This time we had a writing exercise. We had to write a “compelling and dark” short story (or beginning) consisting of 150 words, and something that forces your character to act. We were also given a list of prompts to choose from – I liked “this has got to stop.”
We had a few separate pieces of homework to complete this week. The first was to create a 20 second video that includes 10 different clips, all showcasing different sounds on a journey between indoors and outdoors. I chose to film my trip to the supermarket.
Then our final submission was to make three 10-second long videos, inspired by the sound design work on the online magazine ‘Onomatopoeia Club.’ We had to take audios and edit/distort them in some way using software like Premiere Pro, and then provide visuals to go alongside, either filmed or animated.
In our group of 7 (myself, Ayan, Iqra and Keyleigh from Group E and Layton, Ash and Carolina from Group D) we had 2 weeks to visit an exhibition, and create a 20-second film in our medium of choice, based on an artist’s work we find.
One week ago we took a visit to 180 The Strand, which had just opened ‘Lux,’ to the public, which is a one-of-a-kind virtual and interactive exhibit. There we discovered the work of Je Baak. His work titled ‘Universe’ (2019) showcasing a theme park really stood out to us – taking something that’s fun, exciting and childlike, and making it immensely foreboding.
This became our influence for ‘Born to Decay.’ We take pleasant items such as children’s toys and explore the dark history behind them, as well as the way that they enforce gender roles, whilst simultaneously leaving under-represented children behind. Together we filmed this mixed media piece (using animation and visual effects), and edited all of the clips together with an ambient voice over.
My roles mainly included researching galleries and organising the visit, as well as recording the commentary.
We also made a slides presentation explaining our inspirations more in depth.
Here are some of my favourite personal pieces I’ve made throughout the past year or so.
I drew myself in a few different art styles, including my own and then like the ‘Sailor Moon’ anime. I picture this version of me with axolotl horns, though I’m not entirely sure why. I’ve always focused very heavily on character illustration, but I’m hoping to use my time at Uni to expand beyond that.
These are characters from a story that I’ve been working on for quite a while – I like to imagine it as a web-comic or an animated series. For my Graphic Communications A-level, I decided to make a pretend poster, with a fake title and streaming service. Drawing a big city background took a long time, but I believe it was worth it.
This was my contribution to a charity zine during lock-down last year. 40 artists came together and each produced a full-page, digitally coloured illustration (this was my first time working in CMYK so that was a challenge to overcome). The theme was celebrating the anniversary of the K-pop girl group ‘LOONA’, so everyone was individually assigned one of their songs as a prompt to base their drawing from. Mine was called ‘Heart Attack’ and is about a girl trying to attract the attention of someone she looks up to.
I was also lucky enough to be one of the 12 artists working on the cover – we each drew one member of the band, then made a collage of them together.
The zine was named ‘Asterism’, and copies were printed and sold online, along with other things like stickers, prints and key-chains. The main goal was to raise money for Black Lives Matter, and all of the proceeds from sales were donated.
Our first task was to take a class trip down to Waterloo, where we split off to do some location drawing. We had to do around 10 small sketches – I chose to focus more on figures and characters, so I looked around for people or situations that seemed interesting enough to capture.
My favourite one ended up being the middle right, of a girl standing by the wall to look across the river and buildings. I quite liked the use of negative space, and her being taller than the buildings. I chose this one to use for my final piece, which had to be a comic of sorts, where your original drawing is the middle, and you have to make up the beginning and end.
I decided to go with a lighthearted fantasy theme.
For the second week, we were learning how to edit photos and collages with Adobe Photoshop. More specifically, we had tutorials on using the layer mask function in order to cut out images, as well as using channels, adjustments and layer modes to correct the colours.
These are the 3 pictures I used:
– Floating spheres made to look like octopuses, from the Tate Modern
– An acrylic painting that appears very graphical, consisting of neat geometrical shapes, also from the Tate Modern
– A District Line tube parked at the station, from the way home
The term began by visiting the roots of animation; 2D hand-drawn on a light-box. In my opinion, this was the best one to start with – there aren’t really any shortcuts or places to hide, it’s just you and a pile of frames to piece together.
Here we began to learn about the 12 principles of animation – the fundamental basics that are absolutely necessary to understand before moving on to anything more complicated. The ones that we focused on were ‘squash and stretch,’ ‘straight ahead and pose-to-pose,’ ‘arcs of motion’ and ‘timing and spacing.’
We applied these to every animators initial endeavor: the ball bounce, before starting to turn the ball into characters, and soon enough we were working on a short sequence of characters speaking and moving their hands.
This weeks’ homework was to take 20 photographs of objects in and around where we live, that didn’t necessarily belong to us. We then had to arrange them in a narrative on Padlet.
I like to think that my story is about a cat who journeys through different terrains, encounters all sorts of wildlife, and gets hurt but uses food to recharge, all before learning to fly. I’d say it’s pretty abstract.
Collection of some of my favourite works since I started doing digital illustration (2017).
For our very first day on campus, we each had to bring in a sentimental item, and were then sorted into groups of 4 in order to make a short stop-motion film.
My team consisted of myself, Andrea, Jack and Luc-John. With a cotton ball llama, an ornamental elephant, a screwdriver and a piece of string, we created a story about mountain-climbing and moral dilemmas when faced with adversity. Although, the fall wasn’t that big of a deal after all.