Summer term: self-directed project

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The finished article...

And here's the finished version:

Into After Effects

I've started to combine the hand drawn animation with still images in After Effects. Here's the first Quick time movie I've exported from the project file:

Hand drawn frame test...

Here's the quick time movie of the first 80 hand drawn frames I made, photographed on a rostrum camera, extracted in Photoshop and imported into After Effects...

Moving Image / Exploring Narrative

"Develop a short piece of moving image work based around the notion of the city and its many narratives."

The first thought that came to me on considering the city around me, was my experience of public transport on my journey to college on the morning of the brief. It had been a particularly unpleasant journey on a very crowded train, with dozens of people pushing and shoving... I started to think about the way people behave when they're travelling. Generally, they're in a rush, and their main concern is to get themselves to their destination as quickly as possible, at the cost of anyone else. There is also a convention in our city that no one talks to anyone that they don't know when they're on public transport. They don't usually even make eye contact... If I were to strike up a conversation with a passenger I'd never met before, no matter how friendly my words were, I would be considered eccentric. This depressed me. Why are people so unfriendly when they're travelling? In fact, why are they so unfriendly most of the time.
I decided I wanted to make a moving image piece to express how alienating and unfriendly the city can be. I would stick to the theme of travel, and try to replicate the experiences I've had travelling on crowded trains.
I started by taking my camera on my next train journey, and taking as many photos as I could. I also took some film, but after looking back at the images, I preferred the effect of the still images taken in succession creating jerky, disjointed movement.
I would need a protagonist - a character to experience and thereby express the alienation I'd felt... I didn't want to use a real person, so I decided I'd work with a hand drawn character, creating an animation of him to lay over the photographic moving images I'd created. I liked the idea of a very small, cartoon-like character trying to travel on a train, and having a hard time - being jostled and pushed about. I also liked the idea of no one paying any attention to this strange character - I thought this would express people's apathy to each other quite well - they're so switched off they don't even notice a tiny animal trying to make a journey on the same train as them.

Here's a photoshop file I made to show how my character will look in the photographic world:



He's sitting on the station platform looking dejected.

First and Last...

For the First and Last magazine brief, I had to create a double spread to the theme of these two quotes:

“Rorschach’s Journal, October 12th, 1985.”
“I leave it entirely in your hands.”

- the first and last lines of the DC Comics Graphic novel, Watchmen, by writer Alan Moore and Illustrator/letterer Dave Gibbons.

I made the following double page layout using InDesign:

Mile of String... 2007!

After experimenting further with my string installation in my laundry utility room, and after a rather luke-warm reception of the idea in the last group meeting, I decided to change my idea a little... To be more precise, I decided to change the location for my installation. Group members generally agreed that the public participation element of Duchamp's original Mile of String added to its interest, and that my re-creation would be more effective if it were in a more public space. I also took in to account the fact that the final outcome of our project is to involve a presentation, and simply showing photos of the installation in my utility room would not be all that exciting... I therefore came to the conclusion that the most effective method of conveying the experience of the Mile of String would be to make the actual installation my presentation. I would install the string in the Casket Space, where the presentation is to be held! I proceeded to buy large amounts of string, got hold of a staple gun and went to college earlier this evening after classes had finished, and set up the string in the Casket Space with the help of my assistant...
I documented the process from start to finish on my digital camera, and below are the images in order from the earliest to the final result...














































I also made a short film of moving through the string, as the photos do not convey the 3D sense of the structure as well as moving image does... Here it is: