Rhianna Catt

This project stopped me in my tracks several times, and I struggled with ideas and every time I went back to research to start coming up with ideas and Brainstorming.

I started by taking the Keywords, and researching the meaning, including dictionary meaning and their effect and then wrote down my reaction to each of these, and I how I felt about their connection to the world we live in. I felt a lot of anger at times.

From the brainstorming, and researching of meaning I went on and realised I was concentrating of the why instead of the how. This lead onto researching, and I like statistics about why and where people migrate from, and of course got such a mixed reaction, which finally lead on to the question Is our future determined by our place of Birth?

(Note to Self: Add images and links from research)

In all honesty I really struggled with the whole process of this project, it wasn’t simple, straight forward or easy. It played with my brain and messed with my idea of who I am, and had a bit of an identity crisis in who I am as an artist, if I am one at all.

This wasn’t helped by the results I got at the end of year 1. I was happy with my studio results, however after receiving my CTS results, and within a few days of being told I have dyslexia, I started doubting whether I could do this or not.

I realise now I can, but I was struggling at the beginning of the summer.

I honestly think that my time-based piece for this project is better and more cohesive and interesting than the one I created for the Through A Lens projects, and I used that project as a starting point of where I need to improve, but what I like, and gave me a list of question to work through on how I was going to complete this project.

I have a very honest Manifesto, which I believe will change with time as my identity will solidify and become apparent. I think my manifesto truly represents who I am now as an image maker, and so does my video. I believe my time based piece does evoke the emotion and nostalgia I wished and worked for. And it represents my Manifesto well.

Looking back at my time-based piece, I can see so many options or paths I could have taken, and I believe it all worked for the outcome I got, however I see how I could have animated the letters and the typography which was the original plan. I am now asking myself the question could I have been more ambitious? Or did I play it safe? And even though I like the outcome, I think the above questions maybe true for the time based piece, not the manifesto though.

https://vimeo.com/user102562292/review/358100119/ad28fa0d8d

I wanted to make sure my Manifesto was clear and simple, and not like my brain sometimes and full of scattered ideas. I wanted everything to have clarity and come together cohesively.

My Manifesto…

Who do I want to be as a creative…?

To not let labels define me, and always be open to the new ideas and processes but not forget the traditional.

To be confident in myself and what I do. Not to compare myself to others work.

To not be afraid of failure, and to take that failure and use it to inspire success.

To not be a suffering artist, it doesn’t mean success, personal happiness and mental health always come first.

To be dedicated to my work, and constant self improvement but also make time for myself and personal work.

To use my artists medium to communicate meaning and ideas, even if large and controversial. To not be afraid of expressing personal emotion.

To realise perfection doesn’t exist.

My time based was created using several techniques, I wanted to evolve from the 20 second animation I completed at the end of year 1. I also wanted to use the typography to communicate clearly what I intended. I used Procreate to create the typography, the background, layers of animated textures, and then I layered it all on top of each of in after affects to gain the result I desired. I realised that frame by frame animation isn’t for me.

I work in a way where I can add and subtract easily and see things as a whole, being able to step back, instead of being up close to one frame at a time. I created more animated textures and nature clips than I ended up using because I like to edit but also to have choices and be able to experiment. Especially as time based pieces isn’t a medium or an outcome I am used to using/making.

I wanted the video to be able to be used on Social Media that is why I picked a square canvas, and also I loved the idea of being able to take a frame and turn them into posters, and that graphic look and idea is something I used to inspire and but also to restrict my ideas so the video look cohesive and bold.

The Portrait started my ideas for my time based piece. I loved the typography I had used, and that was a starting off point. So I started drawing out my Manifesto in that style of typography, I also did some style frames, and these became the basis. From here I took all the frames and started spacing them out on after affects to get and idea of timing and what was needed. From hear I worked on a background which was simple so it wasn’t overwhelming, but gather the idea of growth I was going for.

In my style frames, I had these splatter effects in the background, when working on my style frames, I had all the backgrounds the same, I knew I wanted the splatter to move. So I worked on two separate animations. A white splatter motion effect on a background (knowing that if I overlay and use the correct blending mode in After Effects this would be the easiest) and a red splatter on a white background for the same reasons. I then overlaid and looped them in AE adapted their timings, and their blending mode and opacity to get the best and desired result.

I knew this was personal for me, and I was looking back a lot at my journey in inspiration for this piece, and made me think of all the old VCR videos we used to record of my family when I was a child. I wanted that feeling, when you get a little nostalgic, so I started to create the same feeling by lowing the resolution. At this point knowing I didn’t want a voice over, but needed some sort of background sound. So I spent some time mixing just some relaxing chill music with a looped sound of an old projector. These were still before my time, but the result still brought up the emotional nostalgic feeling I was aiming for. Then after adding that. I knew I wanted to play with the saturation at the start of the video and added the effect where colour gently faded in for the intro to the video.

