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Final Artist Statement

Our assignment was to create a short nonlinear film using images derived from a song and focusing on color, and then removing the song and syncing abstract sound to the footage. I honestly had no idea what to do with this project or where to go with it, particularly because I lacked interest in the subject. After a few failed concepts, I came up with the idea to create a complication of various early 1930s cartoons to display to the class what one of my large inspirations of my work and being an animator is. I decided to use an electric swing song, which is a contemporary take on swing to parallel with my art, which I believe to be a contemporary take on the early 1930s comics and animations. The song itself is an instrumental remix of “Bella Belle” by the Noisy Freaks, originally performed by The Electric Swing Circus, edited down to about two minutes. For me the song conveys an upbeat wild party type feeling, but also a sense of the dark and surreal. This is similar to 30s cartoons which usually had upbeat happy characters and worlds that would on occasion contrast with surreal and nightmarish imagery. After collecting various cartoons, I began editing them together matching scenes to what I felt fit well with the song. My main goal was to use imagery of upbeat party scenes for the first half of the video and as the song progresses become wilder until switching to the surreal crazy imagery for the rest of the video. Afterwards I layered old film, scratches, different film reel beginnings and endings, and multiple burnings of film reels. I did this to emphasis the old worn look and the surreal/abstract feeling of the film. To be honest color was an afterthought, most of the footage was black and white to begin with except for a tiny bit of footage using recolored versions of the cartoons from the 1970s. I mostly used color filters over the footage, trying to use colors I felt fit with the mood the imagery created and added to the oddness, I also went back and overlaid some footage of abstract colors, which hopefully builds on the dreamlike nightmarish feeling for the piece. While the song-based version probably emphasizes the wild upbeat sensory, my sound piece hopefully highlights the surreal creepiness of some of the footage. I tried to achieve this by adding various old film reel sounds, countdowns, record playing, and other abstract noises. The second piece itself starts out eerily calm and slowly progress to a much darker abstractness near the end. Overall, I think the pieces are acceptable. I am not necessarily proud of either of them but am satisfied with the results. I feel they get the mood I was going for across and display my inspiration effectively. While I think they are edited rather well, I think the use of color in the pieces meets the minimum requirements, but definitely needs some work. This is most likely because the use of color was never intentional as it should have been, and instead incorporated last.

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Part 1 Brainstorming List

Surreal

Crazy

Abstract

Wild

Upbeat

Dark

Retro

Vintage

Dancing

Partying

Nightmare

Dream

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Final piece.

