Thursday 5 May 2016

Sound Piece Script

In addition to what the sculptures mean I want to have a link towards personality, such as spirit animals, as well as the sculptures represent a subconscious of everyone's mind it's not telling the person what to feel it's giving them an example of what they might feel, what they might say, what they might be thinking. It's not a definite that's what they're feeling but it's more vague and general so it can imprint on anybody. The sculptures are not telling them what to feel and how to feel it showing examples of a physical format of what their subconscious might look like.

Notes: The beast is the combination of both depression and anxiety, however I have made him with claws and sharp antlers to represent a breakdown or state of mind in which an event has caused the individual to be release uncontrollable emotions.

Depression = dark blue

I don’t want to move
I can’t move
I don’t want to leave my bed
My body feels heavy
My limbs feel so heavy
I feel heavy like a bear
I can’t sleep
I can’t get to sleep
I don’t feel like me anymore
I can’t enjoy anything
I feel emotionless
Don’t look at me
Stop looking at me
I don’t want to do anything
I can’t think
I just want to sleep
I can’t control my emotions
I’ve lost control
I can’t stop eating
What’s the point
Why does everything irritate me
I can’t believe I did that
Make it stop
I need silence

Anxiety = orange

Make it stop
Everything is so loud
I need silence
I can’t think straight
I can’t sleep
Why won’t my thoughts shut up
Oh god, I have to so much to do
Don’t sleep through your alarm
I can’t believe I did that
I’m so shaky
I hope no one can tell
Why are people looking at me
Do I look okay
Is there something on my face
Something wrong with my hair
Am I acting abnormal
So many people
Have I forgotten something
I feel like I’ve forgotten something
Just breathe deeply
Don’t panic
Why did I just do that
Im such an idiot
Why am I like this
I hope I don’t mess up
I’m so pathetic
Why does everything irritate me
I feel so petty
I want to be alone
But I need company
I don’t want to go outside
I feel constantly on edge
I feel skittish like a deer
I don’t want to leave my room
My head is spinning
No one likes me

Beast = dark green (mental breakdown)

I can’t control myself!
There’s too much happening!
My head won’t stop spinning!
I can’t control my emotions!
I’m so angry!
I can’t stop crying!
I can’t do this anymore!
Too much sound! I can’t think!
Just get up!
Stop being lazy!
Just do it!
Just leave me alone!
Hate being alone!
Stop being like this!
I just want silence!
I need my space!


Tuesday 3 May 2016

Sound Production

(disclaimer: the date and time were of the screenshots not the work as I had forgotten to do them during)

To begin with I had to create a new multitrack session and add the ambient background noise and the voice over I recorded on Audacity.


Then I had to listen through the dialog to check for any mistakes and cut them out.


This is when I cut a piece out I had to drag it all together to make sure there wasn't too long a gap between speaking.


I then added an effect to the dialog to make it seem like it was more of an internal voice rather than external.



Here are the original Raw files before I added them. 





Production Development



Its hard to see in the images but his front legs where slowly day by day leaning more forward when put under the weight of the front half which then caused the back legs to twist at a weird angle.





After attaching the front legs to the rest of his body a few days later it was clear that it wasn't the best job I've done as he was slowly twisting in one direction so I edited the attachments which have worked very well keeping the bear stood up straight with little problem.



I bought a sheet of fabric to see how the polyester cotton looked as I was worried the polyester would be too shiny specially with the fact that I have lights pointed at them. However what I got wasn't too bad and is really good to work with and looks nice when put onto the wire.


I tested the new fabric on the ears and tail of one of the bears too see how good it was to work with and how it looked, to start with they don't look too great and it was my first time with the fabric but since doing those I have figured out how to make them more clean cut and looking more professional.  



Whilst cutting the fabric, which my friend helped with as I needed some extra hands, I attached them to the corresponding wire instead of ironing then gluing. Its an easier process to completely to do one task at a time. Then with what fabric was cut I glued it onto the wire, see image below, which sadly didn't look as good as I hoped.


With the wire it came rolled up in a coil however I needed the wire straight so I would cute random lengths of wire the sit and straighten them all out which made putting the sculptures together a lot quicker.


When doing bear #2 I found the building process a lot easier due to me cutting the wire and straightening it before hand, so I had it built in 5 days, the only problem with it is that all of the weight is in the front so it tilts forwards and can't stand up, I have created crutches which sadly didn't work.


After ordering test fabric for the other two colours I agreed that both those colours looked as close as I could get them and the fabric was good quality. However when I received the second order of green it was a completely different shades of green however to fix this I am going to order more and see what shade they send me again and use the new shade of green as the other was a bit too bright, however I fear that another order will bring me more of the colour I don't want and not in time for assessment. The only thing I can do is cover what I can with the fabric I have before assessment and hope that right shade comes at the right time.


I started making the stag by doing the body first then attaching the legs.


I've ordered two different types of new fabric for the new idea (link to new idea), Chiffon and silk satin fabric, in order to get them roughly around the same time. I also got the two different types as they both draped well, however I cannot be sure how they well they look until I apply both types. The only issue is the time they arrive will be very close to deadlines, also I am curious what a transparent fabric would look like compared to a solid fabric.


Above is the new chiffon fabric which is light and flows very nicely like a veil. The only problem is that its kind of transparent which may be okay but may cause a problem.


Above is one of the silk satin green I ordered which didn't come in the green that I was expecting so I can't use that making the silk satin unusable. 


Even though due to late packages I couldn't use the silk satin after looking at the quality of the material and the way it hangs also the weight of it may drag down the sculptures pretty quickly.  

After forming the body of the stag I made legs and attached them, however the next trick was to get him to stand on them.


WHICH I DID!! Barely...





Sound Examples

I sadly find it very hard to describe how I want the sound piece of this project to sound like, as I need the dialog to sound like it's coming from the audiences conscience or it's the thoughts of someone with the mental condition. 

Here are some examples of what I intend the voices to sound like.



Or something similar.

When looking for ambient noises I came across this nice car ride like sound which when turned down and placed behind voiceover, worked really well.



Sound Finals

Here are the final versions of my three sound pieces and there playlist.




