Loop de Loop - Fortune Entry

http://www.loopdeloop.org/2015/09/fiona-stuart-clark-fortune/

So I spent roughly five days making this, I was so annoyed I ran out of time to do one of the background so I just did twinkly stars.

So my idea behind this, is that as someone crosses the road they pick a penny up and get run over because they don't have good luck and someone else runs past them.

I really like how it's got loads of things in it from Melbourne that like represent my trip that only I know about. So for example when the cars turning the corner, there's the rubber duck cafe of Clifton Hill on the far right hand side which is the building I lived in for five weeks. The characters wearing jeans and I went to a jeans shop and bought three pairs of jeans for £25 each where you go and they tailor them especially to fit you and you go back an hour later to pick them up. The annoying tick of the crossing, which i hated so much especially as the first place I was staying in Carlton hill, my window was next to a ticking crossing all night long. The magnolia trees all bloomed whilst I was in Melbourne and it was just the prettiest sight especially in Fitzroy I'd never seen a Magnolia tree so I really like that. The black merc is based upon what the italian gangsters of Melbourne drove around in from this TV show I started watching out there called underbelly based on true stories that all centered in the places I was going. The beanie hats were a necessity because it was so cold, especially without central heating anywhere I lived in mine. I even slept in it. There's a poster that says Real Australian's Say Welcome, because there was so many protests about refugee's, and it what everyone talked about at some point, with the refugee camps where people are dying. I felt it was some pertinent knowledge I learnt about the politics of Australia. The building the poster is on was at the top of Yoni's street where he lived near Parliament Station. Tram Tracks, I loved getting the tram everywhere whenever possible, even if it was just two stops it was exciting. I could have put a lot more into it, but I probably left more time. I'll try better with the next one, maybe focus less on the backgrounds more on the animation.

Interesting to note, I didn't deem this entry Vimeo worthy, hence why it's on my youtube instead. My aim is to by the end of the year have a loopdeloop Vimeo worthy.

Sydney's Art Gallery

Most of the time I was in Australia I spent in Melbourne, but I did spend a few weeks in Sydney as this is where my best friend has moved to for her exchange year in Zoology. So whilst I was there I decided to visit Australia's largest Art Gallery, I did mean to go to the National Gallery of Victoria but I just never got round to it, I wasn't really impressed by what was on in Sydney so I just didn't make an effort for it.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales is on the edge of the Botanical Gardens, which are just beautiful and there's so much wildlife, little birds and white parrots will comes and eat out of your hands and sit with you if you have food. As I walked into the gallery the first section in the entranceway was a mass of embroidery hoops of chinese slang words that have been put into the chinese dictionary since the development of technology. It was very cutesy with lots of dangily threads and I think because I couldn't read chinese I did move on from it quite fast. 

Then we went into the rooms where all the old australian master's were, there were a lot on gold mining, and the war and then they had a room of european masters and painting from the nineteenth century of cumbria and fox hunting so strange. We then moved back to the modern section where there was a really cool exhibition by Jitish Kallat. 

So basically this was three really large walls of Mahatma Gandhi's speech and:

On 12 March 1930, Mahatma Gandhi gave a speech that marked the beginning of his ‘salt march’ in which he walked 390 kilometres to the coastal town of Dandi in the Indian state of Gujarat. There he gathered salt, refusing to pay the tax imposed by the colonial British Government and therefore breaking the law. This simple and now famous act inspired nationwide civil disobedience and is seen as the beginning of an intensified Indian independence movement. Gandhi’s legacy of non-violent protest continues to influence political action worldwide.
In Public notice 2 2007, Indian artist Jitish Kallat renders Gandhi’s historic speech in its entirety, letter by letter. Each letter appears to be made from bone, as though Kallat has exhumed these words from their historical resting place. As Kallat says: ‘In today’s terror-infected world, where wars against terror are fought at prime television time, voices such as Gandhi’s stare back at us like discarded relics.’

 I'd never read this speech before and it was really moving, there's one line from it which I think even now, 85 years later since this speech was given we as a human race still are tackling. "Let no one commit a wrong in anger. This is my hope and prayer." It's cheesy but it really moved me.

