Steven Klein+Madonna=Art

Here is a video example of what Steven Klein can do with stop motion animation. I like the way he makes things disappear and reappear, play forward, rewind, repeat, etc. It is really bizarre. The last 60 seconds of this video shows it really well, although the technique is used for the whole video.

It is a videoscreen backdrop used during the Opening of one of Madonna's Concerts. It is made from a photoshoot that Klein did with her which he then made into a video set to her song "The Beast Within" which contains passages from the Book of Revelations. I find the whole thing to be very bizarre and artistic.

This is the style I would like to explore for my stop motion animation project because I find the repetition and disconnected feel to be much more interesting than a typical time sequence

Steven Klein

Steven Klein is a well known American fashion photographer.  He is known for his collaborations with Brad Pitt, Tom Ford, and Madonna.  He has also worked with other celebrities such as Britney Spears, Edward Norton, Beth Ditto, Christiano Ronaldo, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johaansen, and many others.  He is a frequent contributer to Vogue and W Magazine.

In Addition to his advertising and editorial work, he has done a lot of work in the field of moving images/stop motion.  He does this by taking many photos of a moving subject.  But rather than rather than just showing them quickly in order like a regular stop motion film, he repeats strange, usually awkward movements several times to create a very repetitive, bizarre effect.

His website has many examples of his photography and several videos showing the unique take on stop motion animation he takes.  This is the type of style I would like to try with for my next digital project.

Say AHA!!!

So this is the final image that I submitted for our lyrics project. I also had to print 3 11" x 17" posters. I like having a physical copy of something like that, it's better than just looking at something on a screen, which doesn't feel as real. That is also the reason I buy actual CDs rather than downloading them, because I like having the tangible object in front of me. I do own the CD "Santogold" by Santogold which features the song I chose: Say Aha.

The specific lyrics I chose were

"Say Aha...louder than they allow"

Say Aha was written with a flashlight in the dark by taking 2 second exposures of me writing each letter with the flashlight. I think this method captured the mood/tone of the song. The second part of the lyrics, "louder than they allow", is implied by the use of color in a colorless/quiet/restricting environment (the church).

I received mostly positive feedback during the critique, but there were a few criticisms (which I always appreciate). I was told the overlapping of the topmost girl's leg onto the bottom one's face is distracting and that I should erase it. Also, the 3rd "!" was thought to be a phallic symbol by the teacher. This was not my intention, and I am not really bothered by it, but since it is confusing, I can fix it. When I get time, (and I have no idea when that will be) I will fix these details.

Here is an early draft of the project. I was going for a triptych with the two stained glass windows and the church/girl in the middle. I still didn't have very good light patterns to fill the girl with and the composition just didn't really work as a triptych, so I developed the idea that turned into my final project. This is how all of my projects have turned out so far...I come up with an idea, play with it on the computer, decide it doesn't look great, but I still like the idea and just change it up a bit.

Here is a fan made music video for the song I chose. Sorry, it's the only way I could figure out how to add a song to my post.

Letterforms

Here is the final set of 26 letters I turned in for Design class.

For the definitive solution, I chose my L. The criteria was that it should easily stand out as the letter, it should be a good photograph, and be a creative solution. The shadow cast by the part of the building in the foreground created emphasis on the part of the building in the middle ground, and created a cool L. Also, if you squint your eyes, the first thing you probably see is the L, so that's good.

City of Lights

For my fourth project (the one using lyrics), I wanted to exploit the use of color as noise in a colorless and quiet environment (a church which will be black and white). I wanted to use the vibrant colors provided by the neon signs on Main Street, Newark. To do this, I set my shutter speed to about 1.3", and just swirled, shook, and moved my camera as violently or gracefully as I could to capture different patterns.

These are some of the raw images (no pun intended, they're actually Jpegs) that I took for this project.

To create my final image for the project, I increased the vibrancy of the colors and tinted some of them as well. So I don't really recognize which of these photos I ended up using. I took over 100 pictures this night.

Santogold

Okay, so I tried to upload my draft so far for Digital Project #4, but it is giving me trouble, so I will just show this. This is a picture of Santogold, who sings the song I am using for inspiration for this project. I made her into a silhouette and then filled her in with pictures I took on Main Street where I used a slow shutter speed to capture swirly light patterns. The section of lyrics I am using is

"Say Aha...louder than they allow."

Joebama

I went to the Biden Rally on today. It was so fun. Joe is a great Speaker. This was my favorite shot. He is such a family man. When Tom Carper was speaking, he said the new catchphrase was "Joebama", that was really funny. Actually they all were very funny and the event was very enjoyable. I'm glad I took my camera because I think I got some good shots.

Above and below is Joe with his wonderful family.

He was a very good speaker. That will be a nice change from what we have right now in the Whitehouse.

Above is his wife Jill who looked really stylish.

Below, his 91 year old mother who came out to support him.

So My Halloween Costume Will Be...

Quail Man!

80% of the votes were for Quail Man, and I think that it will be an awesome costume so I am excited.

Something is wrong with blogger right now, and I can't upload any photos, so it might be a while before you see another post. Sorry.

My Process

Just to show the process I went through to get my final design, here are some of the images I worked with. Above is the globe as I was still putting in countries.

Below is the photo I used for the cigarette for the axis.
This is one of the layers of smoke that I got from google.
Here is an early version of the final piece. I didn't yet have my analog portion drawn, so I didn't have that to work with. Also, I decided later to tilt the entire globe to achieve the 23 degree tilt that the earth has, in order to make it more realistic and intersting.

Final Version of my Digital/Analog Project

So here's my final image for Project #3. It's not exactly how I thought it would turn out, and it's gone through many changes. The background is not exactly how I wanted it but it was difficult mixing all of the layers of smoke. Some of the smoke was drawn in pencil as my analog element. I used pictures of cigarette boxes to make the countries. Some are from google, some are pictures I took of boxes with my own camera and some are scans of boxes I found lying around. I had to take a photo of a cigarette as well because nothing from google would have been big enough.