A little encouragement to experiment while you can. I was reading an art theory book entitled "Art & Fear" and the word cacophony came up.
Also, guess what-
We're live! Much more persuasive in person. Everyone did a fantastic job. The projection went just as planned. The triptych grid takes up all the space. The write-up/labels are direct and clear. The flyers catch the eye. And the video, while slow in the process, was compiled smoothly. Check it out! We will in class for sure.
(Joe, head of the digital media department/my MFA committee chair, was very impressed.)
If you'll recall, Art 245, on the syllabus you are required to perform TWO separate instances of art event write-ups to have done and turned in by the end of the semester. With each of you having your own separate lives, jobs, and responsibilities, no time like the present to instill when/where/what these events are. To clarify, here is the initial syllabus portion-
7) Each student is REQUIRED to attend three out of five (physical) events of the Prospectives 2012 Digital Media festival. Prospectives will be given extensive announcements leading up to the exhibition date of October 18th-19th. The events that may be attended are PRESENT, EXHIBIT, STREET, PROJECT/SOUND, or PERFORM. You are required to write a short two page critical analysis over your three selections and discuss each in detail pertaining to your current practice. (extra credit given to those who actually ask questions at the event!)
In addition, one more art event will be required attendance in the semester. Several optional events for this will be given shortly into the semester. A one page critical analysis of that selected event will be required.
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So to outline-
WRITE-UP 1 : The Prospectives '12 Digital Media Festival. Three of the events. Two pages of critical analysis. Clear your calendar for the 18th-19th! Do not miss!
WRITE-UP 2 : Any of the below events listed on the official Fine Arts calendar for Fall '12 are good. I will type them all up for you. For this, a one page critical analysis is required.
For turning these in, please post write-ups on your blog (as individual blog posts) AND turn me in a hard copy on or before our final regular class meeting.
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SEPTEMBER 27
Eunkang Koh, Artist Lecture (for solo exhibition). 6 PM, 716 N Carson St. Suite A, Carson City, NV 89701. Her exhibition is "A Study of Human", at the OXS Gallery. That opening reception is at 4:30 PM-6:30PM (including the lecture)!
SEPTEMBER 27
Nevada Rock Art Foundation Distinguished Lecture : Dr. Robert Layton. 6-7PM, Nevada Museum of Art, 160 West Liberty Street, Reno.
OCTOBER 3
Art in the BRIC 3, group show. Northern Nevada Artists. 4:30-6:30 reception 108 E Proctor St, Carson City.
OCTOBER 4
Clayton Keyes, Ceramicist, Visiting Artist Lecture. Knowledge Center Room 124 Lecture 5:30-6:30 (with show reception).
OCTOBER 5
Poetry Readings, experimental with the form of the book, digital design, micro press printing, and object poems. Sundance Bookstore, Reno.
OCTOBER 6
11AM-3PM, Nevada Museum of Art. A series of panels/interactive discussions on the book (as part of the NMA Book Sale and Festival), 11-12 PM : Chapbooks and Guerilla Publishing.
OCTOBER 10
Nevada Neighbors with Cassandra Coblentz : "Conversations in Contemporary Painting", 7PM at Carson City Library, 900 N Roop St. Carson City
OCTOBER 12
RECEPTION. Benjamin Poynter, MFA Midway "In a Permanent Save State", 5:30 PM, 6:30 PM Performance. An Indie Video Game Exhibition. Sierra Arts Foundation Gallery, 17 South Virginia Street Reno
OCTOBER 17
Books & Writers with Eric Rasmussen, PhD; Carson City Library; Writing Workshop 5:30-7PM, reading 7-8 PM
OCTOBER 26
RECEPTION. Colby Stephens, MFA Midway "Normalcy, Not Nostrums". 5-7PM. Sierra Arts Foundation Gallery, 17 South Virginia Street Reno
NOVEMBER 7
Nevada Neighbors with Brett Van Hoesen, PhD: Why German Art Matters. Carson City Library. 7PM.
NOVEMBER 8
Paul Demarinis, media artist, Visiting Artist Lecture Series, Department of Art, 5:30-6:30 PM, Wells Fargo Auditorium, Knowledge Center (124)
NOVEMBER 9
RECEPTION. Claire Stephens, MFA Midway, "trace". 5-7PM .Sierra Arts Foundation Gallery, 17 South Virginia Street Reno
Dimensions. Printed to scale/fit on 11" x 17" paper.
Installed in a relative "grid" (for you installers) next
week inside and outside in the hall!
This goes for each individual triptych!
