Progress Critique 3

I've started with some animation, and here is what I have so far:

Progress Critique #2

This week, I created the first two graphics in Photoshop. Here they are:
Spirituality:

 Home:

My next step will be to create the other two, and then bring them into Adobe After Effects and animate each of them separately, then intertwine all of them.

Artist Lecture - Barbara Davidson

Barbara Davidson is a photojournalist for the Los Angeles Times who recently came and lectured at UNR on March 29. She was being presented with Frank McCulloch Courage in Journalism award for her photo series called “Caught in the Crossfire”. The photo series chronicled Los Angeles gang violence, but showed the subjects of her photos were the families that were not directly affiliated with gangs, yet were still effected by gang violence. Her photos told a powerful story about the people in Los Angeles, and how normal the gang violence is for them, it’s almost a way of life. The photos were done in all black and white, and showed portraits of people, a lot of the time children, who had been injured by stray bullets, or families that had lost loved ones. She said that the subjects she photographed were more than willing to help her with her project, because the families want to talk about their loved ones because they recognize that they are often forgotten but the community. Davidson decided to do this piece because she felt that this was a story that most times goes unreported in Los Angeles. She says she realizes that her story is not easy to talk about or to listen to, but it is an important story to needed to be told. “It’s really hard to tell these kinds of stories, which is why many people don’t,” said Davidson. To see Davidson’s work please visit www.LATimes.com/victims

Progress Critique #1 - Research

After developing my ideas fully about how I want to accomplish this project, I created a project calendar to keep me on track up until the final due date on 5/8. Here is the calendar:

For this stage in my project, I decided research of all the tools I will be using would be best. I completed some of the Lynda.com tutorials, including tutorials on Adobe Flash and After Effects. After researching both animation softwares I decided to go with After Effects. I've also experimented with Eyecon, trying to figure out how it works and how I will attempt to use it for my final product. I've also considered the sound that I will be using for the animation, and decided I want Eyecon to control the sound instead of the video. So instead of laying a soundtrack on the video file of each animation, I will upload sounds into Eyecon - clips of my favorite songs, sound effects of my life, clips of different people talking, readings of my favorite quotes, etc. These sounds will be randomly changing as a person moves across the space. In the calendar as well as my original idea, I said I would create 4 separate videos that will tie together and each video will change according to Eyecon. Now I will create one single fluid animation that will loop through all four canvases, and the sounds will be randomized.

Project 2 Proposal

I want to create a piece that is similar to the triptychs we made in Art 245. I want to collect around 20 images - either that I found, that I scanned/took a picture of, or that I created in Adobe Illustrator, and paste them together into a digital canvas on Photoshop. The idea I was thinking of was creating 4 separate scenes that each depict an important aspect of my life. The 4 aspects I want to use are Home - Reno/Tahoe, UNR life, how I live, Relationships - family, friends, mentors, etc, Spirituality - religion, culture, beliefs, and Music - my favorite form of recreation. Since these are all aspects of my life, I think they can intertwine with each other. So, I want to animate each scene together as a sort of life story either through photoshop or flash, and then use Eyecon to shift between videos when someone walks across an open space. The different videos will will be the different perspectives of each scene. Each separate scene will interact with one another at certain points depending on where you are standing in the space. This work will be projected on a big screen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpwB2Mz38Cw&feature=related

Final Critique

I realized as the deadling was getting closer, that I had never actually given my work a title. So here is the installation iLight:

You can find this on the 2nd floor of Church Fine Arts, near the ProjectNV gallery.

iLight is a photo series installation consisting of 18 portraits. The portraits were created with a 10 second shutter speed, in which the subject used my iPhone to light up their face, then draw through the air with the iPhone. The end product created a sort of "light painting" in conjunction with the portraits. Of my 240 contacts in my phone, I successfully photographed 30, and narrowed that 30 down to 18 to print for the final project. Each person got to select his or her own light color, as well as draw whatever shape they liked. The only direction I gave was how long to hold the light on their own face, and when to start drawing with the light. In this way, each photo is a personal representation of the person being photographed. If there are any questions, please comment below!

Week 5 Progress

This week I am selecting the photos I want to use for the project, and I will start printing out the photographs. Here are the photos I will be using: