Loren Cook: December 2009

29 December, 2009

Just a few videos I enjoyed:

#1- Color

#2- Beauty Kit

#3- PIGS

#3 is probably my favorite. Great work.

27 December, 2009

Yeah this was cute.

Ten Thousand Pictures of You from Robin King on Vimeo.

12 December, 2009

I only magaged to get a few pictures before my camera died.
This was our final day in CDF, and we went to Colormark. I was really cool seeing how they create all different prints. They do a lot of local pieces like Sprint and random busniess around KC. Very neat expericence.

06 December, 2009

VISCOM | Taxonomy Redo

My first taxonomy was in desperate need of change. After brainstorming and coming down to a solid plan, I created an entirely new taxonomy. I have to say I am much more pleased with my final piece. I am proud to say I created a much more creative and complete piece.
Originally I had wanted to create a taxonomy that related to nature, but not parallel to my haiku animation. My first taxonomy was much too simple and was not fully thought out.
My final taxonomy molded into a journal of field notes. I created narrative of a nameless person hiking/researching in state of Wisconsin at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. Throughout the handwritten notes the writer documents their findings and shows the denotative and connotative concepts. The small brown booklet is being written in a journal like narrative, complete with the writer's doodles and thoughts. Along with their doodles includes samples collected from the research and diagram drawings.
The entire book has a handmade scrapbooky feeling to it and would be considered a personal belonging:

Cover

Inside Title Page

Entry with layered transparency

Entry without transparency

Wheat artifact

Wheat artifact closeup

Entry

Entry closeup

VISCOM | Final Project | Part B

Line #1 using woven wheat

Line #2 using leaves

Line #3 using leaves

tool(s) > mark(s) > pencil sketch(es) > analog shape(s) > digital translation(s) > composed w/haiku text

After completing all three projects I have noticed their parallel of progression. Honestly I did not understand the importance of so many iterations of the dot compositions. I slowly began to understand the importance of the progression when we began the line juxtapositions. It was important to reiterate your first try's when deciding on the correct juxtaposition for the environmental line study.

Throughout these projects I have learned to think "outside the box", and not to act only on my first idea. Most of the time it isn't the best idea. Which goes hand in hand with progression. Just like reiterating dot compositions, retaking pictures of juxtapositions, and revising symbols; when one doesnt succeed in their first try, they should try a different approach. And not go with their first idea.

When the spring semester rolls around I will remember that craft is just about the best thing you can master, mini crits from your peers are always a wonderful idea, and that without a well throughout idea, your piece will not hit it's greatest potential.

These are my first drawings of my haiku. The first two lines are my iterations for my first line ("Wind-blown rained on") As you can see I was looking WAY too much into the poem. There are pictures of rocks, which I was trying to show that the rain and wind had created erosion in the rocks.

I now can see that the pictures were much too literal. I believe I wasn't thinking abstract enough. I have been working on my progression and plan to continue to think more abstractly.

CDF | Final Post

We have been working on a group project between the sections, creating a calendar. This calendar uses our delineated 3D letter forms and our color notions. The months were given a specific color concept and they were assigned to a person in the group. We also divided out jobs like color group and graph layout to insure accuracy and equal cooperation.

My month was March and my concept was transparency. I had a difficult time with this concept at first, due to the fact that my 3D letter form had to appear transparent. I used both subtractive and additive transparency concepts from one side of the form to the other. I really enjoy my color pallet and I think it goes very well with the month of March.

I am excited to see the final piece completed.

03 December, 2009

VISCOM | Final Haiku

Haiku from Loren Cook on Vimeo.

Music: Breathe Me by Sia (instrumental)

01 December, 2009

VISCOM | Final Project

Above is my final storyboard on my flash haiku animation. At first I was having a difficult time transitioning from this simple storyboard to Flash. But quickly managed to produce a short but pleasant piece.

The sequence above is the creating of my 3rd line symbol of "You make me, narrow path indeed".

Which describes the path one makes as they walk among grass. My object was a mass of plastic grass. I chose this material because my haiku deals with grass. I explored/created my marks with India ink, and mostly slapping or dragging the blades along the paper. These created almost teardrop shapes which also resembled grass shapes. My shape sketch iterations were shaky at first, but I finally created a symbol resembling blades of grass descending back, making a path. After scanning the symbol into Illustrator in I vectored the lines and imported into Flash. The transitioning of this object emphasized the creation of a path by breaking the symbols into two separate pieces. The two pieces entered the frame from opposites side and simultaneously met in the middle. I believe this forces the viewer to focus on the middle where the narrowest part of the joining objects.

Music: Breathe Me by Sia (instrumental)

Taxonomy

Though our taxonomy did not have to relate to our haiku in any way, I decided to stay with the nature theme. I stuck with a simple binding and light brown, semi textured paper. I also used white labels (which I dyed) for the text, giving it a more homemade feel.

When classifying my marks into denotative and connotative I also tried to stick with a simplistic layout, using a spread to spread approach. For each object I snapped a shot of the mark-maker, which is the denotative. On the fallowing spread, four marks made by the mark-maker were placed evenly about the pages, labeling them with my connotative words.