Week 2- Developing ideas

Well the end of the second week has come (I'm actually writing this on Tuesday, whoops) and I can feel my project slowly picking up momentum. The beginnings of projects always seem to start off slow as you try to; A: Work out what your project is actually about (~week 1),
B: Find relevant and interesting research and material (~Now),
C: Decide on what you want to make (~week 3)
I suppose this feels slow as it requires lots of thinking, research and development before you even apply any practical skills. Not properly knowing what your project is seems quite common in the first few weeks, which can be a bit discerning when you only have six seeks!

Two skull studies, One from a photograph I took at the Pitt Rivers museum and the other is a scratch drawing of a rabbit skull my dad gave to me.

Anyway, This week I did quite a lot of research. I watched a TV documentary from 1979 about near death experiences, where people have been brought back from 'clinical death' and saw/experienced very curious things such as being visited by dead friends, seeing themselves from the 3rd person and an overwhelming feeling of calm.

The idea of floating about in an unfamiliar place seems quite common and is a reoccurring feature of near death experiences. It inspired me to draw a person who is not quite there, as if they are a spirit or are phazing into the afterlife. The bright swirly colours is an example of paper marbling, which I was shown by a teacher, Lizzie. I felt that the ambiguous swirling shapes represented the inconceivability of a reality beyond death. The bold, bright colours feel rather dream-like, too. I intend on combining these two images next week.

Other research included old Norse, Roman and Egyptian beliefs of deities and death.
It seems to me that a lot of civilisations have similar ideas of Heaven, Hell and the judgement that leads to them. But they are not identical by any means.

'Judgement' -(ink on paper)
An omni-present being peers into a figure's very soul to decide their eternal fate.

The Romans believe in three underworld realms- 'The Elysian Fields (a version of paradise) if you've been a warrior or hero; The Plain of Asphodel, if you've been a good citizen, where you will continue to live a good life as a shade; or — if you've really offended the gods — to Tartarus, where you'll be punished by the Furies until your debt to society is paid. (There's no "eternal damnation" in the Roman underworld, although you can be there a pretty long time, depending on what you've done.) Your punishment depends on your crime.'- Flavia Claudia on novaroma.org  I like the idea that once you've done your punishment, you get to leave hell. It seems a bit less extreme than eternity. Before they reach these realms, dead Romans have to pass the river Styx with the assistance of Charon, the ferryman. They each pay him a coin (called an Obolus) which they were buried with in their mouth. 'This payment is not representative of money so much as of the relationship between god and man, acknowledging your debt to the gods and their protection and guidance to you.'

I like the idea of death money, which travels to the under-realm with you. This seems to be a reoccurring theme- bringing money or possessions with you after death. 

The Vikings would make a band new set of clothes for a dead cheiftain then burn them along with their tools, weapons and one or two sacrifices. All of these belongings were believed to be carried up in the smoke of the fire along with the dead warrior.

I am considering making some of my own death money to take to the gave, we'll see!

In Egyptian beliefs, the dead's hearts are weighed against the 'Feather of truth'. If the heart is lighter than the feather then they go to heaven. If not they are devoured.

When researching the Egyptians even more for this blog-post I uncovered some really interesting information on what they believed happened to Pharaohs after they die, which features passing through 12 gates, battling the huge evil serpent, Apophis alongside the gods and literally turning into the sun. I fancy making some art inspired by this!

I think this week has gone well, I went to a funeral on Wednesday so that was actually quite useful to reflect on my feelings on death directly. I feel I've been pursuing research and developing ideas with notes and sketches rather well. Next week I'd like to make a series of ink drawings on marbled paper and I would like to produce some Underworld currency.

 

Self directed project- 'Hereafter' Week 1

It's a new term, it's a new project! This time it's self directed!
Before the Easter holidays, we went on an educational visit to the Pitt rivers museum in Oxford. The Museum holds a huge collection of artifacts but presents them in a unique way; rather than grouping objects together according to their date or country of origin, objects are presented by theme. So, in the jewellery case there were rings from every civilisation imaginable- bronze age to modern day, assyrian to viking. The whole museum is presented in this fashion from shoes to amulets, bows to ceramics, coins to body art.

