SORRY IT'S LATE-Why I Make Art

I don't know why I started making art, I just always liked drawing. I think I kept on drawing because I wanted to become better at it, and I've gotten a lot better since I was younger. I was interested in making movies when I was ten because I liked watching internet cartoons and I wanted to make them. When I was twelve I got Adobe Flash 7, and I was always making animations and putting them on Youtube. When I got my third cellphone when I was thirteen, and I started trying to make movies with the video feature on it, sometimes the videos I made would influence my animations with flash. Every time I try to make big and lengthy flash animations, it would be hard and boring when I was making them, but when I was done, I was always happy with what I made. I make art because I like the feeling of seeing the finished project I made, and it can still be fun while I make the art.

Some more interesting projects

Hey everyone,
So tomorrow, we will learn how to use the video cameras! yay! Here are a few more projects to give you ideas for the Digital Self-Portraits:

David Crawford's really nice and simple Stop Motion Studies
Ethan Ham's Face Recognition Self-Portrait
and Life Sharing , a project by the group called: 0100101110101101.org

Send me those artist statements!!!

Final Project

I've already told Huong my idea so far.
I have been really thinking about it, I want to try and make a video of how people perceive me, the things they say about me and who I really am using clips and pictures. I also want to include how those things affect me physically and mentally.
Thats just something I made up this week, I'm not concrete on it. I would like a bit of help on some more ideas....

Assignment # 11: Photograph a scar and write about it.

(SORRY, WASN'T ABLE TO GET PHOTO)

Back in about 2007, my friends and I were skateboarding at our local skate-spot in Brooklyn, NY. There was this little ledge that was there and we would never skate on it because there were pebbles lodged into its cement (like some sidewalks around there) so it was hard to do any type of grind tricks on it. That day, we found a drawer on the street and the front part of the slide out shelves were broken off. The front parts of those shelves were flat and easy to skate on, so my friends and I put them on an angle on the corner of that pebble ledge so the [three] shelf parts were laying on it parallel to each other. Now we were able to skate up and down on the shelf parts and do tricks.
I went up on the makeshift ramp we just made and I went back down on it. I didn’t do any tricks because I was making sure it was able to hold my weight. About a few minutes after that, I went up the ramp and tried to do a trick on it. But when I went on, the shelf parts slid off the ledge and I fell and scraped my left wrist on the shelf part.
When I fell, I was thinking I was going to get badly hurt, but when I got up nothing hurt. Then I looked at my left wrist because I fell on that first, and I saw a small cut on it. It was weird because it wasn’t very big, but it was deep. A piece of my skin was almost ripped of but it was still attached by a little part. I was scared because the piece of skin wasn’t like a small dead layer of skin that you can just peel off; it was a small chunk of skin that was the color of the rest of my skin, and it probably was more than one layer.
It started bleeding and I showed my friends and they looked surprised when they saw it. I knew I needed a bandage, so my friend, Sam, and I, went to his house, because he lived close by. I put alcohol on the cut and then put a Band-Aid on it. We went back to the skate-spot and I tried to skate, but every time I did something, my cut started hurting. I think it was like this because the cut was over the tendon that connected my hand to my arm, and when I skate, my hands move around a lot, and that might have caused it to hurt.
Over the next few weeks he cut turned into a small scar

Examples for Digital Diaries

Hey All, 

 Here are some other projects online that I want you to watch to get ideas for the final project. 

The first one is a project where the artist took the memory on his computer every day and turned it into video. It's an abstracted version of a digital diary. Click on this link and then select black and white or color. Click here to read about the project. Think about how this project is a "self-portrait," and how it deals with the line between the private and the public.

The other project is an animation with just text and music. Click here to watch an example. Pay attention to the pacing, use of sound, and narrative structure.

Next week, we're going to learn to use the digital video camera. Come prepared with ideas for your final projects! Also, don't forget to post your artist statement or email it to me at: monohaha@gmail.com

See you then!

New Blog!

Hey Class, Check out my new blog:
http://funfunfunfunfunfunfunfunfunfunfunphun.blogspot.com/

I'm thinking of expanding it for my final project. Tell me what you think!
-Huong

William Kentridge

Ezra was asking about making a hand-drawn animation for the final project. I think it's a great idea if you are up for the challenge. I wanted to post a link to an animation by William Kentridge for inspiration.
Kentridge is an artist from South Africa who creates animations by drawing and erasing over the same image. The results are beautiful.

Links from last class

Hey all! Here are the links to the projects I showed last class:

TehChing (Sam) Hsieh's One Year Performances
Marisa Olson's American Idol Blog

We didn't get a lot of time in class to talk about these projects (though they definitely provoked some strong reactions), so take a look at them now and post a comment on this thread to tell me what you think.

Also, a note about the final project: The idea of a "self-portrait" is definitely up for interpretation. It could be a representation of your body, but could also go beyond that to talk about your life, your family, neighborhood, interests, etc. It can also bring up questions of what is a true representation. For instance, the blog format lends itself to being a journal of your real life, yet Marisa Olson's American Idol project blurs the line between what is a performance for reality television and what are her real experiences and true emotions. What is the line between fact and fiction for how you represent yourself?

Class Today

Hey Everyone, I'm starting a demo on IStopMotion and IMovie right at 4PM, so be on time to class today! Hurrah!

Just to say hello!

Hey Everyone! I'm loving all of the blog activity! I see we have some new bloggers and some great new posts. I wanted to encourage everyone to comment on posts. It's always nice to get feedback. I'm going to start doing it too! Also, it's a great way to get in touch with your animation partner if they are on the contributors list.

For this week, we are finishing up our animations and presenting them to class. I will give a demo of IStopMotion and IMovie in class, we will spend an hour working, everyone will present, and then we will talk about your final projects (!)

Until then, there's still loads of Learning To Love You More assignments to do. Aren't they fun?
Here's the link: www.learningtoloveyoumore.com

See you in class!

Assignment # 11: Photograph a scar and write about it.

I'm super late with this but I figured better late than never! I chose assignment number eleven which was to photograph a scar and write about it. I chose this assignment because I am amazed by how resilient the human body is. Some people might hate their scars or be ashamed of them, but I like to think of them as little reminders that I carry with me all the time. It is located on the the right side of my right pointer finger. The lighting in the picture makes it a little bit hard to see. One day I was walking home from school with my Mom and my brother. I was drinking a Snapple as I walked and tripped. The bottle fell to the floor and smashed open. I fell on top of that bottle with my hand. There was glass and blood every but luckily, one of our neighbors saw and drove us to the doctor. He had to remove the piece of glass and close up the wound. Because of that little accident, that finger is somewhat misshapen. When I tell people this, they think that I'm crazy for noticing such a small thing but I just being observant. Right now, I have another cut right next to the scar. I'm not sure how I got that, but I assume it was a paper cut. It's pretty deep so let's see if I'll have another one to add to the collection.