Spatial Dynamics in Animated Movies

On page 100, Stewart's text describes how Disney's Mulan movie was largely successful due to its animators created the illusion of space with great inventiveness. Mulan was released in 1998 (my early childhood years) and even back then, it is amazing how realistic a cartoon movie can feel just because of the use of overlapping foreground and background, showing different "camera" angles to zoom in or out, and thus producing very realistic and emotional scenes. The use of spatial dynamics, as well as the advancements in technology, is fantastic and today we see even more realistic animated movies than ever before. Thumbs up to artists at Pixar and Dreamworks! I'm sure I'm not the only one who cries during more animated movies than actual acted ones... right? They're just so... real.

The Effect of Rhythm

Putting text in a design can really have an effect on the piece overall. Since I would like to work in Communications some day, I especially like using text in my work. I love looking at magazine covers and other professional publications to get new ideas for how to layout words, as well as what size text and what style of fonts to use. Stewart's text points out that rhythm in your text can be used to create a very interesting display in your composition. I especially enjoy this piece from the book that repeats the word "ping" over and over again, but in different colors and different opacity. This type of rhythm would be very effective in some propaganda work, like the posters we designed a few weeks ago.

Asymmetrical Balance

I don't know why but I'm just not a fan of asymmetrical balance. I mean, I've seen art work designed with it and it can be very dynamic and pretty cool looking. However, I don't think I could ever let myself design something that's not symmetrical. I'm a fan of balance, in fact radial or linear symmetry is easily my favorite style just because it's so pleasing to the eye. I'm probably a little OCD and maybe that's why I don't like having things very offset or unbalanced. Anyone else out there like that?

Closure in Art

Reading through Stewart's text, I came across the section regarding closure. It is defined as "the mind's inclination to connect fragmentary information to product a completed form" which essentially means your work is discovered and interpreted by each viewer themselves. I find this concept really interesting because normally when we are putting together a design, we have our own thought about what ideas or feelings we want to project through the piece to the audience. However, Stewart points that when a viewer is able to complete an image in his or her mind, "it is often more memorable than an image that leaves no room for participation." Leaving some piece of vagueness or mystery to your work and hence letting someone make their own conclusion about it can be better than trying to force people to a conclusion yourself. Something to keep in mind for the future.

Abstract Triptych

For my Vector Exercise, I started off with the word "April" in all capital letters in the font style KG Feeling 22 (this was a font that I downloaded from dafont.com). The first triptych box has the letters AP, the second box has the letter R, and the third box has the letters IL. April is a significant to me because my birthday is in April as well as my parent's wedding anniversary, so if they had never gotten married I probably wouldn't be here today lol. I played around with the points and handles on the text outlines to make them look more abstract. I also cut a few letters in half with the eraser tool then changed the colors and stroke styles as I pleased. I can't say that I had a real direction in mind for where this exercise would go but this is my final piece!

Balance

So yes I'm behind on the reading and blogging. I swear I'll get caught up this week! I just read pg. 66-81 discussing composition grouping, patterns and balance. Oh how I am a balance queen! You can see this in my photomontage, I tried very hard to make the colored rectangles in the background balance well with the surrounding negative space. I'm a little OCD so I think that plays a role haha. My hope for this class though is to go out on a limb and explore making my pieces less balanced simply because I feel they are more real and artsy than something perfectly balanced. Just my thoughts.

Photomontage - Sweet Dreams

              When we were first given this assignment, I struggled to come up with creative ideas for my photomontage. I knew that I wanted to capture something that involved movement but wasn’t sure exactly what that should be. When I was lying in bed later that night, a thought came to my mind; why not take photos of someone while they are sleeping? Now that sounds a little creepy but try not to think about it like that. If you have ever seen a small child toss and turn in their sleep, you can’t help but wonder what they are dreaming about or what kind of stresses they had during the day. That is the type of emotion I wanted to capture in my photos.

                Of course, I didn’t actually want to spend hours watching someone while they were sleeping and take photos. So I asked my boyfriend if he would be my model and pretend he was sleeping in his bed while I capture the pictures on my camera. I had an image in my head of looking down at the person on their bed but in order to make this work, I had to stand on a ladder and take photos. This was a little tricky because it was hard to keep my hands in the same spot, like a tripod would. It all worked out though.

                For editing purposes, I had to take a picture of the bed by itself to have as my base layer in Photoshop, so I did that. Then I started pulling in pictures of the various sleeping positions and using the Select Tool to cut around just the body and make a new layer via copy. This project really helped me advanced my editing skills in Photoshop and try out new features like blending, erasing, and adjusting opacity. I wanted one sleeping position to be the focal point and the rest to show up as ghostly images to present the implication of time passing. I also really liked having a white background as negative space around the bed, but decided to add blocks of color that tied in with the photo to help break up the space so it didn’t appear as if the bed was just magically floating. I’m very happy with my final result.