Today I added more frames into the latest version of the film I’m exploring.

I revisited my previous idea about how presentation in the museum affect our understanding of an object and was able to relate that to this latest progress of my work in terms of I could put my specimen of the banana skin inside a frame as if to question whether do we start to make meaning of any hidden qualities when the object is framed in any particular context or not.

After some reflection to the work I’ve developed so far, it seems as if I started to become the ‘solver’ of the hidden information on the visual I presented rather than let the audiences discover the information themselves as I intended after the change to banana idea.

So, I restarted the experiment to address the message of ‘hidden information’ again, this time I picked random zoomed sections of banana skin as my visual reference for the animation. They were zoomed at 3600% in Photoshop. I don’t mind the pixelated quality of the image since I want to focus rather on the ‘movement’ I create.

This time I drew in abstract lines and shapes with reference to the banana skin without interpreting into figurative images.

I also research onto some abstract works from animators and revisited work from Alex Moy I used to see before. For his piece, the sound also played much part in the experience of the film, also the colours. I might also incorporate such elements in my film to see how it will become. It could go at the moments of background transitions.

I still need to figure out more onto how to introduce these sequences in a film and also whether would I develop it onto any bigger story or not. Below is also an idea on whether I would create a scene where there is a hand that pick up a banana skin and place it behind a painting frame to mimic the presentation of object that is intended to be seen as valuable.

Right now I really need to tell myself that since it’s been a week since I let go of my character and I feel even more lost now with my direction towards to end of Project 3.

I continued intuitively developed further the abstract pattern on the banana skin from a few days ago and also tested the visual with only the patterns, it became something interesting as well.

The patterns reminded me of the shapes from cloud or the constellation.

Today, I also attended a life drawing session hold at RCA Kensington campus and got the chance to revisit drawing again. It was fun discovering new method of drawing like using a stick to hold a charcoal, which resulted in a line that was although deliberate but turned out a bit out of expectation. Relating this to my project, maybe there is something hidden with a new method undertaken for creating the visual?

Today, I got a chance to attend an animator talk with Takeshi Yashiro, a Japanese animator and television commercial director. I also got to see his latest stop-motion animation, Gon, The Little Fox, which was really amazing.

He began the talk by sharing his thinking process behind his work which I found really valuable, for example, he thought much about the meaning and the purpose of doing stop-motion animation comparing to live-action films which seemed to be much about how we got to make the ‘real’ become alive.

He talked about the aesthetics of this art form. The beauty could be from the mistakes of the production, some unwanted movement of the background for example which actually showed that there were people behind the production. Also, he emphasised much about the aesthetics of the ‘material quality’. He intended to show the chisels and cracks of the wood puppets he used for the movie for instance. He also mentioned about the wood resembles well with human’s old age charm.

For the movie, Gon, The Little Fox, was actually adapted from Japanese famous children’s book. The director also read it since he was in primary school but back then he thought it wasn’t that memorable. Until in his adulthood that he visited the book again and responded to it with a new perspective.

The design of the characters and the scenes are absolutely amazing. It made me think how come we as human could communicate a message, or this case a story, through non-living forms like puppets in films. When the animation is done right, you would forget completely about what you see and focus right onto the core message of the film.

It might be ‘stories’ that create ‘life’.

There was also a Q&A session at the end, and there were questions that related to how the director thought about the modern audiences. The discussion made me realise the importance in also take into consideration how would an audience ‘relate’ to a film.

Here is a link to the film project from this amazing Japanese director.

http://gon-project.com/

How to animate a theme of hidden qualities? and from a banana skin? I found the question and requirement I set to myself quite challenging.

I further developed from the image of banana skin cut in blocks below with an idea of finding patterns when the distance gets closer.

The result did not make much sense to me, it could be because the skin was cut into blocks which kind of opened to another question or interpretation. My interest is in the hidden details, so maybe I could just use an image of a whole banana with no cuttings, that might be simpler. I might come back with this experiment in ‘hidden from distance’ again.

Now, I explored with another idea of being ‘hidden from not enough stillness or attention’. By using a still image of a banana skin instead, I imagined what if the black spots and pattern on the skin live or move, what would it be like and animated it as shown below. I believed my inspiration came from the observation of how the spots on the banana skin keep changing and in unpredictable manner.

It’s a bit too soon to evaluate anything at this point for this direction, I will further add more motion and change to the shapes and forms first.

So I was thinking of another way to deconstruct a banana rather than cropping it digitally by physically cut them into blocks.

I will further experiment with how can I find more hidden information in these pieces, sometimes it might not be about going deeper into the details of the object, but also about how we use the information we have and do something with it, that might reveal something as well I assume.

I also would like to start research about animation that deals with patterns and abstract depictions as well in order to find some idea on how can I make use of my resources here from a banana.

Today we had a workshop about writing on an object. There are key points I found valuable as follows,

• Objects can be transformed through interpretation and writing. I totally agreed with this. It brought me back to my experience in galleries or museums that what I perceived from objects were mostly from what I read from the texts or labels around them. Also, this notion is interesting in terms of how manipulative ‘writing’ can be. I would like to take this into experimentation when visiting my previous works for my portfolio preparation to see how I can see my old works in a new light from the change in language addressing them.
• Writing can be treated as another kind of ‘Material’. This point of using texts to work for you makes me feel excited on how I could use texts as ‘a part of’ my work, to see text and visuals working together not separately. It reminded me how important words either writing or speaking can be a part to finish my work before arriving to the audience. For example, how I use language in presenting my work could now ‘becomes a part of the work’ itself.
• Writing can help explore the gap or the overlap between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’, this is also something very good one to realise. I believe this could mean, for example, when we write about what we did in our practices and then we feel it lacks some kind of supporting ideas to what we say which could bring us to any theories research further.

We also did exercises on writing in different styles. There was one that you described your object with facts and information and another one with only thoughts and feelings. I found that the former one was more difficult since I tend to interpret things further than what is actually there in front of me.

There was also an exercise to write about your childhood toy, which for my case, was Pluto plush toy, the Mickey Mouse’s pet dog. At first I thought my writing were from my thoughts which was as same as before in the past but actually, in the process of writing, there was something new also came up which was the idea about maybe I would like to get a real dog to substitute this feeling of lack in companionship. It worths noted on how writing could bring new idea into realisation as well.

We ended the session with an exercise done together with a partner, mind is Shen. We came up with dialogues for our objects, a gang of grape teenagers and an old banana grandpa, with also some thinking about what kind of ‘voice’ these objects would have in terms of the speed, pitch, volume or tone for example.

I was interesting to think about how we came up with such decisions on which kind of voice we would like to assign on each of the object. For me, I tend to relate the feature of what I see to human’s feature then imagine his or her qualities further.

Today I tested further in search for any ‘hidden value’ of the scanned version of a Riso print of banana skins. I cropped the image into 16:9 ratio from random sections of banana skins in various sizes. It is an ongoing process of making and reflecting back at what is happening.

My intention in this research is to discover any hidden value, meaning or beauty of the visual and also to gradually form up resources that could turn into an animation.

From this experimentation I questioned whether should I try to fix any distance of the cropping in order to create some set of rules that might produce a better comparison or not. But, I also liked this random distances since it mimicked how our eyes actually work, we sometime zoom in and out of any visuals we’re looking at aren’t we?

With Premiere Pro, I laid all 30 images and played with a fast and slow versions of images transitioning onto one another with and without cross fading effect.

The result assured my own assumption before about whether do we start to make meaning of something that we don’t know about which in this case, for some moments, my mind would try to construct some forms out of the shapes and patterns I looked at. I would better also ask people around for their reactions on these images.

I also would like to test with other kinds of image manipulation of the banana skin. It could be from digital photograph or a scanned version of one. The ‘subtle difference’ with the materials would also be in align with trying to find the hidden information from the visuals.

In terms of making an animation, I also started to imagine what kind of music that could go together with my current project, and this song called DNA from Akira Kosemura seems to fit for me. The sound made me feel of a dive into a tunnel, moving deeper and deeper into it.

Today I had a workshop on Riso printing and was lucky to have my bananas tested on the Riso printer.

Since currently, my interest in the project is about discover any beauty, meaning or individuality within objects or visuals, it’s great to be able to investigate onto an image of different textures.

A comparison between different methods of capturing the banana which might affect how we see it especially when we look ‘closely’.

A simple object I tend to not pay attention much, what if I pay more attention to bananas? Is it also a way to slow down and appreciate things in front of you? Maybe it goes in alignment with my interest in mindfulness? Is it an invitation for people to pay more attention to things they throw away?

Above are my recent thinking into bananas. This may be puzzling for you, my kind reader, but after an academic tutorial today with Ian, I decided to let go of my character for this project, and explored something else, which is a banana. (for now!)

We discussed at first about my exploration into symbols with Chaiglang, my plant character, it ended up it might be too specific and narrow for audiences to interpret it further. In case they don’t know about my character, all they could see would be just some kind of object with faces. And, even if they know what my character is, the change in his face might contribute much to any bigger scope of questions or answers to the audiences.

I came up with more specific question about ‘How we make meanings?’ and, instead of I figured out ways to represent my character with symbols, which was actually about me talking to myself, I could have created a more abstract visuals and let the audiences fill in the gap themselves.

Instead of only showing people how I make meanings out of this world, it could be more inviting and engaging to share them about my experience but let them make meaning of their own worlds through their own interpretations.

There is also another key idea and quality I discovered with Ian from looking at my research photos of Japanese toggle, the Netsuke, and it is about ‘the beauty in the details’. This is when banana came into playing.

What if I take a photo of different bananas in same position? Would that, linking to above point, create any meanings? This idea is interesting because actually, in my sketchbook, I also did sketch a banana every morning for some consecutive days to observe the change, I could revisit the idea explored and push it further with this project. Or, what if I observe one banana, but with different of time, or sections of its skin?

Above is the storyboard I came up as to further thinking about this idea of ‘details’ and ‘meaning making’. I was thinking of using just an area of a banana skin or a whole banana as a repeating background for the change in the visual on its surface. The idea is to let the ‘visual details’ change gradually through time for a while, then observe whether our minds would start to interpret any meanings from it. I would like to experiment this by myself and also ask other people to see it as well.

I could also create an image of a zoomed-in version of a particular area, to even further emphasise the quality of detail and how it affects our perception of the visual with in different distances. This also somehow reminded me of the opening sequences of X-Men series that let you dive into a sequence of enlarging imageries. There is a sense of curiosity in the movement through time. Although, for my animation, I would want it to be a lot more slower so that the audience could gradually absorb the information.

Below is also an experimentation onto grapes. Since I normally don’t recognise much difference for each grape except its shade of colours, it became an interesting object for me to further investigate about its details in each individual piece whether there are any differences or uniqueness within each grape.

I also tested the arrangement of the grapes to make them looks as if they are some kind of sculptures displayed in a museum to ask whether a context of a representation play also a part in us interpreting what we see.

And here would be my inspiration of the arrangement of objects of Netsuke in V&A Japanese collection.