Tree Mural

I did my final project with Maya (the Tree Mural project). We decided to do our project together while doing the last mural, as we worked side by side and both really enjoyed the project. We originally had the idea to do a forest for a mural, but then realized that a) that would be overwhelmingly difficult, and b) there was not enough space or time to create a sequential forest. We still were keen on the idea of doing something with trees, and thus decided to sequential depict a tree growing, but in a unique way.

 We decided to approach the tree's growth from two angles, I would depict the tree growing geometrically, using sharp angles and straight lines, while Maya would depict the tree's growth through a more organic, curved approach. We decided that we would each start on opposite sides of the final tree, working our way through the respective stages of the tree's growth, meeting in the middle with the final tree split in two, geometric on one side and organic on the other half. When we finished with the stages of the tree's growth, we realized that the mural itself was dark and very hard to see. To fix this, we tried to high light the trunks of the trees with lighter brown and white, but the mural still did not "pop". We decided that we needed a lighter background to contrast the dark colors of the trees, so we bought light blue spray paint and tried to create a representational "sky" around the trees. 

Overall, this project was challenging in that we had to troubleshoot many things, not to mention the heat outside and the steep slope we were painting on. Although it was a challenging project, I had a great time doing it, and really enjoyed collaborating with Maya.

Twenty/Twenty

For my final project, I made a sort of graphic novel, entitled “Twenty/Twenty.” The idea started with a specific medium I wanted to try out: transparencies. I like the idea of drawing on something clear, using black and white so that when you place the image over different surfaces and backgrounds, the image itself transforms. By drawing on clear sheets, I was able to view the drawing as a separate image, but also as part of the layer which it was placed upon. I thought that clear sheets might be particularly interesting to use with narrative/sequential art because by placing a clear sheet over another picture, you can alter the original image and use those changes to motivate a storyline. When the book is opened, there is a color image on left-hand page and the right-hand page is transparent with black line drawing on it. The right-hand page is laid on top of a black sheet, so that you can’t see what image the transparent sheet contains. Then, when the reader flips the transparent sheet over the adjacent color page, the black and white image lines up with the color image, changing it entirely. So essentially, each image is read twice: once in fuzzy pastel and again with sharper line-work and some changes.

In the end, this specific format inspired my story. In my physiology class, we had been learning about vision and the way different species’ eyes have evolved, so I thought it would be interesting to make a story in which all of the initial color images are out of focus, and then the black lines on the transparencies bring the fuzzy image into greater detail. The story itself is about a man who has very poor vision, but doesn’t realize it. The first panels are just in low-resolution pastel, depicting a typical day in his city, through his eyes. Everything is sort of frothy and dreamlike, with most of the details, text, and faces absent. However, in a crosswalk, he is almost struck by a car, and the irate driver sends him to a doctor to correct his poor vision. When he puts on his glasses, suddenly all of the images from his typical day are thrown into harsh resolution, revealing details that he previously had missed. The details aren’t alarming, they’re just unpleasant. His fuzzy, ethereal view of reality changes into a world that acknowledges the existence of cracks in the floorboards, sweat on a runner’s brow, and cigarette smoke in a nearby park. In the end, he smashes the glasses, in favor the blurred and hazy version of the world.
























































The biggest challenge with this project was working with the transparencies because they are slippery and don’t allow for much detail when drawing. But I adopted a sketchier style for this project, so in the end, I think the materials worked reasonably well. I’m pleased with the overall impact of flipping the transparency onto the color sheet.

For this project I wanted to do several unrelated scenes that i could but together to make a story line. What i did as brought this character into the story from a bouncing ball. This character is involved in many of the scenes because he is the main character of the story. My video doesn't really tie into any story plot, but it is fun to watch the story evolve and the characters expand in different ways.  

Mural

For this project, I thought that drawing mural, which represents my nationality and my interest in fashion would be a great idea. For this reason, I decided to paint a woman wearing Hanbok, a Korean traditional clothes.

Hanbok is all about a unifying harmony of different colors of fabrics. When I was drawing the mural, therefore, I did my best to make various colors that match well with one another and place those colors that would go well with the flow of the fabric. Since we only had limited color for the paints, I used my acrylic paints and mixed them with the white paint to make a pastel colors.

I outlined the entire character and drew some details with black paint to make the mural stands out better. I also focused on the detail of the clothes and the composition as well to make the mural visually attracting.

I really like the way the woman I drew grab the tentacle of the octopus. I think they really go well together. I also really liked the idea of a ring girl transform into the Korean traditional woman.

It would have been even greater if we had more time and safer place to paint a mural so that we could really have a solid and detailed transition that makes the mural more unifying and stand out.:--)

Summer Day Dream

My final project was about a high school girl who fell into sleep during the Korean History class. She had a very relaxing, yet queer dream, and when the school bell rings, she woke up from her sleep. Since the project mainly dealt with her day dream, most of the scenes portrayed the hypnotic images of Korean traditional house, woman, and sequence of random images, representing the randomness of a typical day-dream. I put contemporary Korean traditional music, which gives very warm and relaxing feeling to the entire project.

I used photo shop to draw the scenes. For making realistic images, scenes with the roof of the Korean house and the one with the Korean traditional woman, I googled the pictures and put them as the background layers of the photo-shop, traced them, and re-touched them by using tablet and photo-shop effects; for the one with the traditional woman, I deleted the background layer with the original picture after the drawing and retouching process; I really like this scene since it really gives a dream-like feeling. Besides those two images, and the classroom scene, I used tablet ad various photo-shop effects to draw other scenes.

For the scenes with transformations, I used the method that I used for the previous power point project. As I was altering the images by using liquefying effect and tablet, I saved the image as a new file often so that I could get a flowing change from scene to scene.

Although this project took a lot of time, I was happy after I finished this project since I was really satisfied with the outcome; I love all the scenes and the music I put into it! :--)

My Final Project

Idea: I had a sketch of this monkey, inspired by Curious George. Instead of animating it in real speed, I wanted to slow it down. So every picture I drew, it has a trace of his previous movement. I used photoshop, so I can layer up all the frames. This movie consists 65 pictures in total.

Story: The first few second, he is just scratching his head. Then he gets attracted by a smell, so he decides to follow it. And it turns out that the smell is from FRIED CHICKEN! He loves fried chicken, so as soon as he sees it, his eyes turn in to hearts. But then he looks up and finds out that the chicken is from a super ugly female monkey who apparently likes him. Now he is in a dilemma. He doesn't want to leave fried chicken, but he does want to stay away from the ugly monkey. He thinks for a while, and figures out an idea. He pretends that he likes the female monkey by sending her flowers. The female monkey gets really excited. She drops the chicken and closes her eyes, expecting him to kiss her. But, instead of kissing her, he picks up the fried chicken on the ground and takes it away! Yay!

Final Project

Movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFkKyELUCKE



Idea: For my final project I knew I wanted to animate something with Flash. The last time I really animated anything was 2 years ago, because I haven't had the time or the correct software to do so. However, I decided this would be a good opportunity to get back into it.

Inspiration: Over winter break I wrote a song that had a very spacy out of this world feeling, and so I decided that it would be cool to animate a story to the song. I definitely tried to let the music flow with the story I was writing. I made many of the new scenes arrive on beat, and I think that helped add drama and excitement to the movie.

Story: The original song I wrote/am in the process of writing has words. I'm a Christian, and the song is about how Christians are supposed to understand that this world isn't really our home or all that their is. Our home is heaven, and we are only here temporarily. Sadly, in this temporary state bad things do happen, and many people won't like us because of what we stand for. However, it's alright. I guess my movie is an allegory for that.

The space man is a traveler from another world. He's gets to the new planet and makes a friend. The friend symbolizes a person who knows a Christian is a little different but isn't angry, dismissive, or confrontational in reaction to what they stand for. This person simply wants to know more.

So the spaceman and the alien begin to hang out. However, as they walk along, I show that the people who live on the planet are shocked by the space man. This is a metaphor for those who don't like Christians and the fact that Christians bring up the idea that this life (their planet) isn't all that exists.

Instead of getting to know the spaceman or hearing all that he could tell them about life beyond their planet, they decide to kill him.

I guess it is "A Sad End" because the movie shows that people, who could have been helped by what the spacemen told them or showed them, decided to hurt him instead.

