Approach

For the rest of the semester I am aiming to engage in projects that create visual representations of my research and aid in the development of works for the graduate exhibition. I am hopeful that these projects will provide an outlet for beginning to code my data and begin to make sense of it. Additionally, with my thesis work largely consisting of written documentation and analysis (even of the photographed/visual work I am gleaning), these projects aim to communicate my work in another way to accompany a written thesis.

Choices Made

Below is my project proposal. Because I am essentially proposing three projects that overlap and build upon one each other over the course of the first phase (5 weeks) and the second phase (the last 5 weeks of the semester), I have outlined my plans for both. The following is my updated proposal as of edits made this weekend.

project proposal-4

Additionally, the following are the proposed materials I have submitted for the graduate exhibition component.

Trust the Process: An Ethnography on the Role of Writing in Design 

The ways thoughts are externalized is a difficult one met with many choices, first and foremost being the mode in which an idea is conveyed. While most fields of design are often defined by visuals such as renderings, models, and sketches, my research sparks an investigative discussion on how designers use various modalities to effectively communicate a concept. By reflecting on a compilation of design practices with particular interest in the role of writing, my work aims to examine the modes in which we communicate design to crystallize design ideas, impart additional details, and provide a more effective conversation with viewers. This exhibition provides examples from the sketchbooks, desks, and devices of graduate students serve to create a corpus that references the many ways in which words, sketches, and other modalities aid in the design process.

Proposal Guidelines-Design

Current Questions/Needs Raised

• As Maria pointed out, there are some materials I will need to print/purchase and a budget/additional funding will be required.
• I have sent out an email to the graduating MFA grads to get their materials within the next week and will work on organizing and curating content.

Likely Next Steps

Collage/Book:

• Continue collecting materials from grad students for collage/book
• Determine budget and apply for funds  if applicable
• Determine project development space – grad studio? 105?
• Determine collaboration with department and other grads on collage/book
• Development of book layout (digital format of collage) 

Video

• Develop storyboard for video 
• Continue practicing camera techniques – audio and videography

Approach

Final edits to the animatic were achieved by iterating on the timing of the images and audio. I wanted the more pronounced syllables in the words to line up with each shift in the images (movement, change in pace, change in overall “scene” of the narrative). My background in dance and the familiar “8 count” and possibly my short-lived career in piano as a 10-year-old of “rest, two, three, four” possibly aided me in perfecting the overall timing

Choices Made

I submitted the following for class on Thursday:

However, as a class we discusses the need to adjust some of the audio and I familiarized myself with some of Premiere’s filters to cut out some of the white noise behind my words. I also deleted the word “otter” at the end of the animatic since the clip would be preceded by the definition. As suggested by Maria, I added in a rotation of the otter as I had incorporated in previous drafts.

Reflection

Overall I am somewhat happy with what I have created. Throughout the process of iterating and creating this short piece I never really knew when I felt “done” like I am able to do with projects I am more well-versed in. I  felt very much out of my comfort zone during this project and realized I had a lot to learn about animation and using Premiere in general. In my future projects, however, I am excited to test myself more and expand on some of the foundational skills I have gained.

Approach + Choices Made

Watercolor Background

Over the past week I have worked towards refining my video components and iterating on different representations. Because my original watercolor stop motion needed to be oriented horizontally and further revised, I re-painted the scenes using larger watercolor sheets and the DSLR camera, as well as DragonFrame to select scenes from the recorded painting.

However, I was not very pleased with some of the picture quality inconsistencies (many seemed to have a pink tint not present when the recording was taking place, and the blue of the watercolor did not appear as vibrant). I thought that this would be easy enough to fix in Photoshop, but the individual differences in each frame made this process tedious. I started to play around with digital painting and using the watercolors to inform brushstrokes, color, and an overall realistic watercolor aesthetic.

I experimented with a few different water movements create an animation:

Otter Form

I also iterated on a few ideas for integrating the form of the otter. First, I extracted otters’ bodies from their backgrounds.

