changing gears

I'm totally changing what I'm doing. After having discussions with several professors, I've decided that I need to do something that's related to what my current passions really are, and right now it's nutrition. The state of food in America (and a lot of the world) is terrible and people are regularly eating things that are full of chemicals and substances that would never have been considered food 1000 years ago, let alone 10,000 years ago. I want to get people to consider what it is that they're eating and how unnatural it all is. I'll do this by creating mock products, or labels, or foods...not exactly sure what it's going to look like yet. I'll be writing a proposal and going from there next week. Hopefully I'll have photos or concepts for you guys soon.

some stuff

I started to make some images. I decided to not do pictures and drew the objects then went into illustrator and created value patterns over top of the drawings. I like the style. I'm going to mess with it more and see how feasable it is to do lots of individual frames.

yadda

did programming. making progress. gonna draw pictures.maybe a storyboard.

programming

I'm getting started on the programming end of the game. It's going to be a vertical shooter such as Galaga or Ikaruga. I would like to make it a bullet hell like the Touhou series, but that would take some intensive programming. We'll see how it goes.

Galaga - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_lE_L0UtkQ

Ikaruga - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LES0bAg0dBk

Touhou - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N30n1HbDOc0

Doin' Stuff

The goal this semester is to have a definite direction set by mid September. I have toyed with the idea of doing a hand-drawn frame-by-frame animation. I have also thought of creating a video game. I plan to make some character animations in the next week, and work on a possible game mechanic too. My theme this year is the perfection of the paleolithic man, and how agriculture has destroyed our planet, and our bodies.

a little more

messed around with some watercolor brushes I found online

new stuff

So I've got a little momentum going. I'm still developing the pieces. Here's one of them. I'm thinking about watercolor painting over the top of prints. Give me your thoughts.

10 hours...And not much to show for it.

I spent yesterday from 6pm to 4am coding, scribbling out trigonometry, and modeling circles bouncing off each other using Gerber bottle caps. I probably looked insane. I think I might be close, but I really don't know for sure. I really want these circles to convincingly bounce off each other, but it's taking more time (and a lot more inverse tangents) than I had anticipated. I think that'll be my side project so I'm not wasting any more class time trying to do trigonometry that amounts to nothing. On the plus side I figured out the functions I wanted to get stuff to move around in my other piece. Tweens are for noobs! Once I get some more images into that one, I'll post it on my website.

Give peace a chance

On second thought, I'm not a very contemptful person most of the time. I don't want my viewers to get that sense. I'd rather make them happy, or make them think, OR just space out and forget. I think I'm on to something and hopefully I'll be able to show you guys in a few days.

A little progress

I got my codes to do what I want them to do. Now I just need to implement them in a piece. I've tinkered around with fuzzy transparent brushes and it makes a really cool effect. I've linked to the animations on my personal website. Check them out. http://personal.ashland.edu/dimmel/myWebPortfolio.html#animation

looking for inspirations

I already have some traditional artists who inspire me. I know what I like as far as printmaking, painting, etc. is concerned, but I don't really have many animators who I look at for inspiration. If anybody knows of any, let me know. William Kentridge is a really good one, and I like his style, but he's more of a frame by frame drawing, non-abstract kinda guy. I would like to try something like that in the future, but right now, I want to do programming in flash (I also looked into HTML5 a little bit). I'm going to try to look up some people today and post again later about what I find.

organizing my thoughts

So I've decided that I want to do programming to make art.....I've hit the brick wall of endless possibilities quite soon, so I came here to vent out ideas and hopefully come up with something useful. I want to convey an emotion. I think my first attempt will be to convey contempt. What kind of imagery does that imply?

I think that contempt is something that usually drives a wedge through things. It is an emotion that is destructive. So how do I go about destroying things animatedly? I can have images that break apart into smaller versions of themselves. I could have an object that is moving through them and causing their division. I want to make it clear though that this isn't a "Strength in Numbers" sort of piece. I should have theses divisions experience some kind of attrition with each other. They should interact with each other aggressively and chaotically.

I will start with simple shapes and go from there. I'm thinking triangles. Something pointy. Any thoughts?

Getting Started

As my first official act as a CA3 student, I will be writing code. My idea for work is that I will be using a grid of dots to create images, much like a picture in the newspaper is made up: Big dots where it's dark, and small dots where it's brighter. The first work I do will be abstract. I will be using Flash and writing my code in ActionScript 3.0. My goal is to develop a style that is all my own using original code and animations.