Practicing Paths

To help me create animations for my Sense of Place project I had to learn a few new skills to get the animation process I desire so I did a test run on creating motion paths. I tried two different methods before implimenting the method into my own work of an animated map. 

hello from Sophie Wales on Vimeo.

Semiotics - this is just the basics.

Semiotics is a way of how we interpret signs and symbols. This idea can be related to a physical and theoretical being, for example how words as a collection of letters and sounds can relate to a physical object. These signs can be abstract indictors or concepts like sounds, letters and actions and they can work as signifiers as they can in some way be attached or relate to concepts or properties such as colours, shapes memories and patterns.

"There are three main areas that form what we understand as semiotics: signs the way they are organised into systems, and the context in which they appear." - Crow, D. (2016). Visible Signs An introduction to Semiotics in the Visual Arts (3rd ed.). London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Historically, linguists observed that meanings could be found in language and by that logic, the nature of thought could be inferred through observing the origins of a language. They attempted to explain signs as gestures or sensations. By contrast, linguistics scholar and professor Ferdinand de Saussure took a unique approach to the study of this in what is now known as semiotics, undertaking a study in language and how it can be seen as a system of signs and signifiers which relate to one another within contexts of experience, cultural norms and personal relation.

Saussure's language theory is a system of representation. E.g. The letter 'd' in 'dog' represents a sound and in isolation doesn't evoke any connection to the word 'dog' as a concept. A collection of letters (a word) represents a more fully realised concept. That is to say, the word 'dog' is a signifier and the physical being (tangable dog) is that which is signified (visualised). These two elements are both needed to create what Saussure considers a sign.

 

the arbitrariness of language

How to say dog in different languages:

1. Dutch = hond
2. Finnish = koira
3. German = Hund
4. Hawaiian = ilio, 'iilio
5. Hebrew = kelev
6. Hindi = kuttA or shvAna
7. Hungarian = kutya
8. Icelandic = hundur
9. Italian = cane
10. Japanese = inu

The word 'dog' does not mean the same thing in different languages, even though the signified object or being is a constant. The signifier (the word) can be different, but still retain the common sigified concept, as words are abstract variables and their meanings and values are assigned according to individuals, collectives and societies as the meanings are assigned through both individual and shared experiences.

A good example of how signifiers work is the following painting by René Magritte, with the image of a pipe with text underneath. Our brain sees a juxtaposition when we are presented with a pipe and the phrase "This is not a pipe" in french. This provokes the arbitrary nature of human perception as this is indeed not a pipe. This is a painting of a pipe that is presented as a digital photo of a painting of a pipe. Suddenly the idea that we subconsciously pick up the information of what the object is and not the delivery method of which we see it becomes more apparent. We see the signified object before the signifier that delivers us to the result.

meanings of signs can be interpreted into three different catagories of type:

icon - Actual image. This resembles the sign. Onomatopoeic words could be put into this catagory as it is considered as iconic language such as "meow" or "swoosh".

index - Cat paw print. It is a factual reference to the signified item that links the print to the physical cat.

symbol - the word cat. It is an arbitrary relation to the signified 'thing' as there is no connection between the sign and its meaning. Signifiers in different places could mean different things. 

With the idea that different signifiers mean different things to different locations,  something we consider to be culturally positive could be considered to have a negative connotation in other areas of the world. A popular example of this would be Richard Nixon in the 1950's visited Brazil, upon arrival he gave the "ok" hand gesture we are all too familiar with to the crowd greeting him, unaware that it is considered a rude gesture on par with flipping someone off. His welcome was short lived.

In most of the English-speaking world, as well as in several other countries, this hand gesture means that everything is fine, great, okay and/or perfect. In Brazil, however, it is considered a rude gesture. The most famous example of this was in the 1950s when Richard Nixon visited Brazil and flashed the “Ok sign” to a waiting crowd upon arriving in Rio de Janeiro, who responded with boos!

Context Changes meaning

The more common example would be a cross. A cross can have a different meaning depending on the context it is given.

From left to right: The cross of St. Sebastian. Hazardous chemical.  

 

Current Semiotics

Meanings can also change over time due to social construct. The dictionary has annual new words added as they become more relevent in the modern age. Used commonly by millenials in memes and social culture common words find their way into the online dictionary such as the words fleek, doge and feels. All made popular through culutural exposure. The way words are pecieved also changes through social and political means such as the word 'feminist'. 

Due to the mass ammount of negative media coverage around extremeist feminist behaviour or 'feminazi' events and exposure, the word feminist can bring negative connotations to it. Some believe that the act of womens rights to equality is becoming extremist and becoming biased and unfair. This words meaning is not the same as when it was initially used during the initial wave of feminism in the 19th and early 20th century to fight for the right of female voting. Given the way the words meaning has changed can also give people a different opinion on you if you are labelled within' that catagory. The word signifies what the individuals views, outlook and potentially personality may be through stereotype the same way extremist fashion or political views may do.

Still Life Sketching

It is important as an artist to have the fundamentals down before anything else. One good way to practice drawing is from life, the perspective and depth will be different than taking a photo to draw from. This task was focusing on doing just that while taking the time to look at lines curves and overall shape. This is a skill that could transfer into logo design, font and illustrative works. I used a variety of materials such as pens, crayon pencil and coal.

Graphic Games and restrictions

Throughout history graphic design,writers and other creatives have explored different approaches and ideas in a visual manner and once the fundementals were explored they delved into avant-garde or oscure methods of altering their media form.

'Oulipo' was a group of french writers and mathemeticians who wished to create restrained techniques to encourage a more creative ands alternative outcome to a problem. It is through formalism, automated and rule monitored process that new surreal outcomes can form. The Oulipo created a variety of techniques and some unique works from them:

Avoid lipogram - Georges perec wrote a whole novel without the letter 'E' called Avoid. He finds alternative words to avoid using the letter 'E' in his work making for creative language.

The prisoners constraint - A member of the Oulipo Jono Lewarne created this as a way to write a lot on a small ammount of paper. To do this you have to remove acending and decending letters 'b' 'd' 'f'' 'g' 'h' 'j' 'k' 'l' 'p' 'q' 't' 'y'.

Palindrome - words that looks the same forwards and backwards; level, boob, madam and refer.

s=+7{N+7} - everytime you find a noun in the text, find it in the dictionary. count down 7 nouns and substitute the word for the new word. unexpected and fun method of substituting. ( try it myself )

These kind of practices went on to influence future writers and graphic designers to create more interesting techniques:

tree of codes - Jonathan safran created a new book ontop of an existing text. He removed words he didnt want to keep or found arbitrary and from this produced a new text from the pieces missing and therefore gave a new context to the overall message in the book.

Personal Task 

Morpholo is a visual game created in 1985 as part of the oupeinpo which is exploring restaints to make a creativite image collage on tiles. The game is of making the pieces of a giant image that follows a set of constraints. You made 256 tiles. Once you have got them you can play the game. Creates unexpected visual outcomes. Part of a 3D space.

The anatomy of a morpholo tile: 4 equal sided. 8 half edges 2 pers edge of the side. Each of the 8 half edges is coloured either black or white - represented as on/off yes/no true/false 0/1 comparable to booleans. Once you have made 256 tiles with the correct variables you can then have the fun of making your own connected images facing blacks to blacks.

I was tasked to find and copy fonts I liked looking at serif, thickness, shapes and curves and from those I would get details from these fonts to create my own version of the morpholo tiles.

I started by replicating standard fonts as a way to get used to drawing fonts and cursive. I then got an algorithm of codes for the tile shapes and proceeded to make as many fonts as I could fit the rules of the morpholo.

This task is a fun way at looking at alternative approaches to text. Sometimes a methodical and numerical system of order can create a suprising and fun new concept/result. This is something to keep in mind in my own work as I can use algorithms or data on work pieces to create a contextual, craft.

First Puppet Animation

To familiarise myself with the Adobe After Effects I was tasked to create a puppet that can be animated. To do this I had to create a piece of graphics in Illustrator with consideration of joints and limbs. Each joint should be considered a seperate aspect of a characters body and therefore created on a seperate layer. This is done so that I am able to import this character and its seperate limbs into the Adobe After Effects with no issues.

This was the first time I attempted to use Adobe Illustrator so I made sure to make a sketch of the character to work as lineart for my final image. The character design was vaguely inspired by the artwork featured in a videogame "Don't Starve".

In this sketch I pinpointed which aspects of my character I wished to make moveable so that I knew ahead of time what I was going to do for a smoother process. 

left: Finished mode Right: Deconstructed puppet

When it came to creating my puppet animation I felt compelled to have the character enter the 'stage' for a more fluid story to the animation. This animation is short so I felt it best to impliment as much movement as I could in the ammount of time given. Keeping note of smaller details such as hair and eyebrow movement. Adding hair motion is a simple and very effective way to show speed and movement in a 2D animation.

