Emotion : Through Alternative Media

"Emotion : Through Alternative Media" was the title I had selected for my Final Major Project for my first year as a student of art. We were given five titles/topics to choose from, and at first, I was super dead-set on going for 'Illumination,' because through that I could explore how lighting - specifically in theatre, TV and movies - can alter an emotion and atmosphere completely, but then 'Emotions' became available and hey, look where I ended up.

Now, two months, 64 Microsoft Powerpoint pages and one Animation Meme later, I'm writing about the whole experience! (At practically midnight, may I add, so my apologies for any slip ups in grammar, syntax, general formalities and the such.)

For my project, I had the mind-blowing, cerebral-cortex-swelling idea to explore ways of showing emotion through many different ways, besides facial expressions. Easy enough.

Not.

I have surprised myself several times throughout these gruelling two months, however, like how I crammed in about 40% of my project within the first week. I was on a roll. Too bad my handwriting is barely legible but hey-ho, I did a lot of work and I am proud of what I have achieved. I also learned a lot along the way, I drew a test walking cycle that was only really meant as an experiment that ended up as it's own fully fleshed out ten second cycle GIF purely based off of research of anatomy and a few PNGs highlighting key frames when drawing a walking animation. I also learned that artists, whether they paint/draw faces, landscapes, plants, you name it, can use so many factors around them to change the mood and atmosphere of their creation such as time of day, object placement, colour and even plants.

I enjoyed the plant portion of my project very, very much.

During the middle of the project, though I was still producing work, I hit a sort of drywall, so to say. I was getting fed up of how much writing I wanted to achieve per page, but knew it was necessary, and the quantity and quality of work required of us students was like a monument of misery stemming from all of our spines. It was stressful, and everyone was competing, constantly asking each other, 'How many pages you got?' and 'I don't know if I have enough, do I? Can you check my work?' I'm surprised none of us went full nuclear meltdown - on the outside, at least, can't say much about everyone's mental state.

Either way, by this time, we were about 7 weeks in and I had approximately 40 Keynote pages on my iPad Pro, a walking cycle and several scrapped animations that I exiled to the pit of 'Never Happened, Doesn't Exist' (but they came back later on, page fillers.) I needed to get my act together. So, I story-boarded. Didn't like that idea, scrapped that story-board and made a new one, great, cool.

Then, being the absolute genius with a 100% functional brain that I am, I then had the smart idea to change my song. Back to the story board I went.

Now, we were at week 8 here. Stakes were higher than the stratosphere and the amount of manly tears and sweat I released for the following two weeks would probably be enough to dampen the whole of Death Valley. But guess what, I made it. I made that animation. Yeehaw my fellow humans because life was now swell and the sun was shining and my acne was sort of clearing and I could relax.

Too bad Mother Nature and Aunt Unlucky decided to both pay me a visit within the span of two days.

I encountered problems with actually putting my animation together.

Problem number 1) Canvas was 4500 x 5000 pixels instead of 1080 x 720, why I decided to be awkward like that, I don't know so there's no hope asking me.

Number 2) I now had several segments of animation, 9 segments to be exact, that decided that they didn't want to convert into being in an MP4 format, yay! So I had to go rename each frame, (all 112 of 'em,) and with the help of the Mac technician and my Photography teacher, we got the animation. Now, all we needed was music.

Number 3) I'm a big dum dum when it comes to any adobe software, and I have to give credit where credit is due, so to all of you who are able to use Adobe Animate and After Effects, you guys should apply for MENSA or something, because those programs are a bunch of buttons that I press, and when I press, I corrupt. So, we had to use iMovie to put in the music, which resized the animation but at this point, I couldn't have been more relieved for it to be up and running.

My presentation exhibit was fairly simple, some concept pieces on the wall, a canvas painting, some doodles and two gouache sky paintings with two Macs. One showing some context and the other showing my animation. I didn't attend the exhibition - my reasoning being that it'd be way too crowded for my liking and I was still cooling off from 100% panic mode 24 hours of the day. My friends all told me that they, their families and other people they saw there really liked my exhibit though, which really warmed my heart.

Overall, "Emotions : Through Alternative Media" was a success in my eyes.