Laura Aldrich

2010-04-25T18:32:00.000-07:00

Since its getting close to the end of the year, I thought some of the projects I've completed apart from IDM. So, here are lots of pics from my 3-D design projects :)

Animation Complete :)

2010-04-18T18:28:00.000-07:00

Here is my animation...

I have titled it "The Picture Unfolded" because the concept behind it is that every picture has a story behind it. So...publically, a picture is just a picture, but privately, each picture conveys different things to different people.

2010-04-12T19:50:00.000-07:00

Well... for my animation project I am going do an entirely papercut animation.

My story starts out with a young girl drawing a picture of a castle with a princess and a knight...then, the images start to move 2-dimensially...and then as the knight nears the castle, the castle pops up into 3-D, flowers pop up near the castle, and the knight pops into 3-D...the rescue of the princess from the castle is then played out in the 3-D papercut world and after the rescue, the castle falls back into 2-D as does the rest of the figures.

The concept and how this relates to the theme of public vs. private is the focus of a child's imagination. I believe imagination is a private thing and unique to the individual, but the girl chooses to portray her imagination publically in a drawing, therefore sharing her imagination, as many artists do.

Here are some of the figures and papercuts I finished today. I didn't get as far as I would have liked...but oh well :/

2010-02-23T20:43:00.000-08:00

I found two sound installations I thought were interesting from the same artist, Juhasz Marton Andras. His work seems to deal a lot with technology and/or plant life. He focuses on the conceptual idea of how technology has come to rule our lives and how we don't really stop stop to think what it really is or what we're getting into.
http://nilseuropa.com/projects.htm

Two pieces of his really caught my eye. The first one, titled "iGarden", was made planting seeds within an old computer. As the seeds grow into grass, the water that seeps into the computer electrolizes it and those electromagnetic fields change along with the growth of the grass. Somehow, some electrical process, he amplifies the sounds in the electromagnetic field to fill the entire room. The second piece I liked is called "Where is Your Art". He skinned down robots, attached speakers to them, and manipulated them is such a way that they speak live twitter posts about art as people walk into the room. I especially like this one because he is asking the questions of who is really speaking and where is it all really coming from.

I'm not really sure if this last installation counts as a sound installation, or if it really pertains to the type of sound we are discussing, I think its more interactive, but it made me laugh to watch people's reactions.
http://www.accessproject.net/archive.html

It's called ACCESS and its an interactive public art installation that allows users on the web to "track" people, or targets, in public places with a robotic spotlight. It also projects an audio beam that only the person being tracked is able to hear. This audio beam tells the person to walk in different directions, entertain, etc, but only they can hear it and the person is completely unaware that the surrounding people cannot hear the voice talking to them. The person on the web is unaware that there is a voice telling their trackee to move around, creating a communication problem among them both.

I just thought that this installation was hilarious and loved how it could be interactive for people that weren't even in the area where it is currently installed. I think the whole audio beam thing is really clever. The concept behind the ACCESS project goes along with survelliance and human's fascination with watching people(such as celebrities).

"Quotes"

2010-02-21T17:44:00.000-08:00

For this project, I wanted to find quotes that kind of represent my life philosophies, what I want my life to mean and what I want to do in life. I found a tutorial online about placing text along a path which allowed me to arrange the quotes in such a way that they went where I wanted them to(which I was having trouble with before). Each quote has a slightly different meaning, but they do connect to each other which is what I tried to show thought the image of the sun, rays, and flower.

The first quote (in the sun) is: "We've got to learn hard things in our lifetime, but that gives you the strength, its being nice to people, and having a lot of fun and laughing harder than anything, hopefully every single day of your life."- Drew Barrymore

My meaning behind this quote is that life does have its struggles, but its learning to fully enjoy life, to laugh and to love, that give it its meaning.

The second quote (in the sun's rays) is: "Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life." -John Lubbock Sr.

