fundamentally

Made this, got some reasons behind it but..meh. I downloaded a font editing software online it is good but taking a bit of getting used to. I made this in illustrator then messed a little more on photoshop. it's up on my website already, i'm trying to update it pretty regularly.

I made this as well, in the past few days. something about people i'm good friends with and how i know them.

Darjeeling

I'm a bit obsessed with the Darjeeling Limited, so I made this. My friend thinks i should do all 3 characters and make cushions out of them, sounds like a good idea to me.

this is pretty nice, i like how the drawings follow the stories but take on their own animal persona, like the shark eating the fish, the hand drawn type is lovely too.

Home

Gah. It's pretty boring being home.
So I made a little circle font:


it's kind of nice, i'm probably not finished yet.
I also just watched:


It is pretty good! Generally I pretty much hate musicals, but it was kind of an anti musical and the song choices were pretty inspired! Steve Buscemi is great.

competition briefs

So i've been reading through some of the competition briefs that we got yesterday.

I've got a few ideas of which briefs i'd like to try but i don't have any idea about who i'm going to work with! My last few collaborations haven't been very successful.


eeeeeeeh

website

So I've been doing the web design Optional module this week. I was a bit disappointed that it was pretty much the same brief as last time and most people were learning the stuff we did last year, seeing as it was supposed to be web 2, but Sophie has been good and I've learnt some css and things like that.
I also got some time to recreate my website into something a bit cleaner and more professional.

www.eleanorwoodburn.co.uk

I've got flu now, just in time for the holiday!

JOHAN BJÖRKEGREN

Found these really nice images by JOHAN BJÖRKEGREN hand drawn in pencil, i can't believe how neat they are, mine would be smudged to death.

sky

The sky was really crazy the other night, so i went to take a few pictures, but then i got shouted at so i came home.

Last Sunday at around midnight, they showed the Animate! 2007 commissions, that I saw before at the Aurora Festival. It was good to see them again!

This week I was given the Little White Lies magazine, Darjeeling Limited Issue. I love the picture of Owen Wilson's character on the front,


Anyway, web design next week, I want to re-do my website, I like the theme of my previous one, but it is a little fussy and distracting from the work, so something clean and simple will hopefully be created, with more up to date work.

collection end

Been busy finishing off my film, but I have however started a party sequin font. I don't know why really, it's driving me mad and I've only done the Aa's !

Also watched the film 'Velvet goldmine' the other day, a bit of a mad, glam rock portrayal of a Ziggy Stardust character. A tad weird, not sure if i got it or not.

Made a gloopy cover for my film, I guess no one will see it but i wanted to see it off well.

Hippocampus

So I have no idea what they are doing in the New Briggate Gallery, but apparently two people are living in there for a week, like a people zoo. It is a bit annoying I guess.

Found this music vid on a Specialten dvd.


I like it a lot! i like that it is kind of an video of art as it is being completed, rather than animating something that is already finished. It's so simple, and as someone who likes working with actual objects to animate, I like that they use that, crumpling the paper e.t.c.

There's also some pretty nice things in Sela bar at the moment, birdcages with umbrellas in, butterfly's made from matchboxes, etc.

dear stranger

Came across this short film "Dear Stranger" on the net.
I like the mix of still photographs and film, especially the night street scenes.

The Darjeeling Limited.

Went to see the Darjeeling Limited as part of the Leeds Film Festival. I wasn't sure what to expect since Owen Wilson had no hand in writing the script (compared to Anderson's other films) but it was gooood, probably my favourite since Rushmore. The same kind of melancholic story occurs, with the same iconic look and style of a Wes Anderson film, but compared to films like The Life Aquatic it is much funnier and more varied. I love all the actors he constantly uses, and how they fit into his multiple roles for them. Awesome film!

Aurora.

Just got back from the Aurora animation festival in Norwich.
I was there from Wednesday and saw some pretty good / bad / new / old things.

