Flash assignment artist's statement

Artist's Statement

Matt Hornick

I really enjoy the hybridity of music and imagery. For this Flash animation project, I attempted make my own piece that combines these two mediums.

It was one of my first times using flash, so I encountered a lot of difficulties during production. One of the my tricky things was making the buttons. Even though I only had two, the programming aspect frustrated me. I would think I followed the tutorials correctly, but they just would not do what I wanted. For instance, I would be able to click the play button but it wouldn't play the movie. I had to fool around with that for a while to get it right. Also, the button at the end to go back to start of the movie was difficult to configure.

Along with the button difficulty, I struggled to prevent the music from playing before pressing the play button. This was because the music started on the first frame. I realized that if I put the music after the play button, the song would start after pressing play. One thing I could not solve was how to have the music stop when the movie stops. At the end of the movie, everything is frozen but the music is still playing. Then when you press the go back to start button the music overlaps with the original track, which is rather annoying.

The tweening aspect of the movie I found relatively easy. The most difficult thing to do was probably the growing line in the beginning. I had to make a 'mask' to get the effect – this took a little time to figure out how to do correctly.

Overall, I really like simple animations with only a few colours, and I think I was successful in that aspect. I did not realize I was supposed to have type in my animation, and I probably would have made an entirely different movie had I known this. I had fun and learned a lot while making it, and in future productions I will try and make them a bit more interesting and interactive.

What I learned

From doing my flash assignment I learned a number of things - most of which I indicate in my artists statement. I learned how to put music into flash, how to do motion tweens, how make masks, how to make simple buttons and how to use key frames correctly. I basically learned everything about flash in this class, as I wasn't too familiar with it before this class.

I thought this poster was sort of interesting because on the word poetry. Poetry usually links together words and ideas in a small space, and this poster sort of indicate that. The letters are squished together, overlapping each other, sort of the way elements of poetry overlap each other. Other than that it is a pretty simple poster, but I think it gets the companies message across nicely.

This image uses typography effectively. The poster is promoting a scary movie, and the type goes with the theme. The red type almost looks like its dripping blood - and blood is commonly associated with death in scary movies. This choice of typography, combined with the background image create a very horrifying image.

Typography

This image uses typography in an interesting way. I think it is for some sort of animal protection group or something. The 'collage on type' effect is eye grasping. The font looks like new times roman. I don't think it is too effective as some sort of propaganda because looking at it quickly it just kind of looks like a bunch of random words together and you can only identify a theme when you look at it for more than 5 seconds.

With so much information on the web these days, we have to be careful not to consume too much 'crap' out there. I'm talking about addicting games, spending too much time on Facebook, reading non-credible articles, etc. I think it is important that modern consumers not only use the web for pure entertainment, but also for learning about and engaging in the 'real' world. Starting almost a year ago, I've made it part of my daily 'lurking' routine to watch a few videos from this educational, informative website:

http://fora.tv/

With a rapidly changing world, this website follows these changes and its effects on economics, science, spirituality, and much more.

I have an infatuation with the quick little animations in between commercials/music videos/shows on MTV. The total obscurity of them are effective in getting my attention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMhkmcvO4Qk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovLLp6qmPjY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1jbdWepq24&feature=related

I really enjoy things that 'grow'. For my interactive flash assignment I'm going to try to create some graphics like this. I will also record some music to go with the animation. The work will be a commercial for some product - a TV show, or maybe a drink or food. I think it will be a fun assignment and I am looking forward to learning new techniques in Flash to make what I want to make.

Beez be buzzin'

For this project I chose to design a CD cover. I wanted to make an interesting piece of art that attracts viewers, and is indicative of the type of music the artist plays. I've seen a lot of digital art with spirals and trees and nature and I wanted to experiment with that. There is a mixture of bright colours and dark shades to create contrast.

My target audience is anyone into indie or alternative music. This demographic would be anywhere from 16 – 35.

To make my cover, I drew from my experience with Illustrator and used some new techniques in Photoshop. I drew most of it in Illustrator (because I find it easier to draw in Illustrator). I then imported it into photoshop to do some touch ups (blur, shadows). I made good use of the rule of thirds, as nothing is in the middle of the page. It feels balanced. I incorporated an interesting use of typography. To the left of the tree is the band name (Drenkelly) in a random type format. I thought the type looked neat so I used it to make a design. I think the silhouette effect of the black tree is effective in bringing out the bright colours behind it. The tutorials given out in class and ones available on the internet helped me greatly to enhance my CD cover.

There were a number of challenges I had to deal with throughout production. Firstly, placing objects on the wrong layer was a big issue. Objects would be behind or in front of other objects that were not the way I wanted them to be, so I had to do a lot of cut and pasting to fix that. Another challenge was trying to keep image quality when exporting from Illustrator to Photoshop. This really confused me. I would export at the highest quality from Illustrator, but it wouldn't look the same in Photoshop. However, whenever I zoomed in at 100% on photoshop, it would be just as sharp as Illustrator. Any more or less and the image looked rasterized. In the end it was just an exporting issue; my settings were off. The biggest challenge in the actually design process was figuring out where to place the band name, and what type format to use. I tried putting it all over the canvas. Next time I will start with the band name in the beginning and build the design around it.

Overall I feel I accomplished my intended goal. I am satisfied with the work I did. I learned some new techniques for making spirals that are easy and fast. For future reference I will be sure to label layers. I think there is always room for improvement, and with more time I could add more things to make a more effective CD cover. I feel it is an enjoyable piece to look at, and that I would pick up the CD and have a listen. I think the target audience would be inclined to look at the CD.

I didn't learn too much from the in class critique because the professor said he didn't have anything to critique. Personally, I'm still not 100% sure about the font and placement of the band name.