Claude-Oscar Monet

Monet was one of the founding fathers of the impressionist movement and the most prolific practitioner of the movement’s philosophy of expression their own perspective and perceptions of nature rather than just the plain, old view of the landscape that had been laid before the artist.

The picture above is one I have been instantly attracted to, it displays a dark castle looking structure in the background and a sea that is reflecting the sun in the sky and shows the shadow created by the hills beside it. The use of colors and many other shades created a masterpiece that adds great detail and a unique perspective from the artist, which the impressionist movement philosophy represents. The many colors almost like auras, especially around the sun with the white representing the middle and hottest point, spreading to yellow, then orange then red. I found it interesting that the sky isn’t just one color or just a couple of shades of the same color, this could be showing an aurora which can be seen as northern lights, although I am not sure, but this is my take on the piece, the unique things like that is what drew me to this picture and I believe it capture both a light and darker element. The darker element is the shadows and looming, dark castle upon the hilltop that casts a great shadow across the raging sea and the lighter side is the sun’s reflection on the water, creating a break within the dark shadow and giving it life in an area. Again this is only speculation to what he wanted us to see but this, in my opinion is a great piece that has multiple interpretations, but I do believe this was intended as the almost “Beauty lives in the eye of the beholder” style motto the Impressionists had gave way to allow the view to extracts a different interpretation than the artist, or maybe even the same in some cases.

Saul Bass

Saul Bass is a graphic designer who focuses on areas mainly to do with movie posters, a lot of his work includes very few colors that often tend to be different tones of the same color, there are two key colors that I see in many of his posters black and orange.

These oranges vary from a dark almost red orange all the way to a softer, less strong orange shade. I liked his style due to his silhouette style, though these silhouettes will only appear over key features of the poster, one example is the poster for “A tale of two cities” where the silhouette covers the Eiffel tower and Big Ben, he uses this to show only what he needs to show to make it recognizable as well as highlighting the key points within the posters. I had also used one of his styles in one of my pieces, I had used The Hangover official movie poster and gone over it with the pen tool, I then used 2 different shades of orange and black to limit myself to the style in which Bass used in his work, to this day I believe this is one of my best pieces I’ve done as the styles look well to match his as well as being able to make 4 posters, rearranging the colors and making it black and white without using more than 3 colors each time in my pieces. Another style in his pieces is the very simplistic back grounds, in both examples above its 2 different colors and in The Lord of the Rings one it’s only 2 different shades of gray, this is also another way to highlight as not being a key focus in Saul Bass’ Work.

Jonas De Ro is a Photoshop artist who uses Adobe Photoshop to create a scene from a picture, he does this through both adding and taking away features from the picture and changing many of the visuals to match his idea, this is his specialty, photo-manipulation. His specialisation within this area is Concept are, both of characters and landscapes within games.

This is a piece he created using a landscape of New York, it's name as "The Ruins of New York", this piece may have been created by simply using the picture of New York, taking away or covering areas of the city to make it look like it had been damaged after applying other effects to show damage and making the sky appear through newly formed buildings with missing chunks, as if it had been hit with a gun or rocket of some sort. It is interesting to see the way in which a landscape can be altered and manipulated into a piece of futuristic wasteland that we could only imagine and maybe never see, this is why concept art is amazing, it give freedom to the creator to both create and expand on different areas, literally making the world their playground.

Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh was a Post Impressionist artist, Post Impressionist were artists who were influenced and inspired by the artwork of the impressionist movement but rejected the constraints it beheld and they further ventured into their own, unique styles which were more emotionally based than Impressionist based.

He painted many self-portraits with strange wavy and spiraling patterns, seen in quite a few pieces of work he had produced; this was often based and represented the night’s sky. These spiraling patterns could also represent emotion. As this was the case of the post-impressionist artists had followed, but I am not certain, yet I appreciate the passion and emotion held within their work. All of his artwork featured many colors, building up a greater and more detailed piece of art that had a good arrange of colors to represent shadows, sunlight and other natural factors within the area. He also did landscape paintings, this is where it shows the inspiration of the impressionist artists, and this list could include such artists as Claude-Oscar Monet, who is considered one of the most famous artists who was apart of the impressionist movement. His style of work is almost strange, due to the patterns he had used in the sky and backgrounds of his work, although I believe this had been one of the factors that had made him original, maybe seeing something within the sky that represent his emotions, though others may not have seen.  Within his time he was only seen as a crazy and even delusional man, he had heard vices and spent time in an asylum, this is may have been why he never had seen success within his own time, yet now he is considered among the greats within the arts, within impressionist style and post impressionist style paintings within the modern day.

