Project+Two+-+Video

**Project 2**
A series of visual typographical experiments illustrating the frustrations, development and tensions of being lost in the creative process. This project was meant to be a self-critical look into general issues about process vs. outcome, when and how a piece of design can be 'finished' and what charm can be extracted from the 'un-finished'. Order, strategy and efficiency are big words in the design world. What kind of visual result does a rejection of these ideas yield? What can come out of spontaneity, laziness, and inefficiency?

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 * proc·ess**

1. a systematic series of actions directed to some end 2. a continuous action, operation, or series of changes taking place in a definite manner 3. the action of going forward or on. 4. the contition of being carried on. 8. course or lapse, as of time

//"The creative process is a process of surrender, not control."// Julia Cameron

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__Challenges__

Taking a more analog approach to After Effects (such as using imagery/typography that has already undergone a series of processes [building tactile objects, photographing, editing, file formats,] meant that a great deal of time had gone into simply getting objects imported onto the timeline. I felt that the editing of the elements once into the program suffered. A lot of the variables were fixed, and would take a lot of backtracking to fix. A lot of adjustments were done slowly and manually, and took time away from other important considerations.

Organization was another issue. I did make a number of sub-compositions, but layer size was still rediculous and could have been easily consolidated.

I feel like it takes a few of these types of projects to understand the types of things to take into consideration, and I feel like I would be able to better organize things in the future, now knowing all of the processes involved.

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Project 2 is a series of visual experiments that illustrate the creative process for a designer in an abstract way. A number of words express elements of the process, and each is animated in an environment, with materials related to design or design construction.

The series of animations work within a specific visual-style with an unfinished aesthetic, reflecting the continual 'process' behind a piece of design work. Stop motion animation is paired with live action video as well as computer altered visuals, to represent the indecisive nature of my design-work. I am interested in creating something more surreal than real life, so perspective/space and animations are used to create motion that does not make sense in the real world - things move in ways they shouldn't, on their own or on unexpected surfaces. This approach is meant to represent ideas in the designer's head, which may not be completely rational or grounded in reality (therefore often ideas are unattainable, feeding the frustration of an incomplete project).



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My interest in typography in motion projects generally stems from a desire to manipulate the letterforms of the alphabet through different mediums. I see it as an opportunity to try new things, build things and capture them through different techniques, seperating type from it's home; in print, ink on paper. The course is an attempt to step away from the static print-format of type, and experiment with more interesting type solutions, in which the result is still readable.

Everybody can make type fly in and out, star-swipe, and get blurry in a Powerpoint presentation. I do not feel the need to do a project emulating this effect, and the fact that Adobe After Effects gives you complete control over their attributes still doesn't make it an especially interesting effect. My approach in this class has been to ignore stock-text, or simply overlay a font over some footage. I've wanted to experiment with tactile materials, to create type-effects that couldn't simply be emulated on a computer. The results might be more comparable to an installation piece than a short film, but I'm already taking a film based class, and this doesn't bother me. The challenge is to find ways to link these different experiments together into something cohesive.

Project Two gives practically unlimited opportunity. This is positive, but I have a harder time coming up with ideas when there are no restrictions. My storyboarding and pre-production planning generally consists of multiple pages of visual ideas, possible materials and effects, but initially lack a narrative or structure. To supplement this, counter-planning is done where I begin with a theme or idea. This is usually unsuccessful without a definite direction, and this becomes a problem. In a desperate attempt to start something (which although generally unusable and a waste of time, gives me the illusion of productivity) I built some boxes out of cardboard, painted them and wanted to include a letter on each face of the square box, the whole box, spelling a word. I still didn't have a theme so I wrote "Begin", leaving one square face blank as a letter space.

Now I am sitting around with this Begin box, still feeling like i still haven't quite begun. Generally the best ideas include unity of form and concept. I looked through my planning notes to see if I could make any connections. Unrelated to this class, I looked at a document that I had started writing for the YSDN Verso Magazine Project. It was an unstructured piece about collaboration and my personal design process. The idea behind the article was to look at where my creative process is effective and ineffective. I realized that whenever I start a project, just like this one, I get restless and just BEGIN. I need something to reference, I need to feel like I'm not stuck, even if the ideas aren't completely developed.

Since it's the last month of school and everything is getting crazy, I felt like it would be a positive thing to consolidate projects or at least use the research and ideas from a different project to idea-fund this one. I had a framework, which was all I needed to contain my visual ideas for the project. I started linking together how this idea would flow together as a whole.

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Construction:

Drawing patterns for BEGIN cube. (5 sides)