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A S S I G N M E N T 3
"Audio for Animation"
+
"Showtime (Install Our Show for Prospectives '12)" (Next Week) ★ ★ ★ ★
We have arrived at the final leg of the "Photoshop" era in this classroom. You will be making audio (via Garageband as presented solely or any other audio making capability program you can think of/suggest) for your animation piece! You can insert it into your animation via Photoshop! Then export as usual.
This is Garageband. We shall utilize its services
for creating our audio for the assignment.
It has software instruments installed you
can play around with using "Keyboard
Typing" as special filters as well!
By the end of Week 4's class, you should be more than familiar with 'seeing' and 'hearing' this program after a unique in-class activity. In depth explanation of the tools will have occurred in class then and there, dedicating half a class to it! In addition to arriving at the two workshops, should you choose to arrive.
Here is a general workflow.
-Open Garageband -When prompted with a project list/grid, select VOICE (the mic). Save anywhere-any name. -Note THREE tabs at the bottom right : **An EYE (for finding loops and special sound FX which are very valuable). The FX tab has tons of sound effects you can use. Or you can be an alchemist and mix together two/three to make ONE unique sound! Subvert parameters of the assignment when you can, in my opinion. **An "i". And somewhere atop, "Browse and Edit" tabs. You will mainly use "Edit" tab to add filters. Browse will be useful if (should you want to) add a software instrument track to use keyboard typing to play your own music! Or very avant garde like, just "hit" some note. **Lastly, a MUSIC NOTE. This is a gateway to all the media on your computer that's in the music folder, the movie folder, and iTunes. If you want to edit sound directly TO a video file, you can import video! You can add existing sound files to the bars as well and add filters (via "i".. possibilities). **You'll often drag files from right to add to the bars. You can adjust the volume with commands on the left tab! To split/cut a bar in the middle on a track, hit Command+T. **EXPLORE. EXPLORE. EXPLORE. Best things are learned on your own! **To export your file when done- Go to share on top tab! Export as an .MP3. **Then add to your Photoshop animation file!
RE : Step 24 of this CS6 tutorial! This should enable you to be able to insert audio into your existing animation piece (exported from GarageBand or another source) like a cinch. Then export again as usual. Those video bars may look confusing or recognizable. It is the 'other' interface from the Frame Animation option! You can toggle between the two on a tab on the bottom left of Photoshop. Video should be a AV bar icon while frame should be a "[ ] [ ] [ ]" type icon. Correct me if I'm wrong, but for certain, you can toggle on the bottom left.
Turn final video into the "Project 3" folder on HAL and embed it on your blog before class September 24.
THE SOUND YOU CREATE MUST INCLUDE THESE FOUR ELEMENTS.
1. A signature "sound" linking all our animations together on a single reel (as they will be put together in the video). This "sound" will be created/discovered IN CLASS. You will find it out of class by drawing it from the "Project 3" folder on HAL (farthest left computer) once a consensus is discovered amongst the class. I HAVE ALSO MASS EMAILED IT TO YOU. No excuse, you should have it!
2. One sound recorded using a microphone.
** The lab HAS microphones! Ours must be used in the lab. If you have one of your own or can check one out from an alternative source, feel free to use it! You will notice them in use during the in class activity Week 4...
3. A sound appropriated from the internet. No audible MUSIC (meaning, I don't encourage just picking a song and using it... if you wanna use a song, mess it up and show craft!)
4. Same as above.
Creatively mix your segment to effectively work with your animated piece - use filtering, repetition, Left/Right stereo mixing to assemble the best possible audio mix that works flawlessly to complete your animated sequence!
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There's a good to great chance I may have forgotten something on this blog. Maybe one little detail. I'll leave it up to you to e-mail me any questions!
In addition to two critical QUESTIONS about reading posted to your blog.
2.) Your EXTERNAL DRIVE.
(Hopefully already acquired.)
3.) COMMENT on at least two of your peers' assignment entries
onto their blogs! You have an account to do so now!
You learn just as much from others, if not more, than yourself.
DUE in class SEPTEMBER 17th.
The assignment to be explained BELOW.
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WORKSHOP TIMES
Sunday September 9th. 1-4 PM.
Sunday September 16th. 1-4 PM.
(Or by appointment and office hours.)
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A S S I G N M E N T 2 .
"Stop Motion Frame Animation"
aka. SMFA aka. Something Mother Frickin' Awesome.
4:3 ratio examples of the
aesthetic that you will
likely encounter this time.
Food for imagination.
1. Original triptych example I posted.
(A very rushed interpretation of
Haiku poet Basho's famous poem)
"Old pond...
