A digital painting study of Joseph Zbukvic's work

As part of the 2d background project we've been set we have to draw inspiration from an existing painter, I have chosen Joseph Zbukvic as my source of inspiration as I really like the sense of atmosphere in his work. I think it lends itself quite well to animation as he does a really good job of telling stories and conveying mood using color. For example the painting I attempted to replicate on the right conveys quite a miserable tone, this comes from the very drained color pallete, the only bright colors are the reflections in the water coming from various sources of light and the shops canvas. This stark contrast draws attention to the lack of color in other areas and pushes the dreary atmosphere by implying that the floor is wet with the lights. It's also interesting to note that the colors tend to merge together in a way, they're fairly close together which creates a link between the miserable weather and the population of the town. Speaking of the population, the people put into the painting all seem to be trying to get out of the cold, hunched over or holding an umbrella nobody is hanging around to chat, further pushing the mood of the piece.

I attempted to replicate the painting in photoshop, as I don't have any history with painting at all really, so I have some learning to do. I think looking back some glaring issues are the form, there are more clear edges or borders as there is in the original painting, and obviously I'm missing a lot of elements, like the people and cars, and detail on the buildings. Moving forward with digital painting I'm going to focus on tying down specific forms and shapes rather than general splashes of paint.

The merits of making terrible art, and accepting it

I have a lot of stories I want to tell, and I find that paradoxically the more I want to tell a story the less likely it is that I'll actually make it. I think every artist or film maker has a project or story they've wanted to make since a young age, their 'magnum opus', I know I do. But the trouble is I assign such great value to these projects that actually making the damn thing becomes an impossible, mammoth task which I will never consider myself good enough to do justice in my mind, because this is my perfect idea that's been brewing in my mind for years, it has to be great! So I end up just doing little designs and writing story arcs that I know aren't perfect so I put them aside for when I have the technical skill to improve them, but that's where the problem lies, being an artist is always progress and never perfection. So seeing these projects as the best I can possibly do naturally means that I'll never actually do it because I am always in a state of learning and improving. So I guess that's why I haven't actually made my best selling epic 500 page sci-fi graphic novel that I've been writing since I was 14.

My point is that worrying that I can always make something better is stopping me from making anything at all, I only seem to be productive when I let go of the idea that the quality of the final product is a reflection of me as a person, or artist. It's better to accept that anything I make will be imperfect, but it's better to have something finished, because even if I make something at what I consider the peak of my abilities after even a week I'll look back and see glaring errors. So for me this is where the value of experimenting, having fun, not worrying about the end result and just making SOMETHING. In the same way as a kid I would just slam paints onto the page and have a whale of a time and not spend 4 months trying to craft an insightful subtext. I think what I consider to be my best animations exemplify this, they are the stories I want to tell in their purest forms, from my mind to paper, even if they aren't really any good they say something about me.

Obviously I'm not saying that taking on ambitious projects is a bad thing, I still want to make these stories I've been holding onto my whole life, but for now I gain a whole load more from animating a dumb joke at 3am, because it's finished.  

Biting Off More Than I Can Chew (A reflection on my productivity and bad habits)

I'm currently writing this in my universities library under the pretense that I can't leave until I write a blog post, since I seem to have fallen behind in posting weekly, which I think quite nicely sets the scene for the subject of this post. I've been recently struggling to self motivate myself to work, which is odd considering that I really genuinely enjoy the work which I have to do, but I've just gotten myself stuck in a circle of preparing to work but never taking the plunge into becoming productive, and it doesn't help that no matter how much work I do it never feels significant enough to be considered 'enough' due to how much work I have set. I think part of the reason for this is that the stakes are quite high in terms of failing, dropping out, disappointing the people who supported me to get here, and potentially destroying my future career opportunities, if we're thinking catastrophically that is anyway. And of course this way of thinking is daft, letting my mind fall into the consequences of not doing work will only further increase the chances of me doing nothing that day but feeling dreadful for not doing any work, but it's a habit that I fall more into the more I fall behind (Obviously I am a model student though if you're reading this, Dad).

I think if I am to move forward in a more productive manner I need to overcome the initial hurdle of the intimidation, I think a good place to start with this is by setting myself smaller, more achievable targets for each day and each week. This is something I have started to do in some capacity already, I've started to assign myself tasks that I must complete in a day on a post-it note at the start of the day, this way my mind isn't trying to spread itself so thin trying to accomplish as much as possible resulting in achieving nothing. It's ticking boxes and feeling relaxed doing so because I have sorted my workload into chunks that create a parameter for a feeling of being 'productive' in which I can relax knowing that I have that goal to work towards.

I think by setting myself these smaller targets starting working is a much less daunting task, since it's realistic and achievable, and if I do this daily I keep myself productive in a way in which I can stay on top of a large set of projects without it feeling like I'm taking on an impossible task.

Experimental Self Portrait Project Brainstorming

I have been brainstorming my experimental project for a while since reading the brief, as I wasn't sure how to create a movie in self portrait, what aspect of myself to focus on and how to portray that in a creative way. My first idea was to have my life experiences as individual playing cards, and making animations on actual playing cards portraying moments of my life that have formed who I am today. The idea being all the cards in the deck go in the box, and that is me, but I don't really like that idea because I don't have much personal connection to the object, playing cards, and I don't think it fully made much sense to be honest.
I ended up settling on the idea of photography, as when I think back photography has always had some significant presence in my life and a lot of my most important memories. And I think photography in general is quite closely linked to the idea of memories, capturing a moment in time and looking back on it is what we do not only when we take a photograph but when we make memories.

So I have decided to base my experimental self portrait film in a dark room, being a metaphor for my mind and the drying photographs representing my memories, significant events, places, people that have informed who I am today. And the images in the chemicals represent memories forming, coming from the outside world, through the camera and developed as a still shot of a moment in time, set up to dry in the dark room with the other images. Since the dark room is essentially my mind I won't be drawing an explicit representation of me, but rather a silhouette that processes the images as I process memories. I want the piece to look roughly like the image above, the only way you can see the figure is by the lights highlighting the edges, like a uv light in a dark room. I also like the idea of having the look of degraded film over the entire movie but I'm not sure how to achieve that affect, I'll have to look into it.
My current plan in terms of the animation is to first animate it in tv paint, then print out the frames, cut them out, and animate it physically using actual red lights to create the affect I want, I'm not entirely sure what method I want to use currently however so I'll have to do some animation tests and try to find out what best creates the tone and mood which I want.
In terms of 'narrative' I don't think I want to follow a conventional narrative, but rather just an exploration of the metaphor, and my personal experience with memories and the significant points in my life, good and bad, which form how I am today. It's more of a reflection than a story.  

Wild west town moodboard/visual research