Bethan Amy Sands/

You can return to my main design blog and view a fuller body of my work by clicking here This is a blog documenting my progress at university, the projects we have been set, and any exhibitions I have visited.

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Fiona Rae: Maybe you can live on the moon in the next century, at the Leeds Gallery

This piece was the highlight of my visit to the Fiona Rae exhibition, entitled 'the woman who can do self expression will shine through all eternity'. I loved the energy and variety of brush strokes in her work. The combination of the what reminded me of the cutesy asian culture (little pictures of bunnies and glittery bits), with daring but well picked colour choices. Her work is very busy but this does not detriment the composition of her work at all. You cannot appreciate the huge scale of her work online - each piece was at least 2 meters tall.

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Sarah Lucas - Ordinary things, at the Henry Moore Institute Here is another Lucas sculpture entitled 'Bunny' that uses stuffed tights and stockings to create a strange bunny-like shape, which also represents a naked female form slumped on a chair. It's effect intriguing but also slightly creepy.

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Sarah Lucas - Ordinary Things, at the Henry Moore Institute  Sarah Lucas's exhibition contained her famous 1994 piece 'Au Naturel' the slumped mattress with objects representing sexual organs. However for me the highlights were these grotesque creations made from tights and stockings, stuffed with various things such as shredded paper. These sculptures also reminded me of twisted internal organs as well as phallic shapes. Her work is very blatantly sexual, and these objects do have an air of sexuality about them but also look deformed. I liked the idea of combining the grotesque with the sexual, it is a theme I have come across before and I feel this is something I could explore in my own work, and have already started to explore.

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Julie Cockburn Exhibition at the Flowers Gallery London In this vintage portrait she manipulates it by doing some intricate embroidery over the top of the faces. There was a selection of this embroided style of portrait by Cockburn up for sale at the gallery, and I really loved the idea behind them. What struck me about all of Cockburn's work was how tidy and well-executed it was, and I feel this is something I need to improve on in my own work.

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Julie Cockburn Exhibition at the Flowers Gallery London.   On a recent trip to London I discovered a new artist who experiments with collage, whose work I absolutely love. I like how she uses vintage images and cleverly manipulates them. Not disimilar from another artist I love John Stezaker.

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Sheffield Hallam University Creative Spark Exhibiton 2012 Aimee Haselton - Moments of Impact  This piece was featured in the Fine Art section. It was made up of smashed ornaments suspended in a cleverly lit white room. Although the idea of the smashed ornaments of children sounds slightly creepy, there was something very serene and calm about it, like it had captured a moment in time, and because they swayed very gently as you walked through them.

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Sheffield Hallam Creative Spark Exhibition Helen Jennifer Marchant - House Sparrows One of my favourite works by far in the graphic design exhibition was that of helen jennifer marchant. A really lovely idea and very well executed - I always love working on graph paper. This is actually one of a series of three posters. helenjennifermarchant:

House Sparrows

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Evaluation of project

I have enjoyed this project, I found it challenging because it is something I have never tried at all before, so everything was completely new to me and in that way I have learnt a lot of new skills and tried a lot of new things.

I would have liked to have got to experiment more on after effects, but I missed the first session due to illness and could not attend another group’s because of a blood test. Then when I attended the other after effects workshops I just didn’t grasp it at all. I learnt a little in the second one, but did keep falling behind, and as for the third one I was completely confused the whole time, couldn’t keep up with the speed the group were working at, and felt rude asking the tutor to repeat every step he did, so I ended up not really taking anything away from that session. This meant I couldn’t really use the program at all for my project which was certainly a bit of a let down.  Luckily I had decided early on I wanted to experiment with stop motion, so it wasn’t completely necessary for my outcome, but I would’ve liked to have had the option. I still learnt how to use the program IStopMotion which I have never used before. Although I struggled with the project and found it very difficult, I feel it has not been a wasted experience as I have learnt a lot about animation (and particularly stop motion) and tried things I have not before.  I was amazed at how long it took me to create just a second of animation! I was not 100% pleased with my outcome and don’t think it is the best thing I have ever created, but as it is the first time I’ve ever tried animation and considering how hard I found it I wasn’t expecting it to be great, and I still had fun making  it.

The words I was trying to represent in my animation were 'Jovial, light-hearted and leisurely', I feel I managed to achieve this to a certain extent. The animation is certainly jovial and light-hearted as it is quite playful and makes me smile when I watch it. There are parts of the animation that are leisurely, such as when the sliced fruit sway from side to side, but there are other parts that I feel could've done with being a bit slower- however then I wouldn't have been able to fit all the movement in to the 30 second time slot.

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The cheesecake that I made out of the left-over lemons so not to waste them, as it was setting.

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Final Animation  I am reasonably pleased with my final animation. I had fun making it, and I like how the start fits with the music well. I also like the title sequence at the end. I feel I made the animation feel light-hearted and jovial. Parts of it are leisurely but some parts are perhaps slightly too long. I don't think this is my best work, however since I have never done animation before I was not expecting it to be. I have learnt a lot through this project and tried out a lot of new skills so don't feel my time has been wasted. I really struggled with a lot of the parts of the animation (particularly using the programs). One problem I found was that when I exported my animation it made the lighting a lot brighter than it had been before.

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Title sequence experiments  I really like the first one (the name being written) and the second one (the names appearing then spinning round). I thought about combining the two and using them both but i will have to see what that looks like at the end of my final. Although the last idea (my name and the title of the video spinning) shows more information, there is something about it that I like less than the others. 

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Further Development in to Final Idea  Here is some of the footage I am using in my final idea... my camera battery ran out halfway through which meant a bit of a slip up and annoyingly had to move the camera!  It took me ages and I used a LOT of oranges, lemons and limes. My final will be played in reverse so that the fruit sort of 'reappears' out of the madness and 'reconstructs' itself, I am going to put it in reverse now. I have still to add a fade in at the start/end and also some title text on after effects. I am going to add a clip at the end with an orange, lemon and lime with the words 'By', 'Bethan' and 'Sands' written on them.

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TRANSITION EXPERIMENT PART 2  My second attempt was definitely a lot smoother but still work could be done to improve it, but I guess practise makes perfect.

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TRANSITION EXPERIMENT PART 1 The bit I found hardest to do was the transition between the low camera angle and the high one. Because I am using a tripod I had to try and adjust the tripod, adjust the angle of the camera AND move the camera all at the same time. As you can see this first experiment is extremely shaky (and also too fast).

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Here is an example of where I have positioned the lemon too far down in the shot, and when I cut it the pieces of lemon fell out of frame. I wasn't happy with this as I wanted them to be in shot so I had to do it again.

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Here are some photographs taken on my webcam showing some of the propping techniques I had to use to keep the fruit upright in the photographs of the fruit being chopped, when the animation runs though the knives are completely out of shot. You can see depending on the size of the fruit, I had to use a smaller or larger knife. (Apologies for the poor quality but I had to take them on my webcam as my camera was obviously all set up and in position on the tripod!) 

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Revised storyboard after further experimentation It is important to remember this will be filmed from the end to the beginning (it will be viewed in reverse) I decided to film it like this as I felt the beginning of my song suited itself to a fast paced bit (for me all the bits of fruit covering up the formation), as this is at the start of my music and this part of filming will obviously happen at the end, I'm going to play the footage in reverse to my music. This will create an interesting effect of the fruit 'reconstructing' itself at the end.