Reel of Films (Thesis) Lila Burns from Lila on Vimeo.

well, today is the final installment of practice practice. for the film, i decided to choose a classic farewell, and do my own take on it. it seemed fitting as i’m looking towards graduation, and jobs, and the big void in september. it’s been fun, it’s been challenging. there are still a few pieces of the project on the horizon but the meat of the project has completed. now to finish the graphic novel for the print fair sunday morning…. thanks guys! i’ll keep you posted!

film time: 7hrs

btw… i counted it up and on the daily images and films, i spent a total of 149.5 hours. that’s 8,970 minutes. and 538,200 seconds…. yeah.. feels good.

today’s image was the last image for the series! last last image, so i thought i’ve my favorite ending, and it’s PART of the ending to cat’s cradle so only a tiny spoiler… “Around his neck hung a chain with a cylinder the size of a rifle cartridge for a pendant. I supposed that cylinder contained some magic charm. I was mistaken. It contained a splinter of ice-nine.” AND “I opened my eyes–and all the sea was ice-nine. The moist green earth was a blue-white pearl. The sky darkened. Borasisi the sun, became a sickly yellow ball, tiny and cruel. The sky was filled with worms. The worms were tornadoes.“. There will be some considerable reflection on this project soon. Final film tomorrow, graphic novel by sunday, and more after that.

image time: 2hr

“The stars are projectors, yeah – Projectin’ our lives down to this planet Earth – The stars are projectors, yeah – Projectin’ our minds down to this planet Earth” – Modest Mouse.

this project is effectively due tomorrow, but it won’t be done, working hard on my graphic novel and presentation, i’ll add the written developments to the wk-X-wk section in the top right.

image time: 1hr.

almost forgot my image today cos usually i do them in the mornings! but i did mine as another project today! Karen To (BFA 11′) is doing a really cool dead words project and asked me to do one so thus today’s image: definition instead of a word. Stiricide: “falling of icicles from a house”.

image time: 1.5 hrs

this is another response to a spread from BE HERE NOW (Ram Dass) “At this moment if you set the alarm to get up at 3:47 this morning and when the alarm rings and you get up and turn it off and say: what time is it? you’d say: now — here! now where am i? here! then go back to sleep get up at 9:00 tomorrow. where am i ?? here! what time is it? now! try 4:32 three weeks from next thurs. by god it is _ there’s no getting away from it – thats the way it is that’s the eternal present. you finally figure out that it’s only the clock thats going around …. it’s doing its thing but you – you’re sitting here right now always” (80)

image time: 1hr

“I’m on a road shaped like a figure 8, I’m going nowhere, but I’m guaranteed to be late [...] Wind-up anger with the endless view of the ground’s colorful patchwork” – Interstate 8 by Modest Mouse. One of my favorites of theirs… but lets be serious they’re all my favorites. Made todays a gif, cos it seemed fitting.

i’ll be lucky to get any good sleep in the next 7 days……..

image time: 1hr

“Rain is millions of tiny speech bubbles unused, the collected breaths of mutes, and all our silent exhalations where we should’ve put words, or words we had no one to tell, emptied from clouds like clearing horns spit valves, coming back to us now to remind us what we meant to say or that we meant to say something.” – Speech Bubbles by WHY?

the saga of the intimidating overbearing ominous to do list continues.

image time: 1.5 hrs

today’s film is based on the old man and the sea which is a beautifully shot drawing/film. i used a series of 8 six-word stories for my film today. and the band is Fanfare ciocarlia (so good).

made a really scary to do list today… long weekend, better not sleep very much if i want to live….

film time: 3.5 hrs! not bad!! finished while the sun was still up!

todays’ image is based on: “But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.” – Lord Byron getting really into this renaissance imagery thing. that and pointillism in the comic!

had a really good discussion with Gail today about the project, and worked heavily on the graphic novel aspect (for the films/print-fair). thinking of continuing the project after day 70… maybe… and just opening it up without rules, but we’ll see how burnt out i get by then, lots to do. loved every gallery opening tonight, babysitting an empty maclab right now.

image time: 1.5 hrs

today’s image is based on a poem by my great friend raven entitled ‘slightly west of here’ I don’t know how to break reality up Into pieces, small enough For them to swallow. lots to do today again. that is all.