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Artist Statement

For the final unit 2 project, I decided to create a digital piece touching upon culture appropriation and how it relates to blending in versus standing out. For the first part of the project, we used images of patterns from our chosen Masonic temple room to use as a basis for our own variation of the pattern. After creating three different sketches from the pattern, I decided to incorporate all three to create one final new pattern of my own. After this I colored the pattern using the color palette of the Egyptian room, and then tried a few other palettes of color for some color studies. Sticking with the ancient Egypt theme of the temple room I had chosen, I came up with the concept of making a satirical culture appropriation-based piece embracing the stereotypes of ancient Egypt. Studying to become an animator, I admire and find myself largely influenced by the Golden Age of animation and have a soft spot for the aesthetic of early 1930s inkblot cartoons. Remembering that several 1930s cartoons had shorts set in stereotypical ancient Egypt, I decided to make my piece based off these, and to appear in sense as a retro cartoon short. After reviewing some of the shorts, I began sketching settings and designs based off the cartoon’s representation of ancient Egypt. Due to already being inspired by the 1930s “funny animal” cartoon genre, I decided to use characters from my web comic “Whistle Stop” for the piece and began sketching them in stereotypical ancient Egyptian caricature roles. Finally, I came up with the idea that some of the characters would be stereotyped colonist/explores (usually the protagonist in the old shorts) and the rest as local inhabitants (typically the antagonist). I decided that the final piece would incorporate my pattern in the background and use its color palette for the rest of the background and the clothes of the local Egyptian characters, on the other hand the colonist characters would have a different color palette for their clothes. Through the physical difference in clothes style and color, along with their actions, the colonist characters are supposed to address the idea of standing out amongst the locals and their home, the locals meanwhile are supposed to look as if they belong in the space. With all this in mind I laid out the final piece, sketched a rough pencil draft, inked, and finally colored the piece before applying and messing around with filters to give it a worn overexposed desaturated look akin to old film. I believe I completed what I set out to accomplish, the piece seems busy and chaotic like an old cartoon, and the actions and color palettes of the colonist help them to stand out in the piece, fitting their roles as people who do not belong and are only causing trouble and disruption. The rest of the characters blend in nicely to the setting but stand out enough to be seen as separate entities from the background, none the less they appear at home in the space. The idea of radical stereotypes is also addressed, the background is filled with nonsensical patterns and hieroglyphs that displays the generalized contemporary view of not being able to understand them and viewing them as nothing but crude pictures and shapes. Of course, there is a mummy in an area where one would never be, and the various characters each fill different caricature roles common in ancient Egypt stereotypes, especially in 1930s cartoons. There are the hostile locals displayed as soldiers, servants and or slaves, sexualized belly dancers, and the beautiful queen who just happens to be smitten with one of the colonist. The added filters bring textures to the background and give the overall piece the look of dusty grainy desaturated faded film. All in all, I find the piece to be rather successful from my point of view.

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Concept Sketches.

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Color studies of completed pattern.

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Pattern Sketches and original pattern.

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Part 1 Response

I tend to present myself to the outside world as very quiet, calculating, emotionless and I hope somewhat intelligent. A lot this originates from what I believe to be a sort of social anxiety and my introverted personality, I do not enjoy large social events as most do and rather spend my time doing independent activities or social interactions with small groups of people. In other words, I have a tight niche group of friends and it’s very hard for me to open up to new people, as I fear of what they will think of me, and I’m quick to judge them as well. This is obviously something I have to work on for a various of reasons, but inside I believe myself to be a very laid back and thoughtful person, who is also creative, humorous, and sarcastic with just about everything. If I were to use form to physically show the difference between my mask and how I feel inside, I believe the use of geometric and rigid shapes would be a good representation of my mask, being cold and calculating, while smooth organic shapes could represent my inside, warm and thoughtful.

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I have chosen the Egyptian room as my jumping off point of study for this unit.

The following are 6 Egyptian/ Egyptian inspired art in this order:

Triadic, Complementary, Analogous, Split-contemporary, Rectangle, and Square.

The final picture is a European Masterwork inspired by Egyptian art, which is Square in this case.

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Artist Statement

I started this project and disappointedly ended it without much passion or drive. At first, I was lost on any sort of concept that would fit the criteria presented to me and thus relied on Talia to pitch ideas to me. She came up with the idea to pick up on the concept of building images of a room from different materials, similar to what I did for the first Image project last semester, where I created a comic strip that used cardboard and paper to create the background part of the sequence. Without any other ideas, I decided to just go with the one presented to me because I figured it could be worse. Thus, similar to the Image project I created a comic strip that uses backgrounds created from various colored papers to create texture and various gradients. Due to the script for the comic I came up with, the setting went from indoors to outdoors and became more cartoony and farther from reality. Two of the panels essentially became abstract images of various paper and digital paint that form somewhat of a void, hopefully seen as relating to the characters emotions over any form of setting. To be honest I had not set plans for the gradations and kind of threw them together, though I seemed to have used at least both value and saturation gradients in the process. Overall, I didn’t care for the project and I feel indifferent to the final piece. I believe the piece meets the criteria presented to me, but does not go above and beyond that, and as for story, I find in very lackluster, probably being one of my poorest scripts (as I felt rushed to come up with something).  

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Background Concept.