Evaluation

Introduction
After second years final project and with a little help from everyone around me, I found my passion for sculpting and liked to get my hands dirty, so I decided that third year would be sculpture themed. It’s not what I intended on doing when starting this course but through, what I believe to be failures, I made to the other side with an idea of what I actually enjoy. It uses my craft skills more than computer skills, yet still uses the sound editing skills I learnt from second years professional toolkit. This way I could point all my focus into creating something big. 
Adfectus
Adfectus is my only project that I tackled on my own, to bring, what skills I had learnt and testing newer skills, into one big final piece about a topic that has effected not only myself but most of the people around me. 
Before third had even started I had obtained an idea from a moment I had once at university. I wrote it down and had my heart set on it, the idea of an interactive animation that had themes of mental health issues being depression and anxiety. After going through all of first semester with this idea in my head and all the preproduction work based on this, I was devastated and struggled to agree with the concept of changing the idea a little. The reason behind this was that I, myself, had no experience with animation, which I tried to counteract by asking animators around university if they could help me out, but then came the topic of what would I be doing work wise? Yes, I had done all the preproduction and concepts for it, yet I was passing it on to someone else to do for me. With a bit of guidance I realised that I was being a bit ridiculous with that idea and pointed me back in the direction of sculptures, which it only then hit me that that is what I should do for my project? 
Luckily I already had all the concept art for the animals, I just had to figure out how to make them and what to add to it for the cherry on top. That’s where I came up with the instead of drawing them, I’ll make them out of wire and paper mache, as I had experience with once those before. In second semester I started to gather the materials for this project and got down to testing what materials. The wire I found was both good in width but strength wise could be a little stronger however it still holds itself up once all put together. It was the paper mache that caused a lot of problems, when wet and applied to the wire it seemed fine, but once it dried it became tight and bent the wire in whatever way it felt like it. So I quickly had to find something else to cover it and give the animals some skin. I thought that tissue paper would be a good substitute and that if I added a light inside it would add a cool effect to the room that they were displayed in like a lantern. However, after covering half of one of the sculptures, the tissue paper was found to be a little untidy with the corners being roughly done due to the difficulty of cutting the paper and then attaching it. So once again I was back at the drawing board thinking about what kinds of fabric could use to give these sculptures skin, as it had to be in a certain colour and not be too heavy for the wire. This took a long time to find as I had little access to fabric stores, and the ones in which I did visit didn’t help all that much with helping me find the right ones to the point I gave up and tried Amazon in which I bought some Navy blue Polyester cotton to see how it felt weight wise and how it looked, as I was under the intention that Polyester cotton was shiny. 
The next major change was when I had a realisation that I may not be able to get seven get larger sculptures made in their certain style and covered with fabric within the specific deadline. So I changed up the idea a little to reduce the amount of animals I had on display and would only present the main three given me more time to work on them and make sure they weren’t rushed causing them to look bad especially as they’ll be presented in a Grad Show. This change in plan also helping the way of storing the sculptures as each one would be around thirty inches high and twenty inches wide which I wouldn’t have been able to keep in my room and I couldn’t store anywhere else. 
Then I had a tutorial a little too close to deadline, whilst I still had a lot of work to do on the sculptures, finishing building them and attaching fabric to them. However everything changed once we discussed the issue of how the sculptures would look finished and came to the conclusion they would look to crafty as even with the polyester cotton fabric the edges and corners were still a bit rough, less so with than the tissue paper yet it still didn’t look that great. Instead with help the idea changed into the sculptures having there wires bodies exposed yet their faces covered with a veil of fabric that hits the ground. The transparent like look to seeing what it’s made from gives them a raw feeling and more interesting to the audience eye, however I didn’t really like the sound showing the insides of the animals as I felt they were quite shabby looking compared to being covered in fabric but due to time it would have been impossible to get them done in time. Also with the veils I enjoyed the idea it meant that I didn’t have to rush with applying a full coat of fabric to all three of the sculptures. Now it was the issue of finding another fabric that fell in a certain way that looked nice and fall neatly over the faces of the sculptures as for the fabric to fall nicely across the detail of them. After some research about what fabrics draped nicely I came to two conclusions, silk satin and chiffon. With none of the fabric shops that I could reach in time having any of the colours I wanted I had to look on Amazon again, with orange and green chiffon coming on time and only the silk satin blue coming on time as well. Hoping they all would come earlier, of course they didn’t. After receiving the fabrics I found that the chiffon was a better fit for placing on the sculptures as it fell with weight but wasn’t too heavy the only issue was that I was missing one the colours for one the sculptures. So to fix this I used the silk satin I had received as a substitute until I got the Chiffon to complete the set, sadly that was out of hands. 
However I managed to finish the wire body of the sculptures on time with the only issues being that if moved too much the wire will start popping out of the joints. I also had problems with how the wire would come in a roll which then required me to sit and straighten out long lengths of wire for hours and hours so that when it came to putting together the sculptures, I wasn’t interrupted in having to straighten more wire and I could focus more on them. The other issue is with the hot glue that I used to put them together, as much as it is strong enough and holds them well, it only does so for a while as they can pop out, I did think about using a soldering iron and then put hot glue on top, however the thickness and type of wire I got seemed to be too thin to solder together and would be just as weak as having just the hot glue. Also, if I had realised this ahead of time I would have tried to solder it, just too see how it would affect the overall look as well as the strength of all the joints and if that would have helped them stand up more and resist more weight of the fabric. I also couldn’t test certain things at home, such as making sure the length of fabric was good enough and that they all stood up on their own without falling over. However, I do know that two of the sculptures can stand up on their own, only one falls forward which I can only fix with a possible bamboo stick hidden under the fabric to keep its chin up. Overall the sound piece was the easiest as with the help from professional toolkit in second year I knew how to record sounds and edit them on Pro Tools and Audition. This meant that when it came to recording, and especially because it was a scripted sound piece, all I had to do was record the lines and edit a few sound effects to make it like internal thoughts with some ambient noise and they were done. I didn’t choose doing just sound because it was easy, I chose it because I knew that the sculptures would be my main focus and would take most of the time I had, therefore with the sound, I could add something to the sculptures with little effort and still keep most of my focus on building them. 

I still feel that I have learnt not to think too big about what I want to do, project wise. I have these big and wild ideas from nowhere, but either don’t have the talent or time to make them which is what I found out over the course of this year with this project, as its overall size went down more and more to the point where I feel like it’s very minimal work due to its original size yet what I’ve done is a lot, especially for one person. And sadly if it wasn’t for the issue with my dissertation and problems at home I would have had an extra month or two to really sit down and put all I have into make these, possibly making them even bigger, or better quality, but I am pleased with what I have achieved this year. Also thanks to this third year project, I have learnt what I really want to do with my life, job wise and even finding myself through a series of ups and downs over the past three years, I have learnt that as I need to limit myself to what I want to achieve, again project wise and in some cases real life, there is also the fact that I can be easily disrupted from my motivation to do something that I enjoy. I find that I get too attached to my ideas which makes it harder for me to see the smaller and better outcome to said ideas, and the fact that I have no sense of time in as time management is still one of my down falls. 

