Tuesday, March 30, 2010

FINAL

Story: Teenage highschool student is drawing in his notebook on a bus ride to school(public transportation), but is hindered from accurately translating his ideas due to lack of drawing skills. Getting inspiration from his surroundings, he creates a character he is willing to illustrate. At this point, the viewer will be taken inside of the teenager's imagination where his ideas will be seen fully developed.
His character will be doing free running/parkour with the ability to emit graffiti from his footsteps. The main character-teenager-reaches his stop and looses focus of his imagination, causing the free runner to kill himself during his last stunt.

Concept: Inability to escape from reality
How: illustrating is main character's method of escaping. His inability to draw/translate ideas hinders his escape.
inability to devote full attention to imagination/drawings

Connection btw Graffiti & Free Running:
Graffiti writers and free runners use the environment to reach seemingly unreachable locations.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Documentation Materials

I chose to stage an intervention for midterm. I wanted to somehow blend moving liquid/droplets, illustration, and a figure into footage.

After sharing ideas with the class, I decided the best approach for staging the droplets is to film them in motion. I then edited the footage in Final Cut, exported it to Quicktime , and imported them into After Effects. The illustration was penciled and inked by hand (preference). I wanted to use a character design that was exagerated but remeniscient of the actor.

My first objective was to separate the actor from the footage so I can animate the water in between him and the background.I first dragged the footage of actor/environment into the comp, and duplicated the layer. I then dragged my chosen droplet footage in between the two previous layers. On the topmost layer (footage w/ actor and environment) I masked the actor, feathered its edges and animated the actors mask until he left the footage. After playing around with opacity and footage on the water layer I masked the shapes I wanted and animated that. Finally, I added the illustration, and masked the spaces in between the it and water to add depth to the lines.
Below is some of my footage:








Tuesday, March 2, 2010

VERY INTERESTING SPECIAL: PROFESSOR GRIF FROM PUBLIC ENEMY

I came across this while doing some research. If you're familiar with Public Enemy, you may know who Professor Griff is. Well, he was a member of the group and is still active (giving lectures/appearances on radio shows etc. spreading valuable information about where society is heading etc. I recommend this to ANYONE. THIS IS HIGHLY INFORMATIVE. THE SHOW INTENSIFIES AS YOU PROGRESS THROUGH IT. WARNING: THIS CAN BE POLITICALLY INCORRECT.

Monday, March 1, 2010

FAVORITE YOUTUBE VIDEOS

tubesteak

DEFINITION OF VIRAL VIDEO/SOCIAL MEDIA

viral video: usually humorous or abnormal in some way, and almost instantly catches lots of media attention via internet. (sharing/being passed along via internet)

social media: methods + outlets for communication, sharing information, and socializing via internet. 
ex: facebook/twitter/youtube/blog+forums/metacafe

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Article: Electronic Media and the dumbing down of society

http://www.oldthinkernews.com/Articles/oldthinker%20news/electronic_media_and_the_dumbing_down_of_society.htm

More Inspiration

I'm considering taking a new approach to my projects. Below are some links to what influences-other than real life- my style(hand drawings/paintings/comics). Hopefully, I can tie all of these influences to my topic. I want to incorporate hand drawn images w/ digital images.

Peter Chung interview-Animator: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WaSTrXMZjc

I am fascinated with underground/early 90s hip hop music w/ surreal, raw, grimy, melancholy sounds as in this song. I try capture these aesthetics when I make comics. Walkin' Large- In Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXhZiizguCI

This one is less intense, but you get the point.

I will post a few pages of my comics for clarity.


Inspiration

Here is a cool music video done in After Effects. This seems like a direction I would like to take in animating in after effects. There is a nice balance of detail and variety. I make comics and produce lots of hand drawn material. In my future projects I would like to incorporate hand drawn material to attain a raw quality, or take a approach similar to this video.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

ASSIGNMENT WRITE UP

Although I have not mastered the puppet tool, I see of has lots of potential. For project 5 I tried combining a particle effect with the puppet tool. One benefit of this tool is that one can bend/animate/overlap different parts of an object without the trouble of making individual parts first and reconnecting/positioning them. However, I feel that I have more control of animating with parenting because the unparented areas remain completely static. The biggest problem I had was that my pens would drift over time even though they were keyframed, causing a slight pinch in my curve

Monday, February 8, 2010

New Revised Proposal: Mind Control

I have decided to change my topic to mind control. I feel the media is constantly dumbing down our society through entertainment, historical, political, and religious propaganda, but by whom and for what agenda?

What methods are being used to desensitize/condition us to accept various forms of propaganda, and what/who is the source of it?
What vital information is propaganda distracting us from?
Has our society become too dependent on the media's(news, television etc.) information, and at what point do we take initiative, research information for ourselves and use discernment?

GOALS FOR THE ASSIGNMENT:

In depth understanding of how society is being controlled.

In depth understanding of who we're being controlled by, to what extent, and for what reasons.

Learn more about history. (are old subversion tactics presently being used to control the masses?)

Know specific information about major events that are surfaced.

Through knowledge of hidden information/propaganda I am less susceptible of using my art to promote it. (now/future reference/future business endeavors etc.)

Go beyond questioning what I'm unsure about, research my inquiries and use discernment. From there, accept or reject information, or continue researching.




Tuesday, February 2, 2010

1st Proposal Topic: Graffiti

Neville Williams

Proposal

Digital Imaging

I have decided my topic is graffiti. I chose graffiti because it is are recurring theme in my art such as in the use of color, and detail. What attracts me to graffiti is it’s raw quality and that it is illegal. I was impressed by work that was done at a large scale and in hard to reach places/conditions such as-while keeping watch of the police and attackers during late hours-writing on bill boards, and sides of tall buildings/bridges with no surfaces. I found that graffiti can add character to dull or depressing environments. To an extent the viewer/public do not have a choice of as to when, where or what kinds of work is being executed.

There are rules that graffiti writers should follow, and I am not familiar with all of these rules. Through my research I can better understand these rules and have more in-depth knowledge of graffiti.

Graffiti was also a way of bridging all of my influences together.

INTERNET SOURCES FOR TOPIC: GRAFFITTI

http://ghettomanga.blogspot.com/2009/12/watching-infamy-dope-graf-documentary.html