LSAD Drawing Awards

The Drawing Awards are taking place on Thursday 28th February, and we were all encouraged to take place in the awards selection, so I decided that there was nothing to lose, so why not enter! I submitted three pieces to the exhibition. Two of the pieces were part of the "To Sense My Space" project last semester, and the other was part of my Visual Communications elective. I was not expecting all three pieces to get into the exhibition, but they did, and I couldn't be happier!

Here are my three pieces chosen for the Drawing Awards Exhibition:

Line Shadow

Medium: Photography

This photograph was part of my "To Sense My Space" project last semester, were I was investigating geometrical space. This piece in particular investigates the shadows created by a three-dimensional geometrical piece, and how those shadows can stretch across the smooth surface, as if it was reaching out towards the viewer.

Stretch

Medium: Adobe Photoshop CS5

This piece was the final illustration piece for the Visual Communications elective this semester. To illustrate the word "Stretch", I simply created this checked button shirt with much longer sleeves, to immediately create the impression of how stretched the wearer's arms are. 

Geometric Shadows In Motion

Again, this piece was part of my "To Sense My Space" project last semester, were I concentrated on geometrical space. I recorded geometrical pieces, created out of everyday materials, hanging from string. The result are slow turning and twisting shadows against a light, subtle yellow/green surface. The shadows were recorded at two different time slots, and then they were overlapped with one of the video's opacity lowered to about half, so that both videos can be seen, and at certain points the shadows combine into on single shadow, before slowy turning out once again.

Bin Liner Sculpture

Since I had a packet of bin liners going unused, I thought I might use them to create a sculpture, by inflating them, sticking them together, and hanging them from the ceiling. With this piece, subtle folds were created, along with crumpling up other bin bags, to created harsher folds. As the days go by, the sculpture slowly deflates, and the more it deflates, the more folds we can see:

Moving Onto Fabrics

I have moved onto working with fabrics for Sculpture, manipulating them and seeing what forms they can create. Starting next week I should have a wide range of fabrics to work from, such as wool, silk, felt, and so on. The Fashion materials store is also quite helpful for getting different types of fabrics and for advise on how to manipulate them into new forms. With these fabrics, I can experiment with new techniques, such as pleating, gathering, draping, layering, and ruffling.

The main purpose of working with fabrics is to try something I have never worked with before. I have already created many things using paper, so it's thing to get myself into some new territory and start learning some new skills. Here's a few of my fabric pieces so far:

 - Folding and Tucking three pieces of fabric, and combing them together to create one piece. I was thinking of creating many more fabric pieces like this and combining them all together. It would be interesting to see the outcome of that experiment.

 

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- Draping tissue paper, starting from the wall, upwards the ceiling, and hanging fabric pieces.

"To Fold": Paper Folding

The verb which I have chosen to work from is "To Fold" and so I decided to start of with something easy; Paper Folding. I created a few folded pieces out of card paper and lighter paper, to create sturdy, architectural pieces and light, subtle pieces.

 - The piece was created by drawing lines and creating geometric shapes. Each line had to be folded either inwards or outwards. I'm going to play around with different patterns and work on a larger scale with a slightly more sturdy paper, and leave it stand on the floor. 

 Both sides of the paper can then be seen, because the two sides have the opposite folded pattern. I could also create pieces which could be stuck on upon the wall and held on with one or two nails or pins, which allows the piece to be flipped over to see the two different sides. 

- Working with lighter paper, creating more freer folds that have subtle creases, which is very minimal.






I also want to experiment with many other materials, such as fabric, clay, plaster, latex, and even dough. So far, so good!

My New Tumblr Blog

As part of Sculpture & Combined Media, we were asked to create a Tumblr account and start another blog. My Tumblr blog will consist of great pieces of sculpture which I find while researching online. I will also post a few pictures of what I'll be making in the studio, and at home. I think using Tumblr is a great. It's simple to use, and it's a wonderful resource to have when you stumble upon a great art piece, and have the need to blog it quickly. Here's the link to my Tumblr, so please, feel free to follow me!

http://horanpatrick.tumblr.com/

No.3 - Sculpture & Combined Media

We are back after a week of staying at home during RAG week, working away on a pile of stuff (of course I'm being serious!) and now the final elective I have chosen to participate in is Sculpture & Combined Media.

Today we started brainstorming words based on a word on each sheet, for example, "Touch" "Smell" and so on. We rotated around to every sheet, getting every single connected word out of our heads. After our break, we talked about a few famous artists, such as Bruce Nauman and Donald Judd, and it's great to talk about these artists which I have already researched for my Contextual Notebook last semester. And so, the plan for next week is to have researched artist magazine, and answer all the questions on the given information sheet into our notebooks.

By the end of the day, we had written down all the verbs associated with as much of the previously written down words as possible, and we now have three verbs to experiment with. The verbs I have chosen are:

• To fold
• To combine
• To break

To be honest, I was quite apprehensive about starting this elective, but I've decided to keep an open mind now that I have started, and see where it may take me! 

"The Showdown" - Final Animation Piece

Here it is, the finished animation piece which is titled "The Showdown", starring Vinny Rourke and Buddy Hyves. I hope you guys enjoy it, as I'm very proud of the results!

 

(Open the video on a new tab for a better view of the video!)

"The Showdown"

 

RocknRolla

RocknRolla is a British crime film, directed by Guy Ritchie. The story revolves around a British mob boss who rules a growing real estate business and uses his henchman  Archy for his dirty work. The opening credits is brillant, and it's uses the some "motion comic" style I used, but it takes that style further by applying it on a more three-dimensional plain, by using spinning, rotating and zoom transitions. It really shows the possiblities available using Adobe After Effects, which I've used to animate my piece.

I would post the video of the opening credits directly here, but Blogger likes to be annoying when it comes to   posting videos here!

Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYHw_h1YdkA

Working with Backgrounds

For the final animation piece, I wanted to create some simple backgrounds that created the space around the characters, but weren't too distracting and didn't take away from focusing in on the characters. I created multiple backgrounds with light grey outlines on a greyish-black background. I did originally use a light grey background, but the black background worked better, since it made the viewer look at the negative space with the white characters and black backdrop, rather than the other way around. Here's just a quick sample of the many different backgrounds in the animation:

Samurai Champloo & Cowboy Bebop

Samurai Champloo

"Samurai Champloo" which is a Japanese anime series developed by Manglobe. It is set in a ficitional version of Japan, and has a hip-hop setting. The three main characters of the series is Jin, Mugen and Fuu. The style of this animation has it's similarilties to my own animation, and there is also some elements from Samurai Champloo which I can incorparate into my animation piece:

Cowboy Bebop

"Cowboy Bebop" is a 1998 Japanese anime series developed by Sunrise. The story line is set in the year 2071, and follows  the adventures of a "cowboy" crew travelling on the Bebop, their starship. I find this anime style quite interesting, especially with a black and white colour palette.

Animation Inspiration

Colour Scheme:

For the colour scheme of my animation, I'm using some inspiration from the Frank Miller's 2005 movie "Sin City". It has a very graphic novel style to it, with a black and white colour scheme. The video game "Mad World", published by SEGA, also uses a black and white colour scheme using a cel-shaded style, and the only other used is red for the blood.

Sin City (2005):

Mad World (2009):

Animation Style:

For my final animation piece, I'm goin with a "motion comic style, as seen in many superhero movies such as Marvel movies, and in many video games, for example, InFamous and Sly Cooper. Here's a cutscene video from the video game "Infamous".