Ethan Hennessy

______________________"MOVEMENT" ______________________ Exploring dynamic gestures of the human body. With a focus on falling.

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Project Statement

My response to the Semester 2 project titled “Movement” began as studying dynamic gestures of the human body but I decided to focus on an emphasis of falling. I decided to have my project unfold organically, thus instead of focusing on one elective at a time I came up with creative ideas that caused me to be innovative and see how I could address that idea into any elective of my choosing. The benefit in my opinion is my project now reads well in it’s own natural progression with organic linkage between pieces.

I feel as though my efforts in exploring different techniques through my electives not only embraced their flaws but also my strengths helping me to refine my talent as I progressed. Throughout this entire project I have embarked on an adventure acquiring new skills and traits along the way I learned about the mechanics of a camera, the basics to animation along with its principles (also learned the heartache of a file not saving) and explored painting in an almost impressionistic way. I learnt to enjoy the process and not be worried about if it’s going to be good or bad but just enjoy the action of doing and think of unique ways of doing things.

Understandably this project was tough on anyone being stuck at home having to turn your bedroom into a workspace or lacking materials needed to have a piece come to life. Amongst all this chaos during a pandemic my family are also also moving house so between lectures and packing and moving furniture I struggled finding time for the project but with everything considered I am happy with my attempt.

The electives I selected to interpret this idea were:

-AMD (Animation Motion Design)

-PFV (photography, film, video)

-Painting

To view my research click on the keep reading tab under selected post.

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After finding a strange sheet of paper I decided to cut it into squares in varying sizes. I placed them and stuck them to a page in a descending motion almost like falling, I felt as though this added a dynamic aesthetic and texture. But I wanted to spice the piece up a bit more and decided to draw a portrait on top

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A process of planning a bigger painting where the plan became the art. I projected the image of the top down skyscraper view that I had used in my falling dream photos. Then I drew over the projection after that I designed some falling figures and drew them on greaseproof paper so that I could still see the background image through my overlay. I then altered the positions of the figures and layout.

Through this process it also gave me the idea to take a portrait with the projection over my face. This image came out very well and I decided to make it black and white in order for the viewer to be left in a small bit of confusion and curiosity whilst looking at the image.

http://www.ericfischl.com/glassines

The idea was given to me after viewing Eric Fischl’s glassine drawings. In which he layed one drawing over another. examining how a person could be superimposed into different scenarios with ease and tweak to his own desire.

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As an attempt at a narrative I tried making a ghostly hand rest on my shoulder almost like a guardian angel looking over and protecting you, I feel as though this piece ties in well with my animation idea of falling and dying and becoming an angel. Im not entirely happy with this shot and hope to refine my skills with photoshop.

I double exposed this image with the hand layer at a lower opacity, one photo taken with the hoodie on me and another photo of the hoodie put on the back of a chair with a pillow stuffed inside so that I could place my own hand on my shoulder.

I hoped that the ring might signify more in the piece, perhaps a loved one is looking over them or maybe even a significant other.

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A pencil drawing I made after exploring filters and found a way to continue/ extend my face, almost like it's being pulled into a bottomless void where its destined to fall forever.

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A series of ink studies. I studied how an ink drop flows falls, and splatters.

1. Ink running vertically down a page.

2. dropping Ink from chest height to make huges splatters.

3. Turning the page at different tilts comparing how the splatter changes shape. From a direct fall to a fall at 45 degrees to finally a fall on 70 degrees on both ends.

4. Here I cut out smaller pieces of paper to use the same idea from shot 3 but with the pieces being cut out I can now rearrange and alter the look of the layout.

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Making a GIF to capture my experience with moving house through the time of this project and wanted to make art out of it so I set my phone up on a tripod and took a shot everytime I moved a box, I wanted the boxes to be gradually removed as time went on as if the presence of living there was no more.

Alternatively having the idea of the boxes being taken down and being put back up representing the full motions of moving house.

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A few photos of a wire man I made to convey falling as I didn't have a figure falling in front of me i decided to make a reference for myself adding falling lines which helped suspend the figures.

when lighting the figure I found the shadows very intriguing and documented them.