Technique: Besides the song, which was made in Garage Band, I used Adobe Flash and a Pen Tablet to create this movie. I used motion and shape tweening for a lot of the movements.

When I first got into making the movie, I was disheartened by the number of walk cycles I would need to create to illustrate the story. However, once I got into it, it wasn't so bad. This was a fun experience. It has been a while since I've seen characters come to life, and I look forward to making more cartoons this summer.

These are not my final images as I altered some of them in power point.

Grass

Imagine this piece with Claude Debussy's The Little Shepherd.

This project was based on the work of Robin Rhodes. He uses paint or chalk to create an image on a wall or the ground and then, quite often, places himself in the picture and interacts with the image. His works are almost always sequential and usually have at least six or more images per piece. My piece is made up of 15 images, and instead of paint or chalk I used rope to create the two dimensional space that the actors interact with.

I wanted to follow the theme of relationships as we are nearing the end of a year at Duke. These series of images are loosely based on how people drift apart and come back together. Sometimes they never come back together, but I wanted this to have a happy ending. A girl and a boy meet and are happy with each other. Then they start to drift apart. The girl grows butterfly wings and starts to fly away. Afterwards the boy lassos her back in and they continue their relationship.

I added a cement block underneath to give the images some sense of grounding. It is clearly photoshopped, however, in a powerpoint presentation the illusion works fairly well because the viewer will (hopefully) be looking at the people and noticing their changes rather than studying the concrete, as one might with a still image. I chose black and red specifically to contrast with the green grass. The costumes of the boy and the girl also correlate. Wherever there is red on one person there is black on the other, with the exception of the belt of the boy and the fact that they both wear black shoes. The colors of the ropes are completely arbitrary--they were whatever I could get. I changed the contrast levels to bring out the colors more, however I was not able to make it so that my dress did not blend in with the shadow, which was very disappointing. I would have also liked the girl's wings to stand out more.

This project was very collaborative. Kirsty, my roommate, was very good at helping us position our bodies to aid the illusion. We spent many long exasperating minutes trying to figure out exactly what angle our feet should be. Jake was very good at recognizing movement and gave me the idea of being tugged from the middle down and helped me to determine who I should position my body. All in all, I had a lot of fun doing this project. It really showed me how people could work together to create something amusing and worthwhile and it helped me learn how to artistically direct (direct an art piece? direct artistically? be an artisitc director?).

Credits:
Photography-Kirsty Fang
Actors-Alex Young, Jacob Harer
Director/Photomanipulation-Alex Young

STOP ANIMATION DANCE FINAL

My project used stop animation. I originally was gonna use whiteboard animation, but I really like dancing and Micheal Jackson is one of my favorite entertainers of all time =.It came down to him or MC Hammer. I really enjoyed this project I used my Flip cam to record me dancing and then I took still snapshots, which came out to about 600 pictures in all. I used a Mac computer and use final cut pro to put all the clips, audio, and pictures together. Ever since I saw stop animation at the beginning of the semester I knew I was interested in attempting it. It was a fun project and really made me use my brain to figure out the illusion of clothes coming to me and defying gravity. I hope you enjoy and leave comments.

The Catch!

My final project is about a person on my football team that is trying to learn to catch. The main character of my project is named Pridemore, he is the character who gets afraid of the football that is thrown at him. The other characters in my project are My coach( wind blower), the wind, the fire and of course the football. The first part of the project is when one of my teammate throws a football that gets faster and faster the catches on fire and the other character gets afraid and paranoid. The faster the football gets the more paranoid the other character becomes. The football finally arrives to he Pridemore and hits him in the mouth.

The next part of my final project is then best part when my coach blows wind out of his mouth to take the fire away from the football. The action of the wind is like a unstoppable force in which develops speed. The wind continues to transfer as well as the fire of the football and turns into a mass force of wind. While Pridemore is trying to take the football out of his mouth, he sees that the wind that was blown is becoming faster and faster. The wind that is blown soon turns into a fist and knocks the Pridemore off his feet.




This project was fun and very funny when I presented it to my teammates. It took a long time but it was worth it.I hope you like it as much as I do!

