The process picture above was posted only to distract you a bit while the movie below loads. It may take a moment because it's a lo res version of my FULL and FINAL thesis. If you want a bigger, faster loading version, you can go to this link for the whole thing on vimeo I'm really excited not just about how it came together, but also how much I learned along the way. It's been a totally awesome/grueling/ stressful/fun/stimulating/challenging experience and I'm really pumped to get to show it in the show!

The bodies for this last section of my thesis animation are proving to be quite a feat! Even though I think this section may be one of the shortest, I neede the gestures to be more specific and expressive in a pedestrian way..which means I need more of them. Here are 2 thirds of them rotoscoped (and playing in faster than usual succession). I've just got another big pile to mask out and then I'll be ready to animate them with some graphics!

Below is a working version of the first 2/3 rds of The Fuschia Fits. There are still a lot of tweaks to be done on these segments, but I think they are starting to come together nicely!

This past tursday night, I had the opportunity to go see the Lesbian Poet/Activist, StaceyAnn Chin, speak and read passages and poems from her new book. This was the most inpsiring thing I have seen in quite some time. I knew her mostly from seeing the unbelievable speech she gave at the most recent National Equality March on Washington D.C. (she stood out as being the most impassioned, the most eloquent, and certainly the most galvanizing speaker at the event). She is known for her unapologetically blunt and honest style, and her ability to get at the heart of some pretty complex (and very screwed up) social conditions with one or two succint and cutting lines of prose. I was vibrating when I left!!! For what it's worth, here is a youtube clip of one of her more well known appearances.

This week in class I was going to show the main movements I'll be using for the fourth dance. This is a combo video if the bodies I've been working on ...including one being punched back into the ropes of a boxing ring and down to the ground, one that acts much like one of those scantily clad women who you might see slinking around with a numbered card in between rounds in a boxing match (in this version she brings on the name and number of the dance), a close-up clobbering of an already bruised body that will also act as a transistion swipe out of the third dance and into the fourth, a toe touch cheerleaderish kind of thing, and an arching jump that means to go through a ring of fire like trained dogs in an old circuis act.

Here is a peak at some of the changes I made after last weeks presentation...including some changes to the title lock-up, the ribbon color, and the big, now much gentler, SPLASH!

This week, Jun asked us to bring in the first draft of our gallery blurbs. I looked back to a revised mission statement that I had written last semster for Thesis 1 ( posted below ). I reall, really like it. I think the whole thing may be too long, though. I'd like to try and at least use the end of the first run-on sentence...beginning from "colorful chunk of propaganda".

While thinking about the kinds of words I wanted to use for the blurb, I remembered this part of a book I read this summer by David Wojnarowicz, the queer artist, acivist, and author which may have been one of the main things that inspired me to do a piece that involved queer issues with human movement. Here is a small part of it:

"I thought about issues of freedom. If government projects the idea that we, as people inhabiting this particular land mass, have freedom,, then for the rest of our lives we will go out and find what appear to be the boundaries and smack against them like a heart against the rib cage.

If we reveal boundaries in the course of our movements, then we will expose the inherent lie in the use of the word freedom. I want to keep breathing and moving until I arrive at a place where motion and strength and relief intersect."

-David Wojnarowicz (Close to Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration)

What is so poignant about this passage is the way Wojnarowicz blurs the dividing line between one's intellectual/emotional experience and their corporeal/physical experience. He speaks about them as if they are one thing, which I think is very contrary to what seems to be the most popular perspective today of a self that is almost completely disconnected from the body.

In an earlier class, someone..I think it was Alex...suggested perhaps opening my animation with a quote of some sort. Maybe this one by Wojnarowicz (or at least those last two lines) could be a good candidate.

I clamped a tripod sideways onto a step-ladder that I then perched atop some suitcases which were stacked on my kitchen table. The shot on the left is the camera view of my cannon ball ready legs.

When Jun showed that reference in class of the video for Coldplay's Strawberry Swing by Shynola, I was pretty pumped. I thought it was really inspiring how the whole thing was shot from above. It made things possible that shouldn't be and made some completely pedestrian movements deliciously strange and awkward! I thought it might be good to try drastically changing the angle of my own camera. I had been trying to think of how my figure was going to get into the water for the "queer-bait" scene...and then it came it to me! If the camera was shooting from above I could shoot a stop motion cannon ball! Below is the rough cut of the the stills that will be used for said cannon ball.

My good friend Liran, the most design hungry junior that communication design has ever seen, helped me shoot this weekend. His arms aren't super long, so he has trouble with the remote, but he manages to do an amazing job just the same.

