Final Major Project 2012

As my last Major Project for the uni, I wanted to continue and in a way 'develop' what I originally started on the 2nd year of my study, with the 'Magnetic Man' Stop Motion video clip I made.

This time I am making a video clip for band XX-'Heart Skipped a Beat'; I decided the particular song has an interesting combination of electronic sounds mixed with beautiful vocals that have a distinctive tone to them.

Made my own Timeline of the song; I've divided the song into 6 categories <male vocals/ female vocals/ elect. guitar/ harp/ bass/ synthesiser> and marked each part of those categories precisely as the song unfolds, from beginning to end.

Doing my research on Abstract Film Artists; Walter Ruttmann, Hans Richter, Oscar Fischinger, Len Lye  among many others.

I'm doing some research around colour combinations and the connection of certain colours to musical tonalities and pitches. Research goes back to greek philosopher Aristotle and has some interesting points from both scientists and artists.
The information I got is something I could potentially use to illustrate certain musical categories of the song.

Meanwhile, I'm looking at microscopic images from a Science and Art Project of collaborative disciplines called 'BROAD VISION'. I've been taking part in this project since the beginning of February 12' and there is a great material of all sorts of images including insects, human organs, and plants. The texture, shape and colour variation could be something worth checking out for my Major project. http://www.broad-vision.info/

More research. Looking at two books right now, 'See this sound: Audiovisuology Compendium'/ Dieter Daniels and 'The Edge of Vision'/ Lyle Rexer 

Beginning some experimental work. Inspired by Len Lye's 'A colour box' 1953 cameraless film, I wanted to make my own version by using a developed film strip, which I scratched and painted on top using acrylics, black, blue markers, and a white correction pen.

The results were quite interesting; The shapes I made seemed to move in a musical way while the film was rolling. In a way it seems the movement suggests the beat of a song.

The process of making the video. Since the method of playing the film strip was dated back to black and white film, we had to use one of the old machines, in which the film department of the university of Westminster were more than helpful to assist me.

Experimenting with SCHLIEREN PHOTOGRAPH, with the help of photography student, Danny Garside http://da5nsy.tumblr.com/ 

Below, there are four videos taken by Danny Garside which are used as experimental work for my project. 

The first experiment was made by capturing the thermal plume of a lighter. Light was projected from a single source on to a mirror, which reflects the light onto a straight surface (cardboard). The lighter was placed in front of the mirror and managed to capture the flowing movement of fire.

In the second part of the experiments we tried to capture the fumes of the lighter using again a single source of light. Two lenses are placed on a calculated distance in front of the light source. The first lens works as a controlling mechanism of the light beams projected by the light source. The light beams are originally going through multiple directions; the first lens fuses them and directs them into parallel lines. The 2nd lens concentrates the parallel light beams into one focused direction. The result is concentrated light.
We place the object in front of the 2nd lens and the projection appears on a cardbroad.
The different colours are achieved by placing coloured lenses.

Photographers Rob and Nick Carter, tend to take high detailed photographs of the layered textures of paint.
Inspired by their work I thought I could experiment with colours, layers and thick paint textures while taking photographs of the outcome. I spent my day at the printing studio applying and mixing printing ink onto flat plastic surfaces. My goal was to capture certain colour combinations and movements of the ink that would represent certain musical combinations and interact with each other, based on the previous research I did on 'Colour Combinations' (see above).

I divided the mixtures into 6 categories based on textures and movement of the ink.
                                    cat.1

cat.2

                               cat.3

cat.4

                                                                 cat.5

cat.6                                            

Thursday 22 March/2012.                                                                                                                            

Today I'm shooting the 'inky' part of the video clip'; meaning the vocal parts. I'm spending my entire day in the photography studio capturing the movement of ink when dissolved in water and when squashed by transparent tracing paper. This is very slow STOP MOTION process but it will be worth the time and effort.

Thursday 29th March/2012

Still working on my final video. It's been a hectic week but I managed to make some interesting colour combinations using ink and water. I thought since the vocals in the song, are the 'inky' part and since there seems to be a sort of 'dialogue' between them, I tried to illustrate that dialogue using, movement, form and colour; always in comparison to one another. Have a look 

  

Done with editing ! Finally managed to put the video together and divide the parts depending on when each part (vocals, electric guitar, harp, drum and bass) comes in and out in the song.

Final Video. Enjoy:)

Another version of the same video.