Teletubby with ring girl

I got this idea when I was watching Ring. The original scene was the ring girl climbing out of tv.
so I figured I'll draw a teletubby instead of the tv to neutralize the scariness of the ring girl and the cuteness of the teletubby.
To connect my character with the ones next to it, I drew another ring girl climbing towards the dancing girl. The idea was the teletubby kept producing ring girls from his screen, and one of the ring girl turned into a dancing girl. On its left I drew a sun that was smoking cigar and emitting death rays onto the earth.

Adeeb's White Board Murals

When deciding on my final project, I considered the previous work we did this semester. I really liked all of them but I never felt as though I completed the mural project. I like to draw multiple pictures in order to tell my story and so I felt as though I could expand on that previous work. Since this was a new project, however, I wanted to try a new medium. Somehow the idea of drawing on the whiteboards in the Link got stuck in my mind. I talked with the people in charge of the Link and found it very difficult to hold a classroom (with the gigantic whiteboards) for drawing and so I had to use the group study room walls. As a result of this considerable
workspace decrease, I scripted the story of my mural as four separate stories. I wrote the story boards but I found them very difficult to draw. I just wasn't sure how well they'd transfer onto the whiteboard since my pencil drawings are detailed and have a gradient of black whereas dry erase markers aren't too precise and only make one solid color. Thus, I simply went into the study room and went to it.

As you will read below, my stories are centered on one person. I'd like you to look at the pictures to decipher the story and then read my written plot underneath. One of my goals was to make the drawn stories clear on their own (except for one) since most of my artwork has always needed extra explanation. The stylistic choice for the drawing was pretty simple. I focused on the typical white board doodles and went from there. I used some basic techniques to make the stories coherent. For example, I used linearity (the story moves left to right and up to down). I also used arrows and bubbles with pictures inside to convey the words.

One quick note--each story ends with a detailed drawing of the character after the story has taken place. Also, these stories are pretty dark so be warned.

Story 1: Adam



This is the story of Adam and his younger brother Aziz. When Aziz is born, he is immediately loved and taken care of by his brother Adam. The two have a very close relationship. However, as all children, they grow up quickly and move onto their own paths. Adam starts having trouble in high school and at home with his parents. Aziz recognizes this and reminds Adam back to their good old days. Adam, who never wanted to see his brother grow up, is touched and begins to do well again. Eventually, he moves to college. In his absence, tragedy strikes his family at home and they are murdered. Adam cries and pleads to God. His wish is fulfilled as the Grim Reaper then pays him a visit.

Story 2: James



This is really the story of James' mother. After finding out that she's pregnant, she tells her boyfriend who then abandons her. The loss of her boyfriend causes the mom to have an emotional breakdown. She goes to confessional to and realizes that she cannot have an abortion. Later, she is contacted by a mysterious man who offers to help her. He brings her into a lab where her baby is given a mysterious shot. After she gives birth to a baby boy James, the man returns and takes her baby away. The man is seen giving a presentation about US soldiers to a general while the newborn is kept in solitude. Later, after James grows older, he is moved in an army van. He looks outside to see a tower falling onto the people below. He takes the new age army suit and then breaks out of the truck to save all the people.

Story 3: Roy



Roy is a young misunderstood genius. He has no friends at school and he lives alone with his mother who is actually in a vegetative state. He has no one who consciously cares for him. One night, after a bad day at school, Roy cries on the stoop of his home. A man who's been following him for some time pulls a gun and kidnaps the boy. Roy wakes up to see a satanic cult surrounding him in the middle of a forest. He's cuffed, covered in pig's blood and thrown into a coffin. As they bury him alive, they chant to the devil. The story ends with the cult burning down the forest in which Roy is buried.

Story 4: Max



Max is the most popular guy in school. After beating his rival high school in basketball, his envious opponents decide to pull a prank on him. They sneak into his locker room and leave a message on his cell phone. Max reads the message, saying his friends will be meeting in the woods that night. Max shows up and is confused why no one is around. The thugs from his rival high school appear and chase him deep into the woods. Max loses them and stops to catch his breath. He hears a rumbling somewhere near. A savage looking wolf comes from the bushes and attacks Max. Max blacks out. He wakes up in a strange bed with a beautiful girl staring right at him. Note--visually, the end of Max's story is pretty confusing. I wanted to make it like that since Max is also very confused at this point.

