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It's been a while since I posted here! (School became really busy, so it was hard to write, even when I downloaded the blogger app...)

This quarter I worked on two minor projects, a major project, saw a lot of documentaries about artists, and discovered some creative fictional pieces. I continued along paths that I enjoy traveling, tried some new ones (such as starring in a film, and putting on makeup), learned about paths other artists took, and learned about different ways of working with creativity.

Minor projects:
Paper crafting:
I discovered the joys papercraft during Shoshtigigi, where we had to make a voodoo doll of the person's name we drew. I had heard of papercraft before, and decided to give it a try. I discovered that it was a challenge to make a papercraft, so I took a template of a girl papercraft I found online and edited it so it looked like Caitlin, the person whose name I drew. It was fun working with my hands, so I started making more papercrafts during winter break. I stopped for a little, because of school, but in the 4th quarter I started making papercrafts of a few of my characters. It was challenging making different pieces of clothing. Proportions had to be measured, and the only way to truly check if the model worked was to make it; it was a trial-and-error process, but it was gratifying to see my characters become 3D.

My papercraft exhibition at STAC night

Figure drawing:

I wanted to work on figure drawing this quarter. First I drew some figures in my usual technique. 

These two examples weren't the ones I showed to Luke. (I couldn't find those.)

Then I showed them to Luke, and he suggested that I use the coiling technique. He sent me out for an hour to draw people in school using this technique. He also made me use pen, so I couldn't erase any mistakes (the point was to draw quickly).

Luke then suggested that I draw figures by symbolizing different parts of the body with boxes. He said I'm used to drawing flat figures, and the boxes would help with making them look 3D.

I think this helped a lot. I'll need to practice more with this technique (it's difficult to draw a face within the box), but I hope to continue with my drawing. I'd like to work on foreshortening in the future!

Some sketches using the 3D technique

This quarter, my main project was a group film with Kaitlyn Fox.

The plot of the film followed the adventure of a fairy and a girl as they both struggle to fix the girl's problems. The fairy hates her job, but when everything is solved, she finds that she's bored, and thus gives the girl a new problem that the fairy can solve.

The project evolved drastically. At first, I was working on a film that would explore me though other people. There would be a certain time in the day where everyone would change personalities, and the main character would have to find out why this was happening. I didn't flesh out my idea fast enough, and didn't have enough confidence behind it, so was put in a group project with Kaitlyn, who wanted to work with dance.
I'm not used to working with others, and I didn't know a lot about choreography, and how it would fit into my idea, so I was hesitant at first. The element of comedy was new for me, too, and I was curious about how this would turn out. Kaitlyn was a good partner to work with. We stayed on task, and she was very cooperative. We both ditched ideas we had before, and started working on a new plot (that had to have me as the main character, because we were assigned to it.) At first, the story started off with a more serious tone, with the girl's problems. A doppelganger, the manifestation of the girl's inner self, would help the girl solve the problems through her dreams. We felt as if the story needed a kick to it to give it more depth- to pull the audience in- and Luke helped us when we brought our predicament to him. He suggested approaching the story from the fairy's point of view, in order give the story a fresh take. He also put out an idea that the fairy should be bored of doing her job; this would add another layer to the movie.
We spent most of the time plotting out the story. We agreed that the story should have a format to it, in order to emphasize how the girl's problems were slowly being solved. It would also help establish when dream sequences would appear. Kaitlyn choreographed simple dances so non-Dancers like me could even do them.
I didn't like the fact that the story was turning into a female myth, myths where the main character has their problems solved for them (I like male myths better, where the main character solves their own problems.) But the story itself was interesting, so I stuck with it.

Some papers from our brainstorming process

Filming was tough. I should have brought my tripod in so we could film it by ourselves better. We also should have planned out the shots more precisely. Additionally, extras kept on forgetting to bring their clothes (which were needed for continuity) and that delayed filming by a few days. But that doesn't mean that filming was boring. It was exciting working with other people and trying to learn the dance steps. Acting in front of the camera wasn't too bad, either. Most of the roles required me to act in everyday settings, so I tried to keep it natural.
We also created a symbiotic relationship with Anika's project. We had a part where I get a makeover, which Anika did, and in turn, she used our footage covering the transformation for her makeup film. I had never gotten my makeup done, and it was a very different experience... I hardly recognized myself when it came time to look in the mirror! (But I'm not going to put on eye makeup anytime soon. It felt like there was constantly something in my eye.)
In retrospect, we should have spent more time editing, also. Originally, we planned that Kaitlyn would edit a first draft, and I would go over it, since I had to edit another video for another class. It turned out that we ran out of time, so we only had the rough draft to show at STAC live. If I could do that over, I'd put together the first draft, even if I could only edit for a couple hours.

Luke pointed out that the plot of this film was similar to my animation last year. The stress of school, and the feelings of being restricted that come with it, have a big influence on my life, especially this year, and it seems that these feelings have translated into this project, too.

