Exam: Evaluation

For this final piece, my idea was creating a combination of both physical and occult/ symbolic representations of the elements. My piece is an animation starting from the stars and ending at the ocean. I wanted to create a piece that was personal to me, which is why I ended up basing the star part of the aquarius star sign. The animation starts with the appearing of the the aquarius constellation. This was to show the actual apparel of the constellation. To make this seem more powerful, and more importantly seem more personal to me, I added my favourite aquarius quote. The next part is a series of patterns and shapes each representing a different element in some form. The first shape represents air, as the rotation somewhat resembles a fan, or the spinning of a tornado. The second represents is intended to represent earth as it starts to crack, making it seem as if a earthquake had hit. This one also could be seen as being a river, forcing its way through. The third symbol doesn't represent an element, but rather links back to the idea of stars and the varied sizes they come in. The fourth symbol represents a previous research into 'The Burning Man Festival'. I looked into this a while back, its a festival where they make large wooden constructs and then proceeding to set them on fire until they become ash. This is where I thought the construct like shape I used linked to this, so I made use of this with fire in order to make it present more ideas of the physical side of the elements. The symbol after this represents water, and I tried to make it resemble a whirlpool. The ocean scene became the ending because I felt like if I kept adding more it would simply become too much and ruin the piece. I decided on finishing how the peace started, with an aquarius symbol at the end, I had the thoughts of trying to incorporate some of my alchemy research into the piece, but I realised a direct addition would not work, so I decided by looping back to aquarius, I could create the metaphor of infinity, the ideal behind the Ouroboros, alchemical symbol of infinity.

 I decided on creating an animation for my final piece. Animation would make it easier for me to control the environment in which the animation takes place. To make the animation I used Photoshop for the backgrounds and the more advanced shapes. From there I would use Flash to create the main animation, and then final alter it in Premier to gain better control over how long a scene takes, how long the delays are and the addition of sound into the film.

I first created my main Idea after learning about both the physical and the occult side of the elements. I originally wanted to create a film to present this idea of mine, however, in the end I was unable due to technical failure. The animation idea was the next best thing and I felt that this was the best way to present it after the film. The graphical style that I used was based partially off my own style of graphics that I've been developing across the year, however I also believe I encorperated some of the stylings of Saul Bass. This created an interesting style to the work, however I believe that maybe the two styles shouldn't have combined. As I went through the exam I made changes to the basic storybaord idea. I started adding additional quotes and increased my use of the shape tweens, due to time issues and not having enough time to work on manual 'tweens'.

I felt that the quotes were likely the most powerful part of my piece. Using serious or deep quotes alongside graphics doesn't always work I have found, so I believe that they worked well to an extent in my piece. If I had a chance to redo any of the animation, It would be making the quotes stay on screen longer, and remaking the tweens to be more effective than the shape tweens. I felt that I had to rush a lot of the animation due to the time restraints, so In the future I will take longer with the planning and prep work before the exams.