Ageing 2

A more sophisticated approach to the same concept as last post, but not created so truthfully (the individual frames are taken from several individuals of the same family unlike Noah's ageing, which is genuine.

Danielle from filmmaker Anthony Cerniello

"Last Thanksgiving, Cerniello traveled to his friend Danielle’s family reunion and with still photographer Keith Sirchio shot portraits of her youngest cousins through to her oldest relatives with a Hasselblad medium format camera. Then began the process of scanning each photo with a drum scanner at the U.N. in New York, at which point he carefully edited the photos to select the family members that had the most similar bone structure.
Next he brought on animators Nathan Meier and Edmund Earle who worked in After Effects and 3D Studio Max to morph and animate the still photos to make them lifelike as possible. Finally, Nuke (a kind of 3D visual effects software) artist George Cuddy was brought on to smooth out some small details like the eyes and hair The final result is pretty remarkable, if a little bizarre. Not quite out of the uncanny valley, and yet pause the movie at any moment and it feels like you’re looking at a plain portrait. While it plays the transitions are just slow enough that you’re only vaguely aware anything is happening. It’s amazing as it is weird. He tells me via email: I wanted to make a person, I felt like I could tell a story with that, but it ended up feeling slightly robotic, like an android. I’m OK with that. Things never come out the exact way you plan them, but that’s the fun. The score I imagined would tell this woman’s life, with events speeding by as she aged, but in the end I thought it would be more interesting to go with an abstract piece of sound, and my friend Mark Reveley really came through because I love how it sounds

Cerniello normally edits commercials and music videos for the likes of 30 Seconds to Mars and Kings of Leon, you can see much more of his work over on his website.

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/09/aging-timelapse-anthony-cerniello/

Ageing - The accelerated self portrait of Noah Kalina

In November 5th 2008 I posted a video by Noah Kalina called EVERYDAY, where he photographs himself everyday for 6 years and then accelerates the photos to create a stop motion film of himself ageing.

 Today I found an updated version of the film EVERYDAY UPDATED.

 another 6 years...........

Time flies!

Threading the Patio

Dear followers, occasional visitors, students and colleagues,

 I have been away for a few days and am not functioning at high speed at the moment (please forgive the summer rhythm) but today I stumbled upon a few images of an Arts Festival that happened in 2008 at St. Julian's. If memory doesn't fail me, we didn't have an activities week as organised as we do now and we had a whole day arts related festival.
 I was responsible for conducting a workshop of paper and wire sculptures in the patio of the Palacio. After a few sessions I noticed we were accumulating a serious amount of interesting and delicate sculptures and I started thinking.....where am I going to hang all these??

So it came to me. We will thread the patio and hang everything on thread! Logical.
We used trees and windows to connect the cotton thread all over the patio. See below:

This was an ephemeral effort, a lot of the sculptures flew away quickly, but the effect was very good. The patio remained like this for a couple of days, covered by a giant spider's web. The cotton was slightly elastic and gave in slowly. The hight of the lines dropped until everybody had to zigzag above and below lines and knots. Very amusing....even if probably not the best idea in terms of health and safety!!!!!!  

Punching clay

Plaster of Paris, a lump of fresh clay and a good "macro" lens:

These experiments were made by Mariana, one of our year 12 students.

Black, white and the paper in the middle...

One of the most effective ways of teaching our young pupils how to observe light and shadow when looking at three dimensional objects and then how to reproduce that observation onto a drawing is the following:

 - Use black and white drawing materials (chalk and charcoal work very well)
 - Work on coloured paper (make sure the colour is lighter than the black and darker than the white material you draw with).
 - Draw only the darkest shadows and the lightest spots of light.
 - Always leave paper in between the black and the white.

 Et Voilà!

A series of drawings by year 8 students (I swear!):

The simplest printing method

Sometimes the simplest methods can lead to the most exciting results. Below are a couple of prints (please forgive the bad quality photos, but they were the only ones I could find) make by simply inking objects (leaves) with a roller and squashing them in the etching press. They were made by year 8 students. You should only use flat and reasonably soft objects for this kind of experiment or you might damage the press in the process.