Abstract Influence

In school I would always be doodling during class. A girl asked me what I was drawing once in 6th grade and I didn't know what to say. It was a bunch of lines combined into an abstract form, but not really something specific. She looked at me like I was weird or something. That was a lot of my doodles, not something you could say was anything. I still do it now, but more so into a complete finished piece of art work. After getting older and taking some more art classes I began to understand better what the abstract really was and ways to create it. One famous artist I like a lot is Kandinsky. I like his style, interpretation and thoughts on the abstract, and how he relates his art to music. He's got amazing work:

I think something like this could be incorporated in my animation. If I wanted more of an easily understood story involved, this would have to be either as backgrounds or textures, I would think. But really it could be used through everything with not as much of a pure abstraction.

Wassily Kandinsky- "Color is the key. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many chords. The artist is the hand that, by touching this or that key,sets the soul vibrating automatically"
"The artist is not a 'Sunday Child' for whom everything immediately succeeds. He does not have the right to live without duty. The task that is assigned to him is painful, it is a heavy cross for him to bear."

Concepts Continued

alien predator

alien to befriend

style/color search

Aristotle on Thales' Primary Principle -the nature of all things is water- "In the same way nothing else is generated or destroyed; for there is some one entity (or more than one) which always persists and from which all other things are generated. All are not agreed, however, as to the number and character of these principles. Thales, the founder of this school of philosophy, says the permanent entity is water (which is why he also propounded that the earth floats on water). Presumably he derived this assumption from seeing that the nutriment of everything is moist, and that heat itself is generated from moisture and depends upon it for its existence (and that from which a thing is generated is always its first principle). He derived his assumption, then, from this; and also from the fact that the seeds of everything have a moist nature, whereas water is the first principle of the nature of moist things." (Metaphysics 983b)

First Concepts

concept: an abstract idea, a general notion, a plan or intention, an idea or mental picture of a group or class of objects formed by combining all there aspects

First Story

When thinking more in depth about the story, it takes me quite a while. There is just so many different possibilities and I want to find the ones that may not be expected or an idea that hasn't been done, if ever possible. It helps to ask questions:

So why is this rocket man even out in space in the first place?

How will he change from beginning to end?

What conflicts does he encounter?

What is his goal?

What is my goal in telling this story?

What kind of mood do I want to get across?

(These questions will continue to pop up to help refine the story.)

Summary: The rocket man loses his memory after crashing on a planet and so continues to roam the planet for survival. He then makes friends with an alien he encounters, after being a lonely wanderer. Then an alien predator begins hunting them and in the process knocks the memories back into the man. You find out the man is really a robot as he is rebooted into his original mission. That mission is to further the colonization of the planet by making it a habitable place for human life. So the robot sets out to the proper destination where he transforms into a water/plant machine, forgetting all about the friend it had made, for it was only a malfunction in the system that the robot gained more human qualities. The alien friend follows the robot and sits by its side after the robot's transformation. Thats when the predator arrives again to finish the job, knocking the bot back into its malfunctioned state, but it still contains the knowledge of the mission at hand. The bot then overrides the mission command and kills the beast, for it's also a super weapon. The friends then reunite and go off exploring more of the planet, but just before, the robot looks to the sky where he knows the rest of the human colony awaits to take control of the planet.

This idea came out of another idea I had with the rocket man just searching for some type of life, or specifically a water source, since this seems to be one of NASA's objectives when exploring outer space. The search for water could also have a correlation to John 4:13-14: "Jesus answered, 'Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.'"

predator: an organism that lives by preying on other organisms, one that victimizes, plunders, or destroys, especially for one's own gain

First Thumbnails

When thinking of ideas I usually need to somehow picture it in my head and hopefully I can translate that onto paper. Sketching along sometimes helps, or just sitting in a quiet room for long periods of time. I find the time just before sleep to be most helpful. It takes me a while to get to sleep unless I'm very tired, so I will just lay there pondering ideas. Then when I hit the point between dream and reality, some good or just plain weird ideas may occur, or I'll just fall asleep and maybe forget the next day.

So when I finally started to get some images in my head, I was also thinking of what the music might be like, it helps me get in the mood a little better.

transition: black to image

sound: a bell chimes followed by a dragging march

image: a rocket blasts towards a planet

transition: fade to black

transition: black to image

sound: a bell chimes followed by a dragging march

image: fingers fumble at the rocket's controls/buttons

transition: fade to black

transition: black to image

sound: a bell chimes followed by a dragging march

image: rocket blasts through the planet's atmosphere

transition: fade to black

transition: black to image

sound: a bell chimes followed by a dragging march

image: the rocket man holds on

transition: fade to black

transition: black to image

sound: a bell chimes followed by a dragging march

image: the rocket hits the planet surface

transition: fade to black

transition: black to image

sound: a bell chimes followed by a dragging march

image: the rocket man leaves the flames of the crash

transition: fade to black

transition: black to image

sound: a gong hits and fades into whale noises

image: the rocket man begins his journey to explore the planet on foot

. . .

thumbnail: a very small or concise description, representation, or summary: a thumbnail sketch

First Thoughts

Abstract Art: I like it. To see this composition of art as animation would be awesome. It would probably be very time consuming and difficult to pull off as well. In what ways will the animation be abstract, and how could I maintain a story, but delve into an abstract form?. . . I don't know. . .yet.

Medium: Something about the traditional hand drawn, "what you see is what you get" very much pleases me. I feel more freedom and expression through it. I also have liked working in oil pastels, maybe some paints would be good, too. Hand drawn will take a greater amount of time in some ways, but it'd be totally worth it. Maybe some type of computer work would help?

Story: What kind of story could interact with abstract visuals? Something weird. . . I like weird. . . Something different, unusual, unknown. . . SPACE. The mysteries of outer space is something our imagination runs wild over. We know there's something out there, but we don't know exactly what. Okay. Dude lands on a planet and explores it. Anything could happen. . . that's good for now. . .

carte blanche: complete freedom or authority to act, french for "blank paper"