One of the first screenings I went to was a collection of music videos, from well known and lesser known artists and musicians. In particular I enjoyed this one:



This video by Patrick Rebisz uses animation in a perhaps less obvious manner. I thought I would get bored after seeing about a minute and recognizing the formula, but i found it really engaging, from using a constantly moving thing (the fire) which is interesting to look at in itself, to the narrative created by the ever changing photographs. Something of the song tune is also reflected in the motion, it just seems to compliment it so well. I think that the simplicity of this video just gets so well carried through by the great idea it is based upon.



I think this would've been great for the Collection project. Really funny use of existing imagery to animate all the record covers!

One of my favorite films from the weekend was called 200,000 Phantoms, a film by Jean-Gabriel Periot. Based on Hiroshima, the film is made up of hundreds of photos collected from the internet depicting the Genbaku Dome, and the area surrounding it. The Genbaku Dome (i think) was the only building left standing after the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima in the 40s. The animation layers up the photos, but the structure of building, like in the situation, remains constant. We see the dome before, during and after the bomb, the dome top of the building enables instant recognition from it's surroundings and lets the filmmaker use photos of the area from different perspectives, with the dome retaining it's own position. A really great film, and a really unique way of animating that seems both ingenious and justified in what it is showing.


I also went to a screening of Jeff Scher films. I hadn't heard of him before, but went along based upon recommendations in the book and I'm really glad I did.
The showing consisted of several 16mm films and later some digital. His film animations were interesting to me by the way he puts them together, how he layers them, draws on the film and manipulates the aesthetic. The stills of his films really do no do the work justice. The animations are fast moving, frantic, with a pace and rhythm. The colours and patterns change constantly. Scher uses what he describes as 'ironic' accompanying music, upbeat, often vintage sounds.

Another film of his I enjoyed was called 'Trigger Happy'. This comprised of a collection of objects Scher had found walking to and from his studio in New York. The items are placed upon a lightbox and animated. A lot of the objects are recogniseable, and i really liked the aesthetics, we also learned that one of the guns was real. haha.

Another great screening was the Animate 07 previews. With screenings and a Q & A session with the artists, including work by Semiconductor:

And Thomson and Craighead's 'Flat Earth':

"A desktop expedition and documentary, woven from satellite imagery found online to make an extraordinary five-minute journey around the world, encountering the splintered voices of bloggers which interleave and overlap as if to form a single conversation."

All the information for this film was collected in one particular month, and the animation zoomed in and out on the earth (as if using Googleearth) on particular areas, where we heard 'blog' entries from different people living in these areas.

I often dislike digital animations for looking too shiny and simply digital. But animate made me question this dislike as i saw 2 films, digitally made that I really enjoyed.

i forgot..

This one! 'Breath Me' by Sia. The idea of animating using polaroids may be costly but looks great, I also like the idea of watching some of the frames develop as it is happening.

Some good music videos:

Of Montreal's "Requiem For A Dream" This video has a collage element to it, a random animation, made to look imperfect. The video plays with the idea of motion and perspective, it is shown so we feel like we're moving through the scenes and only selective elements move in each shot. I like the way the subjects move simplistically, the layering up of all the imagery, from pixel flowers, to multi coloured clouds, and photographic people. I especially like the bird made from lined paper. I think the style works perfectly with the song, which at times does sound like a computer game sound track which is mirrored in the video.



This is the music video for The Unicorns' 'Jellybones'. The video starts rather simply, but there is a visual theme with the brightened colours and all the pinks, then the scenes and aesthetics are driven by the changes in pace, from fast taking to the flashing, glow in the dark scene, to the slower scenes where our character dies from 'jellybones'. The band themselves are known for their comic, story driven songs, I like the way they even show death this way from the cartoon-esque crosses on his eyes.



This is 'said the spider to the fly' a video from The Paper Chase. I like the way they use the lighting and speed in this one. Sometimes effects like this can be overused, but i feel the combination of that with the light and the song work well. I also like the idea of people missing their heads, kind of simple but styling towards the song, the flashes of the singer create a kind of agitated feel, which is certainly driven by the piano and constant shouts in the background!

Adrian Tomine.