New influences:

Persona 4: 

Persona 4 is a video game that explores humanity in a unique way. I absolutely loved how they addressed personal issues: the characters would grapple with their dark sides in a land inside of the TV. Loneliness, denying the truth, sexuality, the nature of friendship, and the facades "used to overcome life's hardships" were some issues explored in the game. I liked how the game was more about the characters looking inward, and dealing with their inner troubles, rather than simply fighting a demon to save the princess. I found it to be extremely creative and inspiring. (The game's music is great, too.) 

Midnight in Paris: 

Midnight in Paris is another very creative piece of media that I discovered this year. I love the concept of time travel, and the fact that the main character travels back to my favorite time, the 1920's, made me love it even more. Although the message was presented more explicitly than i would have liked it to be, I liked how Woody Allen combined fantasy elements with modern settings in order to convey that the grass is always greener elsewhere.

How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?:
link
This beautiful documentary visited my love of modern architecture. Every shot was clear and presented each building as livable sculptures. Mr. Foster is a very thoughtful, very quiet, man and it's admirable how he makes buildings functional, yet beautiful, such as the Hearst tower in NYC, which utilizes its unusually shaped design to capture water that can be reused for the building's AC. I'm not planning to become an architect, but this documentary introduced a thoughtful mind of an artist at work, and that was very inspiring.

Beauty is Embarrassing:
link
This documentary introduced an artist that dabbled in many mediums, and has only recently become well-known in the art world. In his life, Wayne White has painted, voice acted, illustrated, animated, created puppets, and designed sets. He is very honest about himself, and isn't afraid to assert his independence (for example, when people compared some of his word paintings to another man, he created a painting called "Hoozy Thinky Iz?"). I liked how he wasn't afraid of combining mediums, or transferring ideas from medium to medium, at one point he says that he would like to turn a painting into a set, or a set into a painting. He knows how hard its been in the art world (he started to get depressed at a time), and because of that he's begun to live life as he wants to, which I find very admirable. He's very confident and lives life doing what he likes. The tone of the movie was very light-hearted, and it was great to see an artist having a satisfying life.

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Update: Finished the videos for

Day 2:
Theme: Pervert
Media: Homevideo

(I was going to include music from jazzband...we were practicing a song, "Royal Garden Blues" with the main saxophone missing, and the song sounded distorted/perverted from how it usually sounds...but I couldn't get a recording of it.
Day 6:
Theme: Low-life criminal
Media: Taperecording
Link -Youtube is giving me problems right now-

-47.3-

"" day 8. I drew the theme "old" with the medium "pastels(?)." Since I recently finished "infant" and "filmstill" I was in the realm of objects taking on human qualities. This led me to the idea doing a pastel picture of Tsukumogami, a Japanese concept in which objects are granted a soul after 100 years of service. After a bit of resarch to refresh my memory on the qualities of a typical Tsukumogami, I got to work. I took a picture of objects at the table I was working at, for reference, then started drawing the scene with the objects looking as they were. I also decided that I'd only use the colors avalible to me in the pastel box I chose. After drawing for a few minutes, I realised that my relationships were off, but didn't want to start over because I liked the way the waterbottle came out, so I switched to drawing with shapes and finished the normal picture. Then, I erased parts of the objects to make room to include living features.

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"" Day 9

I drew the theme "Incredibly good-looking" along with the medium "surveillance photo."
At first I planned on taking a photo of someone I considered incredibly good-looking, or a photo of a collage of surveillance photos of a favorite celebrity, but as I was looking at the mountains in Colorado, it occured to me that "amazingly good-looking" could apply to non-human sources, too.
My idea shifted to taking a beautiful nature scene through the window of the as we were driving through the mountains, but as I was about to take a picture, I noticed that I really liked the lighting on my Mother's face. This inspired me to focus on both my Mom and the nature outside whilst taking shots.

I narrowed them down to four:

I liked the scenery here but you can't see the other subject

And chose this shot:

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"" Day 7. I drew the theme "Infant" and the medium "Filmstill."

There weren't any infants in the STAC room that day, and I wanted to get this prompt done before the end of the day, so I decided to make my own "infant" and photograph it. I came up with the idea to make a "family" of objects and photograph a filmstill of the "family" in the progress of taking a family picture.

However, I was at the airport and I encountered real infants, so I decided to take a couple shots.
Here's three that I liked because they were action shots:

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"" Day 6. I drew the theme "Mugshot low-life criminal" with the medium "tape recording."

I was going to draw a picture of a stereotypical "low-life criminal," but I didn't have a lot of time in STAC that day to complete this. After brainstorming, I decided to draw a picture of an interrogation room, then use it in a video with an over-dub of the interrogation of a "low-life criminal."

This picture on a google image search stood out to me 

My drawing, using the "sculpting" technique

I have to finish the audio and put the video together. I will post the video when its finished.

-43.3-

"" Day 5. I drew the theme "Toddler" and media "Sergei Eisenstein Montage." 

