Investigations and Experiments

Throughout the my PVA course I will be doing some quick tasks which investigate artists and experiment with software and photographs.

Photoshop Animation Experiment

Most animation's I create are made in Flash and Premier. However, I was recently introduced the the fact that you can create animations in Photoshop. Below is a short animation I made, it isn't very interesting but documents my experimentation.

This is how I started my animation. I set up a new document and adjusted the set up to work for a animation/film. I did this simply by selecting Film and Video however as I wanted to change the dimensions of the animation this changed to custom.
Next I opened a new layer and wrote the word TYPE on it. This is what I will animate in this short video. I copied the layer 9 times and each time moved the text down the page slightly.
As the animation can't be made with text layers I had to rasterize the type so it was a photo layer. I also had to change the background layer to a plain layer as this also wouldn't work in a film/video.
Next I opened my timeline and the layers were automatically placed into the timeline. As they are all playing at the same time they are all visible on the page at the same time. I didn't need each layer to be on screen very long so clicked the end of the layer and shrunk it down to 7 seconds.
I then placed each one next to each other by dragging and dropping them next to each other on one timeline. I kept the background layer on it's own and let it run throughout the whole animation  so there was always a background colour.


Below is my short animation which I created:


Time Task

I was set an hour and a half task to create a response to my fairy tale theme combining all the research I have done so far. I was told at the start of the time what to do and then had to start working. Due to this I had to use a photograph I already had and then used Illustrator to draw over it. The last time I used Illustrator to create a response it lacked colour, therefore this time I used far more detail and worked with colour. I started with the photo below and placed it in Illustrator before beginning to draw over it.

I took the photograph into Illustrator and placed it on it's own layer. Then I opened a new layer and placed it above (this is the layer I will draw on with). Next I picked my brush, I liked the effect the dry brush gave that I had used previously so used this again. I made the brush 0.5 so it wasn't too thick and began drawing around the outline of the girl.
I first draw around the outline only with the 0.5 brush then went back over with the same size brush to add in minor details which are still part of the outline. This was the shoes, top and arms.
Next keeping the photograph visual under the drawing layer I began to add detail. I used the 0.2 brush tool for this as it meant there was a clear difference in the line weight so it was obvious between the outline and the detail.
I kept up with this idea of adding detail using a smaller brush and began to add more detail to the girl around her hair and face.
Finally, I used a even smaller brush of weight 0.05 add used this to add shading to make the illustration more interesting. I did this around the chin, legs and arms. I also used this size brush when drawing over the girls facial features. I did this because I wanted her facial features to be obvious and using a bigger brush may not have given me the detail I needed.
In order to give the image context I also drew around the tree. Using the same techniques as before I used a 0.5 brush to draw the outline of the tree around the girl. Secondly I added more detail and shading, I combined the two and used a 0.05 brush to do this. I drew quick marks over the tree to emulate the bark and make it appear more detail and give it depth. The image on the right is how it looked before I added colour.

In order to add colour I had to make the shapes solid as the drawings weren't solid shapes so couldn't have colour added. Therefore, using the pen tool I picked a colour which I wanted to use as my fill colour for the objects within the image. In order to add colour to the piece and not obstruct the quality of my drawings I made a new layer to add the colour to and placed this behind the drawing layer. I made a new layer for each part I wanted to add colour to e.g. shoes, trousers and hair. I began by just adding the colour to the girl then developed it to add colour to the tree as well. As the tree in the photograph has the bottom covered in moss/grass I have split the tree up into two colour sections to emulate this. Half the tree is a light brown the other half is mossy green. I would have preferred to have made the colours look more realistic through having them change rather than being a block colour throughout. However, this is something I couldn't learn to do in the time I had. Therefore, next time I further experiment with Illustrator I will develop my knowledge to add more colour.

Below is my final outcome:

Artist Investigation: Slinkachu

I was recently introduced to the artist Slinkachu and the technique of Tilt Shift.


Slinkachu developed a project entitled "Little People", he uses small models and places them in obscure situations. His work doesn't link to my theme directly but his concepts are interesting in the way in which he places his models and subverts the typical idea of art being on a grand scale. "The modern world encourages us to be isolated and scared of the people who live next door. We surround ourselves with our technological gadgets to keep the outside world at bay. But the bigger a city is, the more possibilities it presents." - Art, Urbanity, London, Victoria, and Nelly Furtado, Slinkachu, . Bettery Magazine Bettery Magazine. 2012-12-25 15:00:1. Below are three examples of Slinkachu's work:

 


Tilt shift is the type of photography in which Slinkachu bases there work on. It is the process of creating miniature style photos into real-life scenes which are manipulated to look like model photographs. Tilt shift increases the depth of field within the image and transforms the photo in to miniature sized versions of their former selves. Some examples of this are shown below


Investigation: Victorian Illustrations



The victorian's produced some stunning illustrations surrounding the idea of Alice in Wonderland. A specific artist I found to explore this idea in detail was Sir John Tenniel. His two most finest and enduring illustrations were ones which accompanied Lewis Carroll's stories Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. These are the artworks I have chosen to focus on in the mood board below. I chose these as my theme of fairy tales has a strong focus on Alice in Wonderland with many artists focusing on this idea as well. He started off as a principal political cartoonist for England's Punch magazine for over 50 years expanding his name. All this work led him to achieving a knighthood in 1893 from Queen Victoria, the first man to be knighted based on artwork specifically illustrations and cartoons. He illustrated the first Alice in Wonderland book which was the original based on the Alice Sweet Shop in Oxford. He, like many other Victorian artists use vignettes (any process by which there is loss in clarity towards the corners and sides of an image) although he doesn't loss the clarity of his corners he keeps his illustrations circular which reflects the idea of fairy tales. This is because fairy tales were thought to be forcing the reader to look into a imaginary world and having the artist creating illustrations in this style reflects the story of Alice in Wonderland as the viewer is looking through the circular rabbit hole into another world.



As for my personal study I am looking at how the representation of fairy tales in art has changed over years I have created a three part Venn Diagram comparing the artwork of Helen Oxenbury - one of my personal study artists - with a short animation I found on YouTube and a the work of John Tenniel.



Bibliography:
http://www.goldmarkart.com/scholarship/artists-2/john-tenniel/
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/vignette

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