Into Digital Arts

For this final project for video art project I wanted to incorporate stop motion as a major component. When we started to learn about how to key out certain colors, like in the use of a green screen, I immediately thought about my stop motion project that I had finished earlier. If I could take paper cutouts and mask them out utilizing the keys in premiere, it might result in something interesting. So that is what I did for my final project. I wanted to portray a message about the conflict between man vs nature. So I chose two colors of paper and had one of them, devour the other, this symbolizing mankind's impact on nature. I then masked out the colors with the respective subjects, one color with nature scenes and the other with scenes of man-made objects.  For the audio, I had the thought to utilize a poem reading. So I had my friend record a voice over for me, a reading of a poem about western expansion called The Westerner . The topic of western expansion parallels the meaning ...

The magazine that I have been working on for the past month is finally complete. This is the final project for my graphic design 1 class and I have really enjoyed it. This issue in the magazine I called Nexus, is all about the development of computer graphics technology. Because of this, I wanted to target the technology feeling with the magazine. For this final project, I was to add two full page illustrations to the magazine. The first one, is a photo collage of an xbox one controller with the buttons and the joysticks replaced with photos of nature. In the gaming and animation industries, one of their primary goals in developing computer graphics technology is to achieve the most realistic images under their given constraints. For the animation industry, this is limited to the number of graphics processing units a studio can purchase. For the gaming industry this is the time that it takes to draw one frame, attempting to draw frames at a rate that allows for a consistent frame rate ...

There are many aspects that must be considered when designing a magazine. The content is very important, but one aspect of the design that no one really thinks about is the layout of the magazine. The grid is how images and text are placed around the page. It can determine the size of objects and how much white space is between each element on the page.  Most text in magazines appears to be set out into 3 columns. However, one of the most common layouts utilizes 12 columns in order to appear to have 3 columns. This gives much more layout control over what is shown and how it is shown. Its very surprising that a 12 column layout results in 3 columns of main text. However, the goal of this is so that it is modular. In computer science, one of the most important things that you consider when coding is to try and make your code modular. When you can use the same layout on every page, it means that it is dynamic and interesting since each page will feel like it follows the same rules. T...

This is a chroma key exercise. This is my first attempt at keying anything out of a video utilizing premiere pro. I probably should have chosen a different color for the background.

This next assignment was to build the internals for the magazine cover that I designed. I wanted to have the magazine article be about animation in some way. So I chose to make my article about the history of computers in animation while focusing on the development of computer graphics. I am very facinated with computer hardware so I wanted to do my best to summerize the great advancements since 1960 that still have an impact on the technology that is currently in use in the animation industry.  I kept the same color scheme from the cover. I chose the subtitle colors and the colors of the circuit designs from the theme that I designed for the cover. The overall font and extra symbols I used for the title and the headers, are based upon a unix console interface. These things are all to help with the overall techie feel that I am aiming for in this magazine. 

This video is the first in a series, the other I will be finishing towards the end of the semester. Throughout my career as a musician, I have struggled with self confidence. The confidence to play loud and proudly for others, especially when I am playing alone. This leads me to not play at my best when playing with small groups or by myself. Even when others tell me I am a talented musician, I find difficulty in believing that when I often struggle with the basics. This is what I wish to tell through this animated series. This series is about a trumpet that is not confident in its playing abilities. For this reason, it has difficulties fitting in with the rest of the outgoing group. It must find a way to become more confident in its abilities in order to fit in with the group. 

I am finally done with my third assignment in graphic design 1. These are two possible covers for a zine that I will be producing in later assignments. I plan on having my magazine focus on computers in the field of animation. In particular, the history of animation and what computers brought to the medium. Or it might be about computer animated material I have produced. I am not sure yet, as I do not have enough high quality animations to fill a magazine, but we shall see.  For these two covers, one was photo based and the other was a more abstract design that I created in illustrator. I believe that my abstract design is much better than my photo based designs. For the abstract design, I was trying to give a techie feel with the repeating patterns of triangles and the little circuit design at the bottom. I am very proud of this design, as it took a lot of different attempts to get to it and the final idea.  The photo based one does not quite feel like a magazine co...

