Final Set up

Contextual Studio Evaluation
Jessica Kidd
05136261

Work - ‘Around the House’ (this title may yet change)

The things we take for granted. This semester I wanted to learn how to make stop motion animations, and I have achieved that in my own way. I haven’t animated models in the traditional sense but I have learnt a lot about the process of stop motion and the editing and sound process afterwards. I’m happy with my final four animations, and I think the way they are displayed works really well.

I spent a long time trying to get the shelves right so that they wouldn’t attract attention, and by painting them white, even the screws I think I have achieved this. I thought about what I was going to do with the cords for a long time, and in the end decided I like the way they look hanging down freely from the TVs, I am using technical equipment so why try to hide this by taping the cords away? I don’t even mind the cords and plugs being visible at the bottom of my wall, I just tried to make them as out of the way and tidy as possible, but again, I think they add to the whole scene.

I am going to continue to make animations, this semester has really inspired me to try even more ambitious stop motion. The concept behind this work started off as being an investigation into the way we spend our leisure time around the house, but along the way it morphed into something quite different. Now I like to think of these animations as what the objects might act like if they were like us, something people probably don’t think about very often.

I was interested to hear Sean Kerr’s (well his lamp’s) talk about animating objects with as little added as possible, while still giving them their own character, so I decided to only use eyes because I think they are our most emotive feature. I wanted to make work that was humorous, because I like to make people laugh, I don’t think art has to have a serious message to be effective, if my work can make people feel happy then that is pretty effective in its own right.

I decided to go with an uneven hanging so that when you look at them your eye travels around more fluidly. When I experimented with them how I originally planned to - in a square - I felt my eyes being drawn into the white space between the TVs too much.
I chose to use stop motion because it is an outmoded technology for animating, most things nowadays are animated using computers. So I used 4:3 ratio for my videos, not widescreen, and older TVs not flat screen to in keep with the nostalgis feeling I have towards stop motion.