Final Day of Class, Critique

Final Projects!

So day was the last day of class, the day everyone was to critique and present their final projects. My partner had to already go home for the summer, so he skyped in to help present! It was pretty funny, and Dorian took this awesome photo of us I snagged off of facebook! VVV

So our final project idea was to take something digital, something organic, and combine it to show a new perspective of the place we chose to study and the place we chose to present. The place I went, the farmers market, was very organic with a lot of hand typography as well as a lot of textures that was mostly of fruit and vegetables. To best translate the farmers market and the experience I had, we took what we had learned throughout the progress of our in class work, and our out of class work, combine it all together to show this concept, the concept of:

A digitalized world through presenting in class, combined with the organic nature of the farmers market, we decided to project digitalized typography layered in an composition mixed in with the original, textures, made digitalized by the combination in photoshop, and then add another layer of complexititly by digitalization in Cinema 4D by the animation of that composition, and finally bringing it back into the texture of a truly organic orange, from the farmers market itself. Layers and layers of manulipation of this object, as in a metaphorical process that fruits and vegetables go through today to be sold in the grocery stores...

...It was an undeniable concept that came from the must haves of projection of image onto a screen in our major and a unique way of twisting that deliverable into one that better represented our environment. Taking a organic place and representing that digitally, without loosing the true texture that was the true characteristic of the environment, along with the texture of the rich background audio you would of heard if you were there. 

Animated Projection:

test_forprojection from Alexis Copeland on Vimeo.

In presentation, we went in with the idea of setting up a studio environment, placing the orange in the scene, and projecting this animation onto the orange in hopes that you would see this orange transform before your eyes in accordance to the rich audio. With no time to test this projection out, we were left with a projection that was not contrasted enough because of the type of projection we used, or any at that. Hopefully our concept will be significant enough to prove this as a project that is worthy of a great grade, especially when this final project is more about the concept, rather than the final project.

Learning from this, I really hope to take this approach in the future of motion design. This is the type of concepts and ideas worthy of museums and galleries, and that's what i'm more interested in rather than commercial work. I love the idea of multiple layers of manulipation that is finally unraveled and thrown out just to give back and represent in it's true form, only with my interpretation of it. It's almost art for arts sake, and I love that.

Monday 23rd/ Thursday 26th

The next couple of days we concepted and tried to think of cool ideas to experiment with that will make something visually appealing that displayed our environment, or just simply of what we wanted to do. We dropped the idea of a vertical composition to work with, and instead started thinking in terms of a circle. While I was riding down the street in my car I got this great idea of doing this, in that we could use the canvas of an actual texture rather than an projected one from the screen. The textures of all the food I shot at the farmers market really displayed the truths of the environment and the true organic quality of it. It would be awesome to juxtapose that organic with the helvetica, but with the typography being projections  of the organic from the photographs from the the farmers hand writing composed with the helvetica. It would be cool to show this on something as small as an orange, and then add the audio of the farmers market into the environment that we're presenting, so that the people experiencing this can really get the idea of the artistic expression.

So Corey and I started working in class together to come up with some experiments using this. We eventually took the studies from our work previously, mapped them onto a sphere in c4d, and see what it looked like. Turned out it looked awesome! Super excited to animate and project it onto this texture of an orange. We'll also see what else we can come up with over the weekend for Monday. Cory's leaving but I think I got presenting by myself.

Thursday April 19th,

So we came to class with our Helvetica and texture studies to hang up and discuss. Some of us had a ton and some of us had a few. I took the previous studies of mine and took Dorians suggestion of distorting it by hand, scanning it in, and then I composed it with the other studies I hand and worked with the textures of it. I was fairly happy with them. I really tried to reflect the look and feel of the environment I chose.

In discussion we each chose a study we enjoyed, and explained why we liked it. It was very useful for the person who made it to get feedback on the expression they were conveying, or if they conveyed it in a way the person who liked it, liked it for. Or, if they understood it in general. It was interesting because it just so happened that people picked studies that directly correlated with the other person who chose theirs! Really funny but didn't work out for the discussion's order sake.

After getting a feel for everyones study and an idea/direction to go with our animation, we were given the option to pick partners to work on this with, or to work by ourselves. Super excited that we could also take this assignment and use any kind of techniques, I teamed up with Cory because he wanted to do the same thing. His studies were very interesting as well so I bet whatever we come up with will be a lot of fun to make, hopefully something cool will come from it too!

Monday, April 16th

Over the weekend, there was a ton of stuff going on! Friday was the opening for Best of Ringling, after that was a MD party and a mixer downstairs, Saturday was accepted students day, Saturday we had a visiting artist, David Lewandowski, and he was also here Sunday for a Cinema 4D workshop. With everything going on, Dorian was kind enough to tell us to no do our homework! Awesome!

So, we do our studies in class.

In class we combined our studies together by juxtaposing different textures and type from around the area.  We also started to incorporate Helvetica in the pieces to take the context of the typography out of the environment. From there we took the type, and then reintroduced it back into our textures and elements. After a good time was spent in making things, we took those things and laid them all across the floor for critique. After all it is just a point to make as much as possible, and then to just see what works and what doesn't work.