I started off brainstorming, jotting down ideas in sketchbooks, on my iPad, everywhere, this actually freed me up, as I felt stuck feeling I had to be someone I am not, and have to know who I am when I don’t. When I decided for my Manifesto to be about growth and experimentation and where I am at now, everything started to click into place.

This summer I went travelling for 5 weeks around South East Asia, I know this may sound cheesy, but I realised a lot about myself in this time. 2 years ago I went travelling again in South East Asia but for 2 months, and I struggled. I struggled mentally, and didn’t enjoy some of my experience. I didn’t really want to go out and do anything. This time was different. I realised how much I have grown as a person, how much I’ve changed, I went I was on this trip I worked on this self portrait, and I wrote my ideas down for my Manifesto on it. It was completed digitally as that was an easy medium while travelling.

This is a piece I am proud of and I want to experiment incorporating typography into my portraits more. The ideas expressed in this self-portrait were the building blocks for my final Manifesto.

The main problem I encountered is I don’t know who I am, sometimes as a person but especially as an artist. Before a year ago, I was just someone who enjoyed painting portraits. It was a hobby. The change from a hobby to a potential career is huge.

Before a year ago I didn’t have the facilities to be able to experiment with my practise, and in the last year that is all I have done. That means I am still on the process of working out who I am and what my future will look like.

Only a little over a year ago my future was a life in the kitchen, I thought it would be impossible to make this step into a career as a creative. I haven’t had years on college studying art, or had any guidance before this year, I may be behind in this journey. However it is not a journey I am going to rush, I decided to let my manifesto to reflect this. I don’t want it to be an outward reflection of who I am now as an artist but of the way I am going to grow to be the artist I will be. Even if I don’t know what that will look like yet.

Before I started anything I started to think about what did I want to find out, what questions did I have. But also I realised research for this project wasn’t just about looking at other’s manifestos, but I would need to start looking into myself and determine who I want to be but what I want this manifesto to mean and communicate.

I actually first started looking at the examples given to us from previous students, I thought this was important because established artists know who they are, where as we are only starting to define our identities. And the variety I saw made me realise this is so personal, and everyone has different aspirations and goals.

When researching I discovered Judith’s Bernstein’s Manifesto. This was the one which inspired me the most. I didn’t want to have a manifesto which couldn’t necessarily be used, this gave you a list of activities and practises one could actually be used. I discovered several manifestos which were more conceptual, which I didn’t connect to, they didn’t inspire me.

The idea of a personal manifesto, the word personal was important. I decided at this point I wanted this manifesto to be for me. Not to define myself, because I believe my identity as an artist will constantly change, growth is important, and to make sure that point is evident in my final manifesto.

The research for this project was very different for this project, instead of working on the concept I wanted to focus on how I was going to make the animation, because I had no idea. I started by watching videos on youtube and a site called skillshare. Used this to discover how to use after affects, because I originally wanted to use hand drawn frames, later when I discovered this wasn’t the option for me I started researching rotoscoping and I found the lecture capture from last year. This was extremely helpful as it broke down the process into manageable parts. It gave me a way of using I program I know well but giving me new skills.

I also researched different artists to get inspired. I used this to work out how I wanted my animation to look. I was heavily inspired by two artists. Palefroi a duo based in Berlin, which experiment with hand drawn frames and typography which linked with my ideas and my ambition of using typography.

http://palefroi.net/

The other was Rosa Beiroa, discovering her work was the moment where everything clicked. I loved the fluidity in her work, so simplistic, and delicate. But also had accurate movement and shaped, even though line drawings there was something so realistic about it.

This project aims for us to embrace technology and world of digital to create a 20 second animation or an Augmented Reality experience inspired by either our Hand and Eye or Hybrid Forms project while injecting it with the idea of time.

I was originally really daunted about the project because even though I frequently paint and sketch digitally that feels very different from animation. I have considered learning animation before and I just assumed I couldn’t do it, so I never tried. I decided fear was not a helpful emotion and decided to ignore it. Straight away I was inspired and decided to use that emotional positively to quickly create a concept so I could move on to the process as I knew it was going to take a lot of time.

When coming up with a concept and fleshing it out, I starting asking myself questions and jotting it all down. The main question I kept asking myself was what was excited about in the previous projects? Which I struggled with because I wasn’t ecstatic with either of the outcomes. So I went back to the planning process of each project and found one idea from each to put into this new project.

The two ideas I was most excited and passionate about was the use of typography and the symbolisation of moths I used in my monster from Hand and Eye.