OUIL504 End of Module Evaluation

I think that the early visual journal exercises in which we explored intangible concepts really helped to pick apart what it was that we wanted to extract from our chosen texts. This has made me think differently about the way I would approach a piece of text were I to illustrate from it. What I found most profound about the concept of the visual journal was not the discovery of a new way of working entirely, but rather how new methods/media can inform and push what I already do. The collage and mixed-media portraits informed my etchings in a way I never would have been able to by drawing normally. The looseness of this approach led to me making images far more expressive than I would have otherwise. 

Overall I'm pleased with how my moving pictures turned out. The head squeezing is my favourite part and was well worth spending as much time on as I did. Having drawn all the elements over Christmas, it was incredibly rewarding to just come back into the studio in January and put them all together into something more complete. I enjoyed turning what was once a sketch in my visual journal into an animation and would be interested in doing this more. The manic textures for the backgrounds were also successful, and helped to make the scenes look more "full". These were created by accident when I was etching and made a mess on scrap bits of news print.I feel that my time management was effective while working on my animation, as I knew the limits of my ability.

In terms of sound I’m relatively pleased as well; the windy sound in the first half and the creepy ambiance at the end I got from www.freesound.org - these helped against awkward silences in the animation. The other sound effects I improvised with bits and pieces in the sound booth and came out well. I recorded my own screaming and pitched it down to make it creepier and more appropriate, but listening to it again I think I am a terrible voice actor.

However, the centipedes, which I got moving in After Effects using scripts, are simply drawn and I feel like I missed an opportunity to make them more gruesome looking - as they are, they look very cartoony and don't match the tone of the rest of the animation. On top of that, Dr. Benway was hard to animate, even when rotoscoped, and ended up goofy looking. I didn't think I had time to colour him in either, so I didn’t, which is disappointing to look back on. I feel like these points represent failed aspects of my proposals – namely communicating the nature of the book and its characters.

I also feel like I could have explored more scenarios. I made one story board and stuck to it – I think I was always going to have the crushed head, but I wonder what else I could have had Benway doing, or if the centipedes could have been doing something more interesting. At the same time, I wonder if maybe I would have run the risk of it getting a bit convoluted if I had too many different things happening one after another.

For the printed pictures, I’m not that pleased with them now, reaching the end of the project. I feel like as illustrations, they are quite weak. They are portraits of characters which convey a mood, but don’t tell much of a story. Not making them floating heads as they were before helped significantly, but only to a certain degree. My favourite prints are the thematic ones, particularly the centipede. This one went through a lot of thumbnailing and I think I ended up with an interesting composition that makes for an illustration that would work standalone. I suppose they work as a set, but inconsistencies with the dirtiness of the print are there due to my inexperience with etching. The slip case was actually quite fun to make though and I’m happy that I did it in the end. It makes me feel a bit better about the images as a set.
I had wanted to do etching for years, and am happy that I finally got a chance to explore it in as much depth as I did. I enjoyed the process but think I will take a break from it.

Re-reading my project proposals for this module, it seems like I have fulfilled them almost exactly as they are written. I think it has been useful to work off of these self-set briefs as it makes your idea seem a lot more rigid, giving you confidence in what you are doing.