Nick Gross Art

2D ANIMATION X DIGITAL IMAGING

[nickrgross]

For my final project in this class, I wanted to portray scenes with vibrant colors and diverse space landscapes. Initially, I became inspired from a series of retro-vintage space collage photos. Going forward with this, I combined images that I took on my camera with high-resolution images from the NASA website that are now free to the public domain to use. My main goal was to build multi-colorful images that I had a lot of fun playing around in Photoshop with each photo: modifying the saturation and contrast within each layer. Overall, I am extremely happy with how each photo turned out and I believe I successfully achieved my goal of creating a whimsical intergalactic experience within my photo series. I had a lot of fun with each project in this class and I am stoked to include these in my art portfolio.

[nickrgross]

Desert Bouncing Ball

After Effects Project

For my Bouncing Ball project in After Effects, I went with a desert theme and wanted to incorporate a lot of different objects within the scene that interacted with the ball. This project was time consuming for me and for a while I was confused on a concept within the animation itself but I figured it out and it turned out pretty good I think. Overall I prefer frame by frame animating in Harmony.

[nickrgross]

For my FINAL Dialogue Project, I decided to complete the assignment in Harmony, using frame-by-frame drawing to animate my character and make him talk. I chose to do Papa Smurf and actually had a lot of fun with this project. It was challenging for me to get his mouth to match up with the words at times due to him speaking so fast in a few parts. Due to this, I decided to animate everything else in the scene before I got to the mouth but eventually it all came together. I enjoyed this project and it gave me valuable experience within the program that in turn, gave me further confidence in creating talking characters and possibly making my own short in the future.

[nickrgross]

For my Motion Media Project I used the song “5% TINT” by Travis Scott off of the Astroworld (2018) album. Using images from the internet and graphics that I  cut out in Photoshop, I constructed a lyrical video animating the words from the rap song. I found this project to be tons of fun and really enjoyed matching up the word movements and cuing them to the lyrics in real time. I played with colors and opacity and aimed to create a flashy montage that capitalized on the beat of the song. Overall, this project restored my faith in After Effects and furthered my experience in the program. 

[nickrgross]

For my weight project, I chose to animate Marvin the Martian and have him trying to push a heavy asteroid rock. I enjoyed using Harmony to draw frame by frame movement and once I had a model sheet for the popular character I found it fairly simple to animate his body. Overall very tedious but a fun time.

[nickrgross]

For my clone project, I used my roommate Mike as my subject and chose a scene in my backyard to set up my frame. This project was fairly easy for me as I did something around the same scope in my Digital Media class with Allen Hampton. I arranged my subject 5 different times in 5 locations within the frame and made sure not to move the camera on the tripod at all between shots. Once I had my 5 photos, I imported them into photoshop and began merging the photos. I found this project pretty simple and had a good time putting it together. 

[nickrgross]

10 Portraits - MIKE X NICK

For my portrait series I did them in my backyard of my roommate Mike during golden hour. I got creative with angles and tried to work with the background scenery as best I could. Nature was my best friend in this series and I wanted to capture some with color as well as some with black and white.

[nickrgross]

This fine piece of photography caught my eye with its visual contrast and interesting subject matter. Taken in 1968 (or 1972), this photo was printed on Gelatin Silver Print, showing a busy city street with people walking past what looks like a bar or restaurant. In the middle of the photograph is a photobooth with a woman inside, who is talking on the phone and has her leg propped up against the glass. I found this picture particularly enticing for its unique use of people as imagery. It really gives you a historic glimpse of a day in the life of a bustling city-scape where everyone is rushing around. While the citizens on the street are quickly passing by — each on their own schedule and mission, the woman in the booth is having a personal conversation that stands as its own moment in time. One of the men passing by seems to be giving the woman a peculiar look and it adds to the mise-en-scene of the photo. It kind of gives off a mysterious vibe that makes me wonder who she was talking to on that day and where specifically this was taken. London? New York City? The series was named “Women Are Beautiful” and showcased a multitude of women from back then, doing different things that make them who they are. In my own work, I want to integrate this technique of capturing a snapshot of daily life. Whether that is in public or in a private setting, I will decide my route and execute it artistically. For this piece by Winogrand, I am not sure what I would do differently as it was wonderfully executed, however he could have maybe included a few more aspects of the scene, including possible street signs or more city folk. The angle of the photo is also peculiar as it is not remotely horizontal at all but I also kind of enjoy this approach. Overall it is a fantastically developed photo as well as an excellent exhibit of art that I highly benefited from!

[nickrgross]

For my walk cycle, I chose to do an astronaut character. This project took a good amount of time and was a challenge for me as we were tasked to draw the main positions of the walk. I grew more comfortable with drawing each position as time went on, but still I struggled with smoothness and volume control in my shapes and lines. Overall, I impressed myself on this project and despite him having a slight limp - I think I did okay. I’ve always enjoyed drawing so learning how to engineer each frame to look like fluent movement was an interesting challenge. This walk cycle gave me additional experience and knowledge of the program and I am looking forward to the next project.

[nickrgross]

For my experimental series I decided to replicate the technique used by Gerhard Richter, where he combines high quality photos with colorful layers of oil paints on top of it. Regarding my series, I used 5 photos I took this week and 5 photos I took in California this summer. After editing each photo in Lightroom I printed them out and chose a different palette of paint for each picture. After using different metal tools to spread and mix the paint on top of each photo, I then used my camera and took a picture of each painting and edited it in Lightroom once more. I really enjoyed this project and am pretty satisfied with the results. For this project, I wanted to explore color and implore different shapes of paint on each photo to distort the image. 

[nickrgross]

Batman v Joker Rotoscope

This project threw me for a quite a loop. Once I finally learned to successfully copy a shape and not a whole frame (shared frames are the death of me) I found this project to be cool and entertaining! It turned out to be very time-consuming and I sort of wish I stuck with doing full body shapes instead of a close-up face shot. This put me in charge of lots of detail so it turned out to be lots of work with not so much time to do it! All in all, I enjoyed this project but I could’ve used maybe one more week.

[nickrgross]

Digital Imaging - Photogram Assignment:

For my cyanotype project, I used my photo paper and tried to create an eerie Halloween feel. Using my own cut outs and a plastic spider, I combined paper shapes with natural elements such as mulch and leaves. After laying them out for 2 minutes in the sun, I brought them inside and photographed them. Then I imported each one into Lightroom and tried to manipulate the colors and make them look as creepy and eye-catching as possible. Even though I completed this assignment late, it was a fun and easy process that I actually really enjoyed!

[nickrgross]

Phil The Fish (2019)

Stop Motion Animation by Nick Gross and Mike Fandozzi

This project took A LOT of sweat and tears… and lots of hardwork but after a very long shoot we got everything how we wanted and it turned out pretty good. It really helped to storyboard this one and make sure we had everything in order before we set up to take the shot but this movie is 20,000 leagues above every one else for sure. Let’s go sailing!

[nickrgross]

Ballast Point Park - September 12th 2019

I brought my mom’s Nikon D5000 and went to the pier all the way at the end of Bayshore Boulevard and tried to capture nature’s beauties and dangers. I went there because it is an isolated and windy area right on the bay so I also wanted to capture motion and the nature of water in particular. The natural world was here before any of us got here so I wanted to shoot a mysterious approach and capture how man has affected Earth too.

[nickrgross]

So… a couple days after the deadline, I have FINALLY completed my first animation and it went quite ~ alright ~. It took a...