Contemporary Artist
There are so many choices i could’ve made, but as i’m continuing to think about my work this semester, the work of Masaaki Yuasa is specifically coming to mind with how i want to proceed. Masaaki Yuasa is a Japanese animator and director. His style is iconic for it’s tendency to vary widely between projects and even vary in the project if needed to exaggerate something for the story. Even in the variations, his projects usually look very different from other anime, using more simplistic character designs that lend themselves more easily to exaggerating and abstracting. I’ve always been a big fan of surrealism in art and animation , but I usually feel too nervous to actually attempt it, but the more i thought about my idea for an escapist paradise, I realized that exaggeration was needed to make the project read as i want it to. If i depicted more or less as just a giant theme park, i’m not sure how well this would translate my idea. If you’re not feeling every sense like you would being in an actual theme park, heightening every element of the experience translates the feeling of total escapism better. I really admire how any of the weirdness in Yuasa’s projects only add and don’t distract, which i imagine would be easy to do. I will try to take inspiration and find a relatively simplistic style that can still show off emotion and be easily exaggerated for effect.
First concept painting
How to be an artist
This article written by Jerry Saltz and the ideas within certainly line up with my experience of being an artist. Besides any specific advice about more traditional/ gallery focused work, a lot of his big ideas about being an artist definitely connected with me. My biggest issue with art certainly is confidence, and comparing the uneasy feeling of making art to being indecently exposed made a lot of sense to me. It also seems helpful to think about it that way, because I always assumed my negative impulses while creating were 100% objective, and not just a natural impulse of insecurity. Like any other feeling of embarrassment it can be grappled with. As far as the steps he listed, while i definitely see that I’ve progressed somewhat through the system he describes, I definitely didn’t do it linearly. For a few years I was firmly on lesson 7, trying to get practice by drawing things over and over, but I had pretty much skipped all of part one. I was always embarrassed of my work, only showing it when asked. I saw aesthetics I loved in the artists I surrounded myself with, but thought that even looking at other work before drawing would make me a hack fraud. However currently I feel like I’ve accepted or at least am beginning to understand the first step. I’m hoping after reading this i can think of lesson 5 more. I spend way more time thinking about drawing than actually doing it, so I now see the best way to avoid doing that is just to instantly start working.
What is art?
Of all the given definitions of art in the video, I agree most with the ones about expression. The video gives some quotes about the passion and emotion of artistic expression, which i agree is a component, but also i think art can just be a way we flush out our minds for new ideas. I know i personally always have nonsensical thoughts floating around and expressing some of them in some way in reality helps with the mental clutter. One quote given claims that even ideas that are never realized are art, but i think that the creation of something tangible or visible, or audible, or somehow being able to be perceived by others is what makes something art and not an idea. An unshared idea can only ever have an audience of one. Even a painting that’s immediately thrown off a cliff has a possibility of being seen by others. That possibility makes it art. Also the compromise of the idea is essential to art. Art can interpret an idea, but it can’t replicate it. Ideas aren’t tangible and constantly change in our mind, versus when realizing a piece of art you have the limitations of your materials, your skill, and the fact you have to make specific decisions. The variation that naturally happens I think is a big appeal of art, the style of the piece. Any art be it dance, music or in between is not an exact adaptation of the idea or ideas that sparked it.
further development
Last week we discussed further pushing the aspect of this escapist wonderland having noticeable cracks and being a temporary escape that’s hiding a wasteland. I’ve been trying to put this new direction into my ideas for scenes. I’ve also been taking this opportunity to practice storyboarding, trying to quickly and cleanly communicate shot comp and content.
The importance of showing the employees has kept coming up in my ideas so this is my current design for a uniform that will make them stick out from crowd, to highlight that they don’t get to fully escape.
