Project 1: Expression in Animation

Guidelines:
The goal of this project is to use abstract shapes as tools for forming an expression in the context of animation.

1. Draw visual inspiration from two or more of the following artists. Do not directly depict their pieces, but use their work as a springboard for your own ideas. You will be expected to talk about how you used your chosen artists in the process of creating your animations.

Julie Mehretu
Josef Albers
Matthew Ritchie
Louise Nevelson
Jim Lambie
Bridget Riley
Ellsworth Kelly
Tara Donovan
Robert Motherwell
Robert Irwin
Agnes Martin
Mark Rothko
Richard Tuttle
Donald Judd
Kenneth Noland
Henri Matisse
Richard Anuszkiewicz

2. From the list below, choose three pairs of words

Order / Chaos
Heavy / Light
Joyous / Melancholy
Tense / Relaxed
Liquid / Dry
Unified / Divided
Vibrant / Dull

3. Referencing the artists listed above, use lines, squares, circles, symbols, textures, and free forms; along with form, color, rhythm and motion; to create six separate animations that express the meaning of each word. Do not create literal illustrations, character animations, or narratives(stories). Instead, create the visual equivalences of these words/expressions. Think of this as working the same way a font conveys a meaning or feeling without literally spelling it out.

Here's a link to some previous student work.

In terms of animation, check out the principles of animation for some helpful pointers. You will be limited in this animation to using only the five basic properties(anchor point, position, scale, opacity, rotation) in conjuction with the other techniques we've learned in class. In the next project we will move on to character animation and more complicated parameters.

4. As you construct your animations, consider the following principles:

• sequencing
• touching
• overlapping and cropping of forms
• illusory space
• contrast of elements in terms of size, direction, space and position
• dynamics of negative - positive relationship

5. For each animation, create a new composition in AfterEffects that is 320x240 pixels in size and between 10 and 30 seconds in length @ 30 fps.

6. Save all of the elements to your hard drive node - within the a folder titled Assignment1.

7. When finished export each movie with the following render settings: 320x240, 30 fps, Quick time format, MPEG-4 Video Compressor at 100% quality. Give each movie a meaningful name, for instance, order.mov.

8. Save your compressed movies as YOURLASTNAME_1_1.mov, YOURLASTNAME_1_2.mov through YOURLASTNAME_1_6.mov. (You may want to create a folder on your hard drive node especially for movies you will upload to the web.)

9. Follow the steps for preparing your files and uploading animations to the web.