26 December, 2015. We spent a beautiful, quiet Christmas, but today I have been given a day off to finish Assignment 5. Most of the work I did during the days before the Christmas holidays and as with my first animation the major part of the time I needed to edit the photos. I had thought at first that all my changes, including a tripod, an incredibly bright 500 W halogen floodlight, working with all the blinds closed in my workshop and taking two photos at a time would help to decrease the flicker in the photo series. But no, it was as bad as in the first animation. So I had another look on the web for stop motion forums and what did I find there? The main culprit are mains voltage fluctuations, which are next to unavoidable. Also, something I had not been aware of at all, was the physical impact on the camera and the tripod by the shutter opening and closing, so a wobbly image can only be avoided by taping the camera down (!) on a very stable, heavy surface. Well, never mind. I had a few very intense days editing photos with some success and composing the animation, which also gave me the wonderful opportunity to think about rhythm in an animation and while I can already see the places for further improvement I am happy with the result. Also, and no matter what the outcome of the official assessment, first of all it is a message of hope dedicated to my little son and so tying the ends of the thread running through this blog.
My tutor advised me to upload the film to vimeo. I marked it private, since it might not be suitable for younger children to watch. The link is https://vimeo.com/150048400 and the password Hit_and_Run. Since this is a first version likely to require some more editing after tutor feedback, the size of the film is small. If required, I will replace it by a larger size format for formal assessment.
Which makes me realise that all that remains for this course is my artist’s statement and the actual preparation for formal assessment. There is still a lot of work to do, especially regarding reworking a few of the earlier pieces, but I think I am making good progress and I am looking forward to revisiting the different stages of the course.
All websites mentioned in this post were accessed on 6 December 2015, all images shown are in the public domain.
06 December, 2015. Social intelligence is required to allow successful interaction within society. Successful in the context of my project is the ability to hide from others a fact which, once publicly known, would reduce the individual’s fitness, e.g. my doctor, when found out, would without doubt lose his prestigious job and associated social amenities. From his point of view a behaviour envolving the masking of a true emotion is socially intelligent and thus to be enforced. In Schmidt, K. L. and Cohn, F. (2001) (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2238342/) the social aspect in the evolution of facial expression is discussed.
In order to continue getting acquainted with the expression of fear through firsthand impression I thought that I might study the Austrian Krampus runs, taking place at the beginning of December in each and every village. I took several photos in our own village, but I noticed that the commercialisation of the tradition and a very justifiable ban of hitting people with birch twigs has turned the whole thing into a fun event. No frightened people here, just some girls feeling a bit uneasy, and a scared cat.
Then I had a look at other photos we took over the years. No frightened people either, which is a good thing in one way, but not helpful in another. Here is our younger son with something like worry on his face, but this is certainly not strong enough:
The closest I could get to a fearful face comes here, from a funfair ride (the face was taken from a much larger photo, sorry about the quality):
Since while there are no good actors in my family, my searches on the internet also convinced me that the people posing with fearful faces are no good actors either and press photos showing what I have in mind are exceedingly rare, I based my initial sketches on fear and cruelty on the images and works of art I have collected so far.
First I made a pencil sketch mini series. The first sketch is about status. Before starting it I had a look at paintings depicting royalty and found that a certain pose always correlated with an impression of power: The body is slightly turned to one side, but the stern eyes, looking down on the viewer from an otherwise indifferent face leave no doubt about who is in charge. An example is Hans Holbein’s portrait of King Henry VIII:
Hans Holbein the Younger, around 1497-1543
Portrait of Henry VIII of England, Wikimedia Commons
Here comes my sketch – apologies again for the problems with the paper in my sketchbook. I love the paper but not the wavy righthand side.
This sketch I gradually changed to first show a slight worry, then a glimpse of fear, just enough to reveal the true emotion.
The changes to the sketch were:
lifting the upper eyelids, thereby exposing the upper white
making the lower eyelids tense
lifting and drawing together the eyebrows
emphasizing the vertical folds between the eyebrows and the central horizontal folds on the forehead
slightly opening the mouth to expose the teeth
making the lips tense
reducing the tension around the corners of the mouth
I am not unhappy with the result. As before with my experiment involving Albert Einstein and Alzheimer’s disease I noticed that the changes in facial expression need to be slight only and always involve a characteristic set of alterations.
