ART 314: Project 2

Self assessment

I think immediately after hearing about the concept of the project I wanted to make the connections to graffiti in hip-hop culture. A while ago a friend of mine had given me a bumper sticker that depicted the four main elements of hip-hop: dj, mc, b boy and graffiti. So I started thinking about the connections of all of them and after thinking and looking up things online, there were break dancers who called it physical graffiti. So I thought it was perfect how the two concepts really lined up with each other. As for the place it was to be projected I didn’t have a specific place, because I figured it could work nearly anywhere on campus. And then the idea was shared to me to project with Tyne at the electrical box out behind Monty, which lined up really well not only because of the popular trend of graffiti writing on electrical boxes, but also because Tyne’s project with the stress on lines in her project flowed really well with mine.

After that I knew I wanted to make this connection obvious to the viewers of the project, I just wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it. I first thought about doing some sort of mash up in final cut of different clips of break dancing. But I started to change my mind, because I had already worked with final cut and I wanted to try another program, so I thought about the videos of the visual artist Blu and starting having ideas towards drawn animation. I started researching videos of moves of break dancers so I could start drawing some sketches of the moves. Originally I was planning on using the after effects program to help in animating the figure, but I found it harder than I expected to make the movements of the body look natural. So I decided to watch a video and stop it with every big move and sketch and then go back watch it again to get the in-between shots so I could understand and draw correctly the movements of the body so it would flow through all the sketches as naturally as possible. Then I scanned in all the sketches and after the run through of the preview projection I knew I had to make the lines in the video a decent amount darker to make the figure dancing pop off on the screen. I decided to use flash and the tablet to trace over the sketches I did, and at first I wasn’t too fond of the tablet because it was a little awkward to use, but then after a while of using it, I got the hang of it. Oddly enough though, I didn’t realize until I got to working on the tag name that there was a tool within the pencil tool to switch the lines from straight to smooth and free flowing, but I thought the figure with the rough straight lines added to it. But it was very helpful when drawing in the name and the flowing design that followed out the name. I think through this project I learned a lot about flash and how to set up frames, especially towards the end everything looked a lot smoother and more even and during the process I noticed how easier it got to work through the program.

The process went a lot smoother than the process of the other project I did for the class. The ideas just flowed easier and more coherently, so I was able to work on the project with a good amount of time behind me. I took each idea step by step which also helped, even within the sketches, I didn’t decided on doing the design ending until I was midway through finishing drawing out the name. But that design didn’t take me too long and I started making smaller changes in the frames to make the movement more fluid. I thought I did a good job of managing the time of the project and I got everything I wanted to get done, actually done so I was happy about that. Though last minute I ended up having technical problems with the burning of my dvd, because I had make a dvd and then I decided to change the very ending so I had to reburn the dvd and the looping for some reason didn’t work which I wasn’t aware of until when we had it all set up and ready to be shown. But I went and reburned it, and it worked so other than that little glitch the process of my project went smoothly.

If I was an audience member, I would think the project looked good and worked consistently as an overall concept. I think the connection of graffiti and break dancing was expressed in the project especially with the video being projected. The line and rhythm worked together well. I think the thing I was bothered by when viewing it was how fast the dancing frames looked. While viewing it off the computer screen, it didn’t seem so fast, but when it was projected it was. I think that also had to do with how fluid the name and design was in comparison to the tag and the design. But the good thing was this didn’t throw off the meaning of the project. I would say for the project grade I would deserve an A or B because I worked really hard towards getting the program down while still trying to get my original idea translated into an end result. I also think the projection turned out well and got some good feedback, which is always nice to hear.