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In this week, we had to get together in groups of 6 our second group project. We were briefed on what an ‘artist book’ is, and how we could turn our creative interpretation of Elephant and Castle’s origins into our own artist book. My group and I decided to use the natural surroundings of Elephant and Castle in order to explain our interpretation of the origins. We used the leaves outside of the college as our ‘paper’ and drew our story on them using a white-out pen and regular ink pens.

The basis of our story was to create something more along the lines of a children’s short story. A family of royal elephants call upon their fox jester to provide entertainment for their heir, to which the heir doesn’t enjoy at all. The king – in a fit of rage, dismisses the jester, who becomes both upset and angered. The jester plants bombs underneath the elephant’s palace, and sets them off in order the kill the family as a form of revenge. Getting away with this, the family have statues made in memorial, as other foxes watch one.

As this was a one-day project, my group felt like this would be very challenging! However, when we saw the autumn leaves, we knew that could be an essential part of our project, and everything went upwards from there. We were able to make up a story and once again worked well as a team together. This project was fun and beneficial as it helped me think on my toes about something I had not put much thought into before.

During this class, we had to go outside on a 30 minute walk and take in our surroundings, whilst also making markings in our sketchbooks of what we see, feel or hear, in an abstract or non-abstract way.

I live in an area with a lot of greenery and houses, granted that I live on the border of London! There are not many stores around other than a supermarket, general store and pet shop, and the area is fairly peaceful and quiet around the time of day I took the walk. However, I noted that the Autumn leaves were surprisingly bright in my area in comparison to more central areas of London, so I made that the most prevalent aspect of the map.

This short walk was very helpful in pushing me to focus more on my surroundings beyond sight! I tried to tune into the sounds I could hear, the feeling of the cold chill from the air, or the noises my shoes would make against the fallen leaves.

For this week in ‘Introduction to Animation’ we had to team up in groups of five, and take a trip to two or more art galleries. From the galleries, we had to agree on one artist that uses objects within their work (and also interested all of us), and create a 20 second animation that is in reaction to their art paired with a PowerPoint.

The artist that we chose is Mark Dion, who piqued our curiosity the most due to his rather political approach to art, and his questioning of pseudosciences. I was particularly interested in his piece ‘Tate Thames Dig’, 1999. Below is the animation that my group and I created together.

The ‘making’ of the group was not too challenging! Our group worked very well together and were also organised. We initially started off with writing a short biography of Dion to get a better grasp of his work. We then proceeded with planning and researching (including making a moodboard). Using the moodboard for inspiration, one of our group members created a base animation, and the rest of us animated over it.

The project was a rather fulfilling experience. It was nice to work in a group for the first time for a more lengthy project, as everyone contributed in equal amounts, and we were able to create the animation smoothly. It was very new for me to create an animation based off of an object artist but that was a very small obstacle!

Here is a link to our presentation below!

https://bit.ly/3Gil2T4

The first task we had to do to start ‘Introduction to Animation’ was collate 20 random pictures of 20 different objects that don’t have a special connection to ourselves. Using these images, we had to sort them into a sequence that forms a brief narrative. Pictured below are the 20 images that I took!

The objects were not taken with any story in mind, and I was only able to form a narrative after taking all pictures as I wanted the task to be challenging. I noticed that I have a lot of vintage items in my assortment, along with two coffees and two food items. From this, I made a story about two people that are sitting down and enjoying their breakfast, which is interrupted as they travel through different moments in time, collecting trinkets both small and large as they go along. They are ordered in what I would assume came latest, to earliest.

This project was quite the challenge! I had never created a narrative using this method, but it helped me think outside of the box, and make a concept without following too closely to what I am generally used to.