Photography 27/9

This image has been inverted, and a blue hue added to it. I started with a black ink base, added silver ink for the midtones, and white ink for the shadows. When I thought up this mono print, I intentionally created it in the negative to see what kind of effect I could achieve. The above image was taken when it was still wet, hence all the little black dots which are actually shiny reflections on the peaks of the ink. The idea for this is almost a doomsday sky that I can use sections of in my final pieces along with some lino cut. I have printed out my photogram images on A4 so now I have a 1:2 scale base to start planning the lino cut images. Hopefully the next wek I will have those drawings done and ready to carve out.

Professional Practices 26/9

Update on exhibition group. Traci has given me the contact of someone who can help us find an exhibition space. We are still waiting to hear back about G3, so as a group we decided to backburner that option, and work on finding a new place so that we arent leaving it until last minute. The Cambridge Arcade came up as a potential space for us to use. My job is to get in touch with Kari tonight to find out potential costs involved, any red tape, and what our options actually are. Today we decided on the name of our exhibition, and after our meeting tomorrow, we will have finalised the colour scheme, design, and fonts for our poster/logo, and initial social media posts. Everyone now has a job, Dylan is in charge of recording minutes and documenting BTS, Jessi will be in charge of Instagram, Leigh is in charge of the install form, Stephen is in charge of the design, and I am in charge of the facebook event group and chairing the meetings. Once we have our location nailed down, we can start focusing on our budget, and gallery design, and pushing the event through advertising.

Facebook group is set up, ready to go. I am just waiting on the confirmed design and palette to finish the group off. I will be updating everything after the meeting tomorrow.

Animation 26/9

12 Principles of Animation pt 2.

1. Squash and Stretch. Provides realism to movements. Must retain the original volume when transforming the shapes.
2. Anticipation. Gives the audience clues as to what will happen next, lengthens movements. ie a backswing on a punch. Multiple levels of anticipation creates more complex looking movements.
3. Staging. Presentation of a clear, unmistakable idea. Planning the scene to control where the audience focus will be throughout. Exaggeration of features to ensure the feel of the sequence is obvious.
4. Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose. Two methods to animate images. Straight ahead is animating in sequence as you go. Pose to Pose is creating the beginning image, end image, and then going back through and filling in the gaps. P2P gives more control over the finished sequence. Straight ahead is good for unpredictable animations, eg fire, water. P2P has Keys - beginning and end images, Extremes - the furtherest out the movements will go, Breakdowns - the inbetweens.
5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action(drag). Follow through is the ending of a movement, overlapping action is the "repeat" at the end of a movement. Drag helps distinguish between flexible and rigid objects.
6. Slow In and Slow Out. Extending the beginning and ending of a movement to achieve realism. 
7. Arcs. Adjusting movements on the y axis to remove the mechanical feel of a movement. A smear can emphasise movement with less frames.
8. Secondary Action. Gestures that support the main action. They compliment the main action without drawing the focus away from it. Conveys personality.
9. Timing. The number of frames changes the feel of a sequence. Drawing on twos(two frames per image) gives a smoother movement, drawing on ones is better for fast movements.
10. Exaggeration. Every action and pose needs to be over exaggerated to give the best finished feel. Faster sequences need more extreme exaggeration.
11. Solid Drawing. Using volume, weight and balance to make the image feel like its in the 3d space. Use 3d shapes to block out character shapes. Use overlap to add to the 3D feel.
12. Appeal. Make the characters charismatic and interesting. Use a variety of shapes, play with proportions, keep it simple.

Knowing your characters is key to successfully using the 12 principles to create a good animation.

Sometimes, its more about what frames you leave out, as opposed to what you cram in.

Animation 25/9

First shot nearly done. Ive finalised the background colours, all I need to do now is add the river animation, shadows on the mountain and thats 25% of my animation finished! Thankfully this is one of the biggest sections of the whole piece, so the rest should be a lot quicker to knock out.

Photography 19/9

This time around I have the exposure timing right, however I think the blurriness might be due to me not having the light source directly above the paper. Im not overly worried about this however, as I was always planning on making the building look run down, so I can just cut those parts out and turn them into printed areas. I think this week I need to start working on my lino cut designs.

Professional Practices 19/9

Week 10 problem Solving.
What Makes a Good Problem Solver

1. They dont need to be right all the time, they focus on finding the right solution not proving themselves right at all costs.
2. They go beyond a fixated mindset and are open to new ways of thinking.
3. They see problems as challenges, and try to learn from them.
4. They know when to do systematic and complex thinking, and when to use shortcuts to find an easy solution.
5. They have a clear definition of what the problem is.
6. They use the power of words to connect with people. Good at finding the middle ground solutions.
7. They dont create problems for others. They understand that to have their problems solved, they cant create problems for others. They make a conscious effort not to harm others. They know there will be consequences even if the problem is temporarily solved.
8. They are more about prevention than intervention. Good problem solvers can prevent problems occurring in the first place. They usually face less drama, conflict and stress since they have clear boundaries, dont let their rights get violated, and dont violate others rights. Generally a positive thinker.
9. They explore their own options. They can see more than one solution to a problem, and find new productive ways to solve them. They also have a backup plan just in case.
10. They have reasonable expectations. They have reasonable expectations as to what the solution will be. They understand that there are many elements, and that ways of idealistic thinking is counter-productive.

