Art Show Summary

When visiting Anna Petlick's art show I had a few reactions. Anna's pieces focused on jewerly making, particularly broaches and earrings. Her work consisted of what she called puffs. They were gold colored mushroom looking puffs that she said represented a very nature like design. She was trying to express how today, modern, manmade structures are overtaking nature. She wanted to emphasis this throughout her show. The piece that stands out the most to me was the necklace and shoulder piece. It was probably the largest single piece of jewelry and I thought the two sided piece, one side being very precisely made and the other being the poofs, really represented the point of the whole show well. I thought her idea and her material choice, plastic bags, was interesting and well used.
The other pieces also on display were very interesting as well. There were paintings that showed a variety of things, these were well done, but the least memorable part of the show. Probably the strangest pieces were a short video piece that  showed a girl eating an avocado, and a box you could put your hand into in order to purify yourself. I'm not sure what the point of those two pieces were, but they were interesting ad memorable to say the least.

Final Animation

This is my final animation. My teammate and I thought that it conveyed our meaning quite well. I only wish we had more time to complete it.

Camaro Boy

In this short film, Kershaw uses different storytelling techniques to tell the story of his first car. When telling the story of my first car, I would use slightly different techniques. There are not nearly as many photos for my car, so I would rely more on animation and narration in order to create my story.

If I directed a film

As someone who already directs, I tend to tell stories about self worth and learning to accept oneself for who they are. Most of my films deal with love, either finding it, or trying to overcome a past one. I have made films all over the spectrum however, from horror, to sci-fi, to inspirational, to psa. I don't really mind making any of them, it's all about taking a creative spin on them!

Flash Animation Artist statement and Mind Map

For our flash animation assignment, we wanted to look at what home was, and how we defined home. Our main idea based around the concept that home is not where you are, but where you feel like you are accepted. We also chose to tell this story using a theme of nature because we felt that it helped reinforce the idea that home is not based on a specific location or building, but in those who surrounded you. The idea of telling this story using a polar bear came from the simplicity of the color scheme needed to tell the story. A polar bear would provide a simple black and white character that could be manipulated easily. Since our idea revolved around feeling accepted, we decided that initially the polar bear should be an outcast for some reason. At first the idea of giving him a black spot came to mind, as it would give a big visual representation of why the other polar bears wouldn’t accept him, while the pandas would. In the end, we decided to make him chubby. It was a more subtle way that would lead to the end result we were looking for while allowing us to make more statements on the question of what home is. We felt that having him first try and draw on his spots would show how home is a place where you are accepted for truly being yourself, and how trying to force yourself to fit in does not help. The scene with the bird was added into the piece to try and show how when looking for a place to belong and call home, we have a tendency to try and latch onto anyone or anything. It showed our desire to have someone to care for us. It also provided a nice example of how you can be liked by others without being truly accepted or really feeling that you belong with them. This is why the chubby polar bear ends up being happy when he first meets the bird, but the bird still flies away. The bird is fine with the polar bear, but has his own place to call home. Another way to put it is that even if you are accepted for who you are, there is a kind of mysterious factor that goes into being able to call a place home. Even though the bird is accepted by the polar bear, it is not considered his home. We started and ended our project with the polar bear appearing to be lazy because we thought it was a cute and somewhat humorous way to provide an example of being accepted. There were some issues in making the polar bear chubby enough to stand out, which is something we would try and further work on if given more time or if given the opportunity to reconceptualize this particular piece. Overall, we felt the various ideas and the overall meaning of our piece was maintained throughout and we are excited about the end result.

Ethics

When thinking about what is ethical in our culture vs others, we have to first examine what we as american decide is ethical. We tend to give a lot of freedom when it comes to how content is used and how it is displayed to us. Terms and Conditions when on a website are written so elaborately and subtly, that we are never meant to understand them. Ethics have also become more loose when you look at places like the movie industry. Very few things are now considered taboo for movies. Our money centered system lead to this. When money becomes a priority, ethics gets thrown out the window very frequently.

What type of creative am I?

Today we discussed different types of creativity. These models are brilliant creativity, personally creative, and creative unqualifiedly. Brilliant creativity are people who express unusual thoughts, personally creative people experience the world in novel and original ways. Creative unqualifiedly people are those who effect change in their culture because of their creativity.

I feel that I fall into the personally creative category. I see the world in a unique way that gives me a way to interpret and create art. Just throughout my day I often find myself looking at everything as strange symbolic acts, even when they often are not.


With this, we were given an activity to make something out of a basic shape. I made a little fox out of it.

Thoughts and Reactions: Cat Soup

1. What is this movie about.

In a literal sense, this movie is about a young cat and his sister who go on an adventure through a very strange world. They go to a circus and end up in an endless sea for a while, and to a strange desert. In a less literal sense, I interpreted this film to be about a young boy coping with the loss of his sister. As he is traveling on this adventure through this strange world, he is searching for half of his sisters soul to try and bring her back. He is able to interact in such a way because he had a near death experience (drowning) at the beginning of the film but was brought back. The movie also alludes to some of the major sins at times, which the younger cat commits in an attempt to bring back his sister from the dead.

2. What are 3 creative strategies you can pull from this film?

This film did a great job in it's execution of visuals and manipulating visual symbols. A good example is during the circus when the wizard turns words into the things they say during the circus. I think the transition between the more common symbol into the thing it actually represents is an interesting way to interpret.

I also enjoyed the design of their transitions through different scenes. I felt like they made them seamless while transitioning between very different areas. It helps with my creative process as it allows me to explore more ideas and search for a more creative way to get between them.

Finally, I thought they did a good job of using objects and actions to symbolize how people were feeling within the family. When the boy first drowns, it is somewhat unclear what actually happens there, but the lacking response of the mother when he runs up to her implies he is not actually there. Also, I interpreted the family turning into alcohol as a symbol of their coping mechanism when dealing with the deaths of the children.

3. General Reactions

I personally loved this film. I thought it gave a lot of good ideas in a very abstract form. I thought it was also a great example of how to tell a story visually as opposed to just using dialogue. The dialogue was only used when required to move the story along. I also liked the amount that was left up to interpretation, as I felt it gave the audience more of a chance to relate to the film.

Cat Soup Instructions

1.What is the animation about?
2. Name 3 Creative Strategies you can pull from the film
3. Your general Reactions to the film

Animation Mind Map

Shape Tween Test

Spiderman Test Animation

Test Animation

A quick test of the bone tool in flash. I was given the graphic of the bird and was told to make it look as if it was flying. Not my finest work, but a good example of the tutorial. I could also hopefully loop the character to create a longer animation.

5 Integration Strategies

When trying to figure out how art is integrated into the real world, we have to try and figure out what methods would be more or less effective. There are five major methods of integration. They are Depiction, extension, reformatting, mimicry, and metaphor.

Of these methods, my most commonly used one is probably extension. I enjoy taking a current idea and seeing how we could expand it into a new territory. I find that doing this creates a further understanding on ideas that may have already been addressed, and as a result, avoids certain cliches.

Postcards

Postcards Artist Statment

For this project, I chose to focus on the library here at GVSU. I chose the library because it is the bank of knowledge here at GVSU, and there is this kind of stereotype that college kids choose either the creative pursuits or the more “academic” ones. The library is a good representation of this kind of haven for non-creative students, it’s a symbol of academics, and so, I wanted to show how this space can influence the idea of creativity. My question was, how linked are the “hard” academics, to the creative ones? For me, a basic knowledge of all subjects is needed for someone to be truly creative. If we look at creativity as a method of solving problems, then we must acknowledge that an understanding of multiple fields is mandatory when trying to come up with a solution. There are multiple ways to solve a problem. For example, if you lock yourself out of your car, you could smash the whole window to get it, or you could try and short a fuse to open the door, or you could try and pick the lock. All three require different skills, and knowledge, but all three will get you into the car. Being creative is about having knowledge.

For my first postcard, called “To Places We Dreamed Of,” I used Rene Magritte’s technique of “Making the familiar strange” by putting my location into space. By putting my objects into this new environment, I show how the knowledge obtained in the library can take us to places that we before could only imagine. It was through the use of creative thinking and experimentation that we were ever able to get there. Both in the design of the rocket, and in the survival of the astronauts. I once read that NASA struggled to figure out a way to keep all the instruments on the space shuttle both secure, and able to move from one part of the ship to another. All sorts of methods were used before someone finally said, let’s try Velcro. It worked great, it was a simple, creative solution to something that seemed much more complicated.

For my second postcard, I used Tom Bamberger’s repetition style to show the infinite amount of knowledge that is available to us in the library. I duplicated a row of bookshelf’s over and over to make it seem like a very long column. At the end, there is a single, lone workspace that a person can sit at to try and obtain this knowledge.

For my third postcard, called “Sparked Ideas,” I wanted to combine two of the ideas that were present in my last two cards, and fully link them to this idea of creativity, at least, in the classical sense. It uses Skoglund’s idea of transformation in a variety of ways.  We again, have a lone study space isolated in the library, with a book on the table. Floating around the book are a number of lightbulbs all different colors. The changing of the colors here, and their odd placement, are meant to follow Skoglund’s work. Lightbulbs are always a symbol for ideas, and the different colors are to represent the variety of ideas that can be sparked by just the one book. Outside the window, I put a somewhat fantasy setting to try and show the ideas that can be sparked are not just scientific, but also classically creative ones.