A couple of days ago I set up to shoot a few more movements for the 3rd dance. I went in with a couple of new things in mind. In class, Jun had a really great suggestion about maybe experimenting with the idea of having multiple figures in the same dancing...perhaps symbolizing the throngs of queers dealing with the same issues while also being a good way to keep the dances visually surprising without betraying the structure and concept of the dances. That got me thinking about the times in concert dance (on stage) when we'd usually see masses of dancers executing similar movements like Chorus Lines (a la Rockettes) or a well rehearsed Corps De Ballet (an ensemble of ballet dancers that often moves around the stage with the graceful unity of a school of fish). I think these might be two systems of group movement that I'd like to use, or at least reference in my 3rd dance - The Chromophobe. And I think I can make it work well with the previous concept of the dance which was about a body chasing or grasping at some kind of lure (hello..fish...it's perfect) or proverbial dangling carrot while they're efforts are being consistently stifled by confrontation of colorful gay icons of which they seem to be very afraid.

This weekend I decided to take a look back at some of my original styleframes and video movement tests. I found myself really inspired by how much has changed. For a little while, I've was feeling like I've just been drilling the same idea and aesthetic into the ground. It was good to stop and take note of how it is evolving and the hope that it will keep evolving into something better and better has given me a much needed burst of motivation.

Below are a few super early styleframes that I did:

Here is a video of some also very early movement and video tests (sans audio). Even though there are things I like about this sort of real time dancing feel, I'm much happier with the stop motion poses that I'm working with now. I find they give me a lot more freedom to make 'choreographic' decisions later in the process as opposed to video where the dance I make up is a before the shoot is a bit more carved in stone.

As I'm starting to wade deeper into the bulk of the production and animation of the individual 'dances', I'm re-examining some of the original titles and the core concepts of those dances that I had originally planned. Some are staying the same, some are changing slightly, and some are being completely shelved due to this newer notion of including only 5 dance sections in my piece instead of 7 or eight. Below are some of the original storyboarded dances and short explanations of the idea behind them.

The Chromophobe I think is actually the next dance (#3) that I'll be working on. It is inpsired by much of the gaystream media's (major gay magazines, blogs, and cable networks) complete abandonment of popular gay identifiers and icons like the rainbow and the color pink (especially) in favor of a glossier, more 'apirational', and unfortunately more homogenous aesthetic. This dance sees the participant engaging in movements of melodramatic dismay over gay_icon_headed spears being jabbed at him/her.

The Gender Defender was a sort of very vague concpet I had that I was hoping would gel into something with a more specific concept if I gave it time to simmer. I'm very interested in theories that many forms of homophobia, queerophobia, and effemephobia actually have a general hatred and suspicion of women at their core. This is, of course, a very heavy idea and something I'm just not sure I can broach in one of my dances, so I'm setting this idea aside for another time.

The Commercial Compromise is a response to the the ways in which queer representations in the mainstream media (and in the gaystream media for that matter) are contstantly subject to corporate and commercial approval and manipulation. This dance finds its participant ducking and dodging a vicioucly versatile cash register/clobbering machine.

foreshadowing for this next dance

The Str8 Acting is one of the first ideas that I had. It has to do with prejudices and intolerances that exist within queer culture itself; particularly the femme negative attitudes of many gay men toward their more 'flamboyant' or 'feminine' brethren. The name comes from a what I perceive to be a highly ridiculous, offensive, and kind of confusing label that some gay men, who consider themslves to behave more masculine (and who demand the same from potential mates), use to identify themselves in personal ads or on sites like straightacting.com. I'm currently working on this dance and I've decided to change the name slightly to "The Str8 Defl8'.

The Don't Mask Your Swell is a play on one of the US governments most upsetting policies concerning LGBTQ people, Don't Ask Don't Tell, which requires queers to conceal their sexual preference, and much of their identity, in order to legally serve in the military. This is one I'm still pondering and mulling over. In ways, this seems like it should have a whole thesis entirely devoted to it, but if I can think of a way to make a succinct and powerful reference to the screwed-uped-ness of this law, than you'd better believe I will.

The Sweeps Week Sissy is the first dance in my piece and it has to do with the kinds of queer representations that are most familiar (and perhaps most profitable) in the mainstream entertainment industry. Growing up, I always associated being gay with those outrageously flamboyant icons of effeminate mad-cappery...the Quinten Crisps...the Jack McFarlands...the Richard Simmons'. Now, looking back on all those very similar versons of queer depictions (and the more current ones) I see a very telling disconnect between the kinds of queer behaviors that are preferred in the media versus the ones that are preferred in actual social spheres. It seems that homosexuality is often more acceptable when in comes in the form of comedic boffoonery; something that, when placed strategically in the context of a movie or television program, has not only the potential to be entertaining but commercially viable.

One of the most inspiring visual precedents in my thesis process has been the paintings of Al Held.

Al Held...Embarcadero....Aquatint...29 1/2 x 43 1/2 inches

Al Held.......Trajan's Edge II.......1982

In the animations and graphic schemes I've been using so far, there has been a lot of play between forms in various states of rigidity and malleability. Many of Held's compositions find geometric shapes stretched and contorted almost to their breaking limits. Boxes that might otherwise be stiff, bend and loop back on themsleves or drape over some other hard line structure that looks as though it might soften at any moment. I'm also really interested the way he subverts the devices of 3-point-perspective (checkered floors or ceilings, and depth of feild) by overlapping mismatching veiwpoint systems so everything ends up looking flat again. Maybe this is a stretch, but I think I like his work because it seems like it could be a good metaphor for many kinds of media that we confront everyday. Particularly telvision and movies (and even more specifically the representations of queer folks brought to us through those types of media). In their desperateness to replicate some sort of reality they only reveal more fully their inescapable flatness.

I bring all this up now because the second section of Dance #2 draws heavily from Held's work. I got the idea for the concentric containers from one of his paintings called Vorcex IV. In finshing up this animation I'll have sign posts that identify the outermost container as 'Gender Norms' - a social structure that is quite challenging for someone to confront critically, but that is perhaps the one most in need of a revamp.

I spent this weekend working on what may be the most time consuming componenet of my project - the flash/cell animation. But when I was done with this one tiny section (the neon sign with the unwieldy wires that get unplugged as part of the dance) it was well worth. It has this look, that I'm really satisfied with, of cartoony choppyness that is a great contrast against the smoother movement and modeling of some of the 3d elements. Luckily, in this go round of the cell animation I think I found a way to cut down on some of the tedium and wasted time drawing frames that I end up cutting later with time remapping. I animated (or re spliced rather) the stop motion sequence of the body first in after effects to get the exact timing that I'd be animating to and then exported it out as a lo-res/1/2 frame rate jpeg sequence. Then I printed out the first frame and drew some rough landmarks of the cell animation on tracing paper. After scanning the drawings and importing the jpeg sequence into flash I had an almost an exact map of how many frames I needed and the compositional parameters of the animation. This make compositing the swf back into after effects a little easier. Hopefully, as I go on to do more of these flash parts I'll get even better and faster!

Here we grow!!!////////
So, my first big discovery in todays thesis class (the first one of this spring semester) was that the time limit on department animations to be shown in the thesis show is 4 minutes. I don't know how I managed to miss this. With this in mind, I think I have to alter how much content I was planning to pack into the final version of my piece. Since my project is almost completely non-narrative and is divided into somewhat discreet vignettes (or 'dances'), it shouldn't effect the impact of the entire piece to trim away one or possibly two sections. This also seems like an easy solution since the concept of the piece was always to suggest that a viewer is only being shown a few samples of some vast library of queer inspired movements. In this case I will only have seven dances in total, leaving six to be executed. This should be do-able since the version of the first dance I have done now runs about 20 seconds long.

What follows is my own personal work schedule for the production of what remains to be done on my thesis animation.

WEEK 1/////
construction of assets for 'dance 2'

WEEK 2/////
integration and orchestration of 'dance 2' elements and additional sound mixing

WEEK 3/////
Animation for second section of 'dance 2'

WEEK 4/////
Cleaning and finishing 'dance 2' and animating transition into 'dance 3' (probably beginning of asset comstruction for 'dance 3')

WEEK 5/////
construction of assets for 'dance 3'

WEEK 6/////
integration and orchestration of 'dance 3' elements and additional sound mixing
If I can do this I'll be a little beyond 50 percent done

WEEK 7 (midterm) /////
construction of assets for 'dance 4'

SPRING BREAK/////
I vow not to go to Ft. Laudaerdale, keep my nose to the motion graphics grindstone, and tackle the integration and orchestration of 'dance 4' elements and additional sound mixing

WEEK 8/////
construction of assets for 'dance 5'

WEEK 9/////
integration and orchestration of 'dance 5' elements and additional sound mixing

WEEK 10/////
Adjustments and clean up//////specifics sections TBA

WEEK 11/////
Adjustments and clean up//////specifics sections TBA

WEEK 12 (final) /////
begin the clean up and final tweaking process

WEEK 13 (final) /////
continue the clean up and final tweaking process

WEEK 14 (final) /////
final presentation

Below is a quick snippet of the work I've begun to do on the second dance....more to come!