A.S.: Medium Specificity

Behind the Strokes

            Have you ever enjoyed a movie even more after watching the behind the scenes footage?  Especially today when the lines of reality and CGI can be almost indiscernible, a look into the making of a feature can give us a greater appreciation for the final product…and sometimes it has the reverse effect: sometimes the making of the film was actually a lot more interesting than the film itself.  In choosing concept art as a medium of specificity, I have explored how this same “behind the scenes” principle can be applied to still art.

            I considered first doing a time lapse of the project, but that would be exemplifying time manipulation in film: not focus on the artistic process itself.  Every painting I have ever done has an appendage of doodles and sketch-ups to go along with it.  Many times I hate the finished product (as is the case with the two projects I posted for this assignment).  I don’t like the lines here, the colors, there, etc. The sketch pages however, are almost always entertaining to look at.  It gives a visual artist’s statement as it were to the process behind the creation. 

            After several paintings, I found that the concepts had a life of their own, and I almost never hated the steps to getting to the final destination: it’s raw and natural, and almost indelible since flaws are an intentional part of the piece. The idea of celebrating trivial flaws is key here.  I was very displeased with the final project of the Legend of Zelda triforce: I just couldn’t get the paints right, the shapes simple yet detailed enough, the light reflections that I wanted too: it just felt like a failed project. 

            And in some ways, it is.

            Thanks to the concept page, I can now look back and see step by step what I was doing and where I went wrong.  I’m already planning on tackling the project once again in the future, and I will definitely have the original concept page by my side…as well as create an entirely new one to learn from.

            No artist’s statement, time lapse, or other medium could display so adequately an insight into the creator’s mental process as the concept pages do themselves.  And this way, the strokes and sketches can act as building blocks to help with future projects and provide inspiration not only on original ideas, but help eliminate more trial and error time from the next project.

Concept Art

In Light of the Dark

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4abkf-pUHfRME5ZS3poeXFOZFU/edit

Artist's Statement: Historical Story

A Tale of Two

            Torill Cove presented to us an educative, yet wildly imaginative tale of Norwegian history in her film “My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts”.  The short film is evocative of classic American tall tales and exaggerated story-telling films such as Real Big Fish, Fievel Goes West, National Treasure and most literary works by Dan Brown. There’s a charm in exaggerating historical tales that seems to stick with us in a way that one day furthers the question: “Wait, just how much of that was real? Let’s find out.”

            Although the world’s wars are an important piece of history that we should learn from, rarely does the common teenager or busy college student venture into the obscure details of Norwegian hierarchy during their free time from the books.  Cove’s tale manages to have just the right balance of information in it to suggest that there is a legitimacy to its skeleton, and an equal balance of comedic entertainment as an attractive skin to help those potentially “drier” points stick.

            Now the big question comes into play: in our role as media authors, what is ethical and unethical about the changes we make to stories?  At the bottom line the important thing is to remember that we are first and foremost entertainers in the industry, and no level of cleverly articulated didacticism, whatever the message may be, would matter if you don’t have an audience.

            In the readings we learned of a man who gained inspiration from a photograph he recalled of his mother hanging blankets on a clothesline.  In the end we discover that almost everything he had perceived about that photo was incorrect.  Did it matter? In such a lighthearted occasion: no.  It can be taken as comical, and in that specific instance, led to further investigation and resulted in a new revelation concerning not only his life, but of his grandmother’s.  The entertaining aspect that stuck evoked a study of the actual history, and therefore led to a new application of the story in the man’s life. Let us hope that we can do the same in our works, remembering to base them on the facts, no matter how “tall” our tales may be.

            I had the idea to do a civil war piece with two characters: both blind and hard of hearing.  I knew that I didn’t want to write about the American Civil war, which led to a research session of civil wars throughout the world.  The use of a typewriter in the film for comical purposes, also led to the research of what newspapers an author might be writing for during that time period.  Further investigation led to exactly how a blind and hard of hearing person tells that a machine is out of ink, which in turn led to a study of how old fashioned printers functioned.  All of this, mind you, due to a desire to construct one simple thing: a funny, and entertaining story.

Sound Documentary

Link to the Urak-Pee vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN7kyvtwSRM

Seeing Sound

Seeing Sound

            Is it possible to smell colors, see sound, and remotely feel shapes?  It is if you’ve got an artist’s sense.  And art doesn’t limit itself to simply paintings, but any creative work, view, or innovative recreation at all.  Sure, everyone can see people making dinner, but can you see the story in it?  Do you see the characters, the conflict, and the plot?  How would you write the senses that your nose is giving off? How could you show that to a nose-less audience?  Mute the TV: can your audience still imagine the sizzling of the bacon or the tossing of the salad?  Once we start looking we can find the stories all around us, at both macro and micro levels. 

           

            Turn off one sense at a time and see what you’re left with.

            Play your favorite movie on your laptop and turn off the display on your screen.  Are the sounds so good that you can still see Aragorn clanging his sword against the spears of his rallied troops? Can you feel the tie fighters closing in on Luke and his best friend?  Of course you can’t: it’s just a black screen.  And then you realize something: sound itself shows and tells a painted story, with or without words.  Watch an old home video on mute, one of you and a loved one baking during the holidays.  Can’t you still smell the pine tree in the living room; smell the pumpkin pie baking in the oven?  It just happens.  Our six senses (the sixth being any sense of premonition) are all building blocks that can make up an experience. 

            Jack White, taking out visual limitations, manages to replicate a guitar sound almost to perfection.  Now look at what he’s playing: it’s a glass Coke bottle McGyver’d to a plank of wood.  Mr. White has created an experience, without being limited by the building blocks of sight.  He heard the sound in his head and replicated that through creativity.  Guess what?  I bet you could have gotten the same sound results from someone who had never even see a guitar. 

            

           And that’s the trick: to make sure that the orthodox building blocks of our senses do not block out original innovation.

            For Nick Ritter and I, seeing someone pee (let alone a pack of burly men or orcs) was hardly something we wanted to see.  Audibly however, there was a creative story involved, with limitless potential for comedy: the last thing someone would expect from the dark characters of Tolkein’s world. So what? We took that wall and broke it down: blew it up in an explosion of extenuating zipper sounds and grunts of relief. Sound became a building block for us: not just a….”block”.  As far as seeing sound goes…try not to think too hard about this one.