Semester Submission: Visual Literacy

In order to finalise my coursework for this semester I decided to annotate and explain my Photoshop submissions;

After having brainstormed and mind mapped all the possible outcomes for the words assigned to my class for visualisation, I came to my conclusion by creating a photoshop piece linked to each word; except Fall. Replacing an image for fall is a photoshop portraiture piece I created by combining various techniques I learnt during the practical sessions.

Curiosity: This caricuature of curious sheep was inspired by an image of a field full of sheep. However, the original photo seemed to lack a certain sense of curiosity that only a cartoon could portray, thus I recreated the image to include a bigger personality.

Chaos: There's a certain distinctive element about a teenagers life that includes chaos. One that is only truly revealed in the shadows and slumbers of the streets. Hence, I created an image which incoporates this dark imagery of drugs and drink with blood and misfortune. The black and red emphasise the gruesome nature of the scenes portrayed and truly visualise chaos for me.

Communication: During my research and previsualisations I indentified how many forms of communication there are. To fully portray just how many different mediums there are, I took an icon of comedy, a medium which wouldn't usually be associated with communication, and created a portraiture of him, full of colour to incoporate the beauty of this medium.

Portaiture: To create a dynamic portraiture, I used various different techniques and effects in order to really bring the image to life and create something that was unusual and would stand out from a stereotypical portraiture.

Prayer: This image had to be incredibly powerful and dynamic in order to portray the incredible grief that the main character goes through after losing his child. His hands are clapsed to convey his desperation and urge to pray to God out of grief and anger. Plus I incoporated a tear onto the side of the hands in order to emphasise the 'great sadness' of 'Mack' the main character in 'The Shack'

  

Simming: This scene is the turning point and pinnacle moment of the entire story. The urgency and fear is elaborated by the abnormal colours and frenzied glow. The irony of the whole situation is that Mack's focus on two of his children lead to his youngest child being abducted. 

Stencil recorded

Pitch prelude

As week 8 draws ever closer I once again begin to take stock of my work thus far.

This time, I'm going to make clear distinction between my different modules and indicate the specific work I've done for each.

Audio

So far this year in my Audio module I have worked through all the tutorials on Soundforge and made adequate notes on everything I've learnt. This module is the most information heavy thus far and as such little work has been done on the creative side of things. However, preliminary design ideas for the coursework can be found in my Audio Sketchbook

Elementary Animation

Animation has been much more fruitful in its learning process as I have finally completed two full 'Post-it note' flickbooks. Both animations document the course of a ball undertaking an obstacle course and as I made mistakes in the first book I took measures to correct those mistakes in the second flickbook.

After finishing those, I moved on to the line tests, creating a 3 second animation charting the movement of a 'Ball with tail'. Unfortunately the lighting quality is poor and I am tempted to edit the animation in photoshop to create a clearer result.

 

In addition to this, my Animation sketchbook is showing clearly the development of the design process towards my first animation involving an actual scenario and character. 

To demonstrate this, I have a 'research endowed' collage that tried to present the story I wish to animate in a digitally appealing fashion. The concept is that; An American hillbilly Spacehopper is being abducted by Aliens, and tries to escape his fate by hiding behind various objects. The objects get abducted in turn until there is only one left. The last one is too big for the space craft and it crashes whilst trying to abduct the final object. Equilibrium, disequilibrium, eqiulibrium.


 

Dynamic Communication

In my dynamic communication classes I have been spending time both furthering my flash skills and working towards the coursework goal through designing a personal logo. 

In addition to this I have also created an influence map and documented some thoughts on how various artists influence my own art.

Above you can see some various animations that were created whilst practising my Flash editing skills. Each one highlights a seperate key element of flash creation techniques and were all inspired from lectures and tutorials.

Visual Literacy

In my visual literacy course, my progress has been 3 fold. Firstly, I completed my series of images on communicating words visually. Four words interpreted to my own desire; 

In addition to this, I have also created a series of images in photoshop using the techniques i've learnt during our tutorial sessions;

Lastly, I have began preparation towards my coursework, choosing to design imagery to convey the story or partys of the story from the book "The Shack" which I believe to be basically graphically inept, thus making it a perfect subject matter for unique works. 

Stencil recorded.

Pitch week passover

Behold the fourth week of my computer arts course. The week has been labelled 'Pitch week' and during this week, students from all years on the course get together to discuss and present how they're meeting their assignments. This involves show-casing any work you've done so far and talking about why you did it and how it will help you achieve the overall outcome.

Unfortunately, I didn't have too much to showcase; but I made do with what little I had. Speaking of which; my course is broken down into 4 modules; Dynamic Communication, Visual Literacy, Audio and Animation.

In Dynamic communication I've been tasked with self-branding: which involves creating a logo and indent. As I discovered during my pitch session, I probably should've been focusing more on the logo part and less on messing around with Adobe Flash, but regardless here's a little sneak peak at what I made;

Seeing as the task was to brand yourself, I thought I'd make a very basic animation based around my signature. The paintbrush idea was inspired by an old 'Disney' indent in which Mickey Mouse paints the Disney logo on screen.

The other indent I created is slightly more complex and revolves around the concept of turning a black canvas white. Although he can't be seen in the '.avi' format of this file, there's also a little stick man character who hops onto the screen in this video. This clip is included at the bottom of this update.




Alongside animating, I also delved into character design, developing two characters for the title 'Castle Crashers' and also my own little mascot who was designed to market pepper mints called 'Uncle Peppy' (Dr.Pepper seemed like a breach of copyright)

For my visual communication classes, in which I have to keep a sketchbook of artistic musings, I've created a series of visualisations of assigned words. Basically, it's a collage of all and everything that comes to mind when I think of the word. The words so far have been: Curiosity, Fall, Chaos and the latest is Communication.

Unfortunately, there's nothing to show-case for my Audio classes and although I've been keeping a sketch-book and making several hundred flipbooks, I only have one to publish online.

At any rate, that's it for the first 3 weeks of my course, stay tuned for some intense independent study!

Stencil recorded

Letters to an Art Student

Independent work and Assigned work: Perfect balance of the two will be what makes a successful student successful, in any field of study.

Thus far, I've completed the majority of my assigned work to the best of my ability and done little to know independent study or work. But all that's about to change with the arrival of this blog.

Motivation and inspiration are the greatest tools of study; the foundation on which all learning strives from. Hence, I'll soon be exploring the resources I have to correlate enough inspiration to pave the pathway for independent study and using this blog as the motivation to continue with assigned works from university. That's the 'University of Abertay: Dundee', for those of you who don't know. And the work i'm doing sings to the tune of a Bachelors Degree in 'Computer Arts'

Bienvenue and I hope you enjoy the content that should grace the archives of this blog within the next few months.

Stencil recorded.