Assignment

The assignment was to create a film based on a process. I wanted mine to be about a physical task that seems antiquated and difficult because it has been automated for so long. As someone who enjoys the craft, I felt the clean lines of a book and paper would lend itself well to a beginner animator. I also liked the irony of showing a physical task through a digital medium.

Technique

I adopted a top down view and made all of the basic pieces in Illustrator. In After Effects I used the 2.5 mode to manipulate the pieces in a 3D space. In terms of art style, I stuck to simple vector shape as it was the limits of my artistic ability and based the color pallete on the idea of an old but regal book.

Assignment

For our final piece, we were to make a portrait of person, place, animal, or thing. One night while walking home, knowing that I would be moving out soon, I stopped on the street corner and looked up at the night sky, finally taking the time to realize what a night sky looks like in New York. Inspired by this moment, I decided to use this assignment to memorialize my walk home. On top of the architecture and the particulars of the Two Bridges neighborhood, I also wanted to capture what it felt like to have to walk home in the quietest hours while the maddening roar of the train as it rushes past.

I ended up not sticking true to the landscape of my walk home and mixed buildings together in a way that seemed cohesive. For the rotoscoping, I stuck with just outlines because it’s what I had assumed rotoscoping was supposed to look like. I didn’t get chance to add more detail or fill anything else in. The grey background does work to help you see the rotoscoping.

Technique

I started with filming myself using a selfie stick held very low and at an angle. While I like that angle, it was hard to replicate. Instead I took a tripod took a significant amount of photos that I could then stitched together in Photoshop.I then brought the results into Illustrator and traced over them to turn them into cohesive vector shapes. I also filmed myself, rotoscoped that, and then transplanted myself into the scene. I recorded sounds from the same area and highlighted the skateboard park across the street.

Credits

The ticking of the clock comes from Freesound. I suppose I could also credit myself as the actor.