Adam Dabbs @dabbsart-blog - Tumblr Blog

Wasted Time

#video #vcu #film #object study #soundscape #sound art

Censorship

#digital #vcu #gd #photoshop

Nicole and Anastasia

#vcu #digital #illustrator

Sketchbook doodle!

#me #ink #marker #traditional #process journal

Artist Statement

At the beginning of my four years at CFA, my main goal for my art was to achieve realism, specifically in portraiture. While my subject matter stayed consistently figural, I realized how much I had over-valued realism as my body of work evolved and became stylized and abstracted. My gold key portfolio for Scholastics actually was made up of mixed-media stylized portraits. For my final animation, Artifice, I wanted to juxtapose those contrasting ideals. In each short clip of one of my classmates and their art, I rotoscoped over the footage, frame by frame. After much experimentation, I tried leaving in parts of the source footage intermingling with the animation. The graphic, stylized representation of the figures compared to the actual video of their surroundings and art both aesthetically and conceptually resonated with me.

My other animation, Marty, was much more of a technical venture. After many frame by frame animations, working with Photoshop and After Effects, I wanted to challenge myself by going for more narrative subject matter and using vector and tweening based software Flash. This way, I incorporated some of my vector art skills I had been developing separately into my animation. My vector portraits, made in Illustrator, had always been an indulgence for my desire to blend stylized and realistic portraits both digitally and traditionally, something I had worked in since starting out at the CFA. Being able to combine my animation, vector techniques, and story-telling in one project was an amazing challenge that I learned a lot from, although the end result isn’t really cohesive with the rest of my portfolio.

For the next four years at VCUarts, I hope to continue working with animation and keep pushing myself technically, formally, and conceptually as I have at the Center for the Arts. Although I’m sure my art will grow and evolve considerably for the rest of my life, the foundation I’ve built here will continue to inform me.

#text #animation #hs #process journal