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Why would you work so hard for something only to destroy it?

As an artist, I enjoy my work the most when I am exploring new things. This piece, “Self Portrait Five,” was my first performance piece. Prior to the performance, the work consisted of a jar with interconnected figures around the base as well as a full value 18×24 portrait. For the performance, I crumpled the portrait as small as it could go, crammed it into the jar and lit it on fire. While it slowly and silently burned, my audience had time to reflect upon the message of the work.

This piece explores human capacity for emotion. The dynamism and color range reflects the diverse feelings that can move through an individual at any one moment. (Often overlapping or even with disparity between internal truth and external indications.) The performance explores the idea of commitment and what happens when a person lets go of something he/she has worked towards.

Even once destroyed, the ashes still remain.

Now this is why I came to SCAD! Professional-grade production facilities at my finger tips to make my movies shine. Earlier this week myself and sound designer Alan Koda reserved the Foley studio to record audio for Duck ♥ Teslacoil, and it was very cool. The fun thing about Foley is inventing creative ways to simulate the sounds you want. We found that socks in the dirt pit made great audio for Monster’s walk cycle, and drumming my fingers in the dirt was Duck’s run cycle. I also realized if I wear my coat inside out, I can simulate the texture of Monster’s fur while hugging Duck’s head (in this case, a balloon). We’ll be mixing the sound this weekend and shipping the first cut of the film on Monday! Woo-hoo!

Things are really shaping up for Duck ♥ Teslacoil. Now that we’re in the final weeks of development, it’s time to break out the polish and really make every little detail shine. Last night I revised the design of the bus in the story, and was completely surprised at how well it came out! It’s amazing what a few gradients, glows, and drops shadows will do for an drawing in Illustrator.

Today I’m hard at work on the lightning for the film, which is proving a bit more challengeing than I would like. Instead of using effects generators in After Effects, I’m animating it all by hand, frame-by-frame, to match the rest of the movie. When it finally gets done, though, the result will be well worth it.

Stay tuned for more updates!

We’re in the home stretch now! Here at SCAD, it’s the last week of our Winter Quarter. So that means it’s time for all the final projects to come rollin’ in! To start the week off, I’ve uploaded the final project for my Animation I class. As the Flash test demonstrated last week, the mission was to animate a flour sack interacting with a box. Well, my real project is a bit more refined. I still planned much of it using Flash, but in the end, everything you see was drawn on paper. That comes to over 300 pages! Hey, no one said animation was environmentally friendly. :p

Overall it came out pretty well, I’d say. Onward to 2D Character Animation I!

The Wiggler has so many uses…

A dangerous combination…

And by “boredom,” I mean with all the other kinds of work presently surrounding me.