The folks at Mac-Bo had put up with a home-made iWeb site for a while, but they knew they needed something more sophisticated to communicate the aesthetics and style of their home remodeling business. With a CMS and a matching blog, this site can grow and evolve in step with the company. There’s also a subtle animation (see if you can spot it) and other distinctive details.
Today we looked at examples of two more from the list of ‘dominant models of narrative’. Firstly, Multiple perspectives on a single incident was represented by the Slovenian film ‘Four’. (Which I can’t find of the web). There’s a core incident - the climax, and we see developments towards this climax four times, each through the point of view of a different character. The characters are related to each other in some way, and to the climax. Variations on this structure can be seen in live action films such as Beautiful People, and Thirteen Conversations About One Thing.
We then paired off (me with Christopher Huizar) to devise a narrative based on 1 core event, with three characters for whom the event is meaningful. While also considering what animation could bring to the story the live action filming could not. Christopher and I got going with a truck/bicycle crash. Trick driver, cyclist, and witness who inadvertently causes the distraction that causes the crash.
We also looked at the narrative model of the list-led set of relationships to a core topic. For example, Portland animator Bill Plympton’s 25 Ways To Quit Smoking. We also watched a great piece by Nikki Braine called Procrastinating Gus. Our paired-up response to this one was ‘How to Fake Technical Proficiency’. But early on we concluded that the list we were coming up with was more about language, and would be challenging to express with images. Unlike Plympton’s ‘Smoking’, which is one sight gag after another. So when were were given the choice of which of the two exercises to pursue over the final two days, Christopher and I decided to go with the 1-story 3-POV one.
Then we talked at length about moral dilemmas. Starting with the chestnut example in which one imagines various numbers and types (friends, strangers, drunks, surgeons) of people lying on train tracks, and the train is coming and you can not stop it but you can flip the switch to run over the folks on track A or track B…you know the kind of thing. Comes up in ethics 101 and other places. Anyhow, characters’ agency is the key point, and that you can build a story on a moral dilemma, and have it play out based on the characters and their levels of agency. So the next exercise was to construct a set-up of a situation that presents a moral dilemma, then develop two tracks of problematizing from the one dilemma. I.e. answering ‘yes’ leads you down one track, which gets progressively more complex to answer ‘yes’ to, and same with answering ‘no’. Bag of money found at a bus stop was our starting point. It got more interesting when we gave the money-finder some significant backstory. Anyhow, moving on…
One interesting point that came out, as we were discussing ambivalent reactions (e.g. “I’d keep some of the money but hand the rest back…”) is that drama is driven by specific responses. You go one way or another, when faced with a dramatic choice. So muddying the response is not a great way to create drama. Comedic drives, however, often hinge on complications. If you were creating a dark comedy around the finding of cash by a sympathetic protagonist, introducing ambivalent responses would work. A lot of contemporary storytelling plays with ambivalence.
Then we looked at some major themes, such as desire for justice, fear of the unknown, self-discovery, etc. And tomorrow we continue our work on our multiple-perspective stories.
The late afternoon session was a lecture by Larry Sherman, a neuroscientist at OHSU. How the Brain Sees Motion: From the Static to the Animated Image.
Dr. Sherman did a good job of presenting the material to us lay people in a way that removed the jargon but presented the fascinating aspects of the latest findings in neuroscience. There was a compeling list of agnosias, the specificity of which point to neuroanatomical specificity is handling different type of information. A person with Drawing Agnosia, for instance, can recognize objects just fine, but cannot recognize the same object in a drawing. Achromatopsia robs a person of the ability to distinguish hues, even thought they can see perfectly well otherwise. There are distinct areas in the brain the light up in fMRI studies when the subject views or thinks about faces. And another area for bodies. And another area for houses, would you believe! There is a ‘house’ slot in the brain.
Dr. Sherman also talked about the limbic system, and in detail about how visual perception works, and how much data is processed in the eye before is gets to the occipital lobe, and the what goes on with it once it’s there.
The area of the brain that processes motion is called hMT+ . It’s very small. Damage to this area prevents you from seeing things in motion. Kind of the opposite to those reptiles that can only see something if it’s moving. The speaker cited a case where a woman woke up one day (presumably after a stroke) and found she could not see the coffee pot in her hand. She could feel it, but because it was in motion it was invisible to her. Then she was pouring coffee on herself and she couldn’t see it. She’d see a car in the distance, then step out onto the road, and suddenly the car was right there. So moving things she saw as still objects, a few seconds apart, with no ‘frames’ in between. I can’t imagine how you’d adapt to this. You wouldn’t be able to see your own body unless you kept still.
Then Dr. Sherman showed us some MEAs, motion after effects. Like how you stare at a red spot for 30 seconds, then at a white wall and you see a green ghostly shape, but this was with motion. He showed us a spiralling black and white animation, after which we looked at the back of our hand. The flesh was crawling of its own accord. Visually, of course - not really, but the effect was stong enough to creep me out and make me hind may hand. A motion after effect.
Today the workshop started to feel harder. Paul Wells, such an entertaining and buoyant (one of his favorite words) teacher, is speaking less now, and getting us to work more. Plus it’s an intense course: 8 hours a day for 5 days. For the record, The faculty at the Animation Institute are Rose Bond, Suzanne Buchan, Paul Vester, and Paul Wells.
More tomorrow…
First of all, Paul Wells is incredible. More so than that web page is letting on. He’s creative, smart, articulate, multi-talented, has a has a hybridizing mind, and is a terrific facilitator. If you ever have a chance to take a class with him or hear him speak, DO. Okay, got that over with!
