Final Animation

How this has uploaded now when it wouldnt last week i dont know, but here it is!

Some work that is much neater than mine

This reminds me a bit of the James Roper image i put in the last post, where i was saying itd look good in 3D. It was done by Dan Tobin Smith for Virgin Records. The quality of the objects is so much better than mine, its so neat round the edges.

James Roper

I love these paintings, itd be good to experiment with something like this in 3d.

Guitar

Theres a brilliantly well written piece in the book, a few pages long describing how depressing the early seventies was; when all the hippies who talked about revolution in the sixties had cut their hair, stopped getting high and got mortgages. Nixon was about to get a second term, and icons of the counterculture Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison were all dead.

Iv tried to express this with an image of an acoustic guitar, a symbol of that movement, alone, forgotten and in a dark room. I think the mirror was Ians idea, it really works in expressing a sense of the past, or looking back. There was a psychedelic design on the front of the guitar; im a bit annoyed that this photo stood out as the best and you cant even see all the work that went into it. I made two of them aswell, from card and metal gauze. Took ages and was a major ball ache due to UHU being the worst glue ever.

Final Image: Casino Scene

This image shows a scene in the 'Circus Circus' casino, where the character describes his disgust at the greed of Las Vegas people, through a hallucination involving women with lizard heads. Originally there were alot of lizards all over the floor, but the darkness of the image meant you couldnt see them properly, so i cropped it. As with the carnivorous plants piece, i didnt want to sacrifice the atmosphere by using too much light.

I think i should mention the devastation that this set suffered on the way to college, as a result of my own idiocy and lack of sleep. I put it on top of the car while i got my bag out, and as predicted by Kachia, it flew across the fucking car park and fell apart. So the next hour was spent in an absolutely foul mood gluing it back together.

Final Image: Carnivorous Plants

Set design based on a few lines in the book where Vegas is described as something like 'a town full of carnivorous plants', when hes tripping his balls off and becoming increasingly paranoid about alot of things. Theres alot of things i love about this piece but again, looking at it now i can see where id improve the photography. Like the Venus fly trap on the left should be more defined. And i should have taped the acetate to the lampshade thing, cos it having slipped back slightly has made the Las Vegas sign look out of focus when it really isnt. But photography is now closed so there is fuck all i can do about it. Still tho, i think the atmospheres perfect and i love the contrast between the green and pink. The plants are made from wire and plastic, im really pleased with them, just a shame you cant see them as much as i wanted, but increasing the light would have taken away from the dark atmosphere. And that poor little guy thats probably about to have his head bitten off, he appeared in a very surreal dreeam i had after drinking alot of beers, so i got up feeling quite rough and made him! god i wish it was that easy all the time.

Id like to turn this into an animation.

Final Image: Dollar / Alter Piece

The idea behind this relates to the American dream, the materialism and the almost worship of money. I originally had a few objects arranged on an alter id made, untill ian pointed out how crap it looked. So iv redone it, photographed from below to give a sense of the dollar being above, as if worshipped. All the objects are made from bright coloured plastic or acetate as i wanted a tacky Las Vegas feel to the piece. This is one of the images i photographed on my own, so no doubt it could be better but in a way i dont really care cos i learnt alot about photography, particularly lighting, by being left on my own and having to experiment. So at least some progress there then.

Lizard People inspired by Alexander Calder

Rose brought in a book of Alexander Calders work, iv seen his stuff before but not in so much detail. Gave me another idea for 3d work. Trying to manipulate the thick wire hurt like hell, and my decision to use superglue while semi drunk was a poor one. But despite this, i think using wire has alot of potential and i think experimenting further will create some interesting

results, i hope.

David Hockney Stage Designs

Ian mentioned that Hockney had done some stage designs, i looked it up on the internet and theres loads, i think theyre quality and id love to see them made in 3d. The top ones for a play called "Die frau ohne schatten" and the other two are for "Turandot", neither of which i have ever heard of. I like the atmosphere and his use of light & shadow. The odd shapes, particularly in the third image work well, its a bit less obvious and therefore more interesting.

Finished Animation that wont even upload

I was looking forward to getting this on the blog. and yet again, technology has failed me. For fucks sake, i have done this before! and to take the piss even more, it spends half an hour telling me its uploading before deciding to simply not bother. its quite good anyway, i think. and this is what i had to say about it:

Finally the animations finished! Really pleased with the result, and its been a good process aswell cos iv learned so much about istopmotion and even managed to achieve something with Premier, these types of programmes normally hate me. And i think the music really adds something to it, cheers to duncan for all the help with that that! We sampled 'white rabbit' by Jefferson Airplane cos i really liked the way that song builds up, kinda like the animation does... added alot of effects, it was really insane and paranoid, and i thought it was quite cool and then realized after hearing it a few times that it was one of the most annoying things ever & this is gonna be played at the show on repeat and probably someone will at least try and smash something over my head as a result.... so we changed it. Recorded alot of random tapping noises and screams etc, the bats wing sound is us beating the couch wth cushions. And the money & till sounds are from 'Money' by Pink Floyd.

So iv enjoyed this alot. The i stop motion camera and programme is added to my long list of stuff i need to buy.