Brief 4 - Reflection

"Pursuit" was developed after a strain of thought originating with research I did into the artists Fischli und Weiss. The final product is far removed from the initial spark, probably too far to say that I successfully achieved the goal of the brief. However as the deadline drew closer, I shifted my priorities towards completing a - for all intents and purposes - polished piece of work. The finished result is certainly not resolved, and I make no claims of that. Originally conceived as five different acts, in the end I only managed to finish one of them.

The large difference between this work and my previous projects is that I spent more time planning this one. I storyboarded before going in, which helped me a great deal in making sense of my ideas. Once I established my initial intent of illustrating and eliciting suspense, like that seen in "Der Lauf Der Dinge", I became more interested in narrative forms of suspense, and looked at scenes from Hitchcock's oeuvre, as well as other films that have good illustrations of different types of suspense. However in doing so, I moved further and further away from my initial inspiration. I looked at "Opto-scientific" as inspiration, which illustrated causation to great effect. This pushed me in a more narrative direction, as I attempted to distance myself. I liked the idea of a dot and a line interacting in some way, and inhabited a world of two-dimensions, with very little color.
However, as I continued to develop my ideas, I found myself moving further into a three dimensional world, and embracing depth and subtleties of color. I worked with light sources in After Effects, and found myself seduced by this world.

I ended up, predictably, with a piece of work much closer to my comfort zone of rich, deep color, however I think I benefited from making my first attack on this brief with simple planes and geometries. The concept came first, the embellishment last, which is not always how I've worked in the past.

I am extremely proud of what I created, and feel it has a lot of potential. However I can't claim that it currently embodies my initial desire to illustrate "suspense" with simple, no-frills graphics. The piece is neither no-frills, nor particularly suspenseful (my class-mate Gavin saw more flirtation than suspense, and I concur that that's what it finally became). But it has charm (I think), style, cheekiness, and has served as a wonderful way for me to develop my skill with the 3D camera in After Effects, as well as explore a bit of rudimentary character animation with dots and lines.