Reflection:
This week was a milestone week in discovering the capabilities of my project. My in class feedback on Thursday was instrumental in helping me realise where I can direct my focus creatively for the rest of the semester, in that the experimentation of Pharos with my visuals lead to a very… Disorientating experience. The way the lights would flicker and change would bring the attention of the audience away from the screen, while having the screen demand your attention, making it hard to understand what was going on. While being able to evoke this feeling could be considered powerful, or relevant to my goals of surrealism, in this instance, it led to the lights actively taking away from the visuals. Due to realising the strength of my visuals syncing with the music track, I was able to think about that more doesn’t always mean better, even if the things that have been added were realised to a high fidelity. This was eye opening, as it’s helped me solidify the decision to not work with additional senses such as the Music: Not Impossible vest, and the removal of Pharos so that the visuals can shine to their maximum potential. I was also able to realise how expensive the time of rendering my project would be, as I attempted to render a 6 minute experiment that was estimated to have taken a full twenty four hours!! With that in mind, I now know that when I will need to scale up my visuals to 4K resolution, that the process will be time consuming, and that going beyond the scope of 3 minutes will be demanding even if I do it at a resolution lower than 1080p. Overall, a really great week that helped me realise the potential of my own work, and the importance of a singular focused vision.
Research:
Following my exploration of animation last week, I have begun watching a well-known animated series called Neon Gensis Evangelion. This show has developed an influential reputation for its depictions of trauma through its characters, the frequent references to the angelic, and heavy use of philosophical discussion through it’s use of surreal imagery. The show, while starting off as an action packed, monster of the week romp, descends into a disturbing representation of violence and sexuality through its main character, Shinji, a fourteen-year-old boy, who is tasked with saving the world. The show frequently makes use of sudden jumps between scenarios, while illustrating its post-apocalyptic world with imagery that leaves the imagination to wonder of it’s various interpretations based on the understanding of the characters suffering. Having been recommended this show by some of my peers, I can understand why, as the show utilises “difficult to grasp psychological and moral questioning” (Bouchard, Patel, 2015) throughout its entire runtime. With sequences that have been described as “womb-like states of introspection or an interrogation of their shadow selves” while having “ugly, viscerally executed revelations that radically redefine a character’s world of perception” (Witmer, 2019).
As I continue to work on my project, understanding the creative ways that animation, and, in this particular case, Neon Gensis Evangelion, represents its narrative through this imaginative scenarios, has helped pave the way for me to create my own surreal narrative throughout my three minute runtime. In having watched Spiderverse and NGE, it has given me plenty of creative ideas for the ways I can represent explicit topics, such as depicting internal reflections in mirrors, the use of symbolism in the cycle of life using lakes of blood, contrast through colour, and establishing a connection between my prompts through scenario development. As I continue into the mid semester break, I aim to deepen my own understanding of things that I find surreal, and share those experience with my friends, so that I can make my project successfully represent surrealism in a way that provide my audience their own opportunity for understanding.
Jean-Luc Bouchard, Anjali Patel “10 Anime Series You Need To Watch Before You Die”, September 11, 2015,https://www.buzzfeed.com/jeanlucbouchard/anime-be-you-should-check-these-out
PHIL WITMER “Anime classic Neon Genesis Evangelion plugs into 2019’s political climate” July 3, 2019, https://nowtoronto.com/movies/neon-genesis-evangelion-netflix/
Progress:
This week involved an experiment in bulk rendering enough images to create a 6-minute-long image sequence to understand how long the process could take. To my surprise, it ended up totalling to a full twenty-four hours of rendering, which is less than ideal. I also ran into a problem where I have limited storage capacity, as the process requires an immense amount of storage, and, in my efforts to develop a 4k image, I have concluded that rendering over a thousand images at 4k resolution will be completely out of scope for this project. I have begun experimenting with rendering at a lower resolution format, being 480p, and fiddling with stable diffusion to see if I can speed up the process of making the video, while ensuring that there’s room for upscaling. I have also discovered that my prototype that I have presented may need some significant alterations if I want it to fill the entire screen, as the images were rendered in a way that can not be expanded. However, this isn’t something that bothers me, as I plan to in the coming two weeks develop a basic scenario, that I will then abstract through using prompts in stable diffusion. I’ll follow this up with a questionnaire that asks the audience for what they believe is happening across a series of thirty images or so, and then take that feedback to further expand on my project, so that the imagery on display isn’t coming from exclusively my mind, rather, the mind of the community. I am also hoping to make sure that I make time for a break during the coming mid semester break so that I can bring even more creative ideas into the project!
Image Experimentation:
Lighting Up Your week 