Thursday 18 February 2016

More Animal Research


My tutors keep asking why I used animals to portray the emotions, and how other people may think otherwise to my decisions. However, I thought about it and released that people relate to animals via spirit animals.


So I looked at a website so spirit animals and searched for the animals I'll be sculpting and this is what I found.

If Bear is your Animal Totem:

You have a great deal of patience in manifesting your ideas and projects waiting for just the right moment to spring them on the universe.. You have a great deal of confidence in who you are and where you are going in life. You are looked upon as an authority figure. You are nurturing and protect your children well.

Additional Associations for Bear….

Introspection
Subconscious/Unconscious mind
Strength
Grounding
Inner energy of soul to find answers
Judgments, are you too critical or not critical enough
Inner power to taste the honey of life
Peace
Nurturing and Protection
Resurrection
Confidence and Authority
Powerful
Patience and Connection
Benevolence
Aggressiveness
Sovereignty
Motherhood
Duality


If Deer is your Animal Totem:

You have the knowledge of how to use the power of gentleness to touch the hearts and minds of the wounded beings in your life. You have a propensity to see new innocence and freshness in life everywhere and you constantly feel the lure of new adventures. Often you have a link to the arts, especially poetry and music.

You are also a keen observer, able to see well in low light. You are also a very compassionate, gentle and loving person.

Additional Associations for Deer…

Gentleness
Love
Alertness
Camouflage
Attention to subtler outside influences
Connections to children and people for best interests of all
Vision
Hearing
Smell
Helps discern what actions to be done
Grace
Peace
Beauty
Fertility
Humility
Swiftness
Regrowth
Creativity
Spirituality
Abundance
Benevolence
Watchfulness


I am also using animals to give depression and anxiety as a physical form in hoping that people believe they are real.

Mood Board

It's not really a mood "board" as it's more of a list, but this is basically a mood board for the overall look and atmosphere for the final look of my installation when it's been fully constructed and placed in the Grad show. 

I am looking to place lighting below the sculptures to give them a powerful appearance/stance, the platform they'll be standing on will also give them that boost in importance/intimidation. I am also hoping go give them an boost with the size and severity of them but giving them haunting shadows, as I believe shadows give them life, it shows that they are real.
















Sunday 7 February 2016

Sculpting

In this post will be the journey of me testing out ways to make my Adfectus sculptures and the process of making them from start to finish. 

To start this project was an absolute bitch! I struggled so much trying to find the right wire to make these sculptures with. I tried everywhere you could buy wire from and no luck until I came across a B&Q with the exact wire that I needed, not too thin and pretty sturdy too. PERFECT! So to start with I needed to create the frame for the back legs, so I measured out some wire and prepared my hot glue gun for some sticking. 


All was looking well until I started to paper mache the frame. The paper mache went on fine but after letting it dry I would find the wire frames bending from the dry paper mache.



So obviously that wasn't going to work so I looked around for some other ways to give these animals some skin. Not long after I found that tissue paper is a good way to fill in the gaps and it comes already coloured in the colours I need. BONUS! So I start cutting out pieces of the tissue paper and apply it each side at a time. 



Until I have the whole limb wrapped in the tissue paper. 


After some more sticking and burning myself I have managed to create both back legs, front legs and bear bum. The only issue now is trying to create the arch of the back without it falling over, bending or falling apart. 




 As you can see in the not so clear images above is that I have started to create what will be the main body of the bear, whilst using other pieces of the sculpture to prop up certain wires to stop the whole thing from tipping. 

Measurements

Here are the measurements for the current projects I am doing for 3rd year, one of the reasons I have these measurements is the fact that for the Grad show I need space to install these installations so knowing how much room these will take up is very important. It also has other helpful factors, like if one sculpture broke I know what size to make it again. 


Earth vs Humans Busts: 
H - 26”
W - shoulders 17”
    - base 12”
L - 6-7”

Plinths:
H - 36”
L - 13-13.5”
W - 13-13.5”

Room Needed:
W - 100” (2.60m)
10ft-12ft between projector and busts
11-12” between busts

55” from the back wall

Adfectus: 

Bear:
H = 30"
L = TBA
W = 19.5"

Stag:
H = TBA
L = TBA
W = TBA

Beast:
H = TBA
L = TBA
W = TBA