Dane had us doing an Exquisite corpse exercise for our final workshop, that fun game where you fold a paper into three parts and a different person draws each bit. It plays on the idea of collaboration and surrealism, with different ideas and viewpoints factoring into the final abomination.
We've been tasked with creating an animated exquisite corpse for Friday's class, where we make an animation, take the first/last frame, and pass it on to another student so that they can transition it into their animation.
I did something pretty simple - a lil mandrake bouncing out of the ground. Currently i'm waiting on the starting frame from another student in order to complete the transition of my animation, but here's what I've created so far.
Working on a save point asset, thought to make it look like some sort of fey-plantlife. Mushrooms in particular are pretty heavily associated with the fairy realm, so it seems only natural that you should be able to save by them!
I'd like to draw a few more concepts for these or make them look extra floaty/ethereal/fey-like. Here's a bunch of pictures for further exploration
On Wednesday I was lucky enough to take part in an animation workshop led by Japanese Animator, Mirai Mizue. His work is highly abstract, featuring characters and shapes derived from cels, and he experiments through use of stream of consciousness drawing and by limiting what he can and cannot do with the resources he has on hand. A lot of his work is very high-action and chaotic, which left me feeling both excited and somewhat unable to look at the screen at times.
In particular, his video JAM kickstarted an idea in my head for my own project.
JAM operates on layers, sound and timing. Each part of the musical track corresponds to a cell-like 'character' that can only be seen when the piece in question is heard. Put this together into a full arrangement and you get a kind of visual score to match what you're hearing. As the music evolves, so does the image on screen. There is no narrative, just images corresponding to sound and coming together to fill the senses.
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In particular it was the idea of layers that got me thinking about my own piece. Animation has layers, so does clothing - just like there are layers to music and image. Why not make the idea of the layerthe unifying element for my project?
JAM also got me thinking about the idea of the canvas or workspace of the artist - for a seamstress it'd be a table and a sewing machine, but for someone like me, its the digital screen and the pixel dimensions that I define. I would like to explore the idea that clothing can become the animator's workspace.
With those two in mind, I feel like I have a solid basis for a project now. I would like to take the components of the lolita's dress and turn them into the layers and stages that an animation goes through. The lolita skirt in particular functions similarly to the layers of a canvas - you have your skirt or JSK - the final product that is displayed to all, but underneath lie the petticoats, made up of layers of thin fabric that bolster the skirt and give it its signature shape - just like the basic shapes, guidelines, rough passes and cleanup that go into making the animation look picture perfect. The petticoat also functions quite well as the idea of the onionskin, seeing as the fabric it is made from is quite transparent.
I would like to coordinate a full outfit around this concept, but as things stand I don't think I will have enough money for materials. Because of this I would like to focus the brunt of my project onto the skirt and petticoats, taking tutorials from the internet in order to learn how to craft the right garments and repurpose them for my needs. I would like the final piece to be something I can wear with the lolita outfits I already own, and feature lolita motifs in an animation context.
We were required to abstract our chosen discipline into a character or creature concept, drawing up something that contained the essence of what we were looking into.
Mine being lolita, I figured it would only be natural to abstract the character into a passive, doll-like shape and feature the typical colors one might see a classic lolita wearing. Her face is very abstract and appears quite serene, reflecting the lolita's elegance and poise. She could probably do with a bit more patterning on her skirt, and I am rather worried that I didn't abstract her ENOUGH as she just appears to be wearing the discipline more than embodying it :S
In addition to doing two views, we also had to do them performing an ability, so here's my lolita doll playing with some lace. I figure she can just ribbon it out of her sleeves and wrap people in it? Maybe its a defense thing.
Gothita's evolution line probably gets the point better across than mine in all honestly
Our modelling exercise required us to encompass all of history into an image using whatever tools and techniques we liked. The only condition was that it had to be visual - no numbers, words symbols or sounds.
I tried to think of all the things humanity has discovered throughout the years and put as many as I could think of here in a rather gritty sketch. Things such as space travel and technological developments. I'm not sure if some of them such as knights and soldiers count as symbols for war but, they were still a part of history correct?
I found this exercise particularly hard. How do you describe history without giving it words or symbols? I feel like there's too much symbolism in my final sketchy piece.
The patterning exercise required us to look at a clip of flowing water and create an animation out of that. Mine only follows the first few seconds, but it made me think of a fish or microbial creature swimming in a rather playful way, so that's what I ended up making.
I would have liked to spend more time texturing it and abstracting it to truly distance it from the source material, but I think for now giving it characteristics like an almost-mouth make it feel more alive and playful? than a simple imitation of the patterns in water.
I've fallen behind on our transdisciplinary exercises, so I may spend a little time organizing this journal to fill them in. I've made a few strides in terms of finding a medium for my project and figuring out how to go ahead with it, but I'll be posting those once I have all of these exercises out of the way.
The idea of 'remixing' comics can often be used for humerous effect, but I struggled with this one a little as I have no idea about the theme and tone that the original narrative was trying to convey. It leaves me feeling at a loss in terms of this kind of work - I'm not the most comfortable taking a knife to someone else's production and repurposing it for my own means.
Still, I have taken one of the comics available on moodle and tried to change the narrative from forcing a girl to sign up for a club (?) into a minimalistic, silly yuri romance with a terrible punchline.
