More narrative building ...

A bit of a late update as I've been in bed with the flu the last few days ... should still be in bed but I'm easily bored, so here I bring you what I was up to this last week (please excuse the photo quality as its been really gloomy weather, and also I just haven't had the energy to try and take better photos ...) ..

So on Wednesday we had a 40 panels workshop. We were told to come in with a household object. Mine was an old vintage hair clipper:


We then spent a few hours doing observational drawings of our objects (also changing scale and composition). Here's mine:


You'll notice that each panel also has a word associated - that's what we were asked to do after we were done drawing - attach a verb or an emotion to each drawing ... if you look closely you can see things like 'vain', 'liberated' and even 'playful'. Then we went about picking 8 panels and making a narrative out of those ... here's my final narrative:


Its the story of a playful little hair clipper that teases the audience by skirting round the edges of the frame, then goes 'boo!' with a cheeky grin, and then flies away happily being quite pleased with itself (you got that, didn't you?!?)...

Thursday we had another narrative workshop - but this time it was all about words and audio and onomatopoeias. We were working in pairs - I teamed up with Charlie as we were both fairly ill and coughing so we thought we'd keep our germs to ourselves! We were given a bit of time to go and find an onomatopoeic poem or something with lots of descriptive words. Charlie's mum is actually a children's poet so we ended up using one of hers called 'Dinosnore'.

First we all took turns reading out our poems and excerpts to each other, and then we had to re-write the poem (or part of it) using only text/font and not images (unless the font was being used as a picture). Charlie and I both got quite into it as we both love hand-drawn type... its still very much a work in progress, but hopefully it'll be a bit more finished than in appears here in a couple of weeks when we have to present it.



And now back to bed!

Photo-narrative

Back to school and back to work! We have two modules this semester; one the academic, written one; and the other is 'Visual Narrative'. The intro was yesterday, but we had our first workshop today ... its nice to be back doing stuff :)

Anyways, so, the task for today was to go off with our digital cameras and take a series of 10 photographs. If possible trying to think of a narrative, but not absolutely essential. I went wondering off by the old rail tracks by the harbourside and here are my 10 photos:


We then headed back to the studios to print those photos and then go on to try and develop some kind of narrative with them. It didn't have to be a linear narrative, but mine seems to have ended up that way. We could enlarge, reduce, cut bits out, do whatever really with the photos (having access to a photocopier) that helped tell the story. This is how mine stands at the moment (click to enlarge).

I shouldn't have to explain it but ... stroll; train racks, distracted by found objects; running people .... erm the rest I leave to your gory imaginations ;)

We've been told to go away and have a 'dialogue' with the work over the next few weeks. Hang it up on a wall and then go back and see every few days how we might change/improve it.

It was good fun doing this - a quick and easy way to make up stories - by taking what you have in front of you and just trying to make connections. I'm always scared of doing narratives as I always tell myself "I don't know how to write a story!", but this excercise reminded me that I don't need to be a genius plot-writer, just simple observation can sometimes lead to all manner of things :)

I'm still here!

Hello all that have been wondering where I've disappeared to ... I've been taking a well deserved break! Last semester was a whirlwind of college projects, driving lessons and wedding planning - and it all got a bit too much :¬/

Since then I've had two weeks off college (intersemester break) during which I've passed my driving test, gone to London to see LOTS of old friends, and finally managed to get the bulk of the wedding planning moving. Its been really nice to be able to concentrate on the wedding without college work and deadlines looming .... but it all starts again next week ... so updates will be regular again from then.

In the meantime, here's a little sneak peak at something else I've gotten up to in the last couple of weeks - A bunch of us have been learing how to make animation puppet armatures/models with the fab Mary Murphy in our college's animation department.. For me its been less about learning it for use in animation, but to have movable models that I can pose and take photos of for 2D purposes ... Its been great fun - I have plans for this one, despite it being still only half finished!