The only qualm I did have with it, was that I was so disappointed the bone lettering I looked very closely at, I'm pretty sure the letters were mass made. I think it might of had more of an impact if they were individually crafted. I tried to inspect them as closely as I could and I'm pretty sure there was casting mould lines on them.

I continued around the art gallery, and I was really surprised to see such a large Matisse Section. I didn't realise Henri Matisse was so influential even on this side of the world. I guess it's something I've always underappreciated though, it was such a big deal to have his work out in Sydney, but for us everything in Europe is just so accessible, but out there that culture the society has really had to fight for to see.

But that's not to say they don't have there own. So Aboriginal art is huge. These weird totem poles are actually examples of gravestones that the aboriginals use. Now I went to an exhibition at Melbourne museum to try and understand said culture, but I think because I was mainly in the south and I didn't meet any and everyone I met was really western I just didn't understand. It comes across, that they have been treaten badly in the past by the white colonies but they haven't really helped themselves, they seem to be uneducated, still struggling with housing and because they come from the most desolate part of the country it's where the drug and drinking problems seem to be. Obviously this is a broad waving of stick and not all are like this, there are a lot of talented aboriginal artists, but it is mainly very complicated patterns they do, there's no training of form or perspective in paintings but that's there style. Also in the Melbourne Museum exhibition on Aboriginal people they had a really heart wrenching video on the people making bits of art work like a factory to fob off to tourists, like boomerangs with patterns and so on, mind numbingly painful to watch but they still seemed happy.

After my trip to the Art Gallery I saw the Opera House for the first time and oh my gosh, it was so seventies inside! Even the toilets felt like I was out of an austin powers movie! Also this architecture is not aging well. I am a firm believer that any pebble dashing floor just should not be acceptable anywhere, no way did I think it would be at this Iconic landmark! I was not impressed! However sydney did have a double decker metro system which was super impressive!

David Bowie Is Exhibition

Exclusively for the Telegraph original storyboards, by David Bowie, for the Ashes to Ashes video, 1980

The David Bowie Is Exhibition is a touring collection of costumes, lyric notes, art work, storyboards (&animatics) film memorabilia from the life of Bowie. With over 300 objects this rare once in a lifetime opportunity to see all the stuff in one room was a chance I could not pass upon.

I went not expecting to have any influence on my own creative practice, but I loved the animatics, I have tried everywhere to find a way to share with you what I saw because it's so difficult to describe, the most seventies scribbly drawings with a bit more animation in than your storyboard on a timeline it was just so cool looked only vaguely like a video it represented but so much development and just a amazing to see how the cogs turn in the man's mind.

There were also stage set designs from concerts, some that were too ambitious to use on tour and others that were used 3D miniature sets which were incredible to see, you could so see them as animation set and his costumes are just out of this world. I didn't realise that he actually commissioned Alexander McQueen, whilst McQueen was still studying at St Martins and as Bowie's career kickstarted it helped McQueens. How ace is that, it's like he's always magnetised other creatives that are as talented as he is in there field.

I don't really know how I'd take this into my practice but I think just seeing this is one day going to come back as inspiration and well deserved a PPP Blog post on as it was one of the things I saw in Australia that blew my mind.


https://www.acmi.net.au/exhibitions/bowie/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/9889711/Star-Man-David-Bowie-at-the-VandA-in-pictures.html?frame=2490437

LCA Logo for 2nd Year Showreel

So for our end of show for second year, I offered to do a 3D Ident because we were so stretched for applied animation I think no one was very enthused about the show. But I really wanted to experiment more with Maya as a software but it has so much potential. I just love hos anything it possible with it. It's just everything take so long on it. But I would really like to do some more little projects like this before I finish just so I have a really well rounded animation portfolio.

So I started off by importing the logo on an image plane and just working on making it 3D around that really. It took a lot longer than I thought to make the individual letters, but it means that come next year I could re-use it and animate them differently rather than just having a deformer on them like below for when we need a new ident. Overall I was really pleased with the final product because I learnt so much about the software. I don't really know what maya task I could do next but it would have to be something little underneath the backburner of my dissertation project.



Leeds College of Art Ident from fionastucla on Vimeo.