Career moves... In this industry, you have to be strategic

So, I went to grad school hoping to be a part of a visual effects industry that isn't falling apart. My hopes have not been deterred entirely... but have changed route. I feel as though I just lost interest in pursuing a career in an industry whose economic model is imploding. I think that working for a large animation house / studio might not be the best fit for me. First of all, contract jobs are by no means stable. The studio uses you for a year or two, and then drops you because they need to create another movie. It is no secret that the VFX industry isn't doing well. Dreamworks will lay off between 350 - 500 people this year (the number of people varies depending on the source) and Rhythm & Hues went bankrupt. Also, jobs that require brainless repetition doing one very very specialized task that could take a year or MORE have turned me off. Check out Cracked's 5 Miserable VFX Jobs that Make Movies Possible. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas recognize the change in dynamics in the film industry with this advent of computer-generated technology and the changing economy and predict a massive overhaul/implosion in the film industry. Although I don't know if the situation is going to change this drastically, I think that there are some changes happening. I am hesitant to jump on the massive VFX slaveship, although I do enjoy compositing, texturing/shading, and digital lighting. I love the idea of making films, but the industry model doesn't seem very lucrative or offer stability... and it is very cut-throat for women (not that I am afraid lol). It's just not fully receptive to women yet, regardless of how assertive I am. I would like to work in an environment where I can try a lot of new technologies all the time. With a background in graphic design, and a newfound interest for animation and motion graphics (the past couple years I have been doing some for school and working in my spare time at the Ohio State Athletic Department - The Buckeyes, making scoreboard animations for football, basketball, hockey, volleyball, etc.), I would love to do some motion graphics for a smaller firm or maybe a software company. The infinite possibility of a visual story or visual narrative is wonderful, and I can combine graphic elements with some animated elements, creating a richer, deeper, more interesting time-based project than just something that is a flat work of art. I love films, and will always, but I like creating art first and foremost. I think art can tell a story without having to be 2 hours long and require 500+ people for production.

I also love the idea of working for a software company doing the front-end design for software or for web/mobile. The need for User Experience and User Interface Design is ever-increasing. And it is something I have really grown to enjoy. I worked the past two years creating a project for women in the military here at Ohio State. It involves very structured design work, research, information architecture, visualizing, testing, a little web programming, all of which I find rewarding as they are challenging for me. Producing a workable, usable, interactive product that actually serves a purpose for the intended audience speaks to me more than something that is simply a work of art to be looked at. The logic involved is a little bit more involved than just the visual/spatial logic you use to create a 2D work of art also. So it is a challenge for me... one with rewarding outcomes. In the next year or so, after I finish my thesis short film, I will be at a crossroads of sorts. So you see, I have been thinking a lot about where I want to be and have narrowed it down quite a bit considering the vast array of work I have tried in the past. I think these two career paths are the directions I could take in my proverbial design career "fork in the road." In the meantime, I will work on my thesis film and paper as well as be teaching courses this fall and spring. I still have considerable time before I seek a job (a year), but in the meantime the state of the VFX industry, the industry where I am currently pursuing my master's, and the niches I have chosen in the design field will be subjects I will forever keep in the back of my mind :).

What Does Reality Mean to You?

What does Reality Mean to You? is a short piece that I created as a precursor to my thesis. In this piece, I use various styles of graphics in 2 dimensions and 3 dimensions to showcase answers to the survey question “What Does Reality Mean to You?” For this animation, I collected 25 anonymous participants’ written responses to a six-question survey I created and distributed online. I wrote about it in my planning stages in a prior post: Project II Proposal - What Does Reality Mean to You? For this piece, I focused on the answer to the question “What does reality mean to you? Define the word “reality” – what it means to you in simple terms” and encouraged survey takers to respond with an explanation that is as short or as long as they would like. I devised a short script from the responses to this question and created images to accompany it, as well as got help from several ACCADians for voice acting. This is a Wordle I created to depict the most frequently used words in the essay responses:

When I create my thesis film, I would like to include more opinions about reality, reality as it pertains to current films and changing expectations and general perceptions of reality. This is important because graphics have improved so much nowadays that films can create alternative forms of believable reality, and enhanced realities or "hyperrealities," possibly changing viewers perceptions on what reality means and what technologies can do for us. I decided to use a modeling style that was simple, low-poly, and geometric, which is similar to the modeling style in a video I liked on Vimeo called “Let’s Talk About Soil.” This modeling style allowed me to create simple forms and to keep the project achievable given our time frame of half of a semester to complete the work. As a takeaway, I would like the viewer to know that reality is a subject with no agreed-upon definition by philosophers and social theorists. The only thing that is agreed-upon is that reality is perceived. This video was meant to assert that every person perceives reality differently. I really enjoyed working on this project. Thanks to all my voice actors and survey participants! It would have not been possible without the amazing ideas of the survey-takers and my colleagues at ACCAD, who despite their disdain for hearing their own voices, sound lovely!

