A Day in the Life of an Art Student-Timeline

iMovie timeline
Kendall entrance: Jessica sleeping
Title to time (6:30 am)
Coffee grounds/filling of pot
Emily bus entrance
Emily entering building (first shot approaching door)
Coffee cup filling/draining
Emily opening door hitting bags

EMILY:

Kendall walking into computer lab/down the hall
Emily locker combo
Kendall at computer logging in/start loading
Emily at locker/cramming in
Kendall computer loading still
Jessica sleeping--Illustration couch
Coffee filling/draining

JESSICA:

Emily painting/coffee dip
Kendall waiting at printer
Emily painting white paint
Jessica sleeping-White chair studios
Coffee filling/draining
Kendall at walking into room/microwave OR vending

GROUP:
Jessica sleeping-enterance hallway
Daydream with money-Green screen

KENDALL:

Emily drawing charcoal on hand
Jessica/Emily stuff on face
drop pencil box
Kendall computer dying
Kendall walking out at night (Jessica sleeping background)\
Hands up and "Wednesday Check mark"

Credits


A Day in the Life of an Art Student
by Kendall Hart, Jessica Allen, & Emily McKenna

In this short film, we wanted to show what a day spent at the Alexander Calder Art Building is like (hence the title). Specifically highlighting the struggles (messing up art works, over-caffeinating, waiting for the Macintosh Labs to cooperate, carrying too much, etc.) and trying to put a sarcastic, light-hearted, and satirical spin on them.

We begin our film with Kendall walking into the building on a dark morning at 7:50 am, to show how early most students show up for classes, and that don’t end up leaving the building for another 12-15 hours, and sometimes even longer. And how often times those students get here in the dark, and leave in the dark. Emily is the next character to enter the film, getting on the bus at a fairly early time as well. She shows how all students riding the bus must deal with overly full buses where it’s a common occurrence to not receive a seat; For art students not getting a seat means also carrying all of your bags on the bus as well. We then show Jessica, our overly-tired, sleep deprived character who has spent so much time on campus the scene opens with her sleeping at an early hour, implying that she had so much to do she ended up just sleeping on campus. The remainder of the film follows these three characters throughout the day by highlighting struggles (or naps in Jessica’s case) and humorously mocking how it feels to be an art student.

We chose the majority of our music to be a sad violin instrumental, accompanied by the theme music from Jeopardy, intense music, Big Pimpin’ by JAY-Z, and Don’t You (Forget About Me) by Simple Minds. Most of our music was to add an overly dramatic spin to our feelings about our days. Big Pimpin’ was used in a day dream Jessica was having while napping. And to finish it off, Simple Minds famous song was used in the final scene and credits of our film to end on a high note, of accomplishing and living through another day, while also mimicking the end to the famous flick “A Breakfast Club.”

We went in to shooting our scenes with only rough ideas of what we wanted to capture. But we all seemed to have a similar idea of what we wanted to portray, and in the humor and style that we wanted to portray it in. Using iMovie was relatively easy, and we all took to the software quickly. Although we only had a rough idea of what we wanted to accomplish, we all worked together smoothly, and communicated well and were able to create a short film that we were all pretty proud of.

A Day in the Life of an Art Student

Body Positivity

For our animation project we chose to focus on the social issue of body positivity. It is hard to live in our society today and not judge your body to the cultural standards that the beauty business has created. A lot of men and women of all ages feel unsatisfied with how their body looks and wish they could change with a click of a button. That is where we got the basis of our plot from. A girl and a guy find a factory where they can click a button and change into their ideal self, the kind of body that society deems acceptable looking. In the end we have the guy and girl decline to change their selves because we wanted to send the message that it is okay to look how you do right now and that you don’t have to meet any beauty standard that society pushes onto you.

            Kendra worked on the first few scenes. She chose to depict the the street where they find the newsstand that has the magazine telling them about the body changing factory as a black and white watercolor scene. She then built the newsstand line by line to add an interesting architectural feel to the first scene. The characters then find the magazine and head over to the body changing factory. The factory appears just like the newsstand does, line by line, to create a feel of unity through out the first 45 seconds.

            Kendall drew the characters and created the middle scenes where the characters see what their body could potentially change to. She mimicked Kendra’s background by finding a black and white warehouse and then using the watercolor filter in Photoshop to create unity through out the entire animation. She created the characters to be the exact opposite of what society tells us is attractive in order to show how many changes they would have to go through. Creating changes to the girl’s body was easier considering she has grown up with society’s beauty standards being pushed onto her as a girl. However, thinking of changes for the guys body proved to be difficult and she had to ask the guys of the class what they feel like society demands them to look like. They provided several answers and helped create a ‘society approved’ male character. Kendall is also responsible for the music selection throughout the animation.

            Kym created the last few scenes. She stuck with the background and characters that Kendall had created in order to keep the flow of unity from scene to scene. After the characters see what their body could potentially change to she animated the ray to ask each of them if they wanted to change their body. She then had each character select ‘no’ and changed the background to a colorful happy one as the characters high fived and the ending title, and message of the entire animation, came forth onto the page; accept yourself. Kym is also responsible for creating the intro and credit page, as well as the mind map.

Body Positivity Animation

The cowboy's favorite flowers are daisys

Issues for Animation

Some social issues I wouldn't mind working on would be animal rights/adoption from shelters vs buying, the health of our environment/recycling and taking care of pollution, or body positivity issues.

Postcard Project

The place I chose for my postcard project is Grand Ravines park. It's a beautiful, natural park right outside of Allendale. I love spending my free time there, it's extremely beautiful and I hope it is able to stay that way. Through these postcards I hope to call attention to problem of pollution in the air, water, and land. I used three different artists that we learned about in class to draw influence from their works.

For the first postcard I wanted to mimic Tom Bamberger's photos where he creates idealized landscapes. I chose to use a land scape photo of a horizon full of trees. With this postcard I wanted to show what a future healthy landscape would look like with double the trees. It could be a possible view if recycling and reusing paper products becomes a serious part of our daily lives. I would love to see this beautiful place bloom with double the trees and flowers next spring. 

For the second postcard I incorporated Sandy Skoglund's techniques of making the familiar unfamiliar. I wanted to show what an unhealthy future environment could look like since I used the first postcard to show what a healthy future environment would look like. In illustrations hazardous waste often has a 'glowing' effect so I manipulated an image of the lake to look like it's glowing. This was to show the possible damage that pollution could cause on our forests.

For the third postcard I drew influence from Jenny Holzer's work. I wanted to find a phrase or sentence that conveyed the over all meaning of all of the postcards. It needed to be something that drew people, but was still clear and concise. Jenny Holzer's words in her pieces always convey a deep meaning. I decided to go with 'save us' since this project is about stopping pollution in order to save the environment and the special park that I love to go to.

Concept map: