#project 2

[panda-paradise]

Project 2 - Nox

"I remember reading an old legend for lonesome travelers long ago. It told us to beware the black dog who walks amidst the darkest night, for it bears an omen of death soon to come. I believe if Nox was given the opportunity, he would not hesitate to make this legend a reality. He fits his role rather well, despite his more unruly attitude at times. For this reason, he remains my favorite after all these years." - The Mistress

my mad lad. unhinged bastard man.

[mindinganother]

3:2

[kdoarts245-01]

Project 2 - Typecube WIP

I have a fondness for Julieta Ulanovsky’s font Montserrat, since it is the sole font used in my portfolio book to apply to the GD+I program.

Ulanovsky was inspired by the street signs and architecture in Monserrat, which is in the center of Buenos Aires and a part of larger Argentina. As urban development progresses, the city changes as well and she wanted to preserve some of the old charm by creating this font

For the experimental type, I began by making a digital collage of the streets in Montserrat. Then, I found and cropped photos that specifically featured some sort of signage, since Ulanovsky drew direct inspiration from these.

Using the collage of the streets, I made several abstract images by putting it though the xerox machine. It gave this warped, marbling effect after moving the sheet around rapidly in the copying process. On top of that, I inked the letter m with india ink (for a flat, opaque look).

I cut up the street signs into individual letters and sections to collage on top of the letter, as if they were bursting out of it, like how change tends to happen whether we want it to or not. After, I layered on more ink to obscure some parts and add more contrast. Visually, I wanted it to reference the bustling city.

———

For the experimental image, I knew that I wanted to play with the idea of arches due to the curves in the lowercase m. Monserrat is where the presidential palace, Casa Rosada, is located. Making my iPad into a makeshift lightbox, I traced over several photos of the arches in the building with tracing paper. My inspiration for the looser style of these sketches is Teoh Yi Chie, an urban plein air artist I’ve been following for a long time. His whole modus operandi is to not be too concerned with precision but to draw as it is.

After copying, the layers of tracing paper are more visible and converted to grayscale. I took a photo of the most interesting part for the final — again, emphasis on the arches.

I also love the surprise pointillism given to the image by the printer. Happy accidents!

[connorchen-saddog8]

Performance lecture documentation

[kdo-arts266]

Week 10 - 3/22

At the beginning of the year I bought a brush pack for Procreate from True Grit Texture Supply that is supposed to emulate traditional pens. I used it heavily for this project, primarily the brushes that mimic brush pens and pencils. I do wish I was able to have completed this in watercolor because working digitally doesn’t quite have the depth I was looking for. I think the washes and layers of color would have added to the moodiness of the atmosphere. Besides that, if there was anything else I’d do differently it would be using more tints of blue. I feel like some panels are more difficult to see and that subtle contrast would help with differentiating figure from ground. It was really fun to experiment with halftones. They made the coloring process much more efficient. I was able to achieve a consistent texture.

[k-do-arts246-03]

3/15 Reading + Reflection - Project 2

Chapter 8: Typography on Screen

I think good design is often design you don’t notice. This chapter made me realize a lot goes into making sure typography is legible on screens. When a site has low resolution text or imagery, it’s pretty obvious and distracting from the content they actually want you to see. I’ve noticed that images are used as text in place of formatted text on a page before but hadn’t really stopped to think about how that would affect the downloading of the webpage. I also have always liked Futura, but this chapter made me appreciate it more, as sans serif modern typefaces like that are versatile and give a cleaner look to whatever media they’re featured in, especially websites.

Over break I was able to finally set up and take the photos I needed for the main poster. I liked the distortion the projector naturally added to the type but felt that some of the letters got lost in my friend’s hair, so I brightened them later in Illustrator. It turned out how I envisioned. If only we had a bigger wall, the ratio of projection to person would’ve been greater and I think that would’ve made for a more dramatic image.

