playing.
    Glabicki's work relates to my own in a couple of different ways. First is his medium. I've been working in animation for a little over a year now. I've done hand drawn frame-by-frame, and I've also used software which he didn't have the luxury of using so I can appreciate the time and effort that he must have put into his work. But his work is also similar to mine in the both the composition and the transition timing. I've done pieces that have no particular focal point and have multiple things happening at once creating the illusion of chaos. His pieces all seem to have this in common. Also his hand can be seen in all of his pieces, some more than others. In some of videos I try and leave stray lines and eraser marks to convey a certain hand drawn feel similar to the kind that Glabicki went for in "Five Improvisations".
    I like Glabicki's work overall at first glance. He has a steady hand and is a talented drawer. Also like I said before, I appreciate the fact that he's doing everything without the help of a computer. His animation is very smooth and straight. For what he's trying to accomplish he does a good job. Even with his transitions being so quick he still takes time to make detailed drawings that might not be seen all the way by the viewer. If there's one weak point of his work I would say his audio could be a little better. Especially in "Five Improvisations", it doesn't really sync up all the way at some points and it's not very high quality. Also there are times in his other works where I'm not sure as a viewer what his message is. Maybe that's his goal, but it could be a little bit clearer.

"Paul Glabicki: Biographical Summary". Paul Glabicki Official Site. Red Fence 1999. Full Moon 2001. http://www.stillshot.net/pages/Glab_bio.html