Initial ideas

 Today I am going to go through my initial ideas for the set project. For this term's set project we were given 3 themes which are: Oriental Surprise, Primitivism and Ultimate Black. 

I started my ideas generation process by creating a mind map to see what Ideas come to mind when I think about those themes and my project.

This brainstorm mind map is definitely messy but it illustrates my thought process when coming up with an idea or a few ideas. Generally I started by establishing what I want to create this term. Last term I did a set of characters and then created a GIF for each of the characters, in the first term in Digital Arts, I have created an animation. The process of creating the animation was very long and difficult but I really like the outcome. I would like to improve on animating because that is what I am passionate about and I know I am still lacking a lot of skills in that area. 

When I established I want to go with an animation for which I will also create posters (since I need 4 2D outcomes and a 3D outcome). As I mentioned in my welcome post, I want my animations to carry a m

Oriental Surprise. The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about asian animation is anime but I personally really do not like anime therefore I do not even want to begin there. The asian culture though is very beautiful; I have a friend from Japan, her name is Mayu and few years ago she explained the Japanese culture to me and the idea of respect towards older people. I was not aware that if I am a year older than Mayu, Mayu needs to show me respect because I am older than her. It does not matter that it is just a year difference. I think it is something beautiful and interesting to dig in and get more information about their culture in general. Here is a picture of me and Mayu at an International conference in 2018:

I think this theme could possibly be a starting point for creating an animation about international friendship and global citizenship. I think this is something I know a lot about but I am not sure on creating a storyline on it. It is just a thought though. 

The other thing I thought about was the recent discrimination towards asian people. The discrimination and hate directed at Asians is caused by the Coronavirus being brought from China. People all over the world are throwing hate at Asians for spreading the virus, even though it is not their fault. I thought about this issue and how I could maybe present it in an animation using the oriental visuals. I think it is an interesting idea and it would definitely spread awareness of an existing problem. Trying to create a storyline that would show this issue is like walking on thin ice, because it is not difficult to cross the line and accidentally get the opposite result of the one I wanted to. It is tricky and I do not know if I want to take that risk. I think that in the future years I will get more sense of making sure works I make are politically correct and are not offensive towards anyone, but as of right now I am not sure if I have that ability yet and as much as I am working on it by informing myself about different ways people can get hurt by art, for example culture appropriation, I am not sure if this is a challenge I am ready for this term. 

Of course it would not be difficult to make a strictly informative video on a problem like this one, but creating a storyline is more of a challenge, because for the storyline I need to present two sides of the situation. 

Moving on to the next theme, which as of right now is my favorite now, Ultimate Black. At first I did not want to go and experience with the color again. I do see color as an important part of animation, but I also do not want to be monothematic and only create when basing on color. At the same time though I came up with an idea for an animation that would be perfect for this theme. 

The theme being: Ultimate Black - color of the night. Made me generally think of night and day and what they represent. I thought about kids who are scared of the dark. I thought about adults being their true selves at night because that is when no one is looking at them and no one is judging them. What came to my mind is a pop song by Camila Cabello called 'In the Dark', click here to listen to the song on Spotify. The song is generally about asking a person to show who are they in the dark, so who are they when no one is looking and they are their true selves. Even speaking from experience, the night is the moment I am by myself and no one is judging, I can be watching meaningless shows online or I could be crying myself to sleep, or I could be creating art when no one is looking. That is just what night is. Some people sleep, some are discovering their true selves. 

When I was in middle school we were reading one of my favorite books that I even mentioned last term, and that is 'The Little Prince'. I still remember that on a test on this book there was a question to interpret a quote and I got the maximum points and a smily face for my interpretation. The quote was:

"You know…when one is so terribly sad, one loves sunsets." 

(Saint-Exupery, 1947).

I understand this quote as an announcement that the night is coming, so a person who is really sad does not have to deal with the day anymore. They can cry because no one is looking, they do not have to act strong anymore. At the same time it also mean the day is ending, therefore a new day will start and a new day is always a new beginning. The night is the end of something and a start of something new, it is the moment of change. 

I personally see it as just this moment when a person does not have to pretend anymore. 

I can see myself creating an awareness animation that would tell a story of a character who has this perfect life and everyone sees them as so happy, but when the night comes, the mask can be taken off and the person can be allowed to cry and to breakdown and just to stop playing a hero the entire time. I think that often young people do not understand that the people they see online and are jealous of, also have problems, also cry and need help. There is this weird stereotype that if a person is generally lucky and have many different things and opportunities that others would dream of, that this person does not have a reason to be sad, which could not be more wrong. 

I think this is an interesting way to approach a color. It is completely different than what I did last term and I really do like this idea. I might work on it and develop it more as I go because it seems to me like a project I would personally highly relate to. 

The third theme is Primitivism and to be completely honest I am not particularly drawn to this theme. I know it is really broad and there are many different options of what can be created but I just do not get as excited about this theme as I get about the other themes. 

I was thinking of using simple shapes for my character designs for an animation to be maybe inspired by Picasso and cubism and generally that geometric approach since I like mathematics and geometry a lot. I was thinking of maybe creating an educational video on history or mathematics that would be explained visually with the use of simple shapes. I can see how it would be an interesting project and how I would enjoy making it, but it would be strictly educational and I could have a storyline for it, but I am not sure if I like it or not. 

I can see how the history animation would be aimed at children and the mathematics would be more complex. I can see it all working out with me designing a 'teacher' that would be potentially holding a class and it all would be animated. It would also fill in the trends nowadays with the online schooling that is not very good in some places. 

It could be a fun project to work on, but I am not personally persuaded. 

These are my ideas as of right now. I think I have some solid ideas that I could develop and create a really good project from. 

Reference List

Saint-Exupery, A. (1947), The Little Prince, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock.