lachrymose-proj

[lachrymose-proj]

Writing Initiative #7

What have you learned about yourself doing this self-directed assignment?

If I’m being honest, I’ve realized I definitely won’t be doing a thesis next year. Instead, I want to take as many courses as possible to learn the skills I’m interested in—like 3D, animation, photography, and so on. That path gives me more flexibility and has helped me develop my own discipline.

I’ve also learned that I don’t enjoy the uncertainty that comes with self-directed projects. Going through that kind of crisis really throws me off. Now I know that structured learning suits me much better.

What did you find to be the most difficult aspect of your chosen assignment? Creativity? Research? Connecting design to research? Craft? Organizational skills? Time management? Something else entirely?

I think my problems lie in my organizational skills and in trying to connect design with research. It’s a long process—figuring out how certain ideas or concepts can be represented through design. Most of the time, I was focused on creating something meaningful for the subject matter, and I kept gaslighting myself into thinking, “This won’t take long.” I really need to stop doing that.

Creativity is another challenge I struggle with. Even though my assigned word was straightforward, I still had a hard time figuring out how to represent it effectively.

What did you enjoy about this opportunity?

I like the fact that this gave me a chance to try out clay and stop motion.

How would you rate your performance over the course of the semester?

I would say that my results were satisfactory. However, in terms of creativity and design, I still need to polish myself more. I feel like I weren't creative enough, and thus needed more time and effort.

Hindsight is 20/20. What would you do differently, now that you've had this opportunity to work this way?

I would either improve or do something different for my 3D. Other than that, I'm quite satisfied with the outcome for 4D, and maybe a little more on 2D performance.

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Reflective

My reflective piece is a tissue box, as you can see. It is stuffed with crumbled tissues, with different reasons written on each tissue for the causes of tears.

The outside of the box is wrapped in strips of frames I made for my stop motion, as I wanted to make it into something being suppressed, but also surrounded by a range of emotions that tears can come from. Bottling up emotions, you might say.

The process was not something complicated, I just gathered some causes for tears around and ended up writing on a tissue. The cause of each tissue can either be a physical or mental cause of tears. As for why the tissue box is metal, it is an old tissue box I found lying around the house, and I thought it would look better if I used a paper box or a nice-looking one. This one has a wear-and-tear look, and thus, it looks vintage and unique since I don't usually see a metal tissue box.

Overall, this reflects the word perfectly, so I'm happy with it.

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Research again (for reflective)

My reflective is going to be a tissue box so here is a tutorial on how to neatly fold the tissue back:

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4D

Final composition of 4D, with stop motion and audio by me.

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4D process

I'm making a stop-motion video for 4D to represent my word, "lachrymose." The theme of the video will be depression and the different emotions that humans possess.

The colours I'm using are: red, green, blue, yellow, and pink. They are not only supposed to represent different emotions but also how people with depression mask their symptoms. From my own observation, depressed people can look like they don't exhibit any signs, but deep inside, they can go through different negative thoughts. To read more about this, please go to this link.

For my stop motion, I put the edited images of my eyes into After Effects and time them accordingly to how I want. Next, I exported each frame, put it through Photoshop to assemble them into contact sheets, and printed them out.

As to how I did it, my plan was to make the animation via mixed media. I used gouache paint, crayons, pencil colours and gel pens to draw on the frame sequence.

This took a while for me since this is my first time doing this kind of stop motion. It was also a struggle because I printed out the frames small, but considering the number of frames I had to do, this size is alright.

For the audio, I was thinking of using ambient sounds to evoke a sense of emotion, and also experiment with GarageBand. So I messed around with the app to create my own audio. It took a while for me to figure out how to use the app, tho.

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4D making

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Writing Initiative #6

Which piece did you present to the class today? How does it relate to the other pieces previously presented?

I presented my final 3D piece, ideas for 4D, and my reflective piece. The theme for both of these still relates to the meaning of the word I have: sadness, isolation, emotions, etc.

For 3D, I took the reference of the eyes in anatomical aspects, with elements of water being the surrounding details within the globe, and pearls as the myth of mermaid's tears. The 3D piece is supposed to be a manifestation of the isolating intimacy when you feel alone and sorrowful.

As for the 4D piece, I'm working towards a stop motion built on a similar theme from 3D: depression and isolation, or representing different emotions of tears.

Finally, for the reflective piece's theme, the reasons behind tears are the context of this. With written reasons for crying on each piece of tissue, I would then crumble it and either put it in a tissue box or a trash bin, replicating the object that's filled with emotions.

Describe 2–3 specific strengths your classmates found in your work and their reasons for identifying them.

A lot of options with material to explore.

Expand on the topic of emotions.

Eyes can mean a lot of expressions.

Describe 1–2 specific ways your classmates thought you could improve this work going forward.

For the reflective piece, instead of conventional tissue, printing on vellum and sewing them together can be an option.

Use leftover clay from 3D to make animations for 4D.

Make the base of the lamp more connected (clay, strings, etc.)

Consider the remaining outcome yet to be presented in a couple of weeks; why have you put it off the longest? Describe your reasons for presenting this outcome last.

I think it's the reflective piece is the one I'm putting off longest because in the process of making other projects, I was hesitated and unsure of what to do, and most of the time I also had a bit of trouble when I tried to brainstorm.

Finally, you have now had a chance to present each of your projects (2D, 3D, 4D, Reflective) in process to the class. Produce an image of each one and describe how an aspect of your word is manifested in each piece.

2D

I directly put the meaning of the word and was inspired by tarot illustrations, and renaissance paintings depicting tears and sadness, as well as the comedy and tragedy mask.

3D

Lachrymose = tearful, weeping; the inspiration of the eyeball and water patterns, lamp = alone sensation yet calming.

4D (wip)

Eyes expressing different emotions; depression and isolation.

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Inspo again

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Commencing 4D

For 4D, I'm working on a stop motion animation with mixed media, including drawings, photography and paper. That's the plan so it could change depending on what I have available.

As for the theme of 4D, depression and tears are the main things I'm highlighting, as depression can be complex, and the word 'lachrymose' means weeping, I think the two of them can somehow articulate with each other.

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3D

This is my final look for 3D, made with air-dried clay, a recycled glass globe, and fake pearls. My 3D piece is inspired by the anatomical aspect of the eyes, but it takes the shapes of water and waves, with pearls inspired by the mermaid's tears.

I chose to make this work a lamp with warm light because this creates a kind of intimate sensation when we are alone and feel that isolation. It is also my subtle showing of how depression can feel when I look into it.

Overall, it definitely needs more improvement, but I'm satisfied with what I have and when I hold something that I made like this, it feels in rhyme with what I'm trying to do.

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Another 3D process video

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3D loading

Finished creating clay parts for now. Next is painting and then assembling.

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Writing Initiative #5

Which piece did you present to the class today? How does it relate to the other pieces previously presented?

I presented my ideas for the 3D piece today, and they relate to what I was doing in terms of the overall theme. I related the word "lachrymose" mostly to the physical/anatomical terminology, as well as a bit of mythical element to it

Describe 2–3 specific strengths your classmates found in your work and their reasons for identifying them.

Going in the right direction

Why a lamp? If I incorporated different colours into the lamp, it could be for different scenarios, emotions and stories, like a carousel

Describe 1–2 specific ways your classmates thought you could improve this work going forward.

Relate to the science of crying

For 4D, consider different methods of making stop-motion animation

Blinking lights

Relate to intimacy: crying alone in a room

Consider the outcomes you still need to present in the remaining classes; why have you put them off till now?

For the reflective pieces, I'm not sure on what format to do this, but I was considering a process book or a journal book, but generally, a summary of the whole semester process. That's one direction, another is to make the reflective into an art installation: crumbled tissue in a trash bin, with written reasons behind crying, inspired by My Bed sculpture by Tracey Emin.

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In-class discussion on Mar 03

reasons for crying: sleepiness, emotions, etc.

colour changing light bulbs ikea, gradually changing

turns reasons into objects, put in a big eye pinata

hormones: basically make a container that contains reasons, items are blue

spiritual cleanse, breaking pinata = breaking pinata

red eyes = light

Inside Out: emotions are played by different colours; different colours = different emotions

orb lights attach strings like tears = reasons object = wind chimes

box of kleenex = ceramic tissue boxes - write on tissues different box tissue for different tears

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Process video

This is just one process video out of all the other videos I did lol. I did the shape of the pupil first, and this is a sneak peak on working the shapes for the base of the globe.

I’m going towards a curvy lines surrounding the base, to create a more nature-inspired shapes, as well as adding pearls to highlight after done kneading shapes and painting.

Right now I'm experimenting with the material I had, to see how long the glossy glaze would take to dry and how strong the clay would be after drying. I still had a long way to go with kneading the base part of the globe, but of course I had to make sure that the first 2 pieces are successful in terms of material durability.

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Sketch for 3D

This is a rough sketch I had for my 3D. For this I wanted to use clay and then paint on it to get a rough feeling of the material, and also this representation is of tears' origin in anatomical aspect.

The material I used here includes a lamp base I got online, and a white glass globe fixture I found during our house renovation. I figured its perfect shape would be nice to use it to make it into an eyeball haha.

But anyways, I already started on working on it a while ago, and I had the material I need with me, so right now I'm working out the clay shapes on this one.

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Prepping

More material arrived!