Max Byrne

He/Him Brief: Movement Electives: Animation, Sculpture and Painting

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Movement Project Conclusion:

I explored movement through my own movements through life by observing my bag.

I started off this project with originally basing my ideas off of my electives: Animation, Sculpture and Painting. I decided to make a Zoetrope with frogs, make a cog sculpture of a frog and paint a frog.

I quickly realised this wasn't what this project was for.

So I started over, and I decided to look closer at myself. What do I need for my daily movements? As an avid outdoors man, a college student, and also a child of divorced parents, I found that I am constantly moving from one location to the next with my home on my back. I rarely settle into one place for very long and I keep my home in my bag.

My bag follows me around with all of my movements, I wouldn't be able to go anywhere without my bag.

For Sculpture I decided to make a bag and also build a little house to go inside it. The house looks like my dad's house, where I spend most of my time. I made it from cardboard and gumstrip. If I were to do this project again I would try and make the bag straps out of a more dynamic material so I could comfortably wear the bag.

For animation, I started by making a short film following my friends around town and observing how their bags were always a silent companion, as college students. Then I wanted to make an animation of a bag following a couple on a camping trip to reflect how I use my bag when I'm hiking or hunting or camping. I was incredibly happy with the final product of the animation. Paul Gardiner was a huge help in developing my animation, giving me critiques on how to improve it, mostly the lighting. After incorporating his advice, the animation really came together.

Finally, painting. For painting, I decided to do a series of paintings with the backpack being the focus. I used the photos and videos I took of my friends in town as references. Sylvia taught me how to use colours and tones to improve my paintings. I am not a painter, so this one was a huge struggle for me, but Sylvia was vital in teaching me techniques and giving me a lot of advice and encouragement.

In conclusion, this project was incredibly shaping for me in furthering my skills and developing new techniques in certain mediums that I am uncomfortable in. I stepped out of my comfort zone and allowed myself to go with the flow of my creativity and designs.

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Movement Project: Sculpture

Here is a video of me unpacking the bag.

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Movement Project: Photography

I decided to take some pictures of the inside of the bag with the house and LED lights glowing. I switched off the lights and placed the bag on the ground where you would typically find a backpack.

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Movement Project: Sculpture

I decided to add a cartoon-esque outline to the bag to make it look like it was from the animation and from the paintings I made. I really love how it turned out.

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Movement Project: Sculpture

Today I finished painting the bag to match the bag I made in my animation.

I also added LED lights to the inside to really hone in on that warm-home feeling. The bottle pocket on the side holds the battery pack for the lights where they can be turned off and on with ease.

Finally, I removed the hot glue mess on top of the little house and instead added a much cleaner hook for easy removal of the little house.

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Movement Project: Sculpture

Now that the house is made, I painted the bag with white acrylic paint and then some of the other areas green. I want the bag to look like the one in my animation so the white areas will soon be orange.

I will also be adding LED lights into the bag to make it more aesthetically pleasing

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Movement Project: Sculpture

Once the paint had dried, I went in with a posca paint marker to draw in the details of the door, letter box, windows and ivy.

This is what my home looks like

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Movement Project: Sculpture

After allowing the hot glue to dry completely, I painted the house to look like my own house in kilkenny. Black door and roof and yellow walls.

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Movement Project: Sculpture

Today, I was busy building a house out of lollipop sticks and hot glue. I want to make a house to go inside the back I had already made to symbolise carrying your home on your back.

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Movement Project: A Bags Journey

Finished shortfilm about the movement and journey a bag goes on.

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Movement Project: Animation Workshop

First scene of the animation I am working on. One more scene left!

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Movement Project: Animation Workshop

I finally got around to doing the first scene of the short film. All I have left to do is the final scene and then I am going to go into post-production work.

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Movement Project: Animation Workshop

Here is the completed scene 5 with added lighting to the characters to give them form and shape. I do really like the flickering effect.

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Movement Project: Animation Workshop

This morning, I came into the animation workshop with half of an animation completed, or so I thought.

Paul Gardiner viewed my work and gave me very helpful criticism on how to improve it, mostly by adding more lighting to the characters.

"Nothing is always completely black, that's a void."

So I spent the rest of the morning finishing off scene 5 of the animation I am working on and also going back and adding lighting to scene 4.

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Movement Project: Animation

This is scene 3 of the short film I am animating. I am finding it incredibly difficult to animate these scenes but I am going to keep going. I do plan on splicing all these scenes together and add music or sound effects to the scenes.

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Movement Project: Animation

Here is scene 4 of the animation I am working on, once again it is a natural environment but the bag catches your eye. I animated some bees in the mid ground to draw your attention to the bag. It’s following them as they move, allowing the couple to go on their hike.

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Movement Project: Animation

I animated a scene from the short film I want to make. It’s the second scene in the animation. In the foreground is the bag and the car, in the mid ground is a character tying down a tent peg and in the background is the woods where leaves blow by.

Your focus is on the character and the small worms creeping by but the bag is in the forefront, always in sight. In order to do the movement of camping, you need to bring your bag with you. You remember setting up the tent but do you remember your bag holding the tent and the pegs to allow you to do this? Bags allow you to move and go on adventures.