“I don’t have a clue. Ideas are simply starting points. I can rarely set them down as they come to my mind. As soon as I start to work, others well up in my pen. To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing… When I find myself facing a blank page, that’s always going through my head. What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas.”
document don’t create
“The best way to learn is drawing, even if you’re no Leonardo Da Vinci.”
‘Our anxiety around drawing starts around puberty, when we begin self-critiquing our abilities to render a perfect likeness, Dowd says. “The self-consciousness associated with ‘good’ drawing, or a naive form of realism, is mostly to blame,” he explains to Quartz. ”If you take a step back, and define drawing as symbolic mark-making, it’s obvious that all human beings draw. Diagrams, maps, doodles, smiley faces: These are all drawings!”’
–– Drawing shouldn’t be about performance, but about process.
From Errol Morris, a list of 10 things you should know about truth & photography
1. All photographs are posed.
2. The intentions of the photographer are not recorded in a photographic image. (You can imagine what they are, but it’s pure speculation.)
3. Photographs are neither true nor false. (They have no truth-value.)
4. False beliefs adhere to photographs like flies to flypaper.
5. There is a causal connection between a photograph and what it is a photograph of. (Even photoshopped images.)
6. Uncovering the relationship between a photograph and reality is no easy matter.
7. Most people don’t care about this and prefer to speculate about what they believe about a photograph.
8. The more famous a photograph is, the more likely it is that people will claim it has been posed or faked.
9. All photographs are posed but never in the same way.
10. Photographs provide evidence. (The question is of what?)
via kottke
“How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye?” – Vine and Me
Yes, so I got a bit excited when they released Vine for Android. It suddenly seemed the whole inventing smart phone thing suddenly had an actual purpose for me. I could make animated journal type entries actually on the go, without having to record everything and go back to base to put it together.
A real stroke of genius for me is that you can’t upload previously made movies, you have to go live, so creating animation becomes a superpower of being able to tap the screen with sufficient deftness you only trigger one frame and then some people go to the next level with using external lenses and tripods and things.
Unfortunately my phone is at the menders (dodgy power socket on those Samsung Galaxy Mini’s apparently), but the only thing I am really missing is the Vining.
I began by deleting a lot of early attempts but then came to the conclusion it’s best just to put it all out there, because often there’s a quality that comes out of the Vine you were not expecting, and the imperfection of it is the best thing.
Most of these have sound, and it’s usually relevant.
These next three are taken at various stages of making my way home after the pub.
(The title of this post is a quote from the mighty mighty Stan Brakhage)
10 Reasons Why Animators Should Make GIFs
1. They’re quick to do.
Animation is traditionally a lifetime torturefest of pain, self-doubt and confusion. You can make a nice GIF from just a few frames and that’s the end of it.
Animation is traditionally a lifetime torturefest of pain, self-doubt and confusion. You can make a nice GIF from just a few frames and that’s the end of it.
2. They catch the eye.
There’s nothing like a moving image in a sea of search results to make people look twice. (We’re living in an attention economy, people).
3. You can provide a nice teaser to your Vimeo page.
Like worms for fish.
4. No-one will ask you to explain the sub-text.
Which is especially good if it is not in your best interest to tell people what exactly that is.
5. People rarely click and watch a video on Tumblr.
With a GIF, TOO LATE!! They already watched it.
6. It’s down with the kids.
Kids love GIFs, GIFs love kids.
7. You can do self portraits and no-one has to look at your ugly face.
I’ve been participating in the Guest Directed Self Portrait project initiated by Molly Peck. I think I am only recognisable in 1 of my 7 submissions so far made.
8. You can try stuff out and get quick feedback.
Nothing says something works by a tsunami of reblogs.
9. You learn the virtue of brevity.
There’s nothing worse than a time waster.
10. You can recycle old work.
Remember that crappy piece of work you did years ago that you’re too ashamed to show anyone? GIF the good bit, bin the rest.
Animated Journal (Long Version)
I’ve been keeping an Animated Journal over the last year.
I’ve always liked the picture a day format, video diaries etc, and animation is, traditionally a long drawn out, painful process, this is me trying to free it up and make it a bit more ephemeral.
Stan Brakhage said that he considered what he did to be his home movies and these follow a similar vein.
I generally capture whats going on around me and funnel it into 250 frames.
Art doesn’t have to be a career objective, or a total obsession, or something you make money from, or even something that other people will like. It can be just something you make for yourself, in the cracks of your life, and if you put it up somewhere and other people connect with it, then that’s cool.
It’s made using a variety of software & techniques including Maya, flip book drawings, After Effects, old cameras, roll film, digital photography and so on.
“I have a horror of copying myself.”
“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web. That is why we must not discriminate between things. Where things are concerned there are no class distinctions. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it – except from our own works. ”
Animated Journal No.1 030709
Still not sure about the name, but anyhow.
I’ve always like the picture a day format, video diaries etc, and wanted to loosen my fixation that animation is a long drawn out torture-fest.
So here I am making it about instincts, ephemera & brevity.
Hopefully weekly, probably more like monthly.
There is no quality guarantee.
Headphones on.
Word to describe animated journally type thing I’m starting: animomento or momentation?
(T)
Paul Greer 