Compulsion to Blog Episode 10

I am keen to experiment with wax as a material for my model because melted wax holds such interesting, fluid forms. I researched some art done with wax and came across these awesome examples;

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/1-melting-wax-katina-cote.html

http://www.ettestudios.com/2011/07/inspiration-of-day-rainbow-of-melting.html

http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=117235;sa=showTopics

Looking at Babled's work got me think a lot about the ability of glass and water to portray fluidity but after thinking of glass and wax and how they get their shapes I realised how well fire does this also. I want to try and capture the form of fire in my model, using wax in some way to emphasise its fluidity.

http://freeimagesarchive.com/img-flame-683.htm

http://www.fire-sprinkler.co.nz/

My inner pyromaniac is squealing with joy...

Compulsion to Blog Episode 09

The word I have chosen to animate for my One Word Film is "evaporate" so I figured looking into the motion of steam and evaporating particles would pay off and this is what I came across;

A slow motion clip of water evaporating mid-air found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6anMpNZYpe0

This clip shows the motion of steam a bit better found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPZZhQps90s

To capture that fluidity of the motion would be key in showing the essence of 'evaporate'. While the boiling water may be quite vigorous, the motion of the steam is very soft.

While looking up these videos I also found this next one. It's not entirely relevant but I find the fact that it exists hilarious so here it is; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kieGBkOdyMU

Compulsion to Blog Episode 08

When researching 'fluidity' and 'juxtaposition' I came across this guy called Emmanuel Babled. He believes that a "good project is born through direct contact and physical presence in the territory of its production". Babled's process is to observe the materials and techniques of production and to gain an understanding of the social conditions, from which he develops his own innovative, personal techniques.

Modular lighting system

Murano hand-blown glass chandelier 

QUARK plexiglass coffee table

Babled's use of glass as a medium captures fluidity beautifully. The coffee table looks like it could be made of water captured in time. I found the curves drew my focus around the objects in a far 'softer' way than any cut corners or points did and I think this is a major attribute that needs to be present for fluidity.

Antiques Hunter

All images from Trade Me Auction page displayed above

This small table was advertised to be in the Gothic Revival style by the seller and in many aspects the item follows this. It is constructed out of English oak, one of the features of the Gothic Revival being the use of "heavy woods finished in a dark stain, such as rosewood, oak and walnut" (A. S. Mills, n.d.). Mills also describes how the style employed "heavy, intricate carvings on tables, chairs and beds", this being evident on the top of the table.

Another classic trait of Gothic design and decoration is to take inspiration from nature to produce simplified imagery. Owen Jones specifies that “natural objects should not be used as ornament”, rather simplified forms that are “suggestive to convey the intended image” (The Grammar of Ornament, 1856), and the carvings pay heed to this. These stylised sunrise/sunsets, however, are also where the design of the table begins to stray away from Gothic Revival and more into the "Jacobean Revival" style mentioned in the Trade Me article.

Also referred to as "Jacobethan", the Jacobean Revival was essentially a hybrid of Elizabethan and Gothic styles. While it borrowed attributes from both, they weren't necessarily applied in the same way. The sunset patterns take up a large portion of the tabletop, disrupting the table's functionality as a desk. The size of the table removes the possibility of it being used for meals associated with the dusk/dawn pattern (those being dinner and breakfast, therefore making the patterns arguably illusionistic). The Gothic style is associated heavily with practical design whereas this table seems to function primarily as an ornament. It becomes even more Jacobean with the use of spool turnings; “Lathe turnings with spool forms or spiral twist patterns were often used for legs and stretchers"(J. F. Pile, 2005) within the style.

Trade Me Link

References:

Mills, A. S. (n.d.). Characteristics of Gothic Revival Furniture. eHow Home. Retrieved from

http://www.ehow.com/facts_5730871_characteristics-gothic-revival-furniture.html

Pile, J. F. (2005). A History of Interior Design, London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd.

One Word Submission

Design teacher always told me that I had to work on my typography skills and I can't think of a better way to do so than this One Word Film project. With the cutting exercise (the jargon used to describe the spacing evades me at this hour) I found myself subconsciously comparing the spaces between my cut outline opposed to the actual letters. This is quite evident on the butter-pad page (butterpage?).

Kerning

Butter-pad

This nimbus of inspiration is a whittled down version of the list of words I came up with during the lecture. My favourite ones anyway. Looking at it now I noticed that even though the words had a lot of potential for fancy animation I didn't think too much about the design principles of project one. Although font behaves differently to imagery I should try and keep things like hierarchy and balance and such in mind when developing my three storyboards further.

Brainstorm

I found out that we can only use the letters of the words as shapes in our animation and nothing else, meaning that in the cases like "Chaos" or "Perspective" the scribbles and construction lines would have to actually be comprised of small letters or larger warped ones.

Concepts 1

Concepts 2

Concepts 3

The next three storyboards are my favourite three words where more detail can be shown from longer storyboards.

Evaporate development

If I was to take 'Evaporate' further I would extend the sequence with a high angle or bird's eye view shot above the beaker where the gaseous letters would drift past the screen but some would stick to spell out the word "evaporate" in the middle of the screen.

Perspective development

To take 'Perspective' further I would increase the size of the 'P' and instead of having it flip back into it's position the letters would rotate into the screen so that when they would normally flip and be inverted they change to be "PERSPECTIVE" spelt properly.

Tension development

If I was to develop 'Tension' I would find a soundtrack to put behind it that was from a classical horror movie as a possible substitute for the heartbeat to increase the tension. I would also want to try comical sound effects for the reactions of the 'e'.

Compulsion to Blog Episode 07

After using charcoal in my 101 hand in I wanted to experiment further with it so I drew this picture of my sister from when she was in England. I found using a rubber to both remove and smudge the charcoal produced quite cool effects, as seen in the background.

Compulsion to Blog Episode 06

I read on http://www.type.nu/bayer/ that Bauhaus was founded on principles of the Arts and Crafts movement in an attempt to combine art and industry. Looking at this font designed by Herbert Bayer I can see principles of the movement showing through. It's funny to think how much goes into something so simple.

 A design by Bayer that I quite liked. Although I don't take anything from it I think it is a clever image.

"At the present, because there are so many channels by which an individual might attain fame, albeit not enduring fame, virtually anyone can become famous for a brief period of time." And it's so true. Think of all the internet stars that exist now due to Youtube or blogs or Facebook. Art can take so many forms these days it can be found almost anywhere. Why can there not be art in anything, everything?

It's funny having seen references to this all over the place and not knowing who did it until now. This is by far my favourite interpretation;

Compulsion to Blog Episode 05

I wanted to see how glass looked when it cracked and how this could be adapted to a word. The other word that comes to mind when I look at this is "Pressure" but I feel it's a bit cliche.

A Storm Is Coming

Before we actually began to brainstorm we had a brief moment to make some simple storyboards. As you can see by the testing of pens on the paper I had other ideas I liked over these ones.

My brainstorm is in the post with the rest of my hand-in pieces of work but these were created afterwards as an attempt at more detailed storyboarding.

A thought I had during the creation of these was to use the word 'Tension' like 'Shatter' but have Tension pulsing like a heart with a heartbeat sound effect in the background. A crack would begin to appear from the      'o' in Tension and the heartbeat would increase. The crack would spread and become more severe and the heartbeat would become more frantic. Eventually the cracks would get too numerous and the word would shatter.

Another idea that I found attractive was the second to last frame of the "Perspective" storyboard. It held a lot of what perspective can mean in a far less literal sense than just portraying different forms of perspective. An animation based entirely on this motion would be just as effective, if not more so, than the complex one shown above.