I looked at how these would look when overlaid in the animation:

I tried out a few other Photoshop tricks as well from tutorials watched and what I remember from predominantly using this tool in undergrad. To try and blend the otter and water even further, I made the form the same color:

Finally, I decided to try out making the otter images more dynamic. Using the Motion options in Photoshop, I create a sort of stop motion to overall on the watercolor wave from stop motion. First in black:

And then using the blue otters:

The addition of the movement and color matching I think effectively conveys the merging of water and otter I was looking for. I am still working through my knowledge of Adobe Premiere and overlaying the Otter stop motion over the waves versus the individual frames (which as far as I can tell need to be moved, scaled and sized individually and lined up on top of each other). While further refinement of sizing and timing needs to be worked out a bit more, iterating on these options has helped me to point my work more confidently in this direction.

Audio

Next I experimented with the audio. As stated in my last post, I wanted to incorporate the sound of children laughing to mirror the piece of the poem and to further draw the parallels between the playful attitude of kids and otters.

I think that while the audio files in this need to be evaluated a bit more, the addition of the laughter brings back the more light-hearted tone that I was hoping to end with.

Current Questions/Needs Raised

I plan to do a bit more investigating of tutorials and other resources to make the merging of the various images, video, and audio I am compiling. Now that I have all of the assets put together, however, it is just a matter of tweaking things to get the timing right and ensure that the video and audio will render properly when presented this week.

Likely Next Steps

• make transitions between water movements more fluid
• match up sound to animation better
• fine tune animation sizing, output, and audio levels

Approach

This week I made moves towards creating a rough animatic representing my word, otter.

This was achieved by overlaying the watercolor waves with a semi-transparent image of the otter rotating 90 degrees across three frames. The audio is comprised of excerpts from Coleridge’s sonnet and otter chirping sounds.

Choices Made

I really wanted to bring in the otter a bit more while still having the emphasis be on the water, or, if anything, the otter being one with the water. After reviewing videos in class, I think I will keep retooling this a bit to look at additional water movements to render in watercolor and otter potions to superimpose. Showing my work in class also prompted me to consider the trajectory of my animatic and how I wanted it to end. For this, I think I would be interested in having the water filter back out to mirror the water “filling up” the page in the beginning, or having it fill up the rest of the page and sink deeper (darker watercolor).

Relevant Sources or Inspirations

I am also not 100% pleased with the use of images in my rough animatic since I wanted to keep things relatively abstract. I thought of the “my teacher says I can’t draw cats” thread in which the simple outlines and gestures of cats are drawn:

(additional images available at: https://www.boredpanda.com/funny-poorly-drawn-cats/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic)

While I do not plan on being as humorous as these drawings, I do wish to focus more on the form and merging of the body and its surroundings with my otter.

Additionally, after watching Floreana in class on Thursday, I also was also inspired by the blending of animal and human.

Because I am portraying the otter’s childlike qualities, I think it would be interesting to add in sounds of children or possibly additional overlaid images/drawings to connect these ideas.

Current Questions/Needs Raised

As of now, I have a bit more time to play around with ways of portraying the otter. I will first need additional and improved watercolor drawings to work off of. I have acquired a camera and become somewhat familiar with DragonFrame to capture and assemble stop motion images in a more professional manner (rather than just using my phone).

Likely Next Steps

• redo watercolor stop motion with additional wave forms
• add in otter forms as option
• image capture + video compilation

Approach 

This week I focused on sound/spoken word elements to supplement the use of the watercolor stop motion last week. Some ideas I had concerning this element included:

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Sonnet: To the River Otter”
• Otter sounds
• Music that reminded me of more ethereal/nature-y moments (I do not want to be too literal with running water/bird chirping effects)

I also wanted to look more at the overall narrative of my piece.

After speaking with Maria during class on the way I envisioned using watercolor to be as much a part of the piece as any sort of otter form, she suggested looking at ways to have otter imagining fade in and out at certain points to create more of a storyline.

Choices Made + Inspirations 

Poem

I started by recording my recitation of Coleridge’s sonnet:

Dear native brook! wild streamlet of the West!
How many various-fated years have passed,
What happy and what mournful hours, since last
I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast,
Numbering its light leaps! Yet so deep impressed
Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes
I never shut amid the sunny ray,
But straight with all their tints thy waters rise,
Thy crossing plank, thy marge with willows grey,
And bedded sand that, veined with various dyes,
Gleamed through thy bright transparence! On my way,
Visions of childhood! oft have ye beguiled
Lone manhood’s cares, yet waking fondest sighs:
Ah! that once more I were a careless child!

