Tag: animation

A Year in Mixed Media ~ part one

Throughout 2015 I completed a mixed media art journal, one page each week.

Some weeks were easier, some were colourful, some were hard to start and some were hard to finish. Both in terms of the art, and in terms of the weeks out of which the pages emerged.

It’s all metaphors, right? 

This year I’m revisiting my year of mixed media, and bringing the pages to life in a different form. Here I was, one year ago:

 

Starting out here, in January 2015, a blank book (year) ahead – full of possibilities img_3578

Week 1 unfolded, bright, wordy and eye-filled.

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Week 2 was a big ole brain dump. Funny how this process cements moments into the memory.

I remember listening to podcasts and YouTube things as I doodled this out. Words and phrases filtered through my ears down, out through my drawing hand – sometimes verbatim – sometimes slightly altered by the messages I heard inside the words.

‘Make 2015 the year you question everything’, said the scrap of paper. Glued into my book, glued into my imagination, this phrase was to inform the way the coming months played out. Question Everything.

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Week 3: Comfortably into the new year I was setting myself some targets. I achieved the specific ones – way quicker than I expected too. But reflecting from a year further into this life, I see how woolly and unquantifiable some were. Lately I’ve been listening to Leonie Dawson. Do you know her?  She’s also loud, smiley, fun and colourful. I like her a lot. She’s big on goal setting. I’m following her wisdom this time round.

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Week 4 found time to pause for thought. I was brimming with optimism, which mirrored again this year as a time so rich in potential and beginningness. As much as anything else, I’m getting to know me a while lot better through doing this. Turns out that’s my happy place: just on the cusp of an ending and a beginning. (Oh, and in case you’re wondering – the computer came back in full health – having not forgotten anything).

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Week 5 – the cross over from January into February. Another big week. (They’re even bigger looking back – it’s a trick of perspective, maybe).

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So as we turn into the next month today, this seems a good point to pause. Part two will follow along soon. 

 

 

 

 

flutterbies

Playing about with a bit of animation…

Last year of college I dabbled a bit in film and animation. Oh my giddy days – this is a thing of wondrous possibility!!  Instant  LOVE for  having the dimensions of time and sound as possibilities In art. 

So a year on I’m reintroducing it, re-remembering the skills and techniques, re inspiring some of the ideas.

Bear with, I’m rusty (and only played a little to begin) but it’s coming back to me. I plan to use these butterflies as my test film, see what else I can make them into. Watch this space!!

memento mori

My big project this term is entitled Memento Mori. Considering mortality.

The aspect of mortality I’ve chosen to illustrate is the fading out and tapering off that some lives go through toward the end; The detachment and fragmentation a person sometimes encounters in their final days, months or years.

I’ve created a series of prints and drawings, portraits of my mum, taken from a photograph of her on her 16th birthday. They are abstracted and distorted, a little surreal. Her final years were spent largely in a dream world, she’d tell me of her fantastic adventures and travels, peppered with memories and enriched by a life time of reading and absorbing information and ideas, as her mind escaped from the body which no longer worked.

The following short animation is made up of some of the images I created in the process.

guinea pig break

hi folks, I’m interupting the twelvty stream of conciousness with a little request…

…would you be guinea pig for me?

Here’s the thing, I’m presenting my project in class tomorrow, a series of portraits.
So, as the deadline creeps up I’ve suddenly taken it into my head to add a short animated doodad into the mix.

I’m fine tuning it just now but I’ll post it up this evening, your constructive criticism would be much appreciated! 😉

TIA! x

Update! It’s much-later o’clock… I realise I’ve been arsing about figuring how to show you this thing… It’s a Flash file (.swf) – which looks all fine n dandy over here but is no good to upload for you to see. Any top tips on converting it to a usable format ?

Update 2! Finally managed it !!! Presentation in class went well (as far as I could tell!) It’s here if you’d like to take a look!