Category: Monochrome

Planning and concept

For my final film, I wanted to create something that combines elements from all of the different tests that I had done. The idea that I had came up with was to make an animation that depicts anxiety. Because I had gotten feedback to make use of a medium other than animation paper since I had been using it for all of my previous tests, I decided to try creating shadow puppets instead. With this idea, I wanted to do something that also visually depicts a head like my Sound of Silence test. The idea that I came up with was to create a shadow puppet of a head of myself that would open up to reveal a monster or demon that is symbolic of negative thoughts or anxiety and is visually inspired by the Indonesian masks I got inspiration from in my last test.

Initial Test

To create my shadow puppets, I made them out of paper that I drew on and cutout using a craft knife and afterwards I put the cutouts on a light box over a rostrum.

The results of my initial test was very successful as I was able to depict the visual sequence I had planned out and I was successful in working with the shadow puppet method. The feedback I received for this was to continue experimenting with transformations and to try implementing the pattern animations I had done in my previous test.

For the final animation, I decided to add a walking sequence to make the animation longer as well as to have more visuals to play around with. I decided to have the character walking in the beginning and passing by rows of shadows staring at him. As he continues walking, the shadows increase in frequency as they pass by him. This is to depict anxiety and the feeling of being judged or perceived by everyone around you which results in overthinking. To show the shadows passing by, I planned to cut out a row of identical heads that would rush past the person as he was walking which would be a way for me to play around with repeating patterns as I had done in my previous animation.

To further extend the animation, I also added more to the sequence of the character’s head opening by having the character turn his head side to side to depict him struggling with his emotions. I also had him struggling to keep his head closed as the demon face tries to pop out and the demon face trying to keep his head open before he closes it again to show the conflict that he is fighting with his inner turmoil.

Final Film – Maelstrom

I would say the outcome of the film was highly successful as I feel I had done very well in making use of shadow puppets as a medium and properly depicting the story that I wanted to depict. I had gotten very positive feedback on the visuals and the effects it had on the story which I feel adds to the success of my final film.

Sound of Silence Test

For the Sound of Silence assignment, we were tasked with creating an animation that depicted our interpretation of what silence sounded like using audio we recorded with a microphone. I had the idea of recording the sounds of machines running as I felt that machines running by themselves without human interference was a way of interpreting what the sound of silence would be. So, I recorded the sounds of the washing machine room in my accommodation and the sound of a microwave running and the sound of the vents in my bathroom before settling on using the sound of a microwave.

Initially, I had trouble coming up with ideas on what to visually depict with the audio I had. The idea that I first wanted to depict was of a sort of thinking machine and I played around with ideas of a machine creating art.

With the idea of a machine creating art however, I felt that I was straying too far from the original sound of silence task and it was not going to become relevant anymore. So, I decided to rework the idea and instead find a way on focusing it on myself. I then came up with the idea to depict how our minds function sometimes independently of ourselves, having a constant flow of ideas and thoughts that are being created in the back of our heads, often with us being unaware of them. With this, I created an idea for an animation of myself that would have my head opening up to reveal a machine head that represented my inner thoughts.

The final animation was made using a light box and animation paper again like the previous tests. I felt this test was especially successful as I feel I was able to translate my ideas very well onto paper and I created a final product where the audio and visuals work very well together.

Visuals Test

For this test, I was inspired by the magazines that I had taken pictures of during the Into the Woods assignment and wanted to create something that was influenced by graphic design elements. This test was done on animation paper and a light box that was used.

Materiality Test

For this test, we were told we could animate in any way we wanted as long as we began and ended with a square that was drawn onto the animation paper using a small metal square that we were given. Following making our animations, we would then combine it with the animations of two other classmates.

For my animation, the story I wanted to depict was that of an experience on public transportation and the feeling of being overwhelmed by the people you are on the train or bus with. The animation would begin with a square in the middle with a character of myself wearing headphones. Afterwards, other squares would emerge on the paper of different individuals on the bus or train that are making noises in some way and more of them would appear more frequently as the animation continued. Following this, the square with myself in the middle would grow larger to depict myself feeling frustrated with the people around me. The square would then grow to cover up all of the other smaller squares that had appeared before shrinking back down to the same size as it was at the beginning of the animation.

When combining my test with other classmates that I worked with, we were also tasked with coming up with a way to create transitions between our animations that would play with the materiality of the test. For this, I came up with folding my animation before unfolding it to reveal the next frame for the animation of the person after me.

I felt this test was quite a success because I feel I did very well to create an animation that worked well to transition seamlessly to the animation of the other people in my group and I feel I was able to create a test that was creative while still working within the bounds I was told to work in.

Flower Mask Test

For this test, I wanted to make an animation that was inspired by Indonesian culture, particularly Javanese shadow puppets and batik patterns. I planned on making a batik style flower that would spin in the centre of the frame and visually transform into a mask. Meanwhile, there would be rows of triangular patterns that would move vertically while the flower in the centre transforms.

This test was quite successful in playing around with visual elements, building off of the first test I had done which had tested moving around words and other graphic elements. With the success of this test, the next step was to find ways to take what I learned from these tests and transfer them to materials other than animation paper and light box for my final animation.

Automatic Writing

In this exercise, we were tasked to write our thoughts freely without any planning or any revision and to see what naturally comes out.

For this first practice, I ended up writing about how I perceive the world as an artist, particularly with how I analyse things in my surroundings such as locations and people to find inspiration for my work. Following this, we were told to pick certain words that stood out in our writing and write another entry focusing on those words.

Two words I had chosen were ‘react’ and ‘interact’ which were originally written in regards to how I notice the way people’s personalities interact with each other as part of my observations of the world around me. I chose these words to write deeper into as I feel there is a lot to go into in regards to how I believe relationships are formed as a result of two different personalities reacting to each other.

Media Landscape

For this exercise, we were tasked to take and combine images from magazine scraps and form them into a story together. The instructions were to use metal squares provided to cut out squares out of the images provided. However, I misunderstood the instructions and instead cut out the images not as squares but as their own individual visual elements and ended up creating a collage of my own interpretation of the task. While putting the images together into a narrative, this was the collage of images I created:

I ended up creating a narrative with the theme of ambition and technological progress, as depicted with birds and flight representing a higher goal for humanity to reach and the buildings as the norm/status quo that they are trying to change with the rocket being a symbol of humanity rising above its limitations to reach its ambitions. The following is a journal entry I wrote on the themes I depicted in my collage:

Into the Woods

For this exercise we were tasked to wander in a library and find interesting books that seemed obscure or had been long discontinued. By finding books that were dated or had not been read much/had not been read for a long time, we were to find sources of inspiration from more unique perspectives and understand how ideas changed over time.

Book 1: Advertising and British Art by Walter Shaw Sparrow

I initially chose this book as the look of its worn-out spine stood out to me among the rest of the graphic design books it was placed with. I thought this book would have been interesting to analyse as being a historical book on graphic art would provide an interesting look into what art used to be contemporary and how design trends have changed since then.

Below are my notes on my observations and thoughts about the book as I skimmed through it.

Book 2: Beauty in History by Arthur Marwick

This was the second book I chose to analyse as I felt that a book covering beauty trends throughout history would provide interesting information on how societal and cultural values change over time.

Below are my notes on my observations and thoughts about the book as I skimmed through it.

Book 3: Form magazines

I chose to analyse this series of magazines next as they caught my eye from the bookshelf, particularly with how several of the issues were compiled as loose pages in a folder instead of as individual issues, having long deteriorated from their original state. Upon further digging, I came across a whole collection of the magazines which ranged from the 1940s to the early 2000s. Analysing this magazine series provided me a chance to compare and contrast how the visuals had changed from the earlier publications to the more modern ones with the influence of new technology and design trends. It further provided a look into how cultural and societal norms that the magazine covered had stayed the same or changed throughout the magazine’s lifetime.

Below are my notes on my observations and thoughts about the book as I skimmed through it.

Pseudonym

For this exercise, were tasked with creating a film review for a fictional film by a fictional film director. For the fictional film, I chose to use the plot of an actual story that I am working on for a personal project about two siblings who start a revolution to overthrow a military dictatorship on a fictional island in Southeast Asia. Thus, I was able to use this exercise to provide a critique for myself for what are the possible strengths and flaws my own story writing could have. For the fictional director, I came up with the name of Nguyen Van Khanh to have a director that would be of Southeast Asian descent such as myself and would have used his experience and knowledge of dictatorships and the struggle for democracy in Southeast Asian countries to provide the inspiration for his story.

In our first week of our Monochrome elective, we first began learning and experimenting with patterned animation. We started with tracing charcoal on paper over an electrical sockets to create black and white patterns that we then created a stop motion animation with.

This was the first of several patterned animations we would make as we would then be tasked to observe our environments to find more repeating patterns we could film. First we filmed patterns we could find inside the LCC campus building.

Following this, we were then tasked to film something that was “boring” or “ugly” which I responded with by filming rubbish bins on the street in my neighbourhood.

From these initial tests we were able to gain an initial understanding of the experimental mindset we were going to have while creating our films. From this we were able to understand how find different sources of inspiration where we wouldn’t normally look for it for our work.