Morning, all!
This week, I’d like to share a few of my current projects, most of which are part of my graduate program–they’re doing some amazing things and I get to be a part of them. I have only scratched the surface of what it means to enter this brave new world of interdisciplinary art and technological innovation, but I can already tell that it’s going to be quite the wild ride! I’m diving feet-first into new software (or new-to-me at least: as a musician, I was a listener first and a viewer second, so the paradigm shift is both challenging and fascinating), forging new connections across disciplines, and learning the ins and outs of life as a creative professional.
The first project that comes to mind is the 2018 NIME Conference. It’s being hosted by my institution, and contains many moving parts, of which I am but the smallest addition. As of now, I am part of the design team and will likely be assisting the creation of the booklet for the conference. The conference itself is still in the planning stages, but based on the aesthetic of the website, the booklets are going to have a similar mix of sleek, ultra-modern yet otherworldly designs. The bulk of the animation is actually reminiscent of other work done by a professor on the design team, Meaghan Dee. She’s done many designs for the School of Visual Art (the school in which my degree program is housed). Her website can be accessed here and it’s an excellent example of the sleek-and-modern aesthetic one is likely to see at NIME this year. It goes without saying that I am very excited to see what she’s got in mind for our team.
My other projects are part of my current coursework and are therefore much smaller in scale: they include a short documentary film about pollinator insects and the people who try to augment their habitats with pollinator-friendly practices, a character I am sculpting in ZBrush based on a legendary figure from Ancient China, and some smaller motion graphics projects I am working on using After Effects.
I have also discovered a newfound desire to carry my sketchbook everywhere, along with an ever-growing collection of pencils, erasers, pens, markers, and brushes to capture my ideas in real time lest I forget them and am faced with a blank screen and an eternally hovering stylus. It has been a great help, especially with motion graphics projects, since I need to see each stage of the project laid out before I can animate it, and I suspect that this storyboarding method will carry over into other courses and projects. In any case, I am still working out the kinks of my now-nascent creative process with the hope that over time, I will have a workflow that works for me and produces beautiful results, because in the end, the creation of beautiful things is what it’s all about.
Taking baby steps,
Jasmine