The things that caught my eye the most were Amulets and other magic charms, cultural patterns, Minerals and crystals. But I really liked the skulls and the skeletons! I spent quite a lot of my time in the museum sketching various skulls:

There were 'skulls of enemies'- bound by twine, impaled on spikes, etc and 'skulls of heroes'- decorated with feathers or decorative stones. I found this value in death interesting. If the tribesmen didn't believe in some form of afterlife, they wouldn't have reason to do this with the skulls of dead men. So why? And what do they believe happens after death?

A painting depicting purgatory by Annibale Carracci

This is what I decided to base my project on; the afterlife.
I'm interested in different cultures' approaches to the afterlife and their art depicting it. I am also very interested in exploring and developing my own thoughts and feelings on the subject matter.
You can read my whole project proposal here.
I chose this theme because I thought that it has a large potential for imagery and big questions. I also knew that I would find the theme challenging, which is exactly what I was looking for. 

Lino prints in silver and white.

The first week is usually spent getting into the groove of a project, starting with research (which can be seen on my afterlife pinterest board). I also got a few books from college about burials. I also produced a few small paintings, prints and illustrations to kick-start my development of ideas.

Right: photograph of a mass grave in 'Tombs, Graves & Mummies' by Paul G. Bahn
Left: My illustration inspired by the photo

Next week, I'm not entirely sure about what I want to do. I'm definitely going to make more pen and ink drawings because I've been enjoying that and took some ink home to make more drawings. We'll see how it goes!

4D project finished

A few weeks ago we started on a mini-project at college based on moving image. Each group was tasked with producing a time-based piece, weather it was a flipbook, film or even a thaumatrope. This is what my group finished with:

I'm pretty chuffed with what we produced considering the constraints forced upon us. But before I delve into critical evaluation, I'm going to take you through the process that lead to the creation of this film.

Mindmaps <3

We started with a mind map- obviously. A few ideas were thrown around for how we could make a time based sequence of images/film, including a time-lapse or hyper-lapse which is a film of something slow i.e: trees growing, the sun & moon, building construction sped up very fast until the slow movements are perceivable at a human speed. The other idea was to make a stop motion animation of the equipment around college brought to life. We chose the second idea because College didn't have the equipment required to make a time-lapse and making a film in the art department felt more personal.
I had already researched a stop-motion artist named Pes who I find quite inspiring. My mum and I saw his degree piece, 'western spaghetti' in Birmingham in 2008 which definitely helped inspire ten-year-old me to produce 'Ninja: Diabolo', an animation about a diaboloing ninja:

Anyway, back to the current project at hand. We looked at videos by Pes and a few other animators, we really liked an animated TV series, 'Ooglies' that was on CBBC. I produced this slideshow of film techniques and inspirations. I had an idea in my head of what I wanted the film to look like. It would start with a shot of a light switch, someone would walk past, turn it off and shut the door. Then, slowly objects like paintbrushes start rattling about faster and faster until they all pop into motion and all start organising themselves upon the work surface. The film would then consist of various short scenes that show things around college such as Vices, easels, paper guillotines (see drawings on mind map above) bursting into life until someone comes back into the classroom because they left something and all the objects drop to the floor. I started a storyboard for this plan:

I didn't have the opportunity to finish this because we decided to just make what we could for the film. We were all given only two mornings to make the whole thing. Minnie and I set up a camera on a tripod and decided the first thing we'd animate would be the paper cutter.
I assumed the role of the animator- I would incrementally move the cutting head, step back then ask Minnie- the camerawoman to take a photo.  We had the camera set to Manual mode and manual focus so that the settings don't change during the film. The cameras usually shoot images that are 5184 x 3456px. This is huge and very difficult for a computer to process into a film (537,477,120 pixels per second). HD film is only 1920x1080 so we changed the camera to take the photos only that size (58,680 p/s).

'shwoosh, shwoosh, shwoosh!'

We managed to produce a few animations like this one, but not as many as I would have liked to have made. I also wanted audio to accompany the film. Foley is very important for pulling a film together and can have a huge effect. Pes, mentioned earlier, has beautiful, crisp foley accompanying his films which really seals the deal. Sadly, we had to be realistic and made what we could in the time given, this meant actually producing the film and not worrying too much about extra parts & details. I then edited all the parts together using photoshop and adobe premiere pro over the Easter holidays.
Right, now, you might want to watch it again and then we'll move on to the self evaluation.

As I said at the beginning, I'm still very pleased with what Minnie and myself achieved and feel that if we were asked to make this film again but were given more time, we'd make a rather professional looking film. I already knew quite a lot about animation but I definitely learned even more during this project and that's very important.