As for the AR aspect — that was the first time I’ve ever done any sort of animation. It was surprisingly straightforward in Procreate. The layers are the frames and I just had to export it as an animated gif. Throughout the process of setting it up — which was kind of tedious but enjoyable — I figured out what works and what doesn’t. I watched maybe 2 minutes of a tutorial but most of it was me messing around and accidentally finding new features. Something I learned is that more frames does make the movement smoother, but it also seems slower. Some of the choppiness is intentional and works with the glitch aspect I want to capture. I think over the weekend I will go back and rework some frames — make the brush strokes come out from within the figure instead of being randomly dispersed. I will also have the text more cropped in and hold the frame longer for readability — right now I think it cuts a bit too fast for people to read the whole phrase.

[sroznowskiarts102-04]

Project 2 — Reflection 2

This project came to me relatively and surprisingly easy. I enjoyed using the alphabet as only images and shapes to create visual interest based on the overlap, curves, or boldness.

It’s very interesting how font choice as one factor can change the whole vibe of a piece. Baskerville, the font used in image 1 as well as my favorite font, has beautiful serif elements, making the essence of the design more elegant and respectable, whereas image 2, non-serif and bold, seems more poster/pop-art like, and image 3, while in English, has almost an arabic lettering quality.

This project shows how composition can really make or break a piece, specifically in the realm of our requirements (ie letters being unrecognizable). This project forced us to reckon with balancing positive and negative space, movement, and visual harmony. I believe our group exercise with the paper grid version of our pieces aided in the development of that skill also.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this project.

[gowhilewedance]

"Well perhaps you could tell me...while we dance."

701 frames, 542 artists, 3 months, all collaborating on 1 animation. Here is the result.

@neil-gaiman @goodomensonprime

[angeliqueshelleyartist]

Further Development Project 2

Post #1

For my second project, I decided to take my Gorilla from the "A 'Bit' of 3D" task and turn it into a character with an outfit and a prop. It would be great to also work on my 3D skills some more with modelling my concept and rendering it, but realistically, I may only be able to roughly model some of the parts and then photobash and render by hand the remainder of the composite in Photoshop.

This is the point I stopped working on the sculpt for the 3D task.

During my peer review for the "A 'Bit' of 3D" task, the main critique I received was that the proportions of the rear and legs seemed off, the backside was too large and the hips were too far apart.

I adjusted the legs and rear to a more accurate representation, and rendered off a 45 degree view of the front and back with some basic lighting as a base for my concepts.

Concepts:

I wanted to elaborate on the gorilla's physical prowess by making him a militant type character with sci-fi elements. After exploring different options from cyborg, enhanced and more natural options, I decided I like the natural options like 1 and 2 the most. I also played around with the idea of a force-field in varying shapes and activation methods, such as neural activation (7), fist-slam activation (8), or chest-pound activation (9).

I decided to explore a variation of concept 1 in greater detail but with a more natural approach (1a&b), as well as concept 2 (2a&b).

In both concepts, but primarily the second, I used a lot of braids and natural materials that are woven and stitched, the feathers will reflect the colourful plumage of tropical birds. For the prop, I'm planning an creating a type of compound bow as the powerful arms of the gorilla would make devastating ranged attacks with a bow. I'm planning to pursue the more natural concept 2.

In my peer review, I expressed concern around the sensitives of race and representation as I was worried that my designs may come across as insensitive if they were based on human cultures living in their habitat of Equatorial Africa, or even other cultures. I want to push the sci-fi element more to show that the gorilla has evolved into something hyper intelligent, like the characters in The Planet of the Apes, and also with it's own unique cultural signature.

Plans for the Final Composite:

I'd like to composite the render into this license free stock photograph of a rain forest I found (Clark, 2020), I'll make some adjustments to make the composite look like a mixture of photographic detail and some painting over to make certain elements stand out more. I also want to pose the character so that it naturally interacts with the environment by having it's front hand on the fore-ground boulder. I'll have to match the depth of field to integrate it well.

Photo References:

CLARK, J. (2020). green trees on forest during daytime. [Photograph]. Unsplash. CC BY-SA. Available at: https://unsplash.com/photos/green-trees-on-forest-during-daytime-H7JiEU8Slnw [Acessed: 06 December 2023]

[insanemomentsinrhdhistory]

Project 2: Cartographers of Intrigue

Reference Images

[mindinganother]

Sam Green, 32 Sounds, 2022

[mocndu]

my back hurts so his does too

[connorchen-saddog8]

Project 2: The Expanded Field The Discrete Horror of Chair Porn

rationale, artist statement and other words:

Layer 1, the sincere, Chair porn:

Layer 2, the analysis, Video essay:

Layer 3, the critique, performance lecture documentation:

Final reflection:

I do like this work and some of the ideas I'm trying to look at. I loved the layered aspect of the work and creating this fictional online environment, playing with the theatrical aspect of performance and the novelty of me playing every part. I do think I could expand on this idea of a hyper online art work further and try to simulate / create a lol cow in a more factual and practice based way, but I think I'm fine with what it is. I think the most successful aspect of this work is the base. The chair porn itself. I do genuinely want to make it, and for it to just exist as an absurdist video work. But I do find certain joy in these layers of analysis and critique along with satire and irony. I am not naturally drawn to performance and I think for the lecture I could have had more authority? Play up the character a bit more. However in theory the character is just me, as is every character in this fictional universe I've created.

[kdo-arts266]

Week 8 - 2/29

I have never done any sort of comic before so the concept of a 4 page comic is really intimidating to me. I started brainstorming ideas about personal experiences I could draw inspiration from but a lot of them are too personal/something I would not be comfortable sharing with the class. Narrowing it all down, I was able to settle on two possible ideas. The first concept centers around anxiety and how it feels so overpowering in the moment but immediately like nothing happened after the feeling passes. I could represent myself as a rabbit, since rabbits are known for running on fear, and have the people around me be different natural predators. The second concept is based on a jarring experience I had with sleep paralysis except it wasn’t really sleep paralysis. It was more like astral projection. The memory starts with me slowly waking up and realizing I was unable to move my limbs and then suddenly I was out of my body. I could see myself sleeping in my own bed and even floated down the stairs. The most terrifying part about the experience was floating down to my mom’s room and discovering that she no longer had a face. Where her features were supposed to be was just a smooth expanse of skin. I’m leaning towards the latter.

[k-do-arts246-03]

3/1 Reading + Reflection - Project 2

Chapter 7: The Evolution of Typographic Technology

I’m glad the letterpress is seeing a revival as an art form because I love the textural quality of a handmade print. My field notes pocket notebook features a print from an independent letterpress shop. I just think it’s so cool in the same way a risograph print is cool, because little variations come through. As someone who loves working in Illustrator, I think I take for granted how automatic the functions are. Leading could be increased at the touch of a button — I don’t even have to think twice about it. I don’t have to individually set each letter and adjust the spacing (would be a nightmare). Can you imagine how long it would take to finish a project if we still had to go about it a mechanical way like that? I would miss my special effects…my overlay… my multiply.

The end of this week marks the beginning of Spring Break, which means I am packing up and going to my friends’ apartment in Georgia. They own a projector, and I intend to make good use of it in creating the imagery for my poster. I’ll start with designing the poster digitally then project the image onto one of them (who graciously agreed to model for me). Hopefully the projection creates some distortion of its own. The above picture shows how I might set it up, reminiscent of a person standing in front of a painting, except they are a part of it.

As for the VR aspect, I’ve been inspired by liminal spaces, which I think also gives a sort of grand feeling the sublime paintings do, but more ominous. The scary feeling comes from that sense that you’ve been in that space before, and since there is no other visible being there besides yourself, there is that element of anticipation for what could be there. I’m thinking of either physically mocking up the room and screen recording myself traversing through it or drawing a 2D image and animating it in a way where it looks like found footage. I think the latter option is much more manageable in the time frame (and given my abilities).

[sofy-tofy]

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