Cruelty next. Cruelty is no fleeting emotion, it is a deep-rooted character trait, which with time seeps to the surface to show permanently. I believe that, in contrast to fear, it is impossible to hide cruelty behind a sweet face. Looking at my character above I notice that a certain amount of cruelty is already present, so I will need to identify the typical characteristics and reinforce them: It appears that an outward impression of cruelty, described as “indifference to suffering and even pleasure in inflicting it” on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruelty) often comes with a totally indifferent or marginally amused face (dictators!), while sometimes the lower white of the eyes is visible, as in:
L0040123 Experiments in physiology. Facial expressions; Cruelty Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Public domain
07 December, 2015. Here is the last change to my pencil sketch. I believe that it contains a mix of cruelty and disdain and this is, coming to think of it, just what is required.
What I did was the following:
lift the eyebrows
emphasize some horizontal folds on the forehead
slightly close the upper eyelids
reduce the tension on the lower eyelids
make sure some white appears below the pupils
ever so slightly open the mouth
suggest a slight curling of the corners of the mouth
In order to increase cruelty I might close the upper eyelids further until they appear to cover part of the pupil, but for my project this slight change is just what I need. A greater change would not go together with maintaining his position as a doctor.
To be honest it was this part of my preparations I had dreaded before its start, because I did not know whether I would be able to produce the desired effects, but all seems well. The next step will be experimenting with materials and media for the portrait. Post to follow shortly.
All websites mentioned in this post were accessed between 2 and 5 December 2015.
02 December, 2015. I just realised that I will have to portray someone dependent on his professional power and social status to nurture his self-confidence. He knows that the incident with the car has immense destructive quality in that respect and therefore has to be kept secret. Being a doctor means to betray both the ethos as a human being and as a professional to keep up the now false image. Both are rightly condemned by society, therefore the fear of being found out. The portrait needs to convey these conflicting interests in the matter of an instant, i.e. between realising the accident has happened and the decision to drive on without helping. Therefore, a charcoal portrait may not be sufficient to qualify as transporter of status. Since I experimented with acrylic mixed media earlier this year, I might refer to the experience gained making the drawing of the skeleton of a radiolarian skeleton. The acrylic background should however not take up the whole of the paper or cardboard, so that the charcoal accident can happen, dissolve and creep up the acrylic face. I need to take care that the colours depicting facial features to be changed provide a smooth surface. Once I have completed the preliminary experiments I will decide on the best way to deal with this subject.
05 December, 2015. The first step in the process, however, is some research into works of art transporting the emotions of fear and cruelty as well as portraits allowing direct contact with the viewer. Instantly I found a connected series of portraits by Theodora Sutton (http://cargocollective.com/theodorasutton/rotoscope-animation-1). While the style and colour change slightly with each portrait and the viewpoint rotates around her face, the person never takes her eyes off the viewer apart from a short moment when she is depicted with her eyes closed. As mentioned in my Assignment 4 reflections, my tutor also pointed me to the work of Dryden Goodwin, who attempts to capture the intensity of his encounters in his portrait drawings (Jack Southern in interview with Deryden Goodwin in the book Drawing Projects). A video interview on http://www.drydengoodwin.com/videolinks.htm emphasizes again his intention not to merely catch a physical likeness, but to weave into the drawing “something that cannot be seen”, a quality, which is, I think, communicated by intuition only and which acts to make an important difference between a portrait and a portrait that moves one to tears (as e.g. in Käthe Kollwitz). Connecting smoothly with my own intentions is Goodwin’s 2010 project “Linear”. Jubilee line staff was portrayed (with line drawings) and the process of drawing with the members of staff talking in the background about their work experiences filmed. Viewing the two media side by side allows not only the process of drawing to become tangible within the finished piece. The stories told are very likely to have influenced Goodwin’s drawing. My own approach does nothing else apart from the important fact that the story told is in part fictional and the reaction of the portrayed person imaginary. In that way my project is only partly documentary and more heavily influenced by my own a priori interpretation of what is going to be.