Dishcotron

When we had to come up with a character for our pseudo-parade under the bridge, I immediately knew I wanted to create a robot character. My character is a robot dishwasher at a diner, who dreams of being a roller disco star. Thus, my robot is aptly named "Dishcotron". Dishcotron connects to the character on the left by dancing to the music the characters create, and connects to the character on the right by providing the port where the microphone for the character is plugged in.

Meiosis

When I had to sit down and think of an idea for our project of evolution, I decided to break it down as far as I could, which resulted in my depiction of the cellular division process of meiosis. I decided to keep the colors pretty mono-chromatic, to give the same feeling/look that a slide under a microscope does.

 

Run Recover

Since the beginning of the semester I wanted to make an accordion book of some sort.  I was inspired by the ones we passed around in class and an odd folding book about being a waitress that we discovered in the Rare Books Room.  

I had the what type of art idea in my head, but not a lot of creative ideas otherwise.  Like all of my projects I wanted to keep this final one close to my personality and interests.  One morning during a run I was brainstorming ideas for my accordion book and realized that there would be nothing better than illustrating a great run (one of my favorite things to do).  In addition, I could use the other side of the accordion to document a typical recovery- which for me involves cereal- after a long run I am never happier than when eating my Kashi Mighty Bites.  The idea just fell into place for me and I fell in love with it.  I could express something I love in a form that I think is really innovative and special.  In addition, running and recovering are both very sequential activities and the concept fits well into our course.

I started off with a mock-up or story board that went through each of the processes.  

RUN!

You stare at the clock when you wake up at 6am, and think, "yes!  time to hit the trail!", then you roll out of bed, change and tie up your shoes (Saucony XT-900s).  After that its just you and the trail, and maybe some plants and people in between.  The runner's watch shows 0:00 as she runs down her driveway and waves to her neighbor- shes heading to the trail across the road.  There are some big up-hills and big down hills, you can see the sun begin to rise as the runner's watch goes forward in time.  A rough hill, a map on the flat trail, lots of trees- this runner might be in a local park or forest (maybe its in the Duke Forest or in the South of Berlin).  She passes another early morning athlete as she takes another hill.  Once looking down to admire or check her gait- "is my stride long enough?  Keep up the pace!"  Then she emerges from the forest into a newly harvested wheat field.  Now she could be running on an old dirt road in Alberta or a trail in Kansas.  She can just catch a glimpse of a train in the distance, beyond the beautiful rolling cuts of wheat.  All she can think is "this is perfect, this is perfect!"  She keeps going and going, noticing the trees in the distance, nearing the end of  her loop.  Finally she's home, making her way up to her house- ready to refuel.  

RECOVER!

The first essential, get some carbs in your system, you need to be ready for cross training tomorrow afternoon.  You grab a pack of Gu- and down it with ease, letting the creamy strawberry-banana flavor warm your mouth and wondering if this strange product is actually healthy in any way.  The you down some much needed water- knowing the importance of staying hydrated.  Preparation for the most enjoyable meal of the day begins.  Grab the cereal, grab the milk, pour the cereal in the bowl, add milk to the mix, and chow down.  You always make sure you eat every last Mighty Bite!  Then it is essential to take your vitamins, making sure that you are getting all of the nutrients your hard working body requires.  You grab the pills and down them with another glass of water.  What comes next- a banana.  You keep your body finely tuned and always ensure you get your daily serving of fruits and vegetables.  After a hard run and good meal you are ready to give your body a little break.  You slip into your favorite sandals, grab a good book and put up your feet.  The perfect recovery.  

I didn't run into any problems when creating my book.  The art seemed to come so organically because I really had my heart in the theme.  I never had to think twice about what to include. 6am is generally my run start time- I'm a morning person like no other.   The forest was inspired by the areas I run in in Durham, the wheat field by my home, and the house by my own house.  The shoes are also mine- as is the watch (I own 2).  The image where the runner is looking down at her feet is a mirror of something I always do on a run- there is always that time when I look down to make sure everything is in check.  The recovery is also based on my own experiences (although I also would be eating some Gu on the run if it was an hour and a half long).  I always treat myself to Mighty Bites cereal post run, and there is always a banana involved at some point.  Unfortunately I often do not get to put up my feet and read post-run, but if I had the choice or the time, I would do it in an instant!

I also had fun putting the physical book together.  I have a square block of post-it notes in my room and used that as the pattern for each of my images.  They were easily cut with the paper cutter in the lab.  The accordion itself was created out of normal sheets of green construction paper that were bound together with glue on simple seams.  The book How to Make Books was very helpful in illustrating exactly how to put the accordion together.  I made sure to put a lot of weight on top of each glue piece in order to ensure that there was no bubbling or buckling of the paper.  This was very successful- I put the pieces between pages of a hardcover book and then wedged the hardcover underneath my bookshelf.  No buckling!  I got the inspiration for the cover from a book we were shown in class and that I was able to borrow (Thank you!) , called Yell-O: Names and Faces.  The book was bound almost like a normal book, but rather than a spine where every page was bound, the spine only bound the end of the accordion.  I loved this concept, and found some thick white glossy paper to be the cover.  I was able to fold it and glue in the accordion to create a fantastic finished product.  (All of my folds were made sharp by running a ruler over them!).   The title page of the book is very simplistic, but also symbolic.  It shows the title "Run Recover" in two very meaningful sequential arrays.  First is in a continuous square (or ring if you will) that shows they cycle.  If you love to run, after each recovery you will be back for another run, and then you will recover and run again, and this pattern will continue on forever in a loop.  There is also the bumpy road that the Run and Recover follow across the cover that show the ups and downs of the process, but also reveal that each time you get out there and run you are moving forward- paving your way into the future, opening up the possibility for that next run to be there.  

I am not quite sure where this idea came from. I think I was influenced by the fact that I am taking American Horror to fulfill a requirement, and watched Psycho earlier on in the semester. Whenever I look at the knife the Octopus is holding, the sound of the high pitched violins from the shower scene go round my head. I had a lot of fun working on this project. I did forget to finish drawing the left eyebrow, however. My section of the mural connects with the picture on the left as one of the tentacles actually goes into the frame and can be seen wrapping itself around the waist of the woman. The Octopus also connects with the picture on the right, the urban cowgirl, as one of the tentacles turns into the rope that she uses. Furthermore, the bubbles match the shape of the loop of the lasso.

Looking back at the photographs I think the octopus is too cute to be inherently evil. Nevertheless, the Octopus is a character that resonates with evil characters from horror comics-although it is not a serious character at all. It lurks around the streets at night, awaiting its victims. It carries a bloody kitchen knife and as it lollops towards you, you realize that no matter how many times you block the knife there will always be another arm coming at you. Its glowing red eyes haunts its victims for days until it finally decides to squelch along and strike its soppy blow.

"Stomp"

“Stomp” is all about movement. It illustrates the pressing hoof that drives deep into the soil. It reflects the conquering desire that wishes to see others tremble beneath one’s feet. It symbolizes the thrashing ambition of a generation that itches to sink its newly-grown tracks into the world. The piece represents the restlessness of the young, adult but unproven, hungry to change the world now that their opportunity has finally come. These are the youth out to prove themselves, to take the rewards they feel entitled to after all their years of restraint. Society bends and groans under each load of self-serving pride, but ultimately recovers when the children eventually mature and begin to care for others.

The character design in this mural piece takes these themes metaphorically. An unnamed, young male of impulsive energy stands tall above a waning globe, ready to strike with a stampeding foot. His dress gives way to his history; he wears a suit, broadcasting his supposed qualification after university to be a full part of society, but also shorts, to say that his childish side hasn’t given away. His posture is one of dominance, arms outstretched in a smug realization that his time has come. Below him is the victim of the stomp, a misshapen globe, showing the strain of society to accommodate this new force.


I chose this type of icon to reflect a realization of mine after some extensive volunteer work and observation in China. I was previously overflowing with a sense of superiority, of arrogance, of entitlement. After all, I was the forefront of a graduating class, a respected officer of multiple organizations, a limitless prospect attending a prestigious university. My goal had been simple-minded, single-tracked: to be rich, recognized for my talents as I finally had my way with the world. It was foolish. I was the obnoxious man stomping in the mural. To experience the struggle of people born to awful conditions, bound by shortages of necessities and opportunities, was a harsh lesson in values and prioritization to my life. I hope to shed the image presented in my mural so that eventually, those others will also have a real chance to be like their icons.