Oz the Mediocre and Not-Really that Powerful

Oz the Mediocre and Not-Really that Powerful

A couple of weeks ago, I went to see Oz the Great and Powerful. It might have been a great movie for children, because as a Disney film it was visually brilliant. It was, however, hard to pay attention to the movie. It was long, drawn out - the story became lifeless and lackluster. The protagonist (Oz, played by James Franco) was not reliable as an identifiable, honest character who grows throughout the story. He was sometimes nice, sometimes not - he seemed like a player who just womanized in the beginning and then didn't really care about Oz until the end when he tried to save it with his parlor tricks. Mila Kunis was over-dramatic and I think better suited for comedy roles. Her costume makeup was awful, (I know she is supposed to be the hideous Wicked Witch) but they could have updated the look for this movie - it looked like cheap green Halloween makeup with prosthetic chin and cheeks. Some of the animation in the set was cool... the jewel-like foliage was interesting. I might have liked the jewel-like foliage because I like shiny things.

Whatever the case, I think the visual effects and style of the film was its strong point, but the overall plot was terrible. I think the movie could have been shortened and the script could have been funnier as well as written to appeal to an older audience in addition to the usual family-friendly crowd. The overblown talk of fairy tales and greatness of the land of Oz was just terribly uninteresting. This movie has no soul, a story with no real development. I think this speaks to the fact that Hollywood can deliver us a beautiful film, but if the story is blasé, the movie is too. Story is king and in this case the story failed to deliver. Lovely set design and animation - I am not going to knock Disney for trying.

Jessica Hische: Should I work for Free?

Kindness: The only thing thing that should be free when it comes to creative work

Several years ago, I went to a Design Madison event at Hiebing. Jessica Hische was the guest speaker. She is engaging and quirky, and has a wonderful sense of humor. She is also AMAZING at type design. AND, she can make a mean web site and has an established web presence. I have been furiously revamping my portfolio web site because I have been searching for summer internships (Check it out at Biesboerdesigns.com). I know it is not perfect, but I had to get some of my works out there in a more appealing way than with my old Flash layout (flash, as we know is a dying technology). I used some great free tools such as highslide.js because I am not so keen on javascript, and a simple semi-responsive layout built to fit on screens of all sides (perfect fluid width layout).

Anyway, during my search for internships, I recently re-encountered Jessica's Should I work for free? chart because I had been noticing again all the companies that host unpaid internships. Jessica is so wise! And intelligent! I think that it's blasphemous that designers and creatives have to put up with this in our field. I completed an unpaid internship in one of the most expensive cities in the United States (New York City) when I was 21 soon after the collapse on Wall Street and I don't think I would work for free for that length of time again. I hold a bachelor's degree and designers and artists have also paid lots of money to complete school in addition to the rest of the world, so I think that just because work is creative does not mean it should be unpaid. It is also work and requires skills and hours and hours of work. I am not wrong to say this or being egocentric about my work. People in the design field are required to have years of experience just like everyone else. We need the basic means to sustain ourselves such as food, water, and shelter. I am in the process of completing a master's degree, and I think that to work for free at this point would be to devalue my work. I think the bottom line is: if you value your work, you should NOT work for free. Thanks for the cute chart Jessica! Her piece is also available as a fancy letterpress print here

Digi-EYE

On Friday I went to a festival compilation of digital film works by undergraduate film studies students at OSU, with several DAIM (graduate digital animation students) pieces thrown in. I was blown away by the films by the undergrads - their pieces were amazing. I loved the humor in the pieces, and the compositions they have created. I thought they all paid really great attention to sound as well. I recognize some of the students from a film studies class I took as well. I loved the music and the beat of Cotter's piece All Your Light (Times Like These). I also loved that everyone LOLed at Renee's Buried Unicorn. I think her film is universally identifiable because tuition debt is something that can weigh on a person and kill their spirit. I also loved Seth Radley's Cinemagraphs: An Experiment. I thought it was very creative. All of Tom Heban's pieces (Heblog) were great, although I have seen most of them before as he is a fellow graduate student in our department. Katherine Stevenson's Good Deeds was absolutely hilarious. I also really liked David Goodwin's pieces, Absence and Interstice as they were serious and reflective.

I was, however, disappointed with the politics involved with this exhibition. I think that the DAIM students' works were thrown in last minute. I was a little disappointed considering my pieces were thrown out of the lineup, even though my name and picture were present in the title sequence for the event. This is fine, but some of the animated works that were REALLY GREAT were also left out, like Sheri's piece. I also thought that Janet Parrott threw her work in to the mix with Ordinal 5, which was a little out of place considering it was a students' film festival. I thought her piece, about dance and the number 5, could be improved. The math didn't line up to what the dancers were doing (there were 7 dancers?). That piece was long and drawn out compared to the students work. The students utilized things like suspense, dialog, composition, tempo and all sorts of other devices to get the viewer engaged. Her piece, did not engage at all. It was academic-sounding and not engaging. There was no hook, no climax. The dancers were wearing weird leotards and were kind of creepy - they looked like extremely tight black and white spandex parachutes. I also thought it was discourteous that her piece was 8 minutes long, the longest film in the festival, whereas one of the works I submitted were ten seconds long. I think that some more digital animators pieces could have been used in the showcase instead of hers, like Sheri's Cinderella piece. Also, Ann Sofie Clemmensen's work The Laws of Jante utilized dance just like Ordinal 5 and was engaging. She utilized timing, repetition, intertitles and an old-timey black and white silent film style that worked with her subjects. Overall it was a great event, I just think that parts of it were pieced together last minute and that the DAIM submissions were widely underrepresented.

