Visual Arts Still Life

Photographer

Found this really cool Torontonian Photograher. I really like her stuff, it looks like pictures that you could find in Vouge, but with her own twist on it. Check out Bethany Ramella 

Maddie the Coonhound

I found a photographer that has an "interesting" approach to his photography. He travels with his dog, Maddie and..... well..... you have to see it! See Maddie here

Pin Art

Check out this crazy art! This would take forever to do! I respect artists like these because I couldn't even imagine how long it would take do complete this!

Kinetic Typography Assignment - TGJ2OP

I named my kinetic typography project Rocky Balboa Motivational Speech. I heard this speech a while ago, and when we had to find a sound file for the project I kept it as an option.  For the project I used Adobe Flash and Adobe Illustrator, I hardly used Illustrator, I just used it for the words SUNSHINE in scene 2 and for HIM, HER and ANYBODY in scene 14. I also used Illustrator for the cat in scene 3 and the cancel sign in scene 7. Towards the end of the project I was getting really quick with the hot keys, it really does make it a lot faster. I really like how the final product looks, if I could change anything it would be keeping my symbols names straight, towards the end I found it more helpful to name it scene# then the word.  I chose to make the background black because black is a strong colour and I thought it was a strong speech. I used white font so it would contrast the background and make the words stand out more. I used Franklin Gothic Medium for the font because it is a bold font and it looked most like the font on the Rocky movie poster as well. Words that I wanted to be bold I made it red to contrast both the white and the black.  I found that importing illustrator files was difficult, if there was a little part that I didn’t like I would have to re-do it, re-import then re-animate. It wasn’t difficult it was the most time consuming part of the project. I think everyone in the class has really benefited from the help of the internet, it was a simple solution for most things and really saved a lot of us. I had to use it right at the end of my project, I didn’t know how to stop the animation from constantly looping, so I googled it and it was so simple, even though I had to get someone to show me! I look back at it, it was very simple to understand, and I was probably overthinking it. I really like how scene 3 turned out with the cat, I think it is subtle enough to make an impact but not bold enough to make the words un-legible. Over all I really like how the whole thing turned out, I think it looks REALLY good.

Avatar

I loved the movie Avatar by James Cameron. The animation in it was amazing. Did you know that James Cameron started writing Avatar in 1995 and started production in 1997, but he put the project on hold until early 2006. He used live-action shooting (about40%) and CGI (about 60%). To create Pandora and the Na'vi James Cameron and his team used over a petabyte (1,000,000 GB) thats over 17 GB per minute!
So I decided I would look up how they made the actors look human, but making them animalistic as well. I found a straight forward tutorial that teaches you how to make yourself look like the Na'vi (click here). I decided I would try the tutorial, but I have a few restrictions, I do not have Photoshop, which was used in the tutorial. 

Flash Spring Animation

My first flash animation was an animation of a Jack in the Box jumping out of his box. My design was quite simple, except for the spring. It looked like a spring, but didn't have the bounce that would make it look way more realistic. So I decided I would try to find a way to make the spring look more real. The tutorial I found was for Flash CS5 not CS4, that we have. I still find it really neat how fluid the movement of the "spring" is, check it out here. Since we don't have the version he is using, I checked out his website to see if there was anything there for CS4 flash. Andy Sykes is a UK animator known as, Hexjibber to Youtubers and Animators. He has some really well done animations, my favourite is the lip-syncing one, and he has many other tutorials for flash CS4. Check out Hexjibber.

website

I found this really cool website where artists from all over the world can post their artwork. Check it out here. I've noticed most of the work is done digitally, but don't let that fool you , some of the work looks like photos! There is a variety of programs used depending on the artists. Many of the artists left a link of their own site if you really liked their work you can look at some of their other works.

Simplicity

"SIMPLICITY IS ABOUT SUBTRACTING THE OBVIOUS AND ADDING THE MEANINGFUL"

-John Maeda

I get my inspiration from the simplest of things. I adore looking at such simple pieces of art, and knowing that, to the artist, there is a very in-depth meaning or story behind it. Just looking at it, no one would guess that, because it is so simple. Simplicity is found everywhere in fashion, digital design, building structure and art, just to name a few.

Simple Building Structure

Simple, yet it can make a statement.

Again, simple. But what does it mean?

The above picture was painted by Rene Magritte. The majority of his work is simple and yet thought-provoking. He challenged the viewers perceptions of reality. He painted images that meant one thing to him and probably something different to the many other people that saw it.

"It is a union that suggests the essential mystery of the world. Art for me is not an end in itself, but a means of evoking that mystery." -Rene Magritte - 1898-1967
Many Artists today are influenced by Magritte's work, Andy Warhol was one modern artist that was influenced. Other artists were and still are influenced either by Magritte's way of incorporating subtle messages or his abstract style, occasionally both.