Some Critique notes:

Some where a little too much, or rather wayy to much
And likewise others were way simple!
There needs to be an in between
Take two different things and fine a dominate structure, but them next to each other and you got it! This was explained by paper folding different studies together and making them that in between we were looking for.

By next class we are to take this approach, or not, but make it work. Also, we are to add back in our elements and textures. Let's see what happens!

Thursday, April 12th

Today we brought in a collection of images from our photoshoot over the weekend. Everyone had a lot of interesting stuff, so much so that people even laid their images on the ground! Well, from this collection brought the discussion on why we keep these sort of things. Such an interesting conversation that about an hour was spent with not one moment left for silence, and not one moment you could even get a word in. It was a very interesting discussion on the future compared to what we believed our generation was involved within thinking of our future. Kind of an confusing concept to get involved in, but one worth it to ponder about and question. Will it be consumed by technology? Or will our generation teach the next to keep it respected as a tool, rather than the overall attitute and infatuation with life inside of technology and social media be the main forms of life. Its kind of a far stretch to say this, but with the rapid development of ideas goals, before you can even think of something its aready here. Basically, in order to really have an original idea in an reachable way you have to think of it way beforehand, where people think its a crazy idea and one where its too crazy to have followers for revolution or change, if it is even necessary. Its hard to get the crowd to follow along, especially when they are so infatuated and wrapped up in the social media of trash, especially living in Florida where it seems to have no history at all compared to the north where there has been establishments from the beginning of colonization.
ANYWAYS, the main point of the conversation for the discussion in class to day was to ask ourselves why we do things. That moves into the past assignment of why we chose to take the photographs we chose, and through discussion we decided that the grunge look of textures and the decaying matter of them are what we are drawn to. More so because it has history.

Monday, April 9th

Today and class we met in the critique room, and rather than pinning our work to the walls we had our binded books so we layed them across the table side by side to go through them. We evaluated things such as type, the type of paper, and the layout of type compared to image. It seemed that if one of these things were off, it pretty much threw off the visual meaning of the total of the work. If someone had a nicely designed book, and it was printed on cheap tabloid paper from the printers then the whole work just seemed cheap and not cared for. This is something I already knew from experience with other classes, but it was definitely evident now. The context you give your work is extremely important. Anyways, it turned out the people in class that treated type the simplest and treated their layout the simplest, they were the ones most successful. Luckily I was one of those people. I used a black bleed across my book, with small system of type that was set flush to the right for easy reading for the viewer, with a large dominate photo that gave the text structure, as well as my grid. James was also very successful, he was a tad different by using even cleaner type and was set in a way where the text was completely separate from the images. This could of been because his book was small, or it could of been a way for easy reading. I believe it was a little of both. You really need that balance and simplicity for your work to shine through between the amount of junk design out there. Its so much clutter sometimes that the eye is really refreshed to see something so clean. Just like when you clean your room you suddenly feel as if your world is organized and you can actually breathe. You feel a whole lot better too.

Well, besides this critique we won't be making tweaks to this and reprinting. I'm pretty grateful for this because with the black bled across my book, it got expensive fast! I had to make friends with the Kinkos people to get a discount! I plan to go to a printing shop in the end though for my final presentation with both concepts for WEDU.

Streamers of Light: Concept 1 WEDU Network Refresh:
Book Semifinal


For homework we will be turning in a collection of our location images and videos for our final experimentation project with type. I'm very excited to take the chance to explore what I can do with the images and videos I have. I plan to take the things I learn by this project and fine tuning them for a show opening animation for ART Network. We just got finished producing "Off the meal plan" A show where student cooks explore the possibilities in recreating a dish from a local restaurant, as well interviewing the cook where the viewers can get a feeling of what the restaurant is like in case they ever miss meal times here at Ringling. Well, it should be interesting! I already have ideas for both.

Thursday, April 5th

So were in the process of designing our process books for WEDU, starting off with our first concept. Over the weekend we were to come up with a grid and with a folio system.

Heading to critique, as usual, we hung our studies on the board and discussed our grid techniques. I had some problems with the way I was setting my header/name/page number. After the critique I took some things away that could help me with redesigning my system: making sure it is an element that won't take away from my book, one where my page number is not the main emphasis, and one that goes along with my grid. Now, these were the general critiques, but after talking with dorian later on, he mentioned to me that I was still in the mindset of designing in a spread format like a magazine. It's cool to do that, but in some cases it may be a one that is distracting, and this is one of those cases since we are designing a book that's primary emphasis is to show off our work. I also placed my system at the top of the page, bad idea apparently and I was told that I needed to use some short of color system for variation rather than black and white. Also after our conversation, we were thinking of was to make a template maybe the future of motion design could use, or where a template was available for anyone to use without much difficulty. I thought of maybe making a motion design logo, especially if other well known majors have their own variation of the Ringling logo then we definitely should!

I have a lot to do this weekend but I know what I want to do for my book: completely redesign it into a simple format that is mated neutral and professional against my work, and one where hopefully there is a newly designed motion design logo. I also plan to head to the farmers market this logo with the 7D I checked out from digital checkout to capture some footage to add into my library.