7. Kinetic Typography

http://vimeo.com/23565686

This was by far my favorite aspect of AE.

8. Final

I used my final to test an idea that I was working with for my capstone. I wanted to play with the idea of being inside a dreamcatcher and experiencing all the bad dreams.I thought the best way to convey this would be in short, packed bursts of images.  

4. Green Screen vs Live Set

6. Particles

Becuase of the war with the Particle Illusion demo, I attempted to create my own explosion in After Effects. I don't think it was a successful attempt but at least I tried. The problem with creating the explosion in AE was that I needed to mask out the explosion as well as play with the pacing. It builds up comes back down way to quickly.

Jillian McDonald

Jillian McDonald a filmmaker that bases much of her work off of horror films. She uses visual effects to put herself in various movies, captures death in films through drawings and does street performances, engaging people in the world of zombies. There are aspects of her work that I found very interesting. I was intrigued by the Body Count Drawings. It’s interesting that she took moving images, which we only see for second and created drawings. The death scenes are definitely more impactful when you have to look at them for more than a second. I also thought it was really nice that they are in pencil them seemingly smeared in red.

            I had a hard time connecting to her video work, however, I did enjoy Alone Together In the Night, “Two videos projected on opposite walls feature zombies and vampires staging a dramatic Western-style showdown at dawn in the desert. Surrounding the videos are floor-to-ceiling photographic murals that wrap the gallery in local desert imagery: cacti, mountain, rugged terrain, contemporary ghost towns, and graveyards. Freestanding photographic cacti rattle dryly via tiny speakers.” I really like the set up of this instillation, recreating an Arizona desert.

            It’s interesting that Jillian identifies with the genre of horror rather than the fans of horror. The variety of inspiration that drives artist identity is really amazing. Learning about artist work and what they identify with has helped me in figuring out my artist identity. 

Lee Arnold

I probably indentifies most with Lee Arnold’s work. As a filmmaker, he documented his travels and played with the sense of time to create a dreamlike experience. I really like the use of raw footage to create an alternate state. However, with today’s use of special effects, I think that gets lost. I really enjoyed Analogue. The shooting technique is so simple but the use of monochrome, exaggerated colors and the music creates this heart wrenching experience. I like the use of topographic lines. It sort of signals that this is a real space, even though elements are making it seem like a dream. Identity within space is very clear in his work. A lot of the work shown to us was inspired by visiting or living somewhere else. I like that he takes that identity and transforms it into these supposed dreams. 

Analogue from Lee Arnold on Vimeo.

Kenseth Armstead

I’ve known of Kenseth’s Spook series for quite a while but I didn’t foresee a comic book coming out of it. One thing I really got from Kenseth’s studio visit was the use of different mediums. When I was first introduced to Spook, it was a film. To see the same subject transform into a variety of mediums really stuck with me. I love that the drawings from the comic book were able to stand individually. There are some drawings that I absolutely fell in love with. Although Spook grew from his family identity, I feel as though that’s not the main drive behind this series. It seems to me as experimentation in creating a brand, which we haven’t seen from any of the other artists.

Kaho Abe

Kaho Abe is a game artist, working increase interactivity between people. I found her work to be really interesting because gaming creates lack of interaction amongst people. Her work acts a breath of fresh air within the gaming community. I was a little disappointed that we didn’t get to chance to play with her work. The most interesting piece to me was the ninja piece that she was currently working on. The game consisted of players working together to create shapes that fit into another preexisting shapes. The objective of the game is very similar to the game show. ”The idea of people having to work together within a game, rather than being against each other is something that I think we need to see more of in games. Kaho also shared a piece with us in which players wore vests and gloves with sensors, depending on each other to complete a song.  Kaho’s work clearly identifies with the modern game culture. However, her work tries to bring in loss concepts of people working together. It’s interesting that Kaho’s identity is related to an activity rather than race. That definitely makes her work unique in terms of identity. 

Everything Is Illuminated: green screen

  

For this project, I chose to put myself in a scene of Everything Is Illuminated. The scene itself is dimly lit and very florescent. Once I shot my part, I needed to do color correction. Also, working with audio in after effects seems to be practically impossible. I need to open the original scene in Final Cut and take out the character sound. If only final cut would ever work here.

Visiting Artist: Linda Ganjian

,Linda Ganjian is a sculpture artist, examining identity from a variety of different angles. Sitting around a rectangle table, housing her current work, she introduced us to her take on displaying identity. She has a variety of work that displayed her identity as well as an identity that related to others. Her most obvious personal piece was Navelstone. Navelstone is a collaborative piece in which both artist created tiles to represent the interaction of Armanian and Turkish culture.Linda's tiles were mainly about coming from an Armenian identity. I grew to appreciate tile work after studying Islamic tiles in Spain. Looking at Linda's tiles definitely brought me back to Islamic tiles. Her use of colors pays incredible homage to tile work. I found Migration Map to be most like traditional tiles.
Her Towers series related to identity through language. She studied different alphabets and reworked the letters into a tower. These piece is a bit easier to relate to because we all have our own alphabets which are a daily part of our lives. I also found it incredibly interesting to examine alphabets and rework them into a structure.
Posted below are the works referred to in this post.

Navelstone

Migration Map

Towers

Sanford Biggers and Indentity

In the series of  visiting artist, I noticed a theme that seems to exists in form of every one's art. That theme: Identity. Saya Wolfalk, Nagar Ahakami and now, Sanford Biggers. Identity exists in forms of race, culture, religion and creed. The question of what makes up your identity spirals into a whirlwind of ideas. One thing these artists have in common is interpreting those ideas and visually reproducing them as a display to others.
Sanford Biggers works in a number of mediums; photography, video, sculpture, and painting. Based on the work  viewed in his studio, they all trace back to identity. I created a few favorite pieces that I wanted to devout my attention to. One being, his short film about a man's journey back to Brazil. The piece really captures the questions of identity that every person deals with. (What makes your identity? your family, culture, birthplace  current home,profession? etc). Amongst his other work, this seems to be the most universally relative. Also, this is one the the first works we've seen that doesn't relate to the artists personal identity.
The second piece which I found to be an incredible window into Sanford's identity was Lotus. Lotus is a sculpture piece, displaying the transportation of slaves but in the form of a lotus flower. Talking to Sanford, it was clear that his heritage is a big part of his identity. He also mentioned his time in Japan which influenced his interest in Buddhism. This is very clear in Lotus. Looking at Lotus very closely, you can see the detailing. to commit to something so intricate and time consuming, one would have to feel deeply connected to it. I definitely got that sense from Lotus.
The works referred to in this post are below:

Lotus

Lotus

2. Doubles

1. Sustitition

This is a substitution project, changing shoes. Doing this project alone effected the camera movement. At the same time, I think it sort of works because there's so much movement in the video.