I was unaware that during the 2011 Oscars, the wrong winner for best picture was announced. This was a concatenation of two big problems: the announcer was handed the wrong card, and the cards typography was not designed in a way that made reading easy. I have been on stage during a performance multiple times in my life, both for musical and theatrical events. In all of these events, I knew exactly what I was going to do and when I was going to do it. This is not the case for the announcers of the winners as they do not know the winner before they walk out on the stage. For this reason, it is very important for them to be able to read the card they are handed. With the amount of stress that is present, especially with millions watching, the information that is important should be eye catching. The information rather than the Oscars logo should have been prioritized and given more typographic importance. Article:  The Oscars Showed Us Why Typography Matters

I am still struggling to come up with ideas for a couple of upcoming stop motion projects for my video art class. In order to hopefully find some inspiration, I went looking for some stop motion shorts. One of my favorites that I came across is called CREATE by Dan MacKenzie. I really enjoyed this short as it really explored the concept of imagination quite well. In a short 2 minutes it was also able to build character in the young boy who the short was about. CREATE is animated very well and manages to capture the charm and creativity inherent in stop motion animation. CREATE - A stop motion short by Dan MacKenzie from Dan MacKenzie on Vimeo . Another really awesome stop motion project I came across is called Gulp. This is a project completed by a studio hired by Nokia to advertise one of their cameras. However, I thought the animation was very charming and they did some very interesting things with perspective that really caught my eye. Gulp. The world's largest stop-m...

For my next experiment into stop motion, I was to try and do it through drawings. Drawing is one of the things that I cannot do to save my life. So I wanted to keep it to simple shapes to hide my lack of drawing skills. Since Ive been watching a ton of Pixar movies recently, the ball that appears in almost all of their movies. So I drew a little black ball that rolls and bounces around the screen.

Continuing on with my studies into magazine covers and indesign, the next exercise was to design a few posters for upcoming events. For my first design, I chose to use a recent photo that I took while I was at the park over this past week. I wanted to make a more dainty poster, advertising a walk in the park. When thinking about a group of people going for a Sunday afternoon walk through the park, I get a classier/entitled and relaxing feelings. So I attempted to encapsulate that in my font choices. Choosing a more light and dainty font with serifs to give the more light and relaxed feel to the poster. For the second design, I wanted to make something for a ski resort. Around this time of the year, ski resorts hold events where participants ski down the mountain and into a large pool of water. The goal is to try and ski across the water. But this is very difficult, and most participants end up crashing into the water. This is something I have always wanted to see, or maybe even try ...

I forgot to schedule the release of this blog, otherwise it would have been available yesterday. In the next step in learning how to work with inDesign with the intent of creating a magazine cover, I began to experiment with the use of grids. The first three images I produced are around the layout of a grid, utilizing three different colors. The second group of three images was also around the idea of grids. However, instead of using colored shapes, I experimented with typographical hierarchy. Playing with the different weights, sizes, and line spacing to create the hierarchy.

With the advent of online classes, we have began to explore into new software included in the adobe suite. The current focus is in Adobe InDesign with the creation of magazine covers. The best way to learn how to use any software, is in making things and just seeing what the software has to offer. This is what I did over the past weekend. I made two different magazine covers using previous works completed for this class.  The first cover was made using my alphabet that was made for the  first project of the semester. Since the alphabet was made from images of pool balls, I wanted the magazine cover to reflect that idea. So I made the magazine called Games  and had current issue, the cover of which I was designing, about the death of the american pool house. As pool started to decline as a popular sport before the turn of the century, I aimed to go for a neon sort of feel with the wording on the cover, without the neon coloring to fit into the color scheme. The...

This is the first of a few experiments into stop motion animation I plan to do over the next couple of days. These are all to get ready to produce a stop motion project in order to fulfill an honors requirement. I am very excited to get into this again, after the long break I have been anxious to get back to work. This work, in particular, has a lot of issues. There are a few frames in which my phone is visible in the lower right hand corner. The movement of the airpods case is also a bit inorganic and stutters a bit from time to time. But I feel that this was a first step into the genre and I look forward to making more.  

Over the weekend, I read an excerpt from The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. This reading was an in depth dramatization of the emotions and feelings of different spaces, in particular the house. A particular point that was made was about the cellar "As for the cellar... it is first and foremost the dark entity of the house, the one that partakes of subterranean forces. When we dream there, we are in harmony with the irrationality of the depths"(Bachelard). This harks back to my childhood, where I was always deathly afraid of the basement. Its dark depths and dank atmosphere lended itself to evil intentions. However, like all fears, mine have passed since I got the courage to explore the basement and what possibilities the space holds. Through knowledge and exploration, fears can be swept aside, replaced by inspiration and a swath of new activities, all without the hanging doom of the unknown darkness that was present beforehand.