I had never heard of this quote before, but as soon as I found it I had to include it into this piece, because art really does color life. It colors life through expression and feeling, it adds the vibrancy to a world that would otherwise be quite dull.

The last quote I found was from Abraham Lincoln: "Die when I may, I want it said of me that I plucked a weed and planted a flower wherever I thought a flower would grow."

I want to leave a legacy within my lifetime. As Lincoln says, we have the ability to change things, the ability to impact peoples lives, to make things better. I want to make people's lives better, even if that may only be to give them pretty art to look at.

Vector Exercise

2010-02-10T09:16:00.001-08:00

This was completely an experiment...I played around with that warp swirl tool, and I think I got a bit too carried away with it. Originally I began with a "W" which composed the large base shape. I began adding white

info signs from the webdings font and then added lots and lots of alternating black and white "g"'s, swirling them every which way. At some point the swirls began to overtake the picture...

This second image came about through more experimentation. I used the webdings font again and utilized the bike symbol. Squishing it and overlapping it created the repetitiv

e line pattern in the back. Then, I created a large thick "A" and through various warp tools and copy and paste, I ended up with two furry like blobs. I tried to create a sort of asymmetrical balance with the larger blob diagonally placed across from the small blob.

Time Travelling

2010-02-06T16:07:00.000-08:00

For my photo montage project I decided on the subject of the light rail. I ride it, in combination with my bike, to and from school everyday, and have come to rely on it and enjoy just being able to watch the scenery go by. I didn't want to have just a collection of images put together, rather I wanted my image to be a bit more organized and I really wanted the main focus to be on that of the moving light rail. I used pictures taken in the morning, afternoon, and at sunset overlaying them and changing up the opacity until I was happy with the effect I was getting. And, if you notice, I attempted to recreate a reflection in the window of the light rail with some of my pictures.

Time and place are especially evident to the light rail. Although each specific train comes and goes every ten minutes, the stations stay put. I tried to capture a bit of this concept by taking pictures at only the 44th street stop portraying the light rail, blurry and moving, a slave to its schedule, and the station only changing with account to the time of day.

Faded Portraiture

2010-01-27T07:49:00.000-08:00

My narrative portrait is composed of multiple pictures from the last three or four years of my life; pictures of my accomplishments (graduation), travels (Japan, Costa Rica, Disneyland :)...), friends, and family, ultimately pictures of who I am and the experiences that have built me up. I experimented with the opacity levels using the pattern of my backpack as an added part of my portrait. This backpack as been almost everywhere I have, and with so much use, and exposure to the Arizona sun, is beginning to fade. It holds about as many memories as the pictures, and it saddens me that it isn't as vibrant as it once was. My memories are fading into the past as well, so I must continue to walk forward, to create new memories, and ultimately live life to the fullest.

I'm a bit disappointed as my image seems a bit grainier than I would have liked. :(

Intro Questions

2010-01-20T08:41:00.000-08:00

What is art?

Art is a visual expression of concepts, ideas, or feelings. To me, art is my way of creating and storytelling. I have never been a good public speaker. It's difficult for me to translate my ideas into words, but art allows me to make a picture or explore a concept without having to speak, necessarily.

Inspirations:

Most of my ideas and inspiration come from life;I love to visually portray everyday occurrences with new light, through my eyes. I have always been inspired by older animation such as the old classic Disney cartoons, and would love if that type of work would come back into style. Also, Pixar's use of storytelling and incredibly unique, quirky ideas are amazing and have a whimsicalness to them which is a quality I admire and try to add into my art.

A few artists I like are:

Dan-ah Kim

Lou Romano

Nate Wragg

Why I am Taking This Class

I would love to enter a career in the animation industry, getting into conceptual design, storyboarding, or character design. Of course, in these times, digital experience is mandatory for almost any job in that field. I believe this class will definitely benefit me in the long run, as I really have very little experience digitally. I work primarily with traditional media, so I'm excited to learn new techniques and see where that takes my art.