Guest Speaker: Teri Rueb

On Friday, ACCAD hosted a very special guest speaker, Teri Rueb (terirueb.net). So I thought I would write a little about her, her work, and what I learned from her presentation. It is not everyday you encounter a scholar with a PhD from Harvard! BIO (mostly excerpted from her web site): Teri Rueb is an artist whose work engages digital, architectural and traditional media and modes of production. Her most recent project, “Elsewhere : Anderswo” is currently on exhibit across two sites in Northern Germany, The Edith Russ Site for Media Art (Oldenburg) and the Springhornhof Kunstverein (Neuenkirchen). Another recent project "Core Sample", received a 2008 Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction in the Digital Musics category. Rueb has pioneered the form of GPS-based interactive installations and is the recipient of numerous grants and commissions from international institutions including the Edith Russ Site for New Media, The Banff Center for the Arts, the Boston ICA, Artslink, Turbulence.org, and various State Arts Councils. She has lectured and presented her work worldwide at venues including Ars Electronica, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, Transmediale, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiasma Museum, and IRCAM. She recently completed her doctoral degree at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design where her research addressed constructions of landscape and subjectivity in mobile network culture. Rueb is Professor of Media Study at the Department of Media Study, University at Buffalo (State University of New York). She also mentioned she did her undergrad at Carnegie Mellon and earned her Master's from New York University. She served as Associate Professor (with tenure) and Department Head of the graduate Department of Digital + Media at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) where she was one of two founding faculty members of the department from 2004-2009. WHAT I GATHERED FROM HER WORK AND PRESENTATION (from my notes... this is my interpretation): Teri Rueb's work is concerned with cartography and spacial representation. Her work begins with an invitation to explore; she does this with sound overlay. Her experiences come into being through sound in her projects. She also spoke about how places have agency, and her work is concerned with discovering this agency. She is interested in the aesthetic and the kinesthetic qualities of GPS in site specific work. Her 2004 piece, Drift allows people to walk along tidal flats in Northern Germany (the Watten Sea). When tides are low, the area can be explored and sounds play in response to the explorer's movements - sounds are nested in areas of concentric circles. Viewers of her project carry a custom P.C. device, with java code that plays the sounds. She noted that the process of creating this project included lots of walking and programming, as well as adjusting things by small increments. She is influenced and sensitized to Cartesian maps and specific qualities of the landscape, fed into the perception of space. She was trained traditionally as a sculptor and painter, and went back and thought about landscape as something you produce. Richard Serra and Robert Smithson are some of her artist influences. She spoke about how sound, site and movements of the body become part of her work. She also is influenced by feminist Elizabeth Grosz. Grosz stated that the meaning of geography is cartographic, and based on specific coordinates, while the meaning of landscape is perceived and experiential. This is very apparent in the works she presented. CORE is a piece located on Spectacle Island, near Boston. This island was originally a landfill, and conservation efforts have more recently converted the island into a park. As viewers traverse to different topographic levels/heights on the island, the sound the viewers hear changes from sea level to the atmosphere, or the highest topographic level of the island. The audio consists of ambient sounds and spoken word, organic and inorganic sounds, as well as sounds of the past, present and future. In congruence with this piece, a soil sample or core sample of the island was on display at the Boston ICA Gallery. This is a sound sculpture and the different sounds play as viewers walk by each level of core sample. The two sites exist dialogically.

Elswhere : Anderswo was created during a residency in Oldenburg park. Its central themes revolve around the alienation we feel when we travel. She juxtaposes the German landscape with sounds that derive culturally from the West (In her video, I heard sounds from the movie soundrack from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as well as sounds and melodies from Western music). Unlike CORE, she did not take into account the history of the site in this piece, but rather the juxtaposition was the focus to communicate the feeling of alienation. No places with names, 2012 is a site-specific work located in Española near Santa Fe, NM dealing with the concept of wilderness and the re-appropriation of place and wilderness. Specifically, viewers at the Institute of American Indian Arts can traverse the landscape outside and hear sounds; some are spoken interviews of native Navajo and other tribe members who speak of the Long Walk and other cultural aspects of Navajo history and life. The Long Walk was essentially a seldom-mentioned genocide that occurred in the 1860s during colonization of North America. The Navajo were forced off of their land and it decimated their sheep, crops and their overall population, and the site of the Institute of American Indian Arts is now built along the same path of the Long Walk. This project illuminated the fact that the wilderness/landscape is not devoid of rich cultural history just because there are no markers for it on a map. In actuality there is a dialog that is seldom heard, and this project illuminates the voices of the Navajo where a cultural and geographical re-appropriation has existed (She points this out by showing the map of the Española valley with names in Spanish, Tewa, and English). During the question and answer period, Teri talked about how with the advent of new technology, she has less control over her hardware and no longer loans out computers/GPS devices for her works. She wrote an application for her works that can be accessed on cell phones and smartphones. This doesn't always work to her advantage because her goal is to suspend viewers of her work in a focused experience, and people get distracted by their phones such as phone calls, notifcations, etc. People also use their own earbuds, which doesn't always get the greatest sound quality. The advantages of using an application however, makes her work free and accessible. For her next possible project, Teri spoke about how she might work with sound more interactively; perhaps by having people walk around in a space and playing with how their proximity to one another affects the sounds they are hearing. Overall it was an interesting presentation, as her design work is a little different from those I have seen. Her work is very academic and seems to stand at a higher intellectual level than most - I appreciated that. However, at times, it was a little difficult to understand quite what she meant in her presentation. Although my work follows along a different vein, it was wonderful to hear from a designer with a very different viewpoint and different methods on approaching her work and process of creation.

Max Hattler - Experimental Animation Done Right

"I am interested in the space between abstraction and figuration, where storytelling is freed from the constraints of traditional narrative. While my films tend to be without dialogue, they explore the relationship between sound, music and the moving image." —Max Hattler I am going to post a little about one of my favorite video artists/ experimental animators, Max Hattler, as he is one of my influences. Max Hattler is an experimental animator and moving image artist based in London and Germany. Many of his pieces create relationships with artifacts of the past and present, or the relationship between form and living beings. Max Hattler performs live audiovisual works at festivals, in art spaces, and sometimes in clubs. Max Hattler was educated in London at Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Art. He has had solo exhibitions at Tenderpixel Gallery, Playgrounds Festival, Lumen Eclipse, Media Art Friesland, and Someonesgarden Tokyo, and retrospectives at Go Short Nijmegen, Image Forum Festival, Fredrikstad Animation Festival, Lago Film Fest, Branchage Film Festival and International Short Film Festival Detmold, among others. His works have been shown at hundreds of film festivals as well as in museums and galleries such as Erarta Museum, MOCA Taipei, the Marl Video Art Award, Yota Space and Gasworks Gallery. Awards include Multivision Festival, St. Louis Film Festival, Premio Simona Gesmundo, Visual Music Award, Animate OPEN Digitalis, London International Animation Festival, Videofestival Bochum, Videologia and many more. Hattler's films have been included in the touring programmes of Videoformes, Videoholica, onedotzero, the European Media Art Festival, Euroshorts, Shorts Attack, Fairecourt, 700IS, The Animation Show, L'Alternativa, Animac, AURORA, and the British Animation Awards. Max collaborates with other visual artists like Noriko Okaku, Robert Seidel, Motorsaw, i.m.klif and Protey Temen. Max also creates concert visuals or works live with sound artists and music acts as diverse as Basement Jaxx, Diplo, Jovanotti, Ladyscraper, The Egg, Kraan, Ocusonic, Mikhail Karikis, Dollskabeat, Fried Dähn, Mehmet Can Özer, Pablo Gav, Hellmut Hattler, and Vesper On. Let me add that I love Diplo. Awesome beatz. He has presented his audiovisual live performances around the world, including the Museum of Image and Sound in Sao Paulo, Electrovisiones Mexico City, the European Media Art Festival, Cimatics Festival, Donaufestival Krems, Filmfest Dresden, SuperDeluxe Tokyo, The Big Chill Festival and London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. He teaches in London at Goldsmiths and the University of the Arts, Chelsea, and is studying towards a Doctorate in Fine Art at the University of East London. Max Hattler has also been on movie projects such as 28 Weeks Later working as a digital compositing artist. For more, see www.maxhattler.com

Max Hattler creates his work using a variety of techniques and methods, depending on the project. He creates works that are stop-motion such as AANAATT, 2008, and also works with 3D and 2D graphics programs. He also has experimented with hand-created animation as well. The images are usually projected either in a gallery as a loop, museum, in a club or concert venue, or in one particular instance, X, projected onto mist at the Kings Cross Filling Station in London (2012).

HIGHLIGHTED WORK - 1923 a.k.a. Heaven

After watching several of his videos, it is apparent that he prefers to work with dark backgrounds and impossible objects and patterns made of bright, neon colors that briefly pass through the screen or loop quickly. In one of his most prominent pieces, 1923 a.k.a. Heaven is a loop based on the outsider artist Augustin Lesage’s painting A Symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World from 1923, and is one piece out of a series (the other loop is called 1925 a.k.a. Hell, based off of another one of Lesage’s paintings). The original piece created in 1923 is based on spirituality and the ornamental traditions of various cultures. This version also captures the sense of a spiritual virtual world, with the entrancing visuals and sound effects.

Neon patterns of light dance and seem to wrap around ancient architecture in a digital space. The manner in which the bright patterns that form and move on the surface of the 3D objects insinuate 3D architecture that is too dark to actually discern. On Max’s web site, a reviewer describes the piece as a “building that is a machine – a chapter of Tron occurring in Ancient Egypt.” The patterns that form are that of technology; symbols for stop, play, pause, circular dials. The forms change colors from a warmer color scheme to cooler, more analogous colors, and the camera movement occurs by zooming deeper into the complexity of the architecture. The beat of the music is simple drum beat, mixed with a more synthetic digital beat reminiscent of old video games. The depth the piece creates in virtual space is spectacular and this contemporary version of Lesage’s piece serves as an infinitely complex, technological homage to a very important but lesser known modern artist.

Wreck-It Ralph. Best. Game. Movie. Ever.