I love a lot of comics, mainly Daniel Clowes's Ghost World, work by Craig Thompson, Simone Lia, Tom Gauld, Jeffrey Brown and Adrian Tomine. Lucky for me there was a pretty good exhibition on in the city gallery displaying pieces by lots of these artists, but unfortunately not Adrian Tomine. Lucky for me his new book was recently released:



I like the clean style of his work and his melancholy, typically 'alienated' characters. I always want to make a comic but half decent storytelling is hard! I know my title though.

Ye olde laptop.

So this guy made this awesome laptop, that my poor acer could not hope to compete with. We don't do minimalism.

Jeep advert.

So here is a rather annoying advert for Jeep. I am not denying that it's clever, with it's meaning and placement, but really, it's not as if they don't park all over the pavements by the local private schools anyway.

GhostFleet "Preen" Video.

So during summer I started manically cutting out 1's and 0's so I could make this video with Josh.
Mainly I did the cutting of ships, numbers and was on animating duties. We built a sweet set in his basement!



Mid summer there was the SouthCentral ad: I was on costumes and filming!

Jeff Buckley painting.

Sometimes I like the smell of paint, so I did this Jeff Buckley portrait for my slightly obsessed sister: (the photo's a little shiny)

Sleepy village.

Recently I've been experimenting with photography, especially night photography, messing around with light and shutter speed & things like that:

& some more from the old mill . . .

Valerie Pirson.

Valerie Pirson is an animator and part of the Parisian 'Partizan" collective. I like the physical aspect of her work, creating films that rely on experimenting with traditional techniques, rather than working digitally. As a result her animations are quirky, occasionally similar in style to that of her previous work colleague Michel Gondry and like Gondry's work always inventive, often with a childlike aesthetic and edge.

Cupsss.

From here!

Slightly creepy but reminds me of my collages, replacing a known form with other items, amalgamating into another object. The fact that this creates a working house hold item, shows that however random this may seem is it intently designed for its purpose. A bit Alice in Wonderland.

Green graffiti!

“I think that our distance from nature is already a cliché. City dwellers often have no relationship with animals or greenery. As a public artist I feel a sense of duty to draw attention to deficiencies in our everyday life. As a cultivator of eco-urban sensitivity, I usually go back to the sites to visit my “plants” or “moss”, sometimes to repair them a bit, but nothing more generally as they tend to get enough water from the air, condensation, and rain - especially in certain seasons. I also like to let them live by themselves. From the moment I put them on the street they start to have their own life. For me, the reaction of life on the street is also very important. I am curious about how people receive them, if they just leave them alone, or if they want to, take care of them or dismantle them. This is what makes my work similar to graffiti, although I am searching for a deeper social meaning and a dialogue with memories of the animals and gardens of my past in a small town in Central Europe. I believe that if everyone had a garden of their own to cultivate, we would have a much more balanced relation to our territories. Of course, a garden can be many things.”

source

REMEMBER! Free graphics software

basically . . .

Hi.

I’m using this blog to store and collect sources of information and research, in accompaniment to a physical collection. Here, I hope to consider and critique the visual information I acquire and allow it to feed my own work.

I (and Vice) am a big fan of Ryan McGinley’s photographs. I love the atmosphere created by manipulating lenses and lighting and also appreciate that before using such tools there has to be a good photo there to start. I also like the way the images seem very much the product of luck, capturing the subject(s) at the best moment and the environment around them at it’s most complimentary. As someone who is not at all interested in fashion / star photography, his use of celebrity icons irks me a little. To me, it makes the photos seem contrived, capturing such a subject so used to controlling their image and press and serves perhaps only to me, as a distraction to the aesthetic worth of the photograph.

These pieces are exciting as reinvented commonplace objects. Understated works purely by their usage of such items, they are dismissible at a glance and maybe surprising at closer investigation. These items show beauty created by arguably ugly things, creativity under the most strict constraints, works of art that enable us to see and appreciate their ‘basic’ forms and how art can enrich the mundane.

In terms of product design Atypyk are great at creating desirable products out of basic necessities. Surprising, silly but remaining functional these items refresh the images of the things we simply need and allow us to indulge in ‘cheap’ luxury.