I struggled with this one. We were instructed to destroy a map of our choice, to do things to it that deliberately negates its purpose. I have trouble thinking non-objectively anyway, so from the start I was a little puzzled. I swapped the poles on my map, and blotted out places with ink, coffee, and ketchup. Next, to take it even further, I cut it all to shreds. For my final, finished piece, I decided to expound on the idea of the directions being wrong. I made a 3-d upside-down compass rose, which ultimately didn’t go over very well. If I had had more time to devote to this project, and maybe been able to start over a time or two, I think I could have pushed this project further and ultimately been successful. As it is, I think I ended up with an interpretation that is simply too literal.

This project challenged me. It was a ton of fun to be in “Letter/Digit Finding Mode” everywhere I went. Somehow I ended up with all of them, but I think the journey to this point was the real purpose behind this project.

The Sound Map project reminded me of this really awesome internet tool. It’s easy to waste a lot of time on this thing.

http://tonematrix.audiotool.com/

This was a group project, which involved retelling the classic Jack and Jill nursery rhyme using only wingdings in ink on bristol. Six panels made up our visual storytelling. Our group re-imagined Jack as a paranoid schizo who communicates with imaginary Jill in his head. He gets an idea to find the Fountain of Youth, and embarks on a sort of emotional quest, and internal struggle of wills. He ends up with brain damage, which means the loss of “Jill” and an undetermined yet lonely fate. Interesting project, and fun to collaborate.

This exploration was a fun, relaxed one. I sat down for about an hour, sketchbook and gel pen in hand, and just marked the page wherever I heard sounds in relation to where I was sitting. I heard a lot of car doors slamming outside, but most other outside sounds were drowned out by the storm. Music floating up the stairs, my roommate microwaving hot pockets, and our toilet flushing a surprising amount of time (I left that part out).

I’d like to talk for a second about a blog I sometimes look to for inspiration. The blog (http://diterlizzi.com/home/) is that of children’s book illustrator Tony Diterlizzi. His style and use of a combination of traditional and digital media are a heavy influence even on my animation work. In all honesty, he doesn’t update it as much as I’d like, but many artist’s blogs have completely fallen by the wayside I guess I can’t complain. I’ve been dissatisfied in the past with blanket “animation” or “illustration” blogs, but I’m sure good ones are out there — I’m just not sure where to look. Blogs that stand out to me are ones that are updated often, show the process of the artist, and go into detail about the methods and media used.

Tonight’s in-class project was to approach six ideas or emotions, and express them successfully using any configuration/combination and quantity of solid black squares. Once again, not a huge fan of in-class work, but here goes nothing.

First, we have “Order”. I immediately thought of numerical or logical order, so I went with a motif of 4 squares subdivided into numerical values represented by black squares. Is it as obvious as I thought?

Next We have “Increase”. I wanted to do a design based on a slope, a lot like bars on a cell phone. I didn’t think it looked as interesting read from left to right, so I flipped it around. The squares increase from right to left.

Third, we have “BOLD”. I wanted a design that mimicked the way we react to bold letters in a paragraph. The eye is immediately drawn to the bold components and then we start to realize the surrounding, smaller components.

Next is “Congested”. My approach to this was something like rush hour traffic, or those animations of clotted arteries you see on medication commercials. The idea is a sort of clogged/cluttered lane, with less going on on either side.

Number five, “Playful”. This one was the most difficult concept for me, and I was surprised when I heard classmates jumping right into this one. I wanted a sense of wavy movement, because I think of playing as moving around, bouncy, a silliness with my younger sibs.

Lastly, we come to “Tension”. I approached this one thinking of a stretched or taught material or some kind, like an exaggeration of a rope in tug-of-war being pulled across the page.

Semi-false alarm, I found some of my process pictures on my mobile, these are some of the layout designs and inking plans I went through for this project. The last inking plan is the design I followed for the final piece.

My Camera is on the fritz, and the software download in pending, so I can’t get my photos on here. The Repetition Grid project was a lot of fun. I got to play with ink (one of my favorite mediums) and I got to think about patterns in a way that I had never approached before. The design I went with got some pretty harsh critiquing, but they were all valid and stuff I would have changed had I the time to rework this project. I struggled with the transfer paper, my lines showed up too dark and refused to erase, and at one point during the inking process my phone rang, which made me jump and ended up with an irregular motif tile. All in all a fun project, I enjoyed trying to bring emphasis and movement into a patterned motif like that. Excited to see what we get into next.

Hey, late getting these up because apparently they didn’t show up when posted from my phone. These focus on design elements “Concentration” and “Isolation”. In-class work always looks sub-par to me, I don’t translate my ideas as well in that environment.