The other day, several of us graduate students went to see Wreck-It Ralph at a free screening at the Ohio Union upon the first day of its dvd release. This was the first time I have seen it, and I was impressed. The animations are nicely done, and I was really thrown into the movie with the different game worlds that Disney had designed. The environment design / set dressing was amazing in this film. It takes the idea of Tron, but instead of inserting real people into virtual worlds, it personifies virtual game characters in an imaginative way. The characters live physically within an arcade, but within each game thrive in their own virtual game worlds. There is also an "atrium" meeting place where all the video game characters can leave their games in their off time, which I thought was a nice way to create a means of allowing the characters to leave their individual game space and interact with one another outside their own games. The cords on the arcade machines acted as a means of transporting the game characters. The film also mentions programming and "glitches" a lot, as embodied by Vanellope's character. I thought that this was a simple way to convey some of the very complex aspects of game design to the target audience: kids. Also, the castle vault where King Candy locks away the game's programmed framework was an imaginative way to visualize the very complex code that goes into creating a game.

The modeling, animation, and particularly the shaders were amazing in this film. I loved the shaders in Sugar Rush. All the variations of textures on the different kinds of candies were very realistic and all the surfaces retained their rightful qualities. And since candies are so decorative and colorful, there was really a lot of creative liberty the texture tds could take. In the still below, the reflections/refractions and the bubbles on the hard candy are great! Also, just look at the ice cream wheels! JUST LOOK! So awesome. I want to eat it. The film's story was easy to follow and I think it included just enough details for all viewers to enjoy it - young and old. The nostalgia for throwback games is apparent - the 80s/90s style of the 2D 8-bit Wreck-It Ralph game, and the appearance of Bowser and some other characters we see in Bad-Anon, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Pac-Man. I believe this film should have won the Oscar over Brave. I think its story was stronger and the work that its artists put into this movie was apparent. I could probably watch this film over and over again and still see things that I missed. Some of the scenes seem a little over-designed, as in A LOT of stuff is crammed into each frame, but I think that video games are oftentimes built that way and it goes along with the mise en scène of the film. This film, along with Paranorman, are my favorite animated films from last year.

Sound City Movie is Effing Rad.

Yesterday I went analog and left my cell phone at home for the afternoon/evening, and I took myself on a little date to see Sound City, a documentary by Dave Grohl that illuminates the history of one of the most instrumental recording studios in the history of American rock and roll music. The irony is that Dave Grohl, famous former drummer of 90s grunge rock band Nirvana and later, lead singer/guitarist for The Foo Fighters, had not the slightest inclination of the history of the dumpy Van Nuys studio when he and his neophyte band Nirvana had stumbled in there to record Nevermind, which ended up selling 30 million copies worldwide and reaching number one on the Billboard charts, trumping Michael Jackson's Dangerous. This was his journey back to the recording studio which started it all, but this time he recounted its history in full, from the days when Stevie Nicks recorded there as did Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The studio also acted as a launch pad for Rick Springfield, as it skyrocketed him to fame with the hit single Jessie's Girl. Countless acts recorded their record there, and from watching the film, the place looked something of a sh*thole. Although I look nothing like a person who would be into rock music, when I was in high school, I discovered that I loved Queens of the Stone Age, Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails, Foo Fighters, and etc. etc. These were some of the newer acts to record in this studio. At the end of the film we find out Dave has a sense of nostalgia for this piece of rock and roll history. Upon the demise of the studio, Dave said he would do anything for the custom Neve console (analog soundboard) that had been installed there at the studio's inception. So, he purchased the console and had it installed in his own personal studio where he and Paul McCartney had a little recording sesh. My favorite moments of the movie happened when Dave was interviewing the brilliant electronics engineer, Rupert Neve, the man responsible for engineering the famous Neve console, and Dave makes a face of utter confusion while a subtitle appears with the question, "Does he know I am a high school dropout?" There is also a moment when they are laughing in the studio as Dave and Paul McCartney record a song, and the producer (Butch Vig) on the other side of the studio is giving them orders, and Dave says sarcastically, "yeah tell Paul McCartney what to do." The film is rich with history, good humor and just all around interesting stories. I think it can speak to everyone because it is about a fundamental cultural identity of America - Rock and Rollllllllllll! *Says that in shouty/screamy voice* The film brings up questions about the authenticity of art. And this does not apply to just musical artists - but to all artists. We all live in a digital era - the analog tools they used before are being ditched in favor of more digital methods. Because the studio's console used tape to record the songs that were made there, songs were recorded and mixed in analog. Some of the songs recorded there were even recorded live! This is based on the notion that art and humans are by nature, imperfect and the imperfections make their music special. What drives the artists to choose the right song is a "feel" - it's just a special feeling they get when they know it's right - it might take one session to record, or hundreds and the notes might be off key, the timing off tempo, but it just has that special feel, a quality that can't be explained. The film basically states outright that the tools that artists use should be no more than tools; what underlies all great artists is their willingness to learn and work hard, and the talent that is acquired because of this. Consequently, a lot of artists that have no business being in the music industry [and have little to no talent] record their songs on their laptops using Pro Tools.

Now, the film doesn't blast new technology entirely. It makes what once was not accessible, accessible to the masses. And Sound City artists like Trent Reznor use digital tools as a means to get different sounds out of the instruments he plays. In one part of the film, it depicts him recording a song on a keyboard, while it was being mixed into the computer, revealing a warped more digital sound altogether with Dave in the background explaining that "he is one of the smartest people he knows." Trent talked about how the music he created has been a result of his parents' decision of having him take piano lessons when he was a child. He learned everything he could about music structure and form, recording at Sound City back in the 90s as Nine Inch Nails, but also allowing digital technology to influence his signature sound. More recently he has written and composed scores for movies such as Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Social Network. I agree with Trent's style and philosophy of creating art - you must have a foundational talent that stems from learning the art form classically, before you can use digital methods as another tool to create art. Your talent does not just get "given" to you simply because you were given a tool to create something with (I'm talking to you and your crappy music, Ke$ha). It starts young and is a learned talent. As for me, I was drawing and painting when I was old enough to hold a crayon. I went to art school, developed my drawing and painting skills before I could learn to create digital art using a computer. I think it's better that way - the foundational skills are very necessary and are always there. The only qualm I have (if any) about the film was that it kind of beat the viewer over the head with enthusiasm for making music. On coming out of the theater, I heard one guy say sarcastically, "That film makes me want to go out and record music now!" It was kind of like, go do it! Don't think about the consequences! Who cares if you are driving around without any money living in a van! As long as you have a dream you'll be okay! I'll take that with a grain of salt, as the lifestyles of musicians are absolutely nuts! haha. But absolutely splendid documentary. GO SEE IT! Here is the link to the movie's web site.

And, LOLz:

Project II Proposal - What Does Reality Mean to You?

CONCEPT - WHAT DOES REALITY MEAN TO YOU? The concept for this project stems from the information I have sorted through and collected for my thesis. This animation has to do with the information I collect from a survey I created and distributed through the internet Facebook and email lists). This method of distribution worked well last year for my pilot study, and I collected responses from 57 people. However, the web site Kwiksurveys, which hosted the survey, had a server crash and lost all of my data. Last week I sent out a new link to the new SurveyMonkey survey. Before I posted the survey, I listed a link to my video from the last project - Reality, Defined. This is intended to help get the survey-taker thinking about these subjects. The survey asks 6 questions (3 demographic, 3 philosophical open-ended essay questions): 1. Please choose your age group 2. What best describes your occupation or field of study? 3. How often do you watch movies? 4. How are some ways in which people perceive reality in the present day (This can be influenced by technology and circumstance, for example)? 5. What does reality mean to you? Define the word "reality" - what it means to you in simple terms. 6. Describe the reality you see or do not see in current films. Do you see any trends towards realism or are films moving away from it? Explain. (You can use your own definition of "reality" here or a new one). Here is a link to the survey

The questions are intentionally left ambiguous and open-ended so the survey-taker can go off on tangents about their own thoughts and opinions on the subject. The survey is well-underway and does not need IRB approval (Maria and I inquired about that). The intended audience is anyone and everyone. I think most of the responses, however, will be young people around my age who use the internet, because I used a Facebook event and sent the link out to current grad students at OSU via email as a method of distribution. The answers from last year’s survey were varied but had interesting repeating trends within the answers, so I decided that once I collect all the new data I can use the answers to create a framework and narrative for my new animation. This will be dependent on the repeating answers, as well as the interesting outliers. One unique example, for instance, consists of a user talking about how drugs influence reality in the present day, and how films such as Fight Club psychologically explore reality in a much more intriguing way than other films. These kinds of answers are great for creating a narrative piece which will then translate over to a larger thesis film for next year. I intend for this version to be an exploratory piece, and next year’s film to be lengthier and included more information. The basic concept for this research is that I want to establish a dialog about the ways in which society perceives reality, since every individual can perceive reality differently. I would also like to sprinkle in information about how films portray reality, considering technology in film has really altered perceptions of what reality looks like - and also has altered people’s expectations.

Examples/Inspiration I am enamored with the style of the animation in this soil video. It is simple, with stylized low-poly objects that create an interesting dichotomy between 3-Dimensions and 2-Dimensions. This play on dimensions feeds into my concept of various forms of reality, and might be a little easier to texture and model given the time frame we have for this project. My project will not have a character, however, because I want the viewer to be experiencing the reality I talk about firsthand. I also would like to have richer textures - maybe created with paintings I make.

Examples/Inspiration This is a still from a style test animation I created based on a painting I made as a BFA student called Untitled. It uses 3D objects composited with painted layers. I am thinking about combining hand-created textures with animation.

Reality, Defined: Process and Final Video

Short Description: This short video was created as an introduction to my thesis area of study. Reality is an elusive subject that can be perceived by every person differently. This video provides a crash course on several forms of reality such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and hyperreality. The video was created in the style of the Everything is a Remix series here on vimeo, using several forms of media such as vector graphics, video, and free stock photos. Song is by Deltason called "Remote" from freemusicarchive.org. Virtual Reality Video is called "Virtual Eye Glasses EPK" available on archive.org.

Process and Reason for Making. The process for making this video depended on syncing up my voice recording with motion graphics that I created and various media that I found and thought would fit with the themes and concepts of my script. The idea for this video stems from thesis writing that serves to establish definitions for repeated concepts I will use in my thesis paper (will most likely be appendix information). This will allow the reader to fully understand the difference between the forms of reality I mention in my paper, and also provide more information that won't appear in the paper for reference. It will also serve to introduce a survey I will give for my final thesis project.

