DMF Final Project - The Book !

CLICK HERE FOR .PDF

What a fun project!

The Mishapventures of Picard and Jesus

Here you will see a very short stop-animation
video my roomates and I put together.
We hope to make some more videos that include
more realistic animation. It was a blast to make.

El Homage

Table of Contents Exercise

Made in InDesign. This marks the first time using this program, and I must say, I do like it! Having experience with other Adobe products made the process a bit easier. I do like the snapping features this program has, especially when in reference to other objects on the stage. Very neat!

Movie (?) Poster

I don't quite think this is a movie poster, but it's for that assignment. Simple shapes, and lines. I believe highly influenced by the Stenberg Brothers. It's missing something though....so, this is rough draft #1.

More Collage

This was a very fun creation. It took a while to figure out what images to use, and though I could continue working on this, I figure I'll just put it down for now and post it up. I found most of the images on the web, with a minor exception in respect to the crows. I found an image and used Live Outline in AI, which created a nice, smooth vector-based image. I don't quite like the cup there, but I figured what the hell, I'll leave it.

Picture the "Other"

How does one approach a man donned with a gas mask?




Cary Verfully.






At least he smiled for the camera.

First Collage

Birth Machine - H.R. Giger

phallic metal arrows gun bullets grey children

A week ago my roomate Dan suggested I look at some artwork by H.R. Giger that I could evaluate for DMF. Now, I have seen all four of Ridley Scott's fantastic sci-fi thrillers, but I was not aware that H.R. Giger designed the characters. I really like his surreal sci-fi/cyberpunk style, and I'm surprised I've never seen his artwork before. This piece, titled "Birth Machine", specifically called my attention. What looks like mutated children wait patiently in a cold, metal chamber, ready to be fired off (takes this to a whole new level), armed with what I can only assume are Philips screwdrivers. Or flatheads. (Update: after proper examination I realized those things are rifles. How's that for double meaning...or is it triple?)

I'm thinking that in a world based on ideas in Giger's head, this is how children are born. Perhaps these little soldiers are the saviors of humanity.

As Lennon once sang:

"When I hold you in my arms
and I feel my finger on your trigger
I know no one can do me no harm
because happiness is a warm gun"

Alphabet Soup - Post-Haste-Edit

Alphabet Soup - Pre-Edit

Scratch Art #3

The future of Drive-Thru!

Scratch Art #2

To quote Miles, "Make lots of scratch art."  So, here we are.  

Is it a carrot?  

Half a worm?  

I have no clue...

Hue, Saturation, Level Examples.

Original

Edit One

Edit Two

zomg!

A mask for all occasions.

The Kusho - Shinichi Maruyama

liquid black water brush motion flow

Those are the best denotative adjectives that I can give, apart from completely awesome. This photo instills a certain sort of peacefulness, despite the fact that the water is cascading on the floor. And black water nonetheless. The eye is constantly drawn to the flow of water is it's thrown from what I can only assume is a broom. Or a ginourmous paintbrush. It does give the impression of a paintbrush though, as if the artist were painting on an air canvas.

I stumbled upon this artist as I was searching the interwebs for a visual message. Shinichi Maruyama has created some fantastic photography that captures more than just the novelty of a picture of a drop in a bucket or a glass of milk. He has captured the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi- the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.

Scratch Art

Night Time Invasion!

Blue
Blurry
Triangles
Building
Cars
Street
Trees


I was freezing my butt off, attempting to take some neat shots from the top of my roof, which offers a sweet view of the valley. I'm still getting used to this digital camera. I did happen to find a new and exciting method of taking a picture that includes long exposure time (8 seconds), and moving the camera, effectively placing the building over the street. Great fun, and it almost looks like the house is hovering over the road. I tweaked the photo a bit in hue and adjusted some highlights in Photoshop which gave me the great opportunity to become more proficient with that program.

Spam-stories

Everyone has a story to tell, though we know some might be more interesting than others. A new form of storytelling is in formation, one that utilizes the interweb communication system as its medium. Let me explain...

I'm assuming most of you have email addresses, and use one (if not more) provider such as Gmail, or Yahoo! I am also assuming that you are sent a fair amount of spam to that email address as well. I've known some people whose amount of emails in the Spam folder are well up into the thousands. Buy Viagra! Lose 1,000,000 lbs in one week! enhance yor Peniskcg!! So much Spam, and the only thing to do is delete it and wish there was some way you could tell them stop sending you so much crap.

But is not "crap," "junk," "refuse" a viable source of inspiration for artistic endeavors? Wonderful pieces of art are formed by found objects. What is that saying, "One man's trash is another man's treasure?" Or woman, for that matter.

There is a new movement in the literary world in response to these emails, called Spam Lit. Many of the Spam emails have snippets of what may seem nonsensical prose and verse, designed to bypass the powerful Spam Filters in many of the big email clients. Here's an example:

I've always been fascinated by these snippets of absurdity trailing each piece of purportedly useless Spam. But apparently I wasn't the only one. Blogs like Spam Stories demonstrate the wonderfully creative ways we can create something from what is assumed to be nothing. Trash to Treasure. I think I will be using this Spam Lit as part of some projects and assignments for this Digital Media Foundations class. Who knows, I might create the first of its kind.

Oh, nope, someone beat me to it.

Flatland - 2D Inspiration

After attending the first lecture and chewing on the idea of an expressive story told by simple shapes, I recalled a fabulous movie I stumbled upon a few months ago. Flatland the Film is based on a short novel written by Edwin A. Abbot in 1884. (read the novel)

"Flatland is a two-dimensional universe occupied by living geometric figures - squares, triangles, circles, etc. A Square, Attorney At Law, finds himself in the middle of two upheavals: the rise of martial law by the circular leadership of Flatland, and the arrival of A Sphere, CEO Of Messiah, Incorporated, a creature from a hitherto-unknown third dimensional world."

There is apparently a new, more Hollywood-ized version with big-name voice actors like Micheal York and Martin Sheen, but I have the feeling it would pale in comparison to the film directed by Ladd Ehlinger Jr.

Here's a brief clip for your viewing pleasure:

Flatland: Assassination

Preecher Man

Holy Guacamole!

It's a blog!  Never did I think I would be creating one of these cursed things, but here I am.  It's for a good purpose though, so it justifies...blogging.  

Even typing the word makes me a bit nauseous....

The picture above is an example of some amateur photography taken by yours truly.