I hate hearing my voice, so we’ll see if I do much more with this. Because it also clocks in at 1 minute rather than the prescribed 15 seconds, I’m considering deconstructing the sonnet as a few phrases or words.

Otter sounds

While my preliminary investigation of otter sounds found me listening to several recordings of very shrill shrieking and squeaking, I soon stumbled upon this lovely video:

I soon found out that this is a popular meme using vocals from this music video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICBwvvh7l6I

Music

I am considering several songs I may sample sounds from, including:

Storyline

I plan to utilize some of the following images to fade into the stop motion water color to depict the otter’s/water’s movement:

I found this instructional video that will possibly help me in the videography of blending these two elements that I will be playing around with before next class to create a more complex animatic:

Current Questions/Needs Raised

• What is the overall story I’m looking to communicate?
  • playfulness
  • blending of water + otter (a fable?)
• What do I need to learn to overlay images + sound?
• Do pleasant otter sounds exist??

Likely Next Steps

• Play around with water color motions + overlaying imagery in Premiere
• Find compilation of pleasant otter sounds!
• Sample music and poetry

Approach 

This week started out with an exploration of the word “otter.” I did some extensive Googling and mind mapped my investigation’s various directions:

I then organized my key findings into a Prezi presentation to include videos, images, and text.

Several key themes emerged from this research, including otters’ inherent playfulness  as well as their unlikely ties to the water – almost to the point of becoming the water themselves. Furthering my research I found that the word “otter” even comes from the word water.

I began to explore these themes through rough sketches and storyboarding.

I enjoyed the hand-drawn qualities of these preliminary explorations as they echoed the child-like qualities otters evoke. However, I had the intent to eventually animate forms using stop motion of some sort. It is a method/medium I have always wanted to explore and combined a new skill (digital animation and videography) with an old skill (drawing/painting).

Choices Made 

I used the camera on my iPhone (along with its simple image editing) before combining photos in Adobe Premier at approximately 0.25/seconds/image. I anitcipate the speed of the frames may change as I add more images and lay over sound.

This first iteration utilized watercolor paints to evoke the motions of not only water – the otter’s habitat – but also the water itself.

The blue paint swirls around, filling the page. I attempted to introduce the “otter” into the flow also. However, I didn’t really like the look of the brown and explored a few other options as well, including red, green, and blue.

This wasn’t quite the look I was going for either, so I explored another quick outlet that I had been considering: simple Sharpie on white paper.

I quite enjoyed the simplicity of this animation, although it did not as effectively communicate the essence of water as quickly as the watercolors, nor did it incite the same carefree and child-like qualities with the lack of color.

Relevant Sources or Inspirations 

Images that came to mind as I was making these were perhaps reminders of my own childhood. Such examples included animations such as Harold and the Purple Crayon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKhKyZgafU4

Since I had not done any type of stop-motion/live-drawing projects before, I looked into some videos on this as well to try and emulate best practices and styles:

And, of course, I went back to my source to see what kind of movement patterns, shapes, and rhythms I could draw from:

Current Questions/Needs Raised 

Although I have begun preliminary efforts to abstract the themes concerning the carefree nature of otters and the simulation of water and otters’ body movements, I still have a lot of work to do. This is not just concerning graphics, but also the incorporation of sounds and/or spoken word. Overall, the narrative of what I am trying to communicate needs to be fleshed out and different avenues explored.

From a technical standpoint, I DEFINITELY need some work in re-familiarizing myself with watercolor and drawing, and maybe explore digital/other means of stop motion. Because the time of this project is somewhat limited, I will need to figure out how quickly I can adopt (and re-adopt) these skills to execute my ideas successfully. 

Likely Next Steps 

1. Develop a more robust narrative
2. Produce spoken word/sound elements
3. Practice watercolor/Sharpie iterations – layering, colors, types of movements
4. Possibly move to layering or only using objects – noodles, yarn, strips of paper also