Joe Goodacre

Abstract:

This piece will be a singular video that adds movement and dimensionality to simple doodles from an eleventh-grade school planner. This piece will show the original doodle created in 2017/2018 and turn it into an immersive, three-dimensional world. Depending on the complexity, the video will either loop back to the beginning to display another image of a doodle or the immersive world will warp from one doodle into the other.

In-depth description:

This piece will begin with a stop-motion animation of the high school planner. It will zoom in on the planner and it will open to display one of the doodles. This portion will be in color but once only the doodle from the page is visible, the colors will only be black and white. The video will continue to zoom in on the doodle and while it is doing so, it will slowly turn into the digital version of the doodle. This digital version will be created through Procreate and Affinity designer using simple black shapes on a completely white background. The digital version will then be used as a blueprint for a three-dimensional space created in Blender. The shapes will turn three-dimensional as the camera virtually flies through the shapes. As the camera moves, it will be revealed that the shapes are all on different planes, with light adding shadows and depth. The immersive world that is created with these doodles will have subtle colors that cannot be seen from straight on, only once the camera begins to fly through the world and the other angles of the shapes can be seen. At this point, there are two possible options depending on the difficulty and time it will take. The more extensive and difficult option would be to have the three-dimensional space wrapped into the digital version of a different doodle. The easier fallback option if that is not feasible would be to rewind back to the start and repeat the same exact steps but with a different doodle. The three stages of this piece (the stop-motion animation, the digital version of the doodles, and the three-dimensional space) will be brought together to create a seamless video in Adobe Premiere Pro.

The goal of this project is to demonstrate the skills I have acquired as an artist throughout my college career. The doodles that will be used for this project come from my planner from junior year of high school. Those doodles marked the first steps on my path to becoming a digital artist. If not for them, I most likely would have studied either math or engineering. The doodles represent the beginning of the journey and the rest shows how much I have grown since then. 

Early in my artistic career, a singular project changed how I viewed art and where I could find my own voice. This project involved replicating the style of a famous painter and I had chosen Piet Mondrian. All his paintings, particularly his later work, take a complex medium and simplify it to create beautiful compositions. The sense of color, design, and minimalism really attracted my eye. Some of my favorite pieces are Composition London and Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow. As inspiration, I chose to name all my pieces in a manner similar to Mondrian: “Composition: ___.”

Along with Piet Mondrian, Andreas Wannerstedt had a very large influence on my art although his work influenced my digital art. Andreas Wannerstedt is one of my favorite motion graphics artists and 3D animators. I originally saw his work on Instagram and was amazed by the seamless loops and the satisfaction of viewing them over and over. My minimal 3D modeling and animation work has taken a lot of inspiration from him and I strive to have a similar style and level of professionalism and flawlessness. The way he creates three-dimensional spaces is very similar to what I want to have in my piece.

Finally, Alex Guevara is not as well known as the previous two artists but his work has a very engaging aesthetic. His work is very abstract and immersive. He finds a way to make simple and subtle movement very engaging. The viewers are meant to experience the work on a whole other level. There is very little use of color and focuses more on contrast and movement similar to how I envision my own project.