Artist Lecture critiques

Polly Apfelbaum: First of all, persoanlly I was interested in her as a person. Compared to other lectures I've attended, she was a breath of fresh air because she had a nice speaking voice and kept the audience entertained with her often blunt comments. I enjoyed seeing her early work (even if I didn't like it personally) because it gave me a reference point to judge her later work. Sometimes at lectures they skim over their early work. I liked the names she would choose for titles like "Language of Flowers" was a piece made from old clown suits. I liked her take on "gallery work" not being so haughty with art speak and the idea of her art adapting to its environment for each gallery show. I thought that her "Eclipse" piece looked "like Klimt threw-up on the floor - beautifully..." as someone remarked after the show. I also enjoyed how she never glued any of her work down so it has such a vulnerable side to it and how she continues to make her work and let the rules follow. When she started showing her more recent phase of work I wasn't as impressed personally as I was with the work from her middle period. Pieces like "Nit in Any Way, Shape, or Form" and "Today I Love Everybody" resembled more of her earlier work with limited and ready made materials with little altering outside of dying of painting. Most of the work she showed from this period consisted of bolts of pre-made fabric being cut up into specific shapes and laid out the length of the gallery space. Some of them were interesting to see the negative and positive spaces the shapes made and possibly what she was thinking when she laid them there. However, I just couldn't let the slightly critical side of me feel that the work from the middle era that had this idea of adapting space along with technical skill sets overpower the though of buying pre-made fabric and doing little altercations. The middle phase of her work seemed more lively and expressive to me personally by it being pushed to such a degree that no one but Apfelbaum could call it hers. Maybe she'll circle back around to these processes again because I felt that they along with "Funky Town" are some of her strongest work.

Shawn Sheeny:

I was really excited about seeing this lecture because I really enjoy the art of pop books. I would say that this lecture was somewhat lukewarm as far as lectures go not because Sheeney's work wasn't interesting or that he wasn't pleasant to listen but that he decided to give a slow-paced history lesson and didn't show as much of his work as I thought he would. I did learn a lot about pop-up books and was surprised that it took almost 10 years to make just one by himself. I also enjoyed some of the other artists he mentioned such as Matthew Reinhart. I got the impression that he would be an even better speaker with smaller crowds where he'd be allowed more freedom and time to explain more of his own personal processes as opposed to teaching about the medium as a whole.

Final Portfolio 12/9

Today our portfolios are due. One of the problems (beside desiring more time to edit my projects further) would be that my DVD has a slight viewing problem. The DVD is fine until you press one of the buttons to activate the video. Suddenly the video will stretch the menu picture right before it plays the file and continues when the video ends and returns to the DVD menu. Someone suggested to me that there is something wrong with the aspect ratio default in DVD Studio Pro and the image sizes of my video files. It is weird because it never showed up when I'd simulate it and even when I later played it on a separate DVD player it sometimes wouldn't occur at all.

12/7

Today our Finals are due. Mine is technically finished but as always it could be refined further. There are a few hiccups in the walk-cycles and there are some moments that could be slowed down. These problems are all minor things and really the middle scene that I added in of Star girl jumping to catch the orb is what I'm concerned with and if it makes sense for critique. My DVD isn't where it needs to be completion-wise and I'll make it tonight for critique on Thursday.

12/2 checkpoint

I had a multitude of problems to meet this checkpoint which I honestly didn't. I noticed that my ground layer that moves, controls, and parents everything else in my timeline had this weird ghost transparent layer on it so I decided to get rid of it. I saved and went into Photoshop but after I finished and reloaded the footage in After Effects it looked like my ground layer along with everything attached to it disappeared. I discovered that it had not vanished but simply moved far to the right of the viewer screen. This caused many problems since it also skewed all the mathematics of my edited layers and assets. Nothing was synching up right. I tried to just quit out and open it back up since After Effects was having other problems due to the lagging of the server. My file didn't change when I opened it back up because it still registered the now messed up PSD file as the parent. I then had to just un-parent all 100 layers and try to register all the keyframes on the timeline and then match everything appearing and disappearing again along with the character's walk-cycles. Its still a little jerky in spots and I didn't really get around to editing past what I already had. I however did allow myself spaces where even though there's nothing right now it'll be filled with more buildings and another scene in the middle. I'll really have to haul it this weekend to get all of this ready for the DVD files due Tuesday 7th. I didn't get a chance (regrettably again) to make tags and text for the DVD. I'll obviously have to plan the DVD this weekend.

11/30 Checkpoint

I managed to have a really rough edit for class today of the entire animation. It could be timed out slower and the characters could have more personality in their keyframes because at times you would just see the keyframes acting and not a character. There needs to be some more pausing with her character at the beginning and in the 4th scene between the city and the forest. The lens flare at the end just looks like an awful lens flare and needs to be tweaked. The moment of the floating orb looks stilted and moves abruptly instead of gliding-like.

Besides these problems I didn't do my text tags for my DVD portfolio that I wanted done for today. This means that again I didn't quite meet my deadline and that by Thursday Dec. 2nd I need to have edited the final project along with creating all of my text/synopsis/tags for my DVD portfolio.

11/23 Tuesday Scene 1 and 2 rough edit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al9Y05TS580

11/23 Tuesday

I realize at this point that I am behind. Out of the five scenes I need to make I only have two so far. What has been taking me so long to make is the walk and run cycles and organizing the main composition in a way that I can nest other comps and slide all of my pieces horizontally across the screen. I know that my deadline for today was to have a rough version of the entire piece. I realize that I have to now double up over break to get back on schedule. So for next Tuesday the 30th of November I'll have to have my full rough edit along with the first 4 rendered projects and all of the text for my DVD. I see this as do-able because know that I've tackled all of the set up issues of run cycles and building my composition, the next three scenes won't provide as many problems and I have pervious comps I can nest to make the process faster. Also I can do the text summaries and biography at home in a text document.