Sequential Time: Playing Piano Animation

Animators can make an animation scene come alive by simply manipulating one of the parts of the entire drawing. I attempted to do just that by only manipulating the fingers in this animation.

I drew the piece using only charcoal, and erased and redrew the fingers; each time photographing a different position to make the animation look sequential.

I wish I had paid attention also to the shadows below the fingers on the thighs; I think manipulating those as well would've added more to then overall production.

Graphic Novel: African Hair Story

A graphic novel is challenging and takes time to create, but I enjoyed working on this. I used Illustrator to illustrate pictures of myself and InDesign to lay the comic strip out.

I decided to focus on illustrating a story about my hair. Every morning, I wake up wondering how to style my hair for the day. Girls of African descent have naturally kinky or curly hair that takes time and proper maintenance to be maintained. I decided to illustrate a simple cartoon of myself managing my hair.

Inspired somewhat by Scott McCloud, I attempted to use action-to-action and scene-to-scene progressions to show time passing.

Looking back, I wish I had spent more time on this really developing the illustrations. I would like to turn this into more than a two-page spread. I am especially proud of the design of the cover: I think it looks very African.

Time Documentary: Storyboard

The life of an art student is often stereotyped; and as is often with stereotypes, no one really knows all that art students do.  Do art students really draw all the time? Do they dress differently from other kids of students? Do they have work in unorganized workspaces? Do they really not sleep? In our documentary, not only do Ishita and I hope to address all the amusing stereotypes of how an art student lives, we also hope to complete them by showing how art students actually find ways to better the world we live in.

Time Map

The Sandwich
We go by performing our daily actions without thinking of their processes. We tie our shoelaces. We drink our tea. We wash our hair. We do these things to get them "done"; but are never quite present during the "doing". I chose to photograph an act as simple as making myself a sandwich. I took quite twenty photographs in sets of twos, the photo to the left showing my hand doing the action, such as adding lettuce, cheese or dressing, and the photo on the right showing the finished action. Going through the process and taking time to stop and take photographs made me spend more time on making the sandwich and eating it afterwards was equally satisfying.

Long/Short Time

The Flame Tree
Over the years, as time passes by, we see progression and changes. Old technology is left on the shelves. The elderly remember the good old days. Children are hopeful for the future which seems far away. One example of change in time is the way we provide light for ourselves when it is dark. Back in primitive age, fire was used as a source of light. I wanted to create a tree that was burning, but instead of using fire I wanted flames to be represented by our technology for providing light today: lightbulbs. The first picture are the branches at the early stages of catching "fire" and the second picture shows how the flames have spread.

Time Lapse

Colorless Conversations
My roommate and my two suitemates are very outgoing people. I am very introverted. I often sit in my room alone working with my laptop sipping tea while they chat away in our common room/living area. Sometimes they have friends come over. Most of these friends are boys from The New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music. Last week, my suitemate Kayla's friend Eli came over and I was very interested in their conversation. So I set up my camera and took pictures of them talking. They talked about Facebook friends, Zac Efron's nipples, etc. I noticed that my suitemate Kayla moved around a lot when she talked. She braided her hair. She sipped her tea. She threw her head back when she laughed. Eli, on the other hand, sat in the same position and did nothing more than stroke his chin and crouch down to laugh a few times. I shot this conversation in black and white because I wanted the livelihood of this odd yet amusing conversation to be the 'color' the photographs.