image time: 1.5hrs

wow day 60! today’s image is a little lackluster.. based on a note from my philosophy class last year “the flux of becoming to the static of being” translated into desert v. northwest. only got four hours of sleep last night so i’m going to go home soon… lost of motion last night but it went well today. lots to catch up on tomorrow!

image time: 1 hr.

so today’s began with one of one of my favorite books ever: cat’s cradle (Vonnegut obv). “‘No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat’s cradle is nothing but a bunch of X’s between somebody’s hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X’s…’ ‘And?’ ‘No damn cat, and no damn cradle.’” took a little longer than i wanted to, but i’m happy with it.

motion/critical studies homework forever. probably no sleep at all tonight… long day ahead…. spring break ended a long time ago…

image time: 2 hrs.

excerpt for today: “Imagine a massive star at the end of its life. All internal sources of thermonuclear fuel have been depleted. A supernova explosion has just ripped the star apart. Although the star has violently shed most of its gases, the remaining burned-out core contains more than 2.5 solar masses. No forces in nature can support this stellar corpse; it is doomed to become a black hole.” (82, ‘Black Holes and Warped Spacetime’ by William J. Kaufmann, III)

deadly busy today… with not a lot of sleep behind me… hoping not to be like that stellar corpse by the end of the week ajosdifjaoidjsf

image time: 1hr

so if you’ll look at wk x wk, part of my manifesto rules for this week include using a piece of text as a starting point. i used one of my favorite books called ‘be here now’ by ram das, it’s an amazing book, easy to find a copy. pic of the spread this is based on after the jump. parents left this morning, made a kindof-terrifying to do list, and am getting my life in order. so much to do !! spring “break” woo!

image time: 1.5 hrs.

long day with the parents today, did a photoshoot with them in the kitchen, and they couldn’t stop laughing, they’re pretty cute. they leave tomorrow and week 9 begins and i have more work than i know what to do with. early mornign tomrorow. k niiight. my “break” part of break is def over.

image time: 1hr

this is the 8/10th film, coming a little earlier in the week for scheduling. i was always interested in that amazing sleeping beauty scene where the room cleans itself… and my parents are coming later today, so i thought i’d stop-frame two birds with one stone.

film time: 2.5 hours

i’m super excited cos my parents arrive tomorrow night and i get to thoroughly get out of the studio for a bit. that said, lots to do before i can afford that. so this is for my parents, it’s using my favorite picture of them taken at hurricane ridge in washington. what can i say, i’ve been into blues and purples lately…

doing my film tomorrow (if i can be speedy) as i won’t have proper film time on friday before the week’s end. we’ll see how this goes.

image time: 45mins

this is my idol, who sits at a mini-fridge shrine at my house. his story begins at the bins in south seattle this past summer. i paid nearly a dollar for this shellacked treasure. at the time i was living at a friend’s house coined the “sac shack” because there were a thousand love sacks there (those humungous bean-bags). his name was decided to be: “Shellacked Zac of the Sac Shack Attack Pack”. My good friends also made homemade ginger-infused hard cider (images of the packaging after the jump). in other news, WHERE HAS THE GOOD WEATHER BEEN THESE DAYS!?

image time: 2hrs.

per manifesto 3/5, i drew the ink part at home and the watercolors in the studio. no photography today… but more tomorrow i’m sure. it’s basically the intangibility of my dreams, i have them, i get flashes but i rarely rarely remember them. so i drew a few things i sometimes dream about and considerably obscured them. want to try more pointillism at some point, pretty satisfying. onto everything else that needs to get done during spring “break”.

image time: 2hrs.

this is my freezer.. and the yeti that’s taken to lazing about in there. i suppose he’s been sleeping in there through all the work craziness.

super duper crazy rainy day today. finally cleared up enough for me to go home without getting soaked. but doing some tests for my final culmination of this project today, getting some stuff in order, trying to track down some lisa frank ephemera around here, and awaiting my parents arrival at the end of the week.

image time: 2hrs.

going to a print fair at USC today with Lauren, and for the image today, one of the rules is part of the process has to happen outside of certain areas in the school, so because it’s a busy day i used photos from far away from here.