After reading excerpts from Invisible Cities by Calvino , I attempted to find an image representing the city of Valdrada. I was unable to find a quality image of the city. But for description, it is a small city in Indian located in the middle eastern part of the country. The particular expert that I am focusing on talks about how the city of Valadra is unlovingly mirrored in the river that flows past the city, just as the small town was overlooked by the world at large through its lack of representation online. In the excerpt, the reflection is described as a city that no one lives in, while everyone lives in that reflection through their actions. The reflection in the water is the result of the actions of the people in the city, and no one in the city acknowledges this. It just makes me wonder what else in our daily lives we walk past unnoticed. The intricate beauty of the world that effectively reflects our actions, gone unnoticed. Such as the footsteps left in the snow by children ...

As I continue my studies into forms of video art, I recently came across an article titled  Smashed cars and Chinese chewing: the five masterpieces of video art  and I found one of the pieces it discusses to be very interesting. The piece is called He Weeps for You  by Bill Viola. This piece has the viewer enter a circular room in which a video camera is trained on a copper pipe that leads from the ceiling and ends at exactly eye level. From the end of the pipe, a drop of water emerges. The camera, with its extreme close up perspective, sees a fish eye effect from the water droplet. Then, the droplet falls onto an amplified drum resulting in a startling boom, leading the cycle to repeat itself. This piece struck with me because of its repetitiveness. Viola's works often tend to focus on the human condition. This piece is almost screaming about how humans tend to follow the same path over and over, even though that, with the sound of the drum, they can realize it each t...

For this exercise, we were to pick an adjective that we feel best describes our artwork. In my case, I love telling stories and that is something that I always try and do with each of my works, even though I don't always succeed. But that is why I am taking these classes to try and better myself as an artist. Looking forward to seeing what works I create in the next couple of years, it will probably not resemble any of the stuff I am making now. 

Type choice has always been something that I have not really understood, or really taken the time to try and understand. Other than my professor warning specific students, me being one in particular, to only ever work with one type at a time, I know little to nothing about using type. However, after reading an article about choosing a typeface, it has made me realize how much work goes into choosing a typeface depending on the media that it will be representing. For example, I never realized that you need to pick a type that has high readability for those projects where a lot of text will have to be read. Since the white space between the letters, allows for faster reading. Whereas, a decorative font that has a lot of extra black space, makes reading lots of words, one after another, very difficult. Now I know why, I should only stay with one font type until I learn how to use font families effectively.

The first project for my graphic design 1 class was to construct an alphabet either out of objects that are in my daily life, or find them in the environment. I decided to construct my alphabet out of pool balls, as I have recently gotten back into playing the game. This assignment was a bit tricky as the shape of the balls and how close they are together made masking the individual objects difficult. One of the issues with the result is that some of the letters are a different size than the rest, such as the 'w'. This is because I was not careful when taking the images and the longer letter made cropping it to the correct dimensions as the other images, quite difficult.

I have finished my first project for my video art class. This project was a challenge for me as I did not initially approach the project from the right direction. When viewing some of the experimental videos that I had shot, I found a video that was a really close up shot of me eating, this struck a cord. So I decided to take this idea and base the rest of my video around it. So I invited a number of my friends to dinner, and I recorded them. The result, was the video below. I hope you enjoy.

This is a rough storyboard for my first project for the video art class. I am not quite sure how I feel about this project yet, but I wont know until I put stuff in front of the camera.

This is a preview of my work for the first assignment, it is not yet complete.

To begin working on the first project, we first discussed different shot types and how we might incorporate them. This is a little sandbox experiment practicing with different shot types.

The first work that I found quite interesting is a piece called Gillian Wearing / 2 into 1 . This work uses a technique that is very common in modern cinema, called a voice over. This is where a voice actor talks over the video of another character or actor, in a way that makes it seem that a different voice is coming from the character shown on screen. In the terms of Gillian Wearing, there are two children and a mother having a conversation about one another, however the children's voices come from the mother's mouth and the mother's voice comes from the children. I find this piece so interesting because this was one of the first examples of the voice over.

The first piece is a work by Ed Rusha in 2015, called Sponge Puddle.  I find this piece really interesting as I can not quite understand what Ed was intending for the meaning to be for the viewer. I also really enjoy the color scheme and how the colors of the background seem to reflect off the top of the snow covered mountains.  The next piece is a work by Jenny Holzer who works in many mediums, ranging from LED signs to painting. She primary focuses on public works of art with the use of projections and LED signs. This saying "Protect me from what I want" is a saying that she put on a sign above Times Square in New York City. This saying is very profound to me in that it has strong meaning to me in that it pertains to what humans tend to do. Humans do not always long for things that are healthy or beneficial to themselves, such as alcohol and drugs. This saying, is referencing this fact and it is something most people come into contact in their daily lives....