Artist Statement: World Building

Hand of the Dragon

            The project seems to be based around a “what if?” premise, which led to some very funny, and downright outlandish, suggestions in class.   I was glad that mine wasn’t picked since the issue I chose was of a more serious nature, and this project seems to be a breath of fresh air in comedy.  World building was a fun exercise in creativity and open mindedness, though I’m not quite sure how helpful it was.

            All sorts of realistic things could come of any a world: no matter how bizarre it may seem.  As an example, a restricted access sign from Peter Jackson’s District 9 was shown which displayed an icon of an alien with a red cross circle through it, saying in captions “HUMANS ONLY.”  This is a fantastical idea: interplanetary aliens being discriminated by humans, but the sign looks as if it could exist in such a world, as is reflexive of similar signs that were posted during the time of color segregation in the United States. 

            An add campaign for the fictitious politician Harvey Dent was also displayed.  That campaign poster was not different than the posters in our reality, so if we treat the world of The Dark Knight as it’s own reality, it would be only sensible that a thing like that would exist…even though we do not see it in the film: it just makes sense.

            Star Wars has been the berth for countless “world artifacts” made by fans.  I’ve seen everything from Storm Trooper Aim Training School prints, to vacation pamphlets and videos for places like Tatooine, Naboo, and Coruscant (all of these artifacts are actually part of the interactive line environment on Disney’s Star Tours attraction).  In fact, the Star Tours attraction is a world artifact in and of itself, since the whole ride is supposed to be the docking bay for a fan-concocted travel agency.

            Brittany’s dragon idea was as comical as it was a brainteaser.  Just how would you eat food on a date if you had two mouths?  What if you liked a person but your dragon hand didn’t like each other?  How would puberty be different? Would they make pamphlets for that? Certainly the news would also be filled with reports of accidental burnings, and IHC would need an extended burn-care unit.  I was in charge of creating the newspaper article, complete with adds for dragonhand-based business pitches.

            I was a bit critical at the beginning of this statement, concerning this project. Looking back, perhaps this was also an exercise in belief.  As directors, writers, sound designers, etc. we are literally world builders.  We need to be so completely engulfed in our work that we start treat it as if it were actually real.  After that jumping-off point, creativity just comes naturally with the logic of the rules of the world we’re playing in. The best actors and authors have been using this skill for ages, so why not us? 

Artist's Statement: Textual Poaching

Sir. Fränkensteen

            Frankenstein: the big clunky growling monster oaf right? Wrong.  Frankenstein is one of the most misconstrued literary works of all time.  Just the name “Frankenstein” rears images of a green-skinned, bolt-necked, clunking monster.  What most people don’t know is that not only is Frankenstein the doctor who created the monster, but that the monster himself is actually as eloquent as an English professor, caring and sensitive in heart, and as fast and agile as Spider-Man.

            Merry Shelley’s original science-fiction vision was of a doctor who set out to create a physically and mentally advanced man: and succeeded.  The poor monster is ridiculed by his own creator and wanders from village to village, seeking friendship from anyone who will not judge him by his grotesque appearance.  Modern comparisons would be such of Disney’s rendition of Quasimodo from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. 

            The original Frankenstein monster has apparently been cursed throughout time in the eyes of the public.  For reasons unknown, it appears that an accurate depiction of the monster was never created in film. Ironically enough, Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein and Stuart Beattie’s I, Frankenstein actually came the closest to pinpointing the original character…and of course even those are extreme stretches.

            HISHE Studios have produced a line of artwork in like-mind set as my Sir. Frankesteen piece. HISHE (How It Should Have Ended) make art by taking popular films and videogames, and making parodies of them based on what may have happened if the audience had not surrendered their disbelief to the story.  The clips provoke the question: “yeah, why didn’t we think of that? That movie makes no sense now.”   A prime example is demonstrated in HISHE’s adaptation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In the adaptation, the Fellowship simply fly eagles to Mordor and drop the One Ring in Mount Doom as they’re flying over it.  The parody ends with the dialogue:

            “Wow, this was a great idea! Imagine if we’d walked the whole way.”

            “Yeah, one of us might have died.”

All Lord of the Rings deep doctrine aside, HISHE has managed to provoke in the common audience a question that surrenders our surrender of disbelief; it calls on our flaws as consumers to question and call out the authenticity of the film. Why didn’t they ride the eagles? Tolkien explains this: Peter Jackson did not.

            The monocle and top hat were photo-shopped onto the famous lithograph of doctor Frankenstein’s monster, in attempts to pay sympathetic homage to his intellectual roots and philosophical heart: forever misrepresented to the public since the original film adaptation in 1931.  The snarky style of art was inspired by our discussions of Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. Hopefully people will question this humorous image of mine and be led to an enlightenment of the true origin of the character. Being my all time favorite novel, if ever given the opportunity to make film adaptations, Merry Shelly’s Frankenstein: the Modern Day Prometheus would be at the very top of my list.

Sir. Fränkensteen

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.