Little Clay Dudes.

This week I've mostly been continuing working with these clay critters. Making videos and photos and such. This was the intention to, create a stop motion in the physical space. And I personally think I achieved it.

These critters inspired me to create a 2D piece with the same character in the same kind of idea. That he'd a ppear several times on the sheet each representing a new movement. I also combined the other project I was following in the navigation through space with this and added arrows to show his movement. I really enjoyed making this and thought his facial expressions just using eyes and eyebrows gave it a nice character. It turned out a little like a story board, an unfinished piece. But just making it was pretty therapeutic for me. 

Again, I'm returning to the navigation through space. I'm going to follow the paths of people in the college more accurately using a frame I had made in the store room and some acetate. By mounting the acetate on the frame I can look through and follow exactly where the people walk. Instead of just a rough idea like the last ones were. Unfortunately any sheet of A3 acetate seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet. So it may take some time.

A Block....

This week I hit a bit of a block. Found it difficult to motivate myself to do much that I was actually excited about. Until the last day or 2 where I've been keeping myself occupied with a lot more sculpture than usual. And more depictions of movement.

Another chat with a tutor lead me to begin looking at the afterimage thing again. But this time slightly differently. To examine the different kinds of way to show movement through space. Which would involve the afterimage but not necessarily be confined to it. So the first bout of inspiration came from the earlier project of people watching. I decided to hide myself away in the balcony and record the paths people walked in the foyer below me. I planned to return at a later stage with some ink and bamboo so I could use a fast medium for a fast subject matter. But unfortunately the door into the balcony was locked. So instead I just copied the original with Indian ink. Not as great an effect as the original  It needs more lines. But I would want to stay true to what I see rather than cheat. Arrows are a simple, yet effective way of depicting direction, and the curve of the line shows the movement and navigation through the space itself.

This is the paths of people walking in the Chapel during the open day. I was in the balcony studio in pretty plain sight.

Today I thoroughly enjoyed myself making 12 small models for a kind of real life stop motion piece. Each piece has a slightly varied gesture and when lined up one can see the exaggerated movements of the piece that I based off myself walking erratically down the hall. The original inspiration came from a cartoon called Avatar: The Last Airbender. In one episode there's a kind of instructional statue sequence that the characters must follow. This:
The point is that the viewer would experience the animation in a tactile object, but of course I can make a video version as well to accompany it.

These are arranged as a crowd instead of in a line

This week I also continued working with conkers. This time it was suggested that I scale up the conker and take a closer look at the shells they come in. It was pretty simple to make a replica of a conker. Some specifically placed bumps and lumps and a few defining characteristics like the bean shaped section and the small hole underneath. Once it dries I'm going to make a shell that fits that large conker. Then once I have both I'll (supposedly) be able to make a full cast of both and be able to make the replicas in anything I like, wax/ plaster/ latex/ others... But the empty space left behind in the shell might be a better subject than the conker itself for this specific project.

Conkers are awesome-sauce!

My goal for the next while is to move onto something completely different to what I've been doing so far. And I've sort of done that.

I found these conkers in Ennis one day. And I picked up and found them to be quite appealing to just rub in my hand. There's nothing,that I know of, like them in nature. A great source of inspiration! And they have brought me 3 new(ish) ideas. The first of which was to run with they're tactileness and hang hundreds of conkers from the ceiling and encourage people to walk through them. I sensation that would be very satisfying. To me at least. I think I would ask people to smash them off each other as well. Make that part of the piece.
Another continues with the afterimage thing from the juggling, but this time in 3D. I want to make latex models of a conker and stack them one on top of the other which would be the afterimage of the conker falling to the ground. That then lead me onto depicting the conkers in the way I used them for as a child. Like depicted above. 2 real conkers at either end then latex models meeting in the middle and I'd like to smoosh 2 together and have bits of latex dripping down.
Just for an experiment, I made half casts of the conkers from coloured wax. Which I quite liked working with! But the results were so so. It sort of resembles a conker. But just as an experiment I'm happy with it! I made several of these and plan to arrange them in much the same way as the latex ones. Including melting the wax where they meet in the middle.

Another idea came to me from using the SCAMPER technique. I thought it would be cool to look at simple objects and what they would become when put into a certain situation or how we associate one object/thing with another object/thing. Firstly sheep and cotton wool came to mind. Then people and pipe cleaners. Personally, I like it and want to investigate more to see what else simple objects can be made into.

My final idea for this last week is another birth child of the conker. Looking at the space it left behind within it's shell! Which brought me onto looking at a banana skin and random rubbish thrown about the place in the car park. It was also pointed out to me that the rain also leaves behind a mark in the form of puddles. So does the wind in leaves on the ground.

This is I did by slowing the shutter speed on my camera and waving my phone about the place. It's not really relevant. I just like it!