Drawing on my previous definition of montage, a bunch of scenes showing either time passing or the plethora of something, I was going to draw many pictures of toddlers from all over the world (since I didn't have any toddlers to photograph). However, I decided to research a bit on what a "Sergei Eisenstein" montage was, in case this definition expanded what I already knew. Through Lisa's blog and google I found a few sites that helped explain. What added to my definition was the fact that montages can be used to convey a certain feeling. A line jumped out at me from the Wikipedia definition "each sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other." This led me to thinking, "Wouldn't it be fun to compile images that reminded people of toddlers, but aren't of toddlers themselves?" Using this idea, and the line from Wikipedia, I decided to print out many images of toddler-related images and string them on top of each other to make a complete "thought."

---
It's a little over a week since I did this, and I'm getting thoughts that if I decided to continue with this, perhaps making more of these "thought montages" would make the overall effect more poignant. "With great numbers come great strength."

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"" Day 4
I drew the theme "middle aged" with the media "old photo album."
At first I was going to take a nice sepia picture of...my parents, but I felt in the mood to draw and I wanted to get this done during the period. So, I decided on printing out an old-fashioned photo of a livingroom, then drawing in a middle aged person. I also decided I wanted the person to have a big grin.
When I looked up pictures of old photos, the first photo that caught my eye was one of a 1920's train station. I decided that, instead of a livingroom, I wanted to use this picture.

I also decided that I wanted to have a middle aged conductor (with the stereotypical handlebar(?) mustache.) I found a reference of an old train conductor and printed it out.

I tried the "carving" technique again, this time with pencil.

An unintended result of cutting it out, but it looked neat!

I was going to draw the person right on the picture, but then I realized that the drawing wouldn't have shown up, so I drew on a separate piece of paper and cut it out. I also cut out a "matte" for the picture, then pasted the whole thing together

The "shadow" on the left isn't the final product. I was having a bit of fun with the remains of the paper after I cut out the conductor

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---- day 3.
I drew the theme "Rich and smug" along with the medium "charcoal and chalk."
Immediately, an image came into my head.
Peirpont Finch (in charcoal) smiling his trademark smile while a line drawing (in chalk) of a businessman  is in the background/future (the businessman would be done in the style of a cartoon by Puck that I saw in social studies. Finch must have popped into my head because "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" rehersals were going on at the time.
First I drew Finch, using the "sculpting" technique I found with charcoal (I wrote about this in a previous post, but "sculpting" is pulling the light values out of a dark blob in order to draw a picture)

After that, I found the cartoon so I could have a reference of the style (it took me a while, since I forgot what the name of it was called at the time).

With the red chalk I drew a stereotypical businessman behind finch (I was afraid that it'd mess up the charcoal -which I liked- but...the picture would have looked empty without it.)

-38.3-

#2 on "".
I drew theme "pervert" with media "home video."
Being a teenager and having teenage friends, I decided to not go down the...immature route with this. Instead, I looked up the word "pervert" in a dictonary. Interestingly enough, I found out that the definition had no mention of how people usually use it (as in sexually immature.)
From my quick research, I'm taking "pervert" in the context of "corrupt" "misdirect" "to turn the meaning or sense of something."
Thinking about movie screams, and this song where a person is laughing insanely, I'm thinking about the following options:
1. Recording a handheld video of going through the halls at the end of the day, walking home, and ending in the closet/through a door to a dark space. (The perversion of how one feels about a, normal, everyday sequence.) You feel uncomfortable as you go through the
-The dark space turns into something normal to provide a twist(?) dark of closet->clothes dark of doorway-> normal looking steps?
-Video of the cameras put in the bathrooms (I recently found out from someone that the school installed them to catch people doing drugs)

I'll be running these ideas by my partner Michelle.

-36.3-

Today I finished my STAC art project, then started on something new given to me: The Wolves, the Women, and a bit of that Old Song.
The project is:
1. Randomly match a theme paper with a medium paper
2. Make the exact result
3. Always work with your partner.
My partner for this project is Michelle (Li). Curiously enough, we both drew "cut paper" as our medium, but Michelle drew "beautiful" as her theme, and I drew "opposite sex" as my theme. We both decided that we'd combine our projects, however it took me some time to think out an idea for my half. Michelle immediately knew what she wanted to do for "beautiful cut paper" so she got started while I brainstormed. Quickly, I decided to cut out pictures of men and women and switch the heads on each (it seemed doable, and I was short on time since I had to go to music last period...we both wanted to try and get one prompt done per day, during STAC.) Michelle was working on cutting out designs in sunglasses found in magazines, and I thought having people to wear the suglasses would combine the two ideas nicely. However, after I finished a couple switches, another idea came to me: cut out a suit for pictures of dresses, and cut out a dress for pictures of suits (opposite clothes hidden in the opposite sex). I managed to get two done before music, then left Michelle to decide which idea better combined with her cut sunglasses. (Even now I got an idea that I could have used plain white paper to cut out minimalistic shapes relating to opposite sexes...)