Janine Thomas

Exercise 2 - Final

This image shows how I put the final piece together. I made each letter and its plant in its own composition, and arranged it all together in a main composition. The other layers create the last slides. In total, I spent 8 hours creating the final piece.  

My first attempt at exercise 2 was very simple. I was overwhelmed with After Effects and I didn’t want to try anything too experimental, in fear of overcomplicating things. I started with a blue background (which isn’t a very appropriate colour choice for a harvest festival), simple line art depicting crops, and bright orange letters. The feel was minimalist and abstract. I explored the movements of the letters and the leaves itself. The simplicity of this first attempt makes the composition appear lifeless. Also, without another shot explaining what “Vegeval” is, it leaves the viewer confused. 

Final

Process Work

This is how I constructed the Play-Doh “d” in the video. I rolled out a long strip of even dough and cut it into increasingly bigger pieces. I separated the “d” into three parts: one for the vertical stroke, and two for the curved portion. I then took individual photos of each piece in the same position so it would appear that it was increasing in size.

(Note: My sketches are rough but they make sense to me. I realize this is something I need to work on. I had so many ideas I wanted to get them down as fast as possible, which explains the mess above)

This is the “studio” for Exercise One. There were no windows casting natural light in this space. A translucent piece of paper was used overtop of the light source to reduce the harshness of the shadows. The camera was placed on the tripod facing down, and the viewer screen was able to pop out so I could sit beside the scene and tap it to take a photo. This reduced the amount of unnecessary camera movement compared to pressing the shutter button. I would have liked the actual white background to have been larger so I wouldn’t have darkened corners in the shots (because the paper curved around the table). However, if the table wasn’t that small the tripod wouldn’t have been able to fit around it, making it almost impossible to get a straight downwards shot.