In animating my puppet I came across an issue; I initially intended to draw a walk cycle however deemed this task a little too great for my first attempt of this method so I worked with what I had. I wish to attempt to create a walking cycle at a later point when more comfortable with the software.

 Overall I deem this a fluid first piece of animated puppet work and would love to expand and add more characters at a later date.

ginger puppet girl from Sophie Wales on Vimeo.

Brand vs Anti-brand

What is brand/anti-brand?

Branding is something that is engraved into us, often subconsciously, through different senses and means. Larger corporate businesses use branding as a way to give a sense of security with its buyer encouraging the transition from older product to new. The brand of tea, Tetley, a product which would be new to me, may not be the same type of tea leaf that appeared in my parents cupboard however thanks to exposure to this brand's marketing during my upbringing I feel more confident in trying the newer product.

With the rise of big business and the assertion of dominance by multinational corporations the uprise of anti-brand began. Larger companies found it easy to exploit the public in using unfair and aggressive business practices for unneeded gain, thus it became more popular to not appear so multinational in order to please more locally and appear more ethical. Companies can enjoy better customer loyalty and more positive media coverage if they do not appear to be a port of the practical financial oligarchy that is the 'Global 500'.

 Anti-brand logo

McDonalds has always been the first to an idea, whether it be the kids meal, the first 'healthy' option. They are also not very well liked, and with good reason; Marketed at children as a 'happy meal', McDonalds meals are neither a healthy option nor entirely ethical.

Historically Mcdonalds have always had the mass production ethic in mind. Each branch has a uniform order of function and aesthetic. The use of genetically mutated potatoes and processed frozen beef creates consistent flavour and a uniform taste for the brand throughout all parts of the world. Homogenising products and appearances gives a sense of familiarity to the chain.

Ironically as McDonalds grew as a business they decided to give back to the community in forms of children's hospitals, despite the fact that their brand contributes to heart disease, obesity and asthma among other things in customers. 

There was some controversy surrounding McDonalds using false beef trimmings and ammonia in their meat, this looked like pink goop and was added to the meat used in their burger patty production. This caused great backlash for the business and I decided to create an anti-brand logo based on this.

1984 - Making of images

The trailer for 1984 I created used strong imagery derivative of communist propaganda. The images were focused on being straight to the point or visually striking; to do this I used a strong, limited colour pallet in conjuction with some of the most prominent imagery featured in the book.

The imagery of the Big Brother poster is something I wished to repeat a lot in my short animation as it creates a sense of it recurrence, never leaving the thought of the viewer. This is the idea of repetitious bombardment of information to create a suggestion or idea that is common in propropaganda or fear mongering media. I made alternative versions of this slide to give it variety while still having the same 'message'.

When deciding upon the music for this trailer I thought it best to find something cinematic or classical. This book is a classic piece of literature with dark perversions of communism and totalitarianism so the music had to be fitting in tone.

Your name?

Another masterpiece by Makoto Shinkai has made it to the west. This time his work has gone above and beyond his previous works. In previous works he showed his skills in animating rain and in this one he went above and beyond in showing what else he can do.

The story is a sci-fi romance of a school girl from a small town in the country who wishes to become a handsome tokyo boy in her next life. The story progresses to show a Tokyo high school boy, Taki, wake up to be in her body and vica versa and the journey they go on to try and meet in person when they can't even remember each others names.  The story is emphasised by the beautiful soundtrack and astonishing animation.

Two specific aspects of the movie greatly inspired me, the amazing use of animated timelapses and when the art style within the movie shifts its art style for creative and emotional effect. I consider these to be the most interesting and impressive way to get across a message through animation techniques.


Time lapse shown in the trailer of the movie:
Your Name 君の名は

Mass Editing and Silly Cutouts

In this session we were shown a variety of simple Adobe Photoshop tools and skills that can help us to use non-destructive photo editing. This is a very important aspect to digital process and can be done in a minor and major scale.


 JPEG vs RAW
Raw data has more access to shadows and exposure that otherwise would be lost through a compressed format images such as a JPEG or PNG. This allows you to have more control of the overall image quality and can amend any incorrect lighting issues you may have had at the time of shooting. This is a common way for professional photographers to work as amending mistakes is easier and the RAW format can be mass edited in software such as Adobe Bridge.