Finally, we have my last postcard, entitled “Bent knowledge,” that represents the ideas of Hozer and text mapping. I have taken a piece of art that is in the library, which looks like a bunch of bent books, and put the text on them. The statement, creativity is bent knowledge is kind of the overall conclusion I came to when asking my question. I think it ties together the rest of the cards very nicely.  

Photoshop 3d

Photoshops 3-d features are ones that are rarely used by the everyday user. They require quite a bit of computing power, and a decent understanding of how 3d models work. Today, we practiced the basic principles of them. Creating 3-d objects from a layer, how to extrude them, how to texture an extrusion, playing with lights, and creating 3d text. 

The first exercise had us render a coin in 3d. my choice of angle doesn't really show it, but you can see the shadow the coin casts from a custom 3d light, as well as the reflective properties I added to the face of the coin. If I were to redo this, I would start with my background image, that way I could simulate the light source in it to help blend the coin into the scene better. The second exercise showed us how to texture, and add other properties to the extrusion. In this case, we used a stack of dollar bills. We took two images, one of the bill face and another of a stack of papers, and combined them to create a 3d stack of bills in photoshop. We added a slight bump map to further the effect. 

Finally, we learned how to extrude text. Here I applied all the techniques I learned to overlay this text onto an image of the city of Detroit. I thought the 3d here really helped emphasis the space in the image.

To practice using the content erase tool, line tool, and text tool, we were tasked with designing a mock postcard. Using the background erase, I was able to isolate the woman and her hair from a white background and add her into the Maine landscape. I made her semi opaque, because she just kind of reminded me of a spirt or ghost. I also had to extend the sky on the Image. We also discussed how to use the marquee tool to create fills and borders, so I reused the background image as a border for the reverse side of the card. I then added a fill to allow text and hand writing to be visible on the card. I photoshopped in a stamp using similar techniques to complete the look.

Today in class, we learned how to use the text mask tool to create beveled text that could be overlaid onto an image. We also learned how to distort that text to try and make it flow with the background more. In this image, I tried to take the most noticeable part of the image, the sun, and comment on it, creating almost a motivational poster. I also added another layer in photoshop to blend the words behind some of the mountains, to tray and give it the feel of a rising sun since one is setting.  These tools will be very helpful in creating the post cards, as it allows me to very seamlessly integrate text into the image.

Another Image I worked on using the same techniques as the last ones. More practice is always a good thing. Here I wanted to try and create a much lighter feeling image than the original while also adding in some color. I'm very happy with the results.

Wallas' Creative Steps

So I wanted to make a quick post on Wallas' creative steps. Essential he breaks down the creative process into four major steps; Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, and verification. Although these steps don't have to occur in any particular order, they tend to follow each other.

I wanted to relate the process in making my postcards. During the preparation stage, I gathered information, in this case the class assignment, and began to gather ideas on what I wanted to create and what problem I wanted to address. After taking the photos, I began to get a more clear idea of what my ideas were and how I wanted to address them. This would be the incubation step as well as Illumination step. Remember, these steps do not have to go one after another. It is a circular pattern. I have not yet reached the verification step because my ideas have not come to full completion yet.

The focus of today's class was to understand how to isolate and manipulate colors and filters to give our images a new look. We focused on the color selection tool and the history brush tool to create the effect. In this image, I used the color selection tool to pick out part of the water and brighten it up to create an almost neon looking effect. When I did this however, photoshop grabbed part of the sky as well and changed its color. I was able to use the history brush to bring it back. We then applied filters, and I chose to single out the mountain and give it a very graphical look. I used the history brush again to bring back the trees to provide a contrast.

I chose to keep a cool and similar palette on this piece because I felt it fit the image well and helped keep the general feel of the image while still giving it some pop style artistic effects.

Today, we learned about how to use the pen tool, the content aware move tool, and the patch tool. We also went over how to create image masks. We used these tools to create the image above. First, we used the content aware move tool and patch tool to move cows around the scene. Second, we leaned how to use the pen tool to isolate an apple from another image and add it into the scene. We then used transform properties such as distort to create shadows for the apples in order to blend everything together.

Today in Class, I learned some very basic photo shop skills. First, we used the clone stamp and paint tool to try and first touch up an image of a celebrity, then modify it to give it a Warhol sort of feel. The focus was how to use the tools, and using color to play into one another. We then used the pattern stamp tool and effect to create a pattern of it. Then, in order to show how these skills could play into an image, we selected a surface and tried to apply the pattern to that surface. I could see how this could be a good skill to have when creating an advertisement or mock up.