Since the main emotion to be transported in my portrait is fear, I also had a look at a number of artists working in that field. Philip Hicks’ fearful portrait “Victims I” (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hicks-victims-i-p01417)Â is brilliant and a wonderful source to study the facial features associated with that particular emotion, but I do not understand why he would have wanted to surround it with symbols, taking away some of its intensity. Marlene Dumas’ haunting 2004 portrait “Lucy” (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/dumas-lucy-t12313) on the other hand does, of course, not capture an emotion on the face of the girl, but its all-too-easy-to-interpret posture evokes the same feeling, instantly, in the viewer. This made me realise that in my project the accident, leaving a dying child behind, may greatly increase the emotional load of the whole drawing – and importantly not with contradictory but the same types of emotion. I was also glad to find John Keane’s “Fear” series, which won the 2015 Aesthetica Art Prize (http://www.yorkstmarys.org.uk/news-media/latest-news/winners-announced-for-the-aesthetica-art-prize-awards-2015/). It shows oil paintings made on the basis of Moscow trial mug shots and instantly connects with my research and drawings of George Stinney. The paintings work not only through a believable depiction of an emotion, but of course by their sheer size and, importantly, through a very cleverly used communication of light and dark with the actual faces. The most haunting of these were, in my opinion http://www.flowersgallery.com/works/view/13631-fear-no-191037 and http://www.flowersgallery.com/works/view/14672-fear-no-48818665, both of which appear to effuse cruelty and trigger a feeling of fear in the viewer. I will keep this technique in mind when planning the layout of my own drawing.
Thinking about my own project things suddenly become more complex, because the accident raises fear, for different reasons, both in the viewer and the doctor, but when the experience acts to change the doctor’s face to radiate cruelty, looking at the face should increase the feeling of fear in the viewer.
Given that I succeed in depicting the emotions correctly. Which means that the next step in the process will be to take out my sketchbook and investigate the facial features characteristic of fear and cruelty.
All websites mentioned in this post were accessed on 02 December 2015.
02 December, 2015. Slowly but surely we will have to get accustomed to the fact that the fight for our son’s future will remain foremost on the agenda for decades to come. The legal system works with agonising slowness and we have to take care that waiting won’t make us ill.
This is why I want to study, in my personal project animation, facial expressions connected with lying, based on Paul Ekman’s “Facial Action Coding System” (FACS). In order to detect lying it is necessary to learn to spot so-called micro expressions, which slip through attempts of a lying person to hide their true feelings ( http://www.paulekman.com/micro-expressions/). Seven basic emotions are understood globally: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, contempt, surprise and happiness. In my project it is the emotion of fear, which the portrayed person is attempting to hide.
I had a look at several websites testing one’s ability to read a face correctly and I seem to be notoriously bad at it. This comes probably from having spent 30 years of my life not being able to look into peoples’ eyes because of a syndrome involving the neck (forgot the name), before being cured within minutes by an osteopath several years ago. I also – still, after all that has happened – tend to believe in people and what they say, so I spend less time looking people into the face than I probably should. Which meant that I had to doublecheck my idea of a face expressing fear. According to http://www.livescience.com/2608-face-fear-explained.html it is associated with a higher intake of air, a wider field of vision and increased visual tracking and is most readily identified by the wide open eyes (increased vigilance!). As listed by http://www.scienceofpeople.com/2013/09/guide-reading-microexpressions/ I also need to be aware of the following:
brows raised and drawn together in a flat line
forehead wrinkles centrally between brows, not across
upper eyelid raised, lower lid tense and drawn up
only upper eye white showing
mouth open with lips slightly tensed and drawn back
My storyboard will thus run as follows:
1. Neutral portrait in daylight (either finished at the start or developing during the drawing)
2.Background gets dark (evening twilight), accident on a road occurs between the portrayed person in a car (to be identified by haircut, doctor’s work coat and tie) and a child walking on the road.
3. The driver stops briefly to look at the child lying on the road, then drives off into the darkness.
4. The portrait stays neutral during the incident, only the eyes move to look at it, then move back to very, very briefly make contact with the eyes of the spectator (by chance, as if the portrayed person did not expect an observer to be there), reveal the expression of fear behind the neutral face, then look straight on, i.e. past the edge of the paper in the direction the car left an instant ago.
5. The remaining scene in the background starts to dissolve, the charcoal moves towards the portrait and into the face to make it look hard.
Back soon with the sketchbook storyboard drawings.
Andrea's OCA study blog 