My models were made with inspiration from Moto Waganari. ^

The models in their sequence are ambiguously falling and jumping/ flipping. I really admire the choice of lighting and how it portrayed the shadows in their dynamic poses.

wire sculpture of father and child wire people wire bending miniature statue metal sculpture paper weight fathers day dad and son by PAINTandPLEASURE. I really like how the idea of the human body can be shown through rough manipulation of wire.

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Capturing the silhouette of falling with unorthodox methods of painting, I layered a sheet of paper with masking tape and cut out the shapes i wanted into the taper i then put on gloves and started flicking and smacking paint off the page, i then removed the tape while the paint was still wet as I wanted the final piece to be messy and be more about the action of making the painting. so i found a cheese knife and did the blue flicks using that, i dropped paint from up high to get a splatter effect onto the pages and the figures and also continued to fling paint onto the piece.

I got a little bit of inspiration from Kazuo Shiraga and his process of feeling the action of doing. This piece is very messy to most viewers but it shows how the artist was feeling and the two tone colour brings out a dark mystic vibe to the work.

Along with inspiration from Sam Taylor-Woods using the shadow as a suspended and almost frozen silhouette. At first I was left in bewilderment as to how she suspended herself with such crisp photos, but upon further inspection of the shadows I realised that the chair had no shadow thus the images were manipulated. How she still made the poses i'm still unsure and this adds to my affinity towards these shots as I still  seem confused , maybe she used a green screen or maybe she layed on the floor I may never know.

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Here is a series of a study of side profile portraits using different methods to capture the shape and form of both the expression and the movement of lines. Methods used were hatching, one continuous line, blowing ink, scraping ink with the back of a brush, column block colour fade from dark to light and a splatter effect.

My favourite is the bottom right as I feel it conveys the best expression and its method matched it, with chaotic splashes accenting the roaring scream.

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Poster I  designed for my animation, the split through the middle is to border the transformation. But how long until it gets severed

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Some light painting shots where i attempted to draw the figure with the light. I found i difficult to free hand so stared to roughly and very fastly trace my body with the light to convey the figure.

The second set is me exploring how a different material over the light at different stages can alter the colour and found it to be effective as i used a high-vis vest.

I noticed how you can highlight the figure in the dark in an intriguing way although i think it would be impossible to do a self portrait as you would moe too much to capture a clean image with the figure highlighted correctly. 

I found the work of Darren Hopkins to be extremely unique in the light painting world. I truly admire the underglow of this photo. I personally would be unable to recreate this piece so cleanly. I wish I understood how he hid himself in this shot. With the assumption that he is hidden behind the light, I used the same method of tracing my body. I like how he used a multitude of colours for different areas such as a yellow skeletal structure and red shoes.

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A photo idea that I hope to create. The plan is to convey falling through the word tension. It will be a three piece shot where it tells its own story as simple as it may be.

Image one a rope would be tied to something while the figure leans over the edge of a wall holding on and suspended.

Image two a shot of the threads of the rope snapping due to the tension applied.

Image three would be the result captured from the the prior shots, in both shot one and three i would have the floor out of frame to have the viewer question how far the fall is.

All the shots would be taken in black and white so there is not distraction by colour from the story being presented.

A Photo idea inspired by the work by Yves Klein and Bas Jan Ader

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Some minimalist silhouette designs in black and white contrast. Each tile it the negative of the previous to capture the difference in direction, the white background and black silhouette represents falling down whereas the black background white figure represents soaring up.

Looking back if I were to do this again i would design the pullout to pull down and not to the side to convey the idea of falling down even more.

Silhouette pieces inspired by the work of Kara Walker and William Kentridge.

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Here is a link to the YouTube version of my rotoscope incase my Tumblr post gets flagged again.

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Here is my first attempt at rotoscoping, a surprisingly quick way to animate cleanly, great for beginners. I hope to use this method more often and include more colour. This video is in tangent to my animation idea of the motion of jumping off a building. The original video used as reference was me leaping onto my couch.

The work of Eadweard Muybridge reminded me of the process of rotoscope in which you take snippets of shots from a video and draw over them.

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Inspired by a minimal interstellar poster i made silhouettes themed around my animation idea. I plan on remaking this digitally to create a cleaner look.