Methods of Inquiry Blog

For the character’s design, I chose to make her appearance simple and aerodynamic to make her look light and easily moveable. Since the character moves throughout the gifs, I chose to place them all together in a square formation so they can be viewed as a sequence rather than separate pieces. I have always been interested in animation, though I have minimal experience in both digital animation and digital drawing. I have created gifs in the past, so I was familiar with the general process, though those projects were all far less complicated than this. Due to my lack of experience in the medium, I had to overcome many challenges during this project, such as figuring out how to time the movements of the character to make them look natural, and how to use shape, color and timing to make the movement of the abstract forces dynamic and fluid. Though these challenges made the project time consuming and frustrating at times, I am glad that I chose to do it, as I was able to further explore and gain more experience in a medium that has always interested me. Overall, I am really proud of the outcome this process produced.

For this project, I wanted to explore how visibly blocking my ears could allow me to control when people approach me in social settings. Before this project, I had observed how people with blocked ears (usually due to wearing headphones or earmuffs) were far less likely to be approached by others in public spaces. I enjoy social interaction, though I often prefer to keep to myself as I go about my day, even in public spaces. I began using these methods of ear blocking as a way to experience public spaces while remaining isolated. For my body extension, I wanted to create a device that allows me to control when my ears are closed off or not, therefore giving me control over the level of social contact I am open to in public settings. To give my body extension this function, I used strips of cardboard and string, and underwent a trial and error process of calculating different lengths for the pieces of cardboard and testing how fluidly the pieces would open. While constructing this project, I faced many other challenges, such as figuring out how to use the string to hold the open cardboard strips in place, how to securely attach the string to the cardboard strips in a way that still allowed the cardboard strips to move fluidly, how to use the string to gather and close cardboard strips, and how to attach the cardboard strips to the head band in a way that gave the strips free movement. I am proud of myself for successfully solving these problems, and for producing a body extension that is well crafted and reflective of my personality. 

Here are the photographs I took to document my body extension. To set up the background for these photographs, I moved around furniture in my living room to make a clear space, and hung a white sheet from the curtain rods. (Thank you Mom for letting me completely rearrange our living room!)

Here are the finished gifs for my (re)mapping project. I wanted to post each gif individually as well so that you can take a closer look at each one.

Here are the finished animations of the character from each gif for my (re)mapping project. I wanted to post these separate from their gifs so the movements can be viewed more clearly. It was challenging to figure out how to draw and time each frame of the movement, though I’m happy with the way it turned out.

Here are the finished force movements animations for the gifs in my (re)mapping project. I wanted to share these animations isolated from the rest of each gif so that they can be viewed more clearly. It took lots of time to figure out the best way to time and draw these movements, though overall I found the process of drawing these frames rather relaxing. 

Here is another sample of how the character will move in one of my gifs. Overall, I planned to be further along with the gif by today, but it took me a lot longer than expected to figure out how to animate the walk cycle. I’m not sure if I’m completely satisfied with how it looks, so I may revisit it later if I have enough time. 

I wanted to give you all an idea of how the movement lines will look in the final gifs, so here is a gif I put together with a sample of the movement lines from one of my gifs. The lines take quite a bit of time to animate, but I’ve found it relaxing to draw, and overall I’m happy with how the movement looks.

Here is the color palette I chose for the movement lines in my gifs. When planning the colors, I was inspired by the abstract paintings by Jeremy Blake in the movie Punk-Drunk Love, which Endi recommended I watch. If any of you haven’t seen the movie, I definitely recommend it too! I found the bright, whimsical colors to be an interesting way the break up reality in the movie, even during mundane or intense scenes, and I feel this idea relates well to my (re)mapping project.

Hello! I hope everyone is getting through finals okay! For me, with all of the exams, papers, and final projects I’ve had over the past two weeks, I found it difficult to make time to work on these projects. However, now that I’ve had the time to fully focus on Methods of Inquiry work, I’ve been making progress a lot quicker! It’s been difficult to share my progress on my remapping. Since the gifs take a lot of time and work to export, it’s difficult to share my work in a way that is efficient and an effective use of time before the the gifs are fully completed. To make up for this, I am going to gather and post pieces to show my process. However, these posts may take a bit, since they are time consuming to put together and export, and I am mainly focused on putting finishing the final piece. As I have very little experience animating with Photoshop, the learning curve for this project has been a little frustrating at times, but overall I have had a lot of fun with it and I’m really excited about the work I’m doing!

I’m happy to say that I finished my body extension! I made some adjustments on the placement of the ear covers, and hot glued them to the head piece. I’m really happy with the way it looks! However, there is still a lot left for me to work on with this project. My next step is to create a space in my house where I can take some higher quality photographs of my body extension. I am currently using pieces of paper taped together as a backdrop for my photographs, but I want to have a smoother, less distracting background (possibly using a white sheet) where I can take photographs of the piece on me and as an object. I also need to create the video documentation of interactions my body extension. I am planning on trying to recruit my siblings to help with these interactions, so hopefully they will be willing to help!

Here is an idea I had for the background of my gifs. Each square would have a different color and different directions of the lines depending on the direction of the forces in the square (represented by lines in the sketches I posted before). I’ve been thinking that it could be interesting to have the lines appear and disappear as the forces appear and disappear. My next step is to figure out how exactly I want to animate the lines so that they appear to move in a direction that moves the character in the desired direction (as seen in the previous sketches).

Here are some new sketches I’ve made to brainstorm how I want to arrange my gifs. I decided it may be a good idea to cut down the number of squares I include so that I can focus on the quality of each one. I am still between these two layouts, so if you have a suggestion I would love it hear it!

I wanted to share some of the work I have been doing for my (re)mapping project. Since I am better at working out my ideas on paper, I decided to plan out my project in my sketchbook. Creating these images has really helped me work out how I want to arrange the squares, and what I want to depict inside them. I chose to arrange them in a wave-like shape to reflect the cyclical nature of both the gifs and the events they represent as a whole. I have found working on this project so far--finding ways to represent the events of this semester and my emotional state throughout it in an abstract way--to be really therapeutic. As I am only in the beginning stages of this project, this positive effect planning it out has had on me makes me really excited to go further with it.

Here is a video showing my interaction with my body extension. Unfortunately, when I looped the video the file was too large, so I was only able to upload one iteration here. I put a lot of time into figuring out the movement of opening the ear cover, and I’m happy with the way it looks. Right now, the movement of closing the ear cover isn’t as smooth as I would like it to be, so next I will work on adjusting the method I am using.