password: proj4

 

 

1. A detailed description of your Artist Statement/Concept (if you are revisiting a previous assignment, what else did you add to strengthen your concept? Did you enhance anything else?)

For this project, I wanted to create a work with a brighter and more innocent theme, as my previous projects were quite dark, and decided to focus on the idea of dreams and what they meant to me. (Interestingly, on some nights when I was working on my project, I encountered more vivid dreams than usual when I slept!) I think that dreams border on the real and unreal. The dreams that I have often include places or people I have met, but under strange and surreal contexts, that sometimes don’t make sense to my brain. Hence, I chose to take a photo of myself sleeping, as I think that the act of sleeping is a means for me to enter the dream realm. I wanted to include a sense of unreal-ness, but also wanted to depict the magical and whimsical side of dreams, as a break, for myself, from what is going on in the world now. I wanted to reveal the dark and nightmarish side of dreams as well, but when I tried it out in After Effects, it didn’t look as coherent as I wanted it to be, so I removed it.

 

2. A detailed description of your technical decisions (i.e. what did you animate and how? Did you use any effects? Why did you do so?)

I had always hoped to dream of my stuffed toys coming alive and interacting with me, but that never happened, so I tried to give them life in this project. I drew over the original photograph, and created different layers for each toy. I added puppet pins to each toy, to the parts I wanted to move, to animate them. I animated simple movements like ears moving, head moving side to side etc. I tried to keep the movements within the limits of the original photo of the stuffed toy, so that the drawn and animated stuffed toy will still look like it is being hugged by me.

 

I also animated clouds in the background. I made them bob a little, by using the puppet pins, to make them feel livelier. I chose clouds as I feel that they represent the fleetingness of dreams, the way I often forget details of what I dreamt about. I also find clouds dream-like in nature, as they appear soft and fluffy to the eye, even though they are just condensed water droplets in the sky. I tried to add more clouds, as the background looked a bit empty too. I also made the speed of the clouds slower than that of the stuffed toys’, so that they would not take away attention from the stuffed toys.

 

Lastly, I added a ‘fairy dust’ using the “particle world” effect in After Effects. Fairy dust is associated with mystic and magic, and is also something we cannot see in real life. It hence represents an element of fantasy, that comes with dreaming. While creating the ‘fairy dust’ trail, I drew a path using the pen tool, to control the flow of the ‘fairy dust’ from the left to right. I also had to control the timing of the movement, so that it matched the speed of the stuffed toys and the clouds.

 

3. An in depth Before and After, visual and written process of your work (Breakdown your photoshop process, what was your original image, etc)

Before

 

After

 

The idea I had to combine my drawing and my photograph was to convey the merging of the real and unreal, which is what happens when we dream. Reality was represented by the photograph of me, while the unreal was represented by the drawn stuffed toys, the ‘fairy dust’, and the abstract background.

 

When I was drawing the stuffed toys at first, I drew them around my two arms. But when I tried animating them, I realised they would overlap my arms. I then cut out my arms and put them on a separate layer, on top of the stuffed toys, which made the animation easier. I used pastel and light colours when drawing the stuffed toys, to create a dream-like mood in the image. I added the same outline on the stuffed toys, on my photo of me sleeping, to tie in the two worlds, and make it look more coherent. I also brightened and increased the saturation of the original photo, after cropping and lens correcting it.

 

 

For the background, I remove the bed in the photo, and replaced it with a pastel blue background. Blue reminded me of the sky and daydreams, and had a calming feel, which made me feel like sleeping. It also reminded me of the sea, and the feeling of drowning I feel when I am dreaming. Additionally, I painted splotches of different shades of pastel pink, purple and blue, to complement the colours of the stuffed toys. I also wanted the background to look more abstract, to represent the sense of unknown in the dreamworld, since I never know what will happen next when I dream. I applied the same colours over the entire image too.

 

4. At least 3 detailed artist/film references (What/who were you looking at and how did it contribute to your image making process?)

   

The ‘cute’ style of the drawings and my choice of colours was inspired by Paula Bugueño. Bugueño uses a variety of pastel colours in her illustrations, which make her illustrations appear very adorable. Her drawing style is also simple, with minimal shading, but distinguishable. She also uses linework in her illustrations to make the pastel colours stand out from each other. As I wanted my stuffed toys to look as playful as hers, I adopted her use of pastel colours and linework.

 

 

The combination of drawing and photograph was inspired by Ana Stretcu’s “I was cutout for this” series, where she drew paper cutouts of her and her boyfriend, and placed them in photos she took. I liked how the paper cutouts interacted with the environment in the photos, making the photos look more amusing and impressionable. Hence, I also wanted my drawings to be a part of the photograph as well, to show the bridge between reality and fantasy.

 

   

I was inspired by short animations I saw on Instagram, created by artists, who animated their artwork. For instance, @little.yeah (I’m not sure what her real name is) makes short animations of the characters in her art, like making ducks in a bath bob up and down. Even though the movement was small, I thought it was useful in conveying the effect she wanted. Since I was looking to animate my stuffed toys in a way that showed life, but not have too big an action, I decided to base the animation style on these short Instagram animations.