'BBC PROJECT'/2011

So BBC wants to celebrate it's 75th anniversary and is asking from Westminster students to take the lead and make a TV advert that is targeting young, fresh audience, using absolutely anything including their knowledge and creativity.
I've been quite interested in the project as it is a challenge for me to make a 50 sec promotional advert, that would both show my skills around promotional illustration and my knowledge around the moving image.

What makes the project quite complicated is the fact that we've been asked to show the history of BBC without creating a documentary video; Meaning old, plain, black and white videos of unfamiliar events and faces that have absolutely no influence to the young audience whatsoever.

So my first thought, is make a plan of the history; I've researched and picked up the most highlighted moments of BBC from it's very beginning until the 20th century and this is what I came up with.

I've been looking at different ways of making animation but I always find myself particularly drawn to the 'stop motion' technique. Many adverts that use stop motion for promotional reasons seem to be very successful and in particular seem to attract younger audience.

Some of the recent stop motion adverts/ experimental videos that I've been looking at.

http://www.smashingapps.com/2009/06/15/21-stunning-examples-of-creatively-done-stop-motion-animations.html

This website is full of the most amazing and clever stop motion techniques that don't really require any high tech knowledge.
In William Kentridge "Compassions, he seems to be using a quite interesting technique for referring to the 'past' using black and white audiovisual videos put together in a strange circular way. Always worth considering.

looking back at some of the 'masters of stop motion', The Quay Brothers and Jan Svankmajer seem to have different but equally appealing techniques, either using delicate paper figures or detailed plasticine personas. I love how truthful those stories look and what great effect they have on audience.







Looking at some of the modern stop motion techniques, you can tell there is a lot of creativity floating around and it is a fact that you can do stop motion by using almost anything.

MTV in the 80's used a lot of animation that revolved around powerful imagery and revolutionary music. Some of the 80's adverts are using great stop motion techniques without much digital touches, making them look more real and fun to watch.

Movies like the 'Science of Sleep' are combining both film and stop motion animation, travelling through realities and dreams; They manage to capture the essence of dream world by using paper and plastic props, puppets and pretty much any lifeless object.

Two of my favourite animations are from a band called 'Future Sound of London" and by a guy called Andreas Hykade. Both of the animations use different techniques but both play with sound and movement, something I found quite revolutionary and interesting.

In the first film there's a serious amount of Collage, Green Screen techniques, PHOTOSHOP and all of the 80's traditional techniques of cutting and putting together in a rather naive way. Some of the figures I find very interesting as they walk around with different faces and body parts. It has a certain revolution and craziness about it, something that we don't see on video clips anymore.
In the second video, Andreas Hykade is using FLASH at it's best with some crazy animation figures that almost put you in a trance state.

Considering the animation part I thought I make some drawings of various 'BBC people' including John Reith founding father of BBC, broadcasters, royal and celebrity guests, documentary presenters etc

Summers Work 11'

I thought I'd be nice to bring my 'fine-art skills' back from the dead, and truth is it's been a while since I took a big blank canvas and draw whatever my heart desires on it. In this case the painting was a request by a relative.

She wanted something that reminded her of ancient Greek culture so I thought soft colors, impressionist features and a touch of cubism would suit the occasion. 

Still life painting with a female figure.

Acrylics on canvas.

During my summer break back in Cyprus, I decided to practise a bit my 'advertising skills' at 'ELENI

EKKESHI' Advertising Agency. i got the chance to work, for about a month, with professional people and in an environment where designer meets client face to face.

What caught my attention was the amount of clever solutions a designer could provide, in order to promote a certain a product, as well as a very valuable tip; 'always have a plan B'!

This is a illustration a designed as an opening image to a Website designed by 'EKKESHI Agency', where you can basically find offers on a wide range of products among the capital city of Cyprus.

here you can find the link of the website http://www.nicosiasuperoffers.com/

CYTA, CYprus Telecommunication Authority, has been organising an event, celebrating it's 50 years. I took the chance to design some of the flyers and cards that would be sent out to people. The main idea was to add two half parts and create one whole; which is the definition of the organisation.


I wanted to play a bit with the main idea and the placement of the type.

So it's 8th September, soon to be back in cloudy London, and I'm almost half way of finishing another painting requested. She wanted vivid colours in an impressionism style... seems to be very popular in my country. I don't think I will be able to finish it before I go back, since it needs  a whole lot of detail in it, but I'll try my best.
This is what i've done so far.

Currently working on promoting my personal work for posters, background pictures and book covers.
This is an illustration that I recently made called "The thinking man". It was originally made as an illustrative book cover for "Immortality" by Milan Kundera. I'm still working on finishing the last details and hopefully post it out soon.

(pen and ink on paper)