Today we visited Steve Solomon in his galley residency. He is currently working on a commissioned Maori entrance way for the SIT main campus. After talking to him for a while, I really got the feeling of just how emotionally involved he is with his work. He takes great care with his choices and it shows in his work and the way he talks about it.

During photography class, we visited the gallery across the road to view the exhibition currently held there. It was a nice mixture of pieces hung up although the back felt a little cramped due to the low ceiling.

Animation 19/9

 12 principles of Animation. Squash and stretch. Important for creating realistic movement in a 2D environment. Today was good practice using key frames, and I learnt how to disfigure during key frame movement, instead of making extra frames/pegs. I think there is a lot of scenes in my current animation that I will be able to use this technique and speed things up for me. Everything comes back to time.. lol

Animation 17/9

Visual reference for my fish, to get the proportions correct. Im going to keep draco the same colour, but definitely step up the shading game.

Photography 17/9

Nothing really to report for the week just been, I took a time out and spent most of the week off trying to de-stress, and completing my final proposals. However, I did spend more time trying to tweak my digital pinhole without much success IMO, I tried a jar lid with a similar size pinhole, but less thickness and had similar results. Im not ready to give up just yet though.

This photo shows the big drawback to using a dslr for pinhole work. All those black marks are dust on my sensor, so I had to purchase a sensor cleaning kit lol. But hey, at least I learnt how to clean the sensor by myself.

Professional Practices 17/9

Mid semester break over and done. Dylan has made contact with the person he is asking about exhibition locations, so we will get a report on that on weds. Originally for my website, I had chosen SmugMug as my web builder of choice, however during my digital software purchasing, I discovered that sometime in the past I had bought a bundle of software that included a web designer program.

Needless to say, it was a pleasant surprise and Ive found it pretty easy to use so far. Its not going to take me much longer to finish a website that Im happy with.

Animation 5/9

Time for Harmony! I have been waiting for this all semester. We were shown how to trasnfer our animatic from Storyboard to Harmony. One thing that caught me out was that each camera angle/shot created its own project folder. My previous animation was all one project, and I hit the frame limit in Harmony. The way we did it this time makes sense to me now as to how people can create proper full length animations using the software.

Im really happy with my animatic mark, and I got some really good feedback on how to improve what I had done. First thing I fixed was the dragons laugh, I changed to from a  deep human laugh to a hippo grunting, which funnily enough sounded enough like a beast laughing. I also had to rearrange my shots because I didnt have them grouped by camera angle, but that was easily enough done. The next part wont be hard at all, it will just take time.

Photography 6/9

Today I tested out my photogram stencil idea, and didnt have clear results.

 





I wasnt the only person having these results, and after a frustating day, Sarina talked to Chris and we discovered our technique was faulty. I will try again next time Im there and fingers crossed Ill nail it next time in terms of clarity and evenness.

On Weds, Leigh mentioned about using a digital camera as a pinhole, so I did some research online and discovered how to convert a cap into a pinhole "lense". The down side that I have noticed so far is a very narrow field of view, and the focus is fuzzier than an analog pinhole camera. The upsides however are no reloading paper for each shot, large photos, colour!, no worrying about light leakage, and extremely quick shutter speeds.

3 seconds

2 seconds

1 second

I wonder if there is a camera setting that I can play with to help with the sharpness. Failing that, I can always use Lightroom/Photoshop to adjust the photos. Thanks to Leighs suggestion, I now have another option that Im interested in for my project.

Professional Practices 5/9

As of today, we are officially off the Think and Create committees, and on to our own events. The class exhibition caught my attention from the get go, because I need experience with organising/running an event of this type. I do need to make sure I dont get railroaded however, and make sure everyone in the group gets heard but I think I can manage it. It is going to be good to actually have some involvement now, unlike the previous committee with too many people. This exhibition is gonna be awesome! *fingers crossed*

Photography 30/8

Proposal presentation day! I feel ok with my presentation but as with all of them, I still feel like I could have done better. On the plus side now I am solidified towards a a goal instead of having to come up with a concept so that should make the next phase easier. Sticking to my timeline is going to be the hardest part, Im definitely a "sporadic burst of work" type of student lol. As long as I dont end up backed up and scrambling in the last few weeks, I shall call it a success.

Professional Practices 29/8

Todays problem solving was creating the worst exhibition we could think of, individually and then collated into groups.Leigh, Aaron E and myself managed to win best "worst" ideas. I really need to finish my CV, but I am having problems with the fact that my work experience is not in the art industry. This makes filling in the skills section tricky. I really want to start my website, but due to Smugmug having a 1 month trial system, Im holding off until after the 14th so that when I hand it in, I dont have to pay to have the website up. Im definitely keen on the solo showcase option for our class moving forward, its a bit more varied in terms of experience options for everyone.