Final project

When I determined to make a narrative about homesickness, several possible scenes that I might capture came into my mind. It was a broad and thought-provoking topic and what I first need to do was to narrow it’s possibilities. I chose making videos to document the narrative and I think one minute was enough for me. I started to thinking about specific details that can be easily recorded and visualized. I think the most obvious feature of being in different nations is the time difference, and then I asked my mother to take a picture of the sky outside the window in China and I took a picture of sky here. I manipulated these two images by turning down their initial color and brightness so that two images taken in daylight became night scenes. At that time, I got an idea that I could make my video by comparing the same scene and objects in different places.

After figuring out the core concept of comparison to reveal the topic of homesickness, I asked my mother again to help me take a video of taking elevator home and some images of my bed and working desk. At the same time, I recorded the same objects here. At a sudden, I got an idea that I could create a feeling of these two places, my dorm and my home are linked by the same elevator. I could shuttle back and forth between two places, just like time-traveling. And I was so excited to find that imovie can make motions much slower or faster. It helps me to create the scene that I could travel between two places in two different nations through an elevator.

Then, the job left was just to combine everything together with some transition effects and texts. I chose two pieces of music and cut part of them by Garageband to become the background music or sound effect of the video. One of them is kind of funny, to make the video more interesting, the other is soft in order to create the atmosphere of homesickness. After everything was done, I think I lost the most important content! Then I put the picture of my family and the facetime screenshot of my mother into the video and ended up the video with smiling faces of my families. I think it is enough to make my video piece showing the homesick emotion. Eventually I made it! But what still makes me unsatisfied is that the video clips of traveling through elevators are a little bit confusing, I am afraid that viewers cannot understand what I meant to express. 

blog 10

I wanna start from the photo of my family to make a video of the "homesickness" theme. I am planning to take some video clips in different scenes and then manipulate them to be a whole narrative.

Failure Paper

           So far, I have completed five micro projects with several techniques such as Photoshop, imovie and Garageband. The first ten specified images, the unique way to somewhere, the objects identifying my own personalities, the video recording the sound and the expression of action words are so interesting and thoughts-provoking that arouse me to be creative. I actually tried to come up something special and interesting; however, there still exist a difference between what I wanted my final project to be and what it eventually becomes.

   Candidly speaking, the biggest failure this semester is the micro project 4. I did intend to make my video amazing and fabulous but what I did is kind of normal. I am not satisfied with both my idea and the technical execution. The place I chose is my dorm and I recorded the sounds of door opening, water boiling, page turning and keyboard typing. Too much sound I chose but my final video is still not so intriguing. I think it is due to my boring thought of picking such sounds and I did not process it in a funny way. I just added some effects of mixing sounds and sound tracks, put some transition effects and nice-looking but useless opening and ending scenes. From this failure project, I understand that good artworks need both creative thoughts and excellent digital art-making techniques. An amazing idea leads the art-making procedure to the right direction, and mastering nice techniques can make details better and perform the artwork in a right way of expressing its initial idea. This failure encourages me to think more creatively and improve my digital art making abilities.

   I think the biggest success is definitely acquiring so many digital techniques of making art and actually it is my initial intention of choosing this class. It is really important and exciting for me to learn how to use Photoshop, imovie and Garageband. I enjoy the moment every time I see my final projects with the post processing of these techniques. By roughly learning how to use these, I can almost express what I want my artwork to be, and this biggest success motivates me to take this course next semester to learn more tricks and skills of using them. It cannot be called a big success, but it really means an exciting progress for me and I find my interest in digital art making. It is quite valuable for me, I think.

   If I get a chance of redoing one project, I would choose project 4 without hesitation. I would come up with a much more creative and intriguing idea and visualize it in a more special manner, even with some mysterious, horrific or comedic elements. It should not be as long as the previous one, it can be short but strong enough to give audience the feeling of surprise. Maybe I would pick one common but easily ignored sound and then alter it into a way that audience would not think it could be like that. 

Micro Project 5

            When I first heard the action word “bend” and “inlay”, I was thinking about choosing a flexible object that can easily altered to be bent or inlaid. I firstly chose plasticene, which is often used in my mathematical model construction in three dimensions. I put it in the little box, kneaded it into a sphere shape and then put a coin on it and press the coin. Then it becomes a bent, twisty and inlaid plasticene ball.

         Another idea I got is the bent straw, a quite normal object that we almost use everyday. I happened to come up with a physical phenomenon learnt in middle school that objects in water would be refracted. I just need to find a transparent bottle with water and then put a straw into it to observe it. Within expectation, the straw becomes bent. It is pretty easy and straightforward but actually show the action word “bend”.

            I was trying to find an object that shows both of the action words. I happened to find my piggy bank on the desk. The rubber cover of the hole of taking money was easily bent and then it was inlaid into the hole.