MASS EDITING
Adobe Bridge is a program majorly used for mass photo editing. All images edited will keep the original format and create a new bridge format file. This allows you to access your original images as well as the ones you have edited. Once you have made the changes necessary to your initial image you can then copy your settings to all images in the photoset you are doing. This technique is good for things like time lapses or a collective image set.

PHOTOSHOP SAFELY
When editing an image in Adobe Photoshop, assuming it isn't in the RAW format and is a flat file image such as a JPEG, you must ensure not to do any image editing to the original 'background' piece. Once this has been edited and the image is saved this will create an irreversible step. A better alternative is to create any additional layers and duplicate the original background layer. This leaves the original image intact.

there are a variety of tools such as the magic wand tool, layer mask and so on which can safely edit an image with once these steps are taken.


GREEN SCREEN MAGIC
 So I used the skills we were taught in this lesson to create a photo edited image of myself in front of a green screen. I had to remove the background using the magic wand tool or other methods with similar effects before I could go ahead and put my cut out into a different environment. This was my result:

Type - Stencil Challenge

Typography was never considered the main focus of documents or advertising until the Bauhaus modern art movement when Typographist Jan Tschichold decided to create a new font removed of any previous superfluous serif or detail.

Upon being inspired by the Bauhaus works Jan decided to create his own font with ideals on what a good font should be, in 1928 he created The New Typography. This font soon became popular not only with people within the movement but more widely with books, magazines and advertising.

As the type movement grew alongside modern art Herbert Bayer created the font Universal in 1925. This font was created with mass production in mind being cheap to print while being legible. This was the first modern font to feature only lowercase letters. The singular set of alphabet kept prices of printing down while functioning on multiple levels as a font. 

"Why should we write and print in two separate alphabets? We do not speak a capital A and a small a."

Type started to be used in posters and typo-photos to give new meaning using type as a creative outlet. Walter Dexel created posters using type in a style which created imagery purely through type and design, using the shapes or styles of letters to provoke images of objects or a visual aspect never before seen from fonts. 

A few years later this idea was explored by Max Burchartz creating a poster using shape and type to give the impression of classical music through the shape, lines and movement of the image overall. There are no photographs or clear cut representations of music so any influence is given through an abstract idea rather than visual factors such as photos or illustration.

Many years later this new artistic form of type made appearance in film. Historically films often shows type in a very basic 

header footer fashion, once the title rolled and when the film read 'Fin'. It was only used in later years as a method to set a tone of a movie. The most well known example would be the North by Northwest opening title by Saul Bass.

North by Northwest opening 

We have come a long way with fonts and the use of type is becoming more creatively free. With more people creating personal typefaces than ever before. There's no standards or structures  so people are free to explore their ideas for fonts and ideas more so now than ever. It is becoming more and more popular with indie culture and the uprise in small businesses and fanzines.

Type - How hard can it be?

For an activity  we were given 10 simplified shapes of which Josef Albers used to create a full type alphabet. This activity made me question how easy it is for us to create letters from basic shapes as our mind feels the need to make connections with shape and type. I would also say that the process was more difficult to create some more 'complex' letters with such a limited set of shapes to work with. The most important discovery was working out the process for the four intimately linked letters " d, b, q and p " all being variations of each other to some degree. This was the best starting point for the alphabet as a result. 

 These are some other ideas I came up with:

   

When compared to the original below the concept was similar however I produced results distinct from this example.

When looking at this type I question its form. The type is supposed to be a new clean graphic however as individual letters the type fails to be as clear as it should be to fit the Bauhaus form follows function formula. "prettiness without readability serves neither author or reader." I feel that this type works more as a collective piece of graphic design due to this unclear individuality to specific letters making it a misconceived response to the Bauhaus form in image only, forgoing the core principals of the style. From a practical standpoint however this type would be quick and easy to manufacture.

Manifesto brainstorm exercise

Feeling a little uninspired by the manifesto task we were set out on a small brainstorming exercise to create a lot of relevent ideas very quickly. In small teams of 4 we were given a variety of cards with keywords relating to things we can use in our personal manifesto. With a short ammount of time, as a group, we had to create as many individual sentences or phrases out of these words. At the end we gathered our most favored phrases to be entered into a larger selection from other groups. the ideas we chose were:

• disrupt the normal
• ideas can come from anywhere
• eliminate negativity
• question logic
• challenge yourself
• choose concepts others wont
• practice daily

Out of all the results the three I found to be the most inspiring were:

•  Do not conceal your purpose
•  Process is important
•  Apply emotion