A frog leaps in.
Water's sound"
2. An animated version of one panel!
Using a special feature called "frame
animation" in Photoshop CS6.
(All PS beyond CS3 have this.)
Again, quite rushed. I expect
you to trounce this.
(By the way, to embed it like this...
Copy the embed code from Youtube/Vimeo/etc
and punch in place of the normal dimensions
tallscreen dimensions. This (for the blog)
measures to 320(w)x640(h). (Also, I seem to have lost HD quality for some reason online. That can change.)
So there you see it : You will be animating one (or more?) of your Triptych panels for the next assignment. Using the aforementioned 'frame animation' feature on Photoshop CS6. Ever hear of or just love programs such as Flash or After Effects? Photoshop is beginning to adapt to that field as well. Think of the frame animation feature on it as the very fundamentals of animation. If you don't know a thing about animation, the perfect place to start. If a little more seasoned, never a bad time to brush up on your basics.
Rules.
-Must be at LEAST 5-10 seconds long. If that short, make sure what is there is good quality.
-Export frame animation at 1080(w)x1920(h) resolution from Photoshop.
-Export as Quicktime file (No worries, we'll review these technicalities as they come.) -***IN ADDITION*** ***FAQ*** (9/12) Q : My file size (exported video) is incredibly large and takes far too long to upload to Youtube/Vimeo/etc. How may I remedy this? A : One of us (Priscilla) found a solution to that. She had a longer video which ended up at 8-9 GB in size with the original specifications. She altered settings to be at "H.264" at Medium quality and it went much better! Then again, you can possibly up the quality if you have a shorter video. The given one was 52 seconds (impressive!). I will be annotating the blog post to reflect this issue.
-Must be uploaded to a video aggregate site (Youtube, Vimeo, etc) and embedded to your blog by SEPTEMBER 17th before class! Preferably embedded in the format I utilized above, but not necessary. See that [COMPOSE] [HTML] duo of buttons at the top left of editing Blogger?
Top left. Below orange "B".
You'll copy your embed code from the video site onto Blogger and paste it via [HTML] to get results. ALONG with a more abridged artist statement from your triptych assignment, seeing as conceptually, this-and-that will not be too distant. But talk about how the meaning changed WITH video!
Look at THIS artist when considering this for example purposes : http://www.tinkin.com
(I am in the process of inviting in a professional NYC based animation artist / old colleague of mine to speak to you as well about her work which I will show prior to.)
This is Photoshop CS6, and since it is in its rather infancy as a program, there are lesser tutorials about it. Yet, I'll reiterate that the frame animation feature has been available since CS3 so a tutorial you will find at latest CS5 will be of great use. HOWEVER, I took a screen cap and will explain base mechanics.
1. OPEN one of your three panel files in Photoshop!
Click to enlarge.
2. Look at the bottom left / bottom. There should be an option
for TIMELINE. Select it. There may be another option to
decipher between VIDEO and FRAME ANIMATION.
You want FRAME ANIMATION. Select that. You will
get at the bottom one 'frame' of something similar to above.
3. Think of animating this "literally" like a stop motion
animation in reality. You will tediously place each little
object in its place... Then take a snapshot! (Repped in
the program as a 'frame' or 'one of those boxes'.)
Arrange one by one your layers throughout the timeline
that you want to be seen in that moment in time.
4. When done with a frame, click "paper" icon to make a
duplicate frame of the one you have before. OR... look for the
"fading circle" icon to TWEEN. Basically, edit a
second frame to be the end spot of your first frame...
Highlight both frames... select TWEEN... And add
however many frames needed to smoothly animate
in between the two! It takes not long to understand.
5. Recognize how long each frame is. Mine is 0.1 seconds a piece.
That means 10 frames per second. And 50 for 5 seconds, the MINIMUM
amount needed for the assignment. The "0.1" can be edited as well.
6. When ready to put online, go to FILE -> EXPORT -> RENDER VIDEO.
These are the settings you should need.
Most important is to figure out the basics of animation using Photoshop for the project. You will want to know how to place your layers in the frames, tweening, durations, movement, etc. Essentially the animation tool allows you to use your layers in an image to animate between them- it is really that simple - the complexity is in figuring out the various tools and using them effectively. Watch tutorials as many times as it takes to figure out how to animate something. Attend office hours and workshops as well. Have fun and get started immediately! If you put this off until the last minute *cough* you will regret it thoroughly.
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TO REITERATE.
DUE in class SEPTEMBER 17th. Your STOP MOTION FRAME ANIMATION. In the parameters given. And also... ON TIME.
