Typography

For our next tech assignment we have to create a kinetic typography video. The content of the majority of these videos are famous speeches or quotes from movies or T.V shows. While I was researching for what the content of my project I was stuck between two speeches. One was Soylent Green and the other was William Wallace's speech (0:46-1:31). In the end i decided to do William Wallace's speech first of all because it is inspiring but to also represent my heritage.

Now that I had my content I needed some inspiration so I watched many kinetic typography videos on youtube. Some were good, some weren't. My two favourite were Size Matters Not and The Breakfast Club Moving Type. I liked these two because unlike most of the other ones you could almost always see all the words of a sentence instead of constantly overlapping the other words. My favourite part of Size Matters Not was at 0:31 when it zooms out and the type looks like the handle of a lightsaber. My favourite part of The Breakfast Club Moving Type was from 0:42-0:46 because the artist makes a entire sentence and turns it into a square using different font sizes. I also need to pick a background and I have yet to decide this. I was thinking of something along the lines of old parchment paper. Storyboarding this is hard because pencil and paper are static while the final product will be moving.

I will be sure to post the final video once I finish.

Space Art

So I recently bought the game Mass Effect 2. Definitely one of my favourite games ever. One of my favorite parts of the game is oddly the Galaxy map. It started to make me think of not only The Milky Way but also other galaxies and how each one looks totally different. Obviously the ones in the game are not all real but they are still amazingly crafted. After finishing the game I looked up some space art and was awed at the complexity and details of it.

I found one artist on deviantart who’s work is absolutely amazing. I think Space Lane II is by far one of his best pieces. After looking at other peoples stuff I decided I would try my own. Not as easy as it looks. So far I have completed one decent planet,half a nebula, and a star field. For a beginner I think they are awesome. Here are some of the tutorials I used.

El Anatsui

El Anatsui is a world-renowned sculptor and professor. He was born 1944 in Anyako a small fishing town in Southern Ghana. His work has been shown in many prestigious art galleries around the world. His most recent works are dazzling metallic tapestries made from liquor bottle tops. His work is currently on view at the AGO, and his metal-cloth series and sculptures in wood, ceramic, and mixed media will be part of the world premiere of the artist’s first-ever career retrospective at the ROM. Some of his tapestries resemble kente cloths which is a celebrated type of strip-woven-cloth popular in Ghana and all of Africa.

He has used many different mediums throughout his career including wood and clay. Only recently has he begun to use liquor bottle tops. His bottle cap cloths are shown at such a large scale so that viewers can see the detail and perseverance he has put into his work. I personally like how he was able to show such a firm and useless material into something so majestic and beautiful.

Anatsui used ideas he mastered while creating his first works with metal for his installation titled Gli. This demonstrates the change of Anatsui's artistic vision. Anatsui has turned his creative spirits to the idea of a wall. His idea is that walls and barriers are "something that can close you in" but keeps people on both sides of the divide curious. Walls taunt the individual to jump mentally over the wall to picture what is on the other side.

I have seen his work in the AGO and found it ough inspiring. The craftsmanship involved to make something so inspiring made me think how one man could so something so meticulous. I find all of his work very creative and jaw dropping. I can not wait to work with him at the ROM I believe it is going to be something I remember for the rest of my life.