Thursday, January 31, 2008

Quiz #2

1. You'd want to convert a frame to a keyframe if you need to make that particular frame a particular instance in the animation (i.e. the beginning frame, end/result frame).

2. To convert it, you can simply right-click the frame in the timeline and select Convert to keyframe.

3. Easing in is an effect you can set for a motion tween that makes the object start slow and end fast at certain rate depending on how you set it. It is used to make things seem more physically believable (i.e. when you nudge something down a hill). The numerical value of easing out is a negative number.

4. Easing out applies the same principle as easing in, only it makes the object start fast then end slow. Again, it's used to make the movement of an object appear more realistic (in this case, like if you nudged the object on an even surface). The numerical value of easing in is a positive number.

5. To motion tween color, you just set up your object as one color in the first keyframe of the animation, and then set it as another in the last keyframe, and create a motion tween between the two.

6. To make an object move along a path, you would put a motion guide in the animation by selecting the first keyframe of the animation and clicking the motion guide button. Then you would draw the path and attach the object to its beginning and ending points, according to the animation.

Project 1

The first project was supposed to be practice of what we went over in the Flash program in class the other day. It was supposed to make use of a couple different motion tween tools which included moving an object in different ways. I chose to depict an object falling down, as it sounded like I could fulfill the assignment effectively this way. I used this cassette tape graphic I made in Illustrator and drew out some quick sketches of the scenes to be in the animation. The tape was to slide across a table, where it would meet an incline, then tumble down a rocky slope and finally into some water. This last part was to be animation frame by frame, so I decided to make it look like a silhouette. I didn't quite make the silhouette look quite the same as the first tape graphic in terms of proportion, but I ended up leaving it the way it was because it made the tape look scared or something.



Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Quiz #1

1. The difference between a symbol and an instance is that a symbol is basically a core shape that is stored within the flash program that you can copy and use multiple times, whereas an instance is like a certain state of that symbol that may be singled out either because it has changed shape or position or that it is going to be changed.

2. The two main reasons that people use flash are to animate objects and the file size is manageable.

3. The difference between a frame and a keyframe is that a frame is one state of the objects at a given point in the animation, while a keyframe marks important moments of the overall animation, like start and end.

did I fail?

sleep



I titled this piece “sleep” because all of these pictures put my mind at ease। They are all Polaroid pictures I took around ten years ago of areas surrounding what was my home in Fredericksburg, VA. I made 4 new blogs on blogger.com – one for each picture. I had to edit some of the HTML code in order to make some things go away – I thought I would’ve had a harder time with this process. I wanted the aesthetic to be very simple and the site to have as minimum of objects as was necessary to put most of the focus on each photo. I wanted you to be able to click the photo and it would take you to the next one, so I simply uploaded them and linked them. The last photo takes you back to the first, as I wanted the presentation to be seemingly infinite. Each photo has a tag that represents what I think when I look at the photo at the time I posted it.

SLEEP

coexistent

I happened upon a piece of net.art titled “coexistent” from the (presumably) British-based site www.shiftspace.org.uk, which is essentially a small group of works that appear to be variations of the same source material. In this case, the audience (me) is presented with a group of icons that are to be clicked to reveal a DREDGING, low-quality video snippet of what appears to be two women doing some sort of interpretive dance – in slow motion. I really disliked this piece, as the source material was not anything that could hold my attention long enough to care. The clips were just SLOW and BORING. I don’t hate it so much as I don’t see much relevance. If I wanted to go see people perform some random group hippie movement I’d probably go to a rave or something, and not online where I can enjoy squinting at it in slow motion. I have to note that the music is good in that it goes with the slow and organic nature of the dancing, and also I enjoy droney, down-sampled music kind of like this, so at least its got that going for it.

A HISTORY OF INTERNET ART

link

So she made an interesting observation at one point - pointing out the ever-increasing mergence of television and the Internet. That's a fair assessment, as television these days is basically a sad, un-interactive version of a number of popular internet video sites. My question is this:

Will TV and internet capacities merge, creating one mainstream public entertainment service equivalent to our present-day basic cable service, and if so, will net.art be wiped out as a result of control by government-regulated providers due to risk of malware and manipulative code, or will it simply fit into any constrains, redefining itself in accordance to its modern application.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Watercouleur Park


I happened upon a piece of net.art called Watercouleur Park from the list of links. It is a flash-based site created by a French artist collective named Qubo Gas, who according to the Tate Online website, work primarily with collages, frescoes, video installations, and digital animation among other things. The site also alludes that body of work produced by the group usually starts with drawings and sketches. Watercouleur Park is essentially a series of animations made up of said sketches and doodles that appear to be cut-out pieces of paper that they have scanned in. The article mentions that the images used in these animations come from an updatable database of an unspecified amount of these sketches. The sketches resemble organic pieces of landscape - trees, waterfalls, vines, assorted vegetation - and they appear to be drawn with various pens, markers, and watercolor. Apparently, there are 14 different formations that appear randomly when one visits the site, which are made up of randomly selected landscape sketches. Each of these animations are interactive in different degrees according to which particular animation appears on-screen. For example, in one particular animation, the sketched landscape pieces zoom in and out as if you are traveling along a sphere. The bright colors and organic shapes are coupled with a seemingly randomly composed soundtrack for each animation. These noodling sounds round out the imaginative and abstract disorder of the site.

Discussion question

Vuk Cosic is one in a growing group of "net.artists", which to my understanding just signifies anyone who uses the Internet as their canvas, as well as medium. His interview with we-make-money-not-art.com has raised a question that I feel in the current atmosphere of digital art is a valid inquiry for this ever-evolving medium. In an intangible world of art, how can we display these net.art creations to the public, in a tangible environment? And as a follow-up to this question, will the increased interest and production of digital artwork cause art museums to become outdated and obsolete? In the interview, net.art was compared to video art as well as performance art. Will these unrestrained forms of art, with the growing popularity of video-sharing websites and online community spaces, cause the art show crowd to migrate their interest to the Internet?

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

BLOG!


yeah this is my first post