Thinking about Light and a Balanced Life

Today I was thinking about lighting and I stumbled upon this video. Beautiful visuals, which play with light and set a peaceful serene soundtrack to the film. The light in this piece is so brilliantly achieved - in a variety of different spaces and contexts. What I also noticed is that it uses AfterEffects techniques we learned in class - Using 3D layers in post with a moving camera that utilizes impossible camera movements filmmakers could not readily achieve in physical space, but only in digital space. Some of these shots achieve photorealism and I actually had to double check to make sure that some of the film source for this film is not live-action (although it uses telescope photos from space)! I thought the shots with the drops of water on the spider web were gorgeous, as the way the light and reflections/refractions sparkle and showcase that nice shader on the water droplets is brilliant.

I think this short film captures a sense of wonder, and really put me in a mood to make peace with my work and be at ease. This film, with the music and the beautiful scenery is metaphysical in nature. It got me thinking about life balance and order. I think this is important because we all have a lot going on right now... I know I consistently bite off more than I can chew and blindly hope it all pans out for the best. Taking a moment for mental health is key in maintaining sanity, especially with a ridiculous work schedule (my fellow grad students agree). I think for now, I am going to focus on maintaining a balance in all aspects of life, as this vital for well-being.

Grit

Today I wanted to post a quote that Nikki (another grad student) showed me, a quote from Ira Glass, a public radio personality and host/producer of This American Life. I find myself coming back to this quote in times of doubt or times that I experience "masterpiece syndrome," perfectionism in my work, or also pessimism. I think it's a great point of reflection for any person who has chosen a career path in a creative field. It's difficult to find structure and know when exactly there is a point to continue or a point to stop working on projects that are creative, especially self-directed projects. You really have to rely on your experience with design and art to create work that communicates to an audience in an effective or interesting way. What speaks to me about this quote is that it carries the message that you have to try. And work hard. And fail many many times. It's a natural and normal process in life and in a creative career. But what never changes is your core taste which got you into the game. Take a minute to think about how far you've come. Sure, a lot of your work has probably sucked, and you've probably failed many times. But hey, you worked and planned and tried until some of your work was actually good. And then better. And even kick ass!!!. This quote is a great daily affirmation. Never give up creatives! The ones who succeed are never the smartest, or even the quickest to learn, etc. They are the strong ones that keep pushing and never give up even when their early work belongs in the trash can. They create volumes of work with no hesitation. Only by trying everything, they find their perfect niche. They are the ones who work the hardest and have endurance. The most successful creatives have the most grit.

--Quoted from Ira Glass-- “What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Zero Dark Thirty

I don't want to make this blog solely about films, but I figured this one was too good to not talk about. I saw this movie the day it hit theaters. It illuminates everything that occurred leading up to Osama Bin Laden's capture - which I think the average American had not been fully aware of and did not understand entirely until now. The film apparently is controversial because of the torture that supposedly the United States government is denying taking part of. Yes, the torture scenes to me seemed inhumane - because torture in itself is by nature, inhumane. That being said, some of the tactics and crimes against humanity that I have read about that have occurred in the past or that other countries and terrorist groups have been part of, are much worse. The stuff I have read about makes this movie's torture scenes look like a vacation. If you want to know what I mean, or if you want to cry a little bit, read Luz Arce's book, about Pinochet's military junta in the 70s and 80s in Chile. It details very closely how she lived in fear for years being brutally tortured and raped repeatedly, living in fear and having to become aligned with a corrupt political party in exchange for survival. It is really, really sick and disturbing (Here is the link on Google Books). And I mean even more sick than The Human Centipede. Anyway, I just thought I would mention that because her book scarred me for life and the torture scenes in Zero Dark Thirty maybe weren't as bone-chilling as some of the reviews are making it out to be. I also think that the American government does not want to fully reveal all the exact details of Operation Neptune Spear because they are classified and simply not the agenda of the average civilian - which is why certain artifacts in relevance to the truth of the movie are being denied by the government. And also there is the claim that information that had not been declassified was obtained during the research of this film without governmental consent. But this is besides the point.

What I appreciated about this movie was the way this movie communicated its message: That no matter what, war is bad. I think it made a statement; that assassinating Osama Bin Laden was not a happy, fun thing that everyone should all sing and dance around a bonfire about and scream "'Merica!!!" while waving our firearms around in the air. There are no winners in war. Period. I think a lot of people went into this movie thinking it was all about propaganda and celebrating Operation Neptune Spear. Although it is biased (because it follows an American CIA operative), I don't think it beat the viewer over the head with the fact that America was elated about the operation. I think it was more of a "this-situation-really-sucks-but-justice-needs-to-be-served" kind of thing. And this justice doesn't just speak to America. Because The al-Qaeda are a terrorist group, and do not "sit well" with a myriad of governments and political groups. Osama's body was dumped in the ocean because no country would receive it after the operation had been executed - including Pakistan where he had been secretly hiding out. The film never really became cheesy because it did not depict Osama Bin Laden, nor did it show the president. Leaving these elements out entirely focuses on the operation at hand, and the one operative who worked tirelessly on this manhunt and did not give up even after a decade. It also gives the film more of a timeless and universal quality, as the two enemies are faceless. The middlemen (in this case the middlewoman) are really the ones who pushed for this operation and for the fulfillment of justice. The audio in this film is also amazing. The first sequence of the film is just a black screen which allows the viewer to listen to the actual desperate final emergency phone calls of the victims of 9-11. It really creates a chilling experience which serves to dramatically introduce the film. The film also leads me to believe that government jobs look very difficult. And ethically conflicting. And serious. It was tiring to watch Jessica Chastain in duress during the pursuit of OBL. And when you feel as though you can empathize with a character, you know the film has done its job. Very poignant film.

Motion Design: Reality, Defined

The concept for this project stems from the information I have sorted through and collected as background and introductory information for my thesis. My thesis focus, which explores hyperreality in film and the perception of reality, requires some establishment of definitions of reality at the beginning. Since there are many forms of reality, I thought that creating an initial introduction and dialog about defining and distinguishing between the various forms of reality in the text would be vital in communicating the main ideas regarding hyperreality in current cinema more clearly. This disregards, for obvious reasons, realities such as "reality television," but makes a distinction between the realities that people oftentimes confuse such as augmented reality and virtual reality. The text that will be read as the dialog for the video has already been written, but will need to be simplified and edited down. With the advent of the new thesis structure the program is instating this year, some of this information might have to be cut out of the final thesis paper. Thus, this is a perfect opportunity to create a work that is related to my thesis but the info may not be presented in the final thesis product. It is also great introductory material to a final thesis project.

The various definitions of reality I will use as the basis for the video might offer some opportunities to experiment with style, as some ideas could be expressed with 3D more appropriately and some I could approach with using vector graphics; or even use live-action footage. I would like to create a work using mixed-media, in true postmodern fashion. The Everything is a Remix series below is a great example of the type of narrative and visual mixture of vector-based motion graphics and live-action footage I would like to create. The other videos offer interesting pace with music, and clean, colorful geometric forms which I may use as a nice style for some of the information visualizations in the video. I would like to incorporate background music as well as the voice-over narration, which serves as the structure for the pacing of the visual elements and animations in the video.

Video inspirations for the Motion Design Project Proposal:

Oscar Noms for Best VFX

Oscar season is upon us. The 85th academy awards released their Oscar Noms yesterday. As for the Visual Effects category, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Life of Pi, Marvel's The Avengers, Prometheus, and Snow White and the Huntsman are in the running. My first pick would have to be for The Avengers. To showcase their amazing abilities, ILM released a reel for Marvel's The Avengers. The reel is incredible. The movie is heavy on the effects end, with impressive modeling, texturing, and animation for the Hulk. The scene in the reel which was the most surprising, if not one of the most impressive, was the realism captured in a scene where ScarJo's character, Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, is running in front of the Hulk as glass shatters and metal is bending behind them. Although only a few short seconds, the character never traverses into the uncanny valley and the actual, live actress looks composited in the scene rather than a CG version of her. Any animator knows, this is very difficult to believably achieve. The sheer scale of the set and the green screen is enormous as visible in this reel, and the complexity of the modeling, dynamics, and set design is incredible. This is one of the most complex projects that ILM has created to date; which is saying a lot when taking into consideration the legendary projects that the company has worked on. Another film with beautiful visual effects in this category is Prometheus. I found this film to be lacking in the story line and parts were laughable when they should have been suspenseful, horrific, and foreboding. For instance, why does Charlize run WITH the shadow of the falling ship at the end? The film uses the standard sci-fi mise-en-scène, but does it in a visually brilliant way. The background mattes are gorgeous and the levitating alien user interface animations I found to be intricate and futuristic.

Here is a highly photoshopped photo of the interfaces (but you get the idea, click to enlarge): Snow White and the Huntsman had moments of visual brilliance, and I found the Evil Queen (played by Charlize Theron) delightfully awful. Her character and her costume design was probably the only reason to see the movie. There are moments where the space used for the background is enhanced with green screens and replaced with backgrounds that capture enormous depth and hyperrealism (There are some nice articles in Cinefex from July 2012 about Snow White and the Huntsman and Prometheus) and there are interesting special effects, but some of the poor special effects turned me away. The strange fairy creatures with enlarged eyes seemed out of place with the rest of the film. Also, the mythical CG white deer-beast was not very believable in its realism and had unnatural movements characteristic of bad animation. Rupert Sanders' take on the evil queen's mirror was interesting and creepy, but it reminded me of The Secret World of Alex Mack every time. In the reviews I read, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey does not use as smooth or believable CG and fx as the other LOTR movies. For this reason, I have not chosen it in the lineup. And finally, Life of Pi is a visually beautiful film and has some nice reviews. Some of the CG animals in the film did not seem realistic (the movements give it away), but overall the tiger was pretty believable. I think this movie should win for best cinematography. The shots are brilliantly composed. Also if you haven't seen it or are familiar with the book, be prepped for a surprise philosophical ending. : )

Also, watch this animation about Prometheus. Hilar. And complete with the The Hans Zimmer Inception BRAAAM lol.

***** As an addendum, Life of Pi won for Best VFX and Best Cinematography. It is unfortunate about the controversy regarding the visual effects industry and Rhythm & Hues though.