image time: 1hr

so this is the last day of my least favorite rules/restrictions/themes thus far. i held a conversation between my right and left hands. music: grimes. it fit, i’ve been listening to it all day, was so tired but this is what i was able to get out. pretty happy with the hands, like working with shorter clips. if anything it’s based on this.

it’s spring break finally (which means working without interruption unfortunately), that said, usc shelf life 2 (print fair) tomorrow as well as a house show later. pretty excited. then its’ back to the grind forever and ever.

film time: 5ish hours

ITSSPRINGBREAKWOO, official at four. so made this collage based on clark goolsby. one more film then it’s on to week 8!! so happy it’s spring break, have hella work to do, but it’ll be nice to sleep normally at least.

image time: 3.5 hours

today, another one written to myself, reminders for my future-self. these are based loosely on a few illustrators, Christian Northeast in particular.

day off today. have a lot of critical studies to do. read a ton of books from portable press at yo-yo labs, definitely give them a google, really beautiful books.

image time: 2hrs.

[hand model: andelee, thx babe] so i’ve been up for 38 hours… about to head home right after i post this… so today i made a fortune teller (aka “cootie catcher” according to jazmyn) very very loosely based on one of my favorite illustrators McBess made for myself (as if i needed reminding to sleep).

back on track tomorrow, working on exciting things for this project additionally! can’t wait for spring break.

well.. dying of stress over here, no time for the image really so when in doubt, use a pun… these are my “letters to the editor”… using the first school newspaper designed by Thea and myself. not inspired by anything today… but it’s kinda nice, i had imagined in this project doing a few that were only 5 minute projects so that’s good. working on motion and end of year show stuff for ever. spring break can’t happen soon enough

image time: 10 mins

so this week’s manifesto is a little harder, writing to “something”. today i wrote a letter to myself, to say there’s a light at the end of the tunnel… spring break is close… i just have a ton of stuff to do before then. it’s based on tunnel books (used by many small presses, and motion projects lately) woke up at 6 this morning… and i’m not sure if i’m completely adjusted to daylight savings.. so it felt like 5. it was still dark.

image time: 2hrs

so this week i’m “implementing letter writing” and today i woke up to torrential rains, then woke up again to still-perpetually shitty weather and a power outage at my house that won’t be fixed till 9pm. so i wrote an angry letter to the weather… you’ll see it foiled my efforts however. it’s not exactly based on a designer but closer to Marissa Moss (of the amelia notebooks)

image time: 1.5hrs

the 6th film installment is inspired by and referencing heavily the old pinball number count from sesame street directed by Jeff Hale. music the pointer sisters

film time: 12 hours……………………….

translation: “contort, distort, warp, deform, reform.” have class all day, a lecture, a town hall, a meeting, etc. this is based on a collage series in NOGADOD (look it up, amazing book, like my illustration bible.

image time: 1 hr

based on street artist REMED and some of his pieces in STREET SKETCH BOOK. since wednesday’s are my mid-week-weekend, i wish they were all as such. lots of work to do today. made an exaggerated list of what i thought i could get done today, but we’ll see…

image time: 2 hrs

today’s based on an image by Alvin Lustig (drawn hand, holding real coins). as far as typography goes, i went more with pieces of letterforms, and basic representations. like my natural drop shadows? in other news… had class all day, end of year show, motion, etc. going home soon.

image time: 45 mins

today i made a comic, (BASED ON THIS AWESOME SERIES BY STEVE POWERS!!!!) mostly about my days lately: waking up at the crack of dawn to loud ducks, having no phone reception or charge, having too much caffeine, the lame daylight savings, not looking at enough inspiration, having silly pizza pizza ideas, you know, the usual.

spent way longer on this than i planned, but it was worth the wait!

image time: 3.5 hours

per the rule set 1/5, its typographic, its based on a designer… I used Dominion by Canada Type, wrote out “sisters of mercy” as well as S, O, and M, as it was named after a song by that band. Then had a scanner frenzy… and an indesign frenzy.

Lots of critical studies today, ouch. and logistical stuffs. and money stuffs. anyway, we’ll see how it goes.

image time: 1.5 hours.

get to spend some time with Lauren today, and catch up on homework stuff as well. Since yesterday marked the half way point in the project, i’m starting to write a new “manifesto” of sorts for each week, instead of a “theme”, it will be more based in rules/restrictions. This week’s after the jump

MANIFESTO 1/5
This project is changing and transitioning. Where there were once “themes”, there are now rules and restrictions. There will be one content rule, two concerning form, and after this first week, keep a rule from the previous week. This also begins the process of transforming the body of work into one or two succinct pieces.

1. Image must be inspired by, be about, or include another designer, illustrator or design figure of history.
2. Image must include something typographic.
3. Image must have different color scheme each day.

Today’s was based on a piece by Sheila Lebrant de Bretteville: more bout it here.

image time: 1 hour

THIS IS OFFICIALLY THE HALF WAY POINT OF THIS PROJECT BY THE WAY

today was busy for no classes, had a mosho meeting, then a little time to film, then a longggg end of the year show meeting. walked to school though with phil which was nice, and bought groceries with jazmyn. had some fun with this film, pretty simply, pretty silly.

the project gets more involved after today. more on that shortly. but all i’m gonna say is there are 5 manifestos in my future.

they never had a chance… last image day of this theme (staging), impulse buy at cvs while buying lotto tickets to get army men, spray painted them, used some posters i had for backdrops. few more scenes after the jump :]

image time: 2hrs

wrapped a tree, so now we have paper weeds in the courtyard. took a lot of photos, so it was hard to pick some. listening to some m.elliott thanks to augusto, feeling 10 yrs younger haha. getting some homework together, like reading tiny press zines in the critical studies hallway… while loud meetings occur. more images after the jump.

image time: 2 hrs

Tiffanie offered up some of her awesome pinecone collection. little bit of a struggle coming up with an image today, but i figured it out. Had class alllllllll day, but a day off tomorrow to catch up. been listening to the best of 99 with the studio for a bit now :]

image time: 1hr

first day of class for the week. finished some homework with a lighter schedule this weekend. got to buy groceries too! furthering my “staged scenes” week, i took my favorite book of illustrated science/nature. more images below the jump.

image time: 45 mins

one month anniversary of the project today. continuing on with my staged scene theme. using another one of andelee’s excellent toys, i made a yarn monster. this is a series of two if you click after the jump.

piggy got caught

image time: 15 mins.

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been four weeks already… this week, week 5 is my last “themed week” before my project takes a slightly steeper trajectory. The them for this week is staged scenes. I’d like to thank the wonderful Miss Andelee for letting me borrow her cool eraser.

In other news, working on packaging the images i made this past week for friends back home. Also trying to get ahead on a few projects if i can work fast so i can sleep normally this week. my parents were touched by their film yesterday :]

image time: 30 mins.

had a meeting today, and spent the rest of the day getting groceries, etc. then worked on the film from dinner-time-ish till now. it’s for my parents. they’ve been discussing where they’d like to live after i graduate, so i gave them a modest house, close to a city, sunny weather, public transportation, coast, and some fruit trees. love you.

film time: 9 hours

today is for a dear dear friend who is now venturing in the arctic cities of canadia. she loves her rap. she loves her typography. i give you some words to live by now: “g’s up, hoes down”. it says it i swear! GIF translation after the jump.

image time: 2 hours

today i made a mix tape for a dear friend back home. made a little pattern from it. the mix is good, the drawing’s there, i hope she likes it.

image time: 1.5hrs

This image is for a dear friend of mine, we do a lot of blind contours together, and in all honesty she’s probably going to think this is more scary than genuine, but it’s for her, love her, hope you enjoy the image!

today was the last (for a little while) of my absurdly busy days. i got other things to do still ofcourse, but i’m not as outofcontrolcan’teverdolaundryorshower mode ya know

today is another gift for a friend back home. we have mad yahtzee rematches ahead of us.

image time: 2hrs

so today is the second day of my theme: made for another. today i made a collage (self-explanitory) for a fellow artist from back home. (to save confusion, Amelia, you’re scheduled for later in the week <3 ). I cannot currently reveal who until i've mailed it to them however.

image time: 1.5 hours

Today is the beginning of week four. The theme is making something for another person each day. Today is for Tiffanie (don’t worry, she’s received it already) but it’s in the occasion of her 21st birthday! yeahhh get druuuunk!

image time: 1.5 hours

today is a little abstract, just dollar store items, wanted to do some music visualization, working a lot on the newspaper today, and a few other little things. new theme tomorrow, this week didn’t really have one.

film time: 4 hours

Last outrageously busy day of the week, saw Danny DeVito at the galleries tonight… film tomorrow, getting back on track, projects are ending, projects are beginning, the weather is getting warmer. Gonna go home and totally jam out on my new keyboard asap. Today was a sweatshirt landscape….

image time: 45 mins

So today is very busy. So I drew my to do list, including laying out a newspaper, designing a book, making important phone calls and hopefully getting my life together. Really hoping I can get back on track with real images tomorrow.

image time: 30 mins

so i have ever so slightly more time today. spent like half an hour last night playing with my new keyboard from a very good friend of mine. today is 6 drawings on post-its, its moveable, its malleable, its modular.

image time: 2hrs

spent the time i would have spent talking about the day on the image. no time. gotta get back to school stuff. will make it up soon. (blind contours from trip photos)

(added) so yesterday i woke up at 5:50am, and worked on motion homework and book design work forever and barely had time to do anything else. but i got to sleep by 3, and have a slightly ever so slightly more chill day today

image time: 1hr

had the longest day of my liiiife today (or at least it felt like that). woke up at 10 in comptche (totally beautiful back country in the redwoods), and left around 12noon and just got back to valencia around 8:30. these are some shots i took today, i’ll be back on track with more involved images soon. but i think i found a methodology for when i’m not in the studio.

in other news, passed by a whole caravan on i5 today including a few equipment trucks/trailers, 8 motorcycles with two people each, a pickup truck wiht a camera crew in the cab of it, (as well as another camera crew at a rest stop way ahead. ntm, they were with a group called “bollywood hollywood”, who knows, maybe i just started my bollywood career as an extra. anyway, have a redic amount of stuff to do. oh god. ttys.

image time: 15mins

(hi-res here) today i went into town (mendocino) through the (hardcore) woods, and had to take pictures as soon as i got to the water. got to see one of my favorite towns, and visit my grandma. leaving tomorrow morning, happy i could get out of the city, in a big way

image time: 15 mins

So today i’m doing an image instead of a film (switched with yesterday) since i drove all the way from valencia to comptche (about 500 mi). with like a thousand different kinds of traffic/roads, and part of my car falling off and my radio not working… but i’m at my friends house. the image is in chronological order by horizon line, i took pictures intermitenly throughout the day

image time: all freaking day, plus 20 mins

Today, I woke up super early and decided to make my weekly film on a thursday instead of friday as I leave for northern california tomorrow morning and didn’t want to skip out on the film. there WILL be an image, the schedule is just a little shifted for this week.

I used my favorite car, my hotwheels AMC gremlin, and some beautiful old national geographics. And one of my favorite songs in the world, “Freebird” by lynrd skynrd. This weekend will be a little wild as far as this project goes, but I have week no.3′s theme on standby. hopefully I get some decent sleep before then.

today was another experiment with some lovely old national geographics. don’t have class today, but alot of projects to do, as i will be driving north on friday. on that note, i might switch around two days, to do the film before i leave, or something, i’ll figure it out. I think for this project to work i can’t worry too much about being EXACTLY the same schedule each week… its a lot harder to be flexible that way.

the photographs in this issue are seriously gorgeous. but usually books like that end up living in a box/cubby/shelf and i never use them, just like before i bought them. cutting out the flowers provided an additional unintentional composition on the backside.

image time: 45 mins

decided to try a slightly more tactile collage, have some greeeeat old nat-geos.

long 48 hours… 12 spent in class, the rest spent on motion… and a measly 4.5 hours spent in my bed oversleeping. pretty ridiculous.

image time: 45 mins

I’m (SNAIL-PACED) slowly working on my boards for Motion, and trying to figure out some 3d. So today I tried a different approach to 3d, and made some treacherous mountain slopes for my tiny climbers, ode to all my climbing friends back home, missing you guys.

You’ll please excuse me, I had almost no time at all to make an image for today, (see to-do list above). I have significantly overbooked my schedule for basically the rest of the semester. Just gotta keep pushing. I have a desk crit today in my main design class, then my class on horror/scifi, the stories were good, too bad I couldn’t read them very thoroughly…

image time: