i had a meeting at minnesota public radio this afternoon (in regards to creating an iphone app). on the way home i took advantage of passing trader joe's in woodbury. there was a mighty fine looking pizza in the frozen section, but i thought to myself, "alex, you could make a much better pizza for less. don't be a chump." well... i ain't no chump.
whole wheat dough. organic mozzarella. organic basil pesto. organic roma tomatoes. crust with a light glazing of spiced olive oil from mallorca, spain. baked at 360 degrees fahrenheit.
if this doesn't deserve to be on an art blog, i don't know what does.
the final project for my 3D modeling class was to create a short animation within a group. everybody in class was supposed to create a little art concept to present to the class, then vote on the projects they wanted to work on. i was in spain a missed a few days of class and forgot about the assignment, so before my presentation i did a quick photoshop drawing of the first thing i thought of... which would obviously be a giant pig. only the best digital artists are able to create the quality image i managed... and for some reason my concept was voted for and selected to be on of the 5 group projects.
after the group was formed, i came up with a storyboard and one of my group members came up with a good idea to go with a ertle farm toy look. i was the more established character modeler and animator so i delegate that task to myself (i was the group leader. i could do what i wanted). my first task was to make a pig. i started with pigzilla first but it turned into some sort of fat, ugly, pork pig and i scraped the model. i decide to create a regular, cute pig first and then just mutate it into some angry. i knew render times would probably become an issue near the end of the semester so my goal was to create really simple models that would render quickly but still have a very distinct and interesting style. really that just equated to taking an egg shape and morphing appendages to it. i consider the pig a success.
creating pigzilla was rather easy once i had a pig that i like. all i really did was stand the normal pig on its feet and give it some resemblance of a neck so it could look straight. most of the time spend on pigzilla was readjusting the geometry. bending an egg in half creates a lot of overlapping and messy meshes. also, getting the legs to be under the pig took quite some time to adjust. initially after moving the legs down, it just looked like a crumple mess of pink flesh. i suppose it might have been easier to just create an original mesh, but i really wanted pigzilla to be the exact same thing as a normal pig... and aside from some added polygons to make the eyebrows, it is the same exact mesh.
after creating the main characters, i needed to add some more things to the farm to make it more of a scene. a chicken was definitely needed. again, it really is just an elaborate egg and very quickly rendered. and due to some group miscommunication of tasks, we needed a farm house so i made one quickly. the house was pretty easy to make since i wanted it look like a plastic toy. that really helped me to limit the amount of polygons put into the model and the texture bump maps could be really simple.
so after compiling other group members pieces (and quickly creating pieces that were missing), i spend an entire day animating (in maya and modo), rendering (modo), and composting (after effects) the whole mess into something fairly interesting. enjoy:
the semester is coming to an end and printmaking is done (until i take it again during the summer) and i made one last print tonight for kicks and giggles.
ashley had a couple little boards that were covered with a cheap canvas and i thought that one of them would make for a nice collagraph... so i straight up stole one... after nicely asking permission.
an artist generally doesn't give away his or her trade secrets but i am not an artist... so... i took the cap from my bottle of gesso, centered it on the board, painted gesso around it, played plants vs. zombies while waiting for it to dry, inked it up with a raspberry color, smeared a black-ink-cover-cheese-clothe around the center, wiped it clean, and pulled the print. tah dah.
i find it kind of interesting that my best print of the semester (in my opinion) won't actually be used for a grade since i had already turned my portfolio in... i just did it for the fun of doing it... i guess i am an artist after all. please ignore the previous paragraph.
here is part two of my two part woodcut animation prints (that is just as hard to type as it is to say). i decided to go with a walking dog. why? i've never animated a dog before.... doing it with a piece of wood seems like the logical choice.
i have come to the conclusion that this new media could make for some really interesting projects and i plan to explore combining printmaking and animation more in the future... probably this summer since i signed up for a printmaking summer course. woodblocks are fairly easy to do and have a very distinguishable style and texture. it could be interesting to see what other styles of printmaking could create in terms of animation.
i am aware that i could most likely recreated everything with computer and save myself a ton of time... but gosh darn it. there's just something about seeing an animation that's created from a piece of wood that is much more satisfying.
here is the final animation of the dog walk cycle:
one of my final projects for my printmaking class is to make a two different prints with the same theme, each with an edition of four (eight total). i decided to make my theme 'animation' since that is my focus in school and i thought it would be interesting to try and combine printmaking with my major.
it all started with a piece of wood. i then created a grid on the block and drew a human walk cycle. all the space on the print that is white was carved away and i pulled four prints using the green color. after cleaning the block, i carved away the parts of the block where you see green showing up on the print and pulled four prints using the very dark purple (which just shows up as black on the computer screen).
i let the print dry for a while then captured it digitally, created cropped layers in photoshop, and then compiled everything in after effects. here is the final result:
i had a meeting at minnesota public radio this afternoon (in regards to creating an iphone app). on the way home i took advantage of passing trader joe's in woodbury. there was a mighty fine looking pizza in the frozen section, but i thought to myself, "alex, you could make a much better pizza for less. don't be a chump." well... i ain't no chump. 