The faculty at the Animation Institute are Rose Bond, Suzanne Buchan, Paul Vester, and Paul Wells. I’m in Paul Wells’ ’stream’, but the streams come together at lunchtime and for a late afternoon session.
I’m taking this class to open up possibilities for different types of work to come together. I’ve been a visual artist since forever. Well, officially since 1986 when I graduated from art school and started showing. Then I got into the digital realm in about 1999, starting very slowly, and gradually building skills to the point where I now run my own web design company. Then a few years ago I suddenly and unexpectedly started writing fiction. (Yeah those are adverbs. Whatcha gonna do about it?) A novel sort of fell out of me and I’ve been cleaning it up ever since. I hope to have it presentable enough by the end of this year that I can start exploring ways to send it out into the world.
Event Horizon, Julia Stoops, 2007
But these things I do: 1. visual art (mostly painting), 2. website design (with a little bit of client-commissioned animation) and 3. fiction writing (mostly a novel) have not come together. They have informed each other, definitely. Each discipline enriches the others. But I still pursue the disciplines separately. The formal and technical concerns of each discipline are demanding enough that once I’m engaged in one, it’s all I think about. Shifting gears into another discipline is hard, and is a cause for anxiety. My ‘painting brain’ does not want to think about usability and information architecture. My ‘website brain’ isn’t clued in to character development. My ‘writing brain’ never considers revealing mysterious shapes within layers of translucent color.
And why not? As soon as I wrote this, I thought, wow, that’s interesting. But when I’m in the middle of the making, the medium-specific questions I ask are already so requiring, that others get crowded out.
Why? Several reasons. Firstly because the digital and fiction writing practices are relatively new to me. I’m still looking for a level of facility that lets me step back from worrying about ‘getting it right’, into a place where I can truly play. Craft is still an issue with fiction writing and digital work, in a way that it’s not with painting. Not that I’m the world’s most facile painter, but compared with the other two disciplines, I started younger and I’ve been doing it longer. There’s a level of comfort and familiarity in painting that isn’t there yet in the other disciplines. Not to imply all my paintings come easily: they don’t. But when they don’t it’s okay. Painting does not generate the kind of anxieties I experience with fiction and digital.
Secondly, for the last few years I have also been preoccupied with a fourth thing: running a business. With no background in business, and no role models among family or friends, learning how to create and manage a business is a steep learning curve. One that’s charged with the excitement of charting ones own course, (Yeah, a cliche. Whatcha gonna do about it?) but is also labor intensive.
And my ‘business brain’ claims to be far too busy dealing with demanding practicalities to spend quality time playing with color, character, and other things that it says will have to wait. The books have to be balanced. The seminars have to be listened to. The client follow-up is intense. The options have to be weighed. The business plan must be reviewed. The router needs rebooting. The subcontractors must receive explicit instructions. And so on.
So it’s in this context, during this week-long space that I was able to carve out of my daily web design studio routine, that I am exceedingly grateful to be taking ‘Devising Narrative Structures: Script and Storyboard’ with Paul Wells, during Boundary Crossings: An Institute in Animated Arts at PNCA.
An incredibly accomplished composer, arranger, and performer, Mark Orton is known for his several bands, including Tin Hat, as well as his composing for films such as Everything Is Illuminated. Mark’s site is rich in music as well as visuals, with a Joseph Cornell inspired aesthetic. There’s even a ‘radio’ filled with dozens of tunes you can play while you’re looking at other websites. Check it out, and plan to stay a while.
Portland’s new mayor Sam Adams is an arts advocate. Let’s show him that Portland supports his beleif in the importance of creativity in the modern world.
Image from Sam Adams's website
WHAT: RACC’s State of the Arts address to the Portland City Council
WHEN: Thursday, March 12th at 2:00 pm
WHERE: Council Chambers at City Hall
1221 SW 4th Avenue
Portland, OR 97204
The Creative Advocacy Network, a new non-profit working towards a regional dedicated funding solution for the arts, is working hard to make sure that the Regional Arts and Culture Budget is preserved by Portland City Council and they have sent us this notice and request.
On March 12th at 2:00 RACC will be giving their “State of the Arts” presentation to Portland City Council and describing how last year’s investments in the arts benefited the City. This is the first step in the FY10 budget process. We need to have the Council Chambers full of arts supporters to send a strong message:
The Arts CAN, and must live here.
The Council will be facing major budget issues this spring so our objective is to pack the Council Chamber with arts supporters to show the Commissioners that the arts and cultural community have a strong voice. We all know how many people there are living in Portland that are in the arts and care passionately about the arts, but we need to insure that the Council understands this too. Please come out and show your support.
If you know you will be attending please RSVP to info@theartscan.org
For more information visit www.racc.org/advocacy/local.php
Julie Perini takes on the world!
Julie Perini recently relocated to Portland, whereupon I had the pleasure of meeting her…and pretty soon I was designing her a fab new website! Her short videos investigate her immediate surroundings as well as larger social structures with humor. Julie is cooking, with a recent show at PCC Cascade, and one up right now at PSU. Check it out!
Banana tree in snow. Our neighbors have a banana tree. Which is pretty ambitious here above the 45th parallel. Every winter it disappears, and every summer it pops back up over the top of the fence. Here it is receiving the shock of its life.
Swirly snow. A study in movement.
Hummingbird in snow. I hope it survives the upcoming week of below-freezing temps.
moss
Walking in Washington Park today, my zoomy eye spied these secret and magical worlds.
Okay, so my new camera has a macro function. Now that I’m losing the closeup range of my eyesight (just old age, nothing serious), this camera will have to fill in for me!
pine