Vincent Van Gogh Self-Portrait

Personal Statement (Blogger Back up)

I have an interest and a passion in the area of animation, watching in wonder at how an inanimate object is given life by the animator, a personality and the ability to inspire awe and emotion from an audience. In the future, after graduation I wish to be able to eventually work in a company such as Disney, to inspire audiences, enthrall them and excite with the animations I create.

The use of claymation gave me some experience and knowledge into the use of clay, cameras and the software used in making clay based animations. College helped me progress these skills, adding such skills as team based skills, both leadership and following specific orders, time management by working to a set and somewhat specific deadline, this will be vital due to the fact in University I will be working to tough deadlines, so it will help in time management. This will apply past that into being able to work to a stricter deadline in the industry. Another skill these will help develop is problem solving, I say this due to the fact in many projects I have often found myself having to use orthodox ways to solve certain problems, and this often made my finished project better than what it would’ve been.

I was once a student representative. In which I had to address concerns and problems to the tutor from students either to nervous or scared to ask, it demanded such qualities and skills as leadership, empathy and power.  I believe these help me due to it giving me the chance to lead a team, while also being sensitive about thoughts, feelings and concerns, all which will help on working in a team for an animation group.

From both Media and ICT I developed my computer based skills, though this is more valuable in Media due to this being done for animation and media based subjects, also on Macs, this helped when I progressed to college as they are heavily based applications and programs such as iMovie. This gave me experience into the software I would use in college and then possibly in University also. I have also done some paper based animation in my spare time, from the ages of 10 stretching through to when I was 13, I did simple animations, such as movement the movement of legs and arms, then progressing to running, this shows my passion and interest into animation. Wallace and Gromit often inspired me towards choosing a course like animation or interactive media, the slick movements and simple look is always something I thought was great, especially after reading into the complexity behind such skillful productions.

I hope for the University to be able to offer me a career path, or multiple. As there are a variety of paths for Animation, stop motion and Claymation being two examples. Gaining knowledge and a deeper understanding into my chosen career will be something I hope to achieve, as this will be key if I do get a job in the animation industry. Also the skills, tools and experience required to be able to proceed and excel in my career path, to be able to work in a well known brand of animations, such as Walt Disney and the software in which I can develop skills for my craft and future career.

Michel Gondry

Michel Gondry is an Academy Award-winning French filmmaker, He has worked on many different things ranging from TV commercials to music videos. I researched a lot into his music video side in which he has worked with a variety of bands, anything from Rock such as the Foo Fighters - Everlong video, to a techno or dubstep style Daftpunk - Around the worlds.

For the Foo Fighters he used quite a few techniques the obvious one being the grayscale which is used over most of the video. Also when the protagonist grows his hand (featured twice in the whole video) the the time seems to slow to something like 75% as it grows. The grayscale is seen in multiple Music videos he has done.
A song he directed by Bjork known as Bachelorette Was also done in the style of grayscale, it seems he does this to add emotion to each emotional piece, though in Everlong it was a comedy, the parts that were grayscale were nightmares and night terrors part, in which the protagonist woke up in a cold sweat. Bachelorette was featured on a stage,as was Daftpunk - All around the worlds, this is a replicated element, this seems like he likes carrying a piece of another video into a new one, such as in the White Stripes videos he directed they had an urban British scene, which in one featured projection and the other stop motion. Carrying on in this theme he also used projections in yet another Bjork video known as Hyper ballad, in which the projection was on the protagonists face. One big thing seen in a lot of Gondry's music video is the big use of CGI, in Bjork's and Beck's video CGI was seen extensively. This shows a pattern of elements which he has used from one video to another, this could be a coincidence but there is some form of, whether purposely or not, reoccurring patterns.

This is to show both he similarities and differences in these videos, above is Daftpunk below is Bjork. Both feature on a stage, this is similar, and could be seen as a purposely done similarity, although the Bjork is a very plain paper and cardboard scenery, where as Daftpunk, due to his music being dubstep (almost futuristic), seems on a simple stage with different, futuristic, multicoloured lighting.

Games design research

This is Sumo digital, a games design company based in Sheffield, they have worked on quite a few big names, such as Sonic racers, they focus on animated racing games. (Sheffield)

Capricorn is a company I really liked they are based in London; the designs they have done are really cool and detailed.

Studio aka is an animation design company. (London)

This a blue zoo an independent design company in London who work on many things with such clients as AMV, Nickelodeon’ and Disney.

Blue-Zoo Productions Ltd.
Chesterfield House
385 Euston Road
London
NW1 3AU

Tel. +44 (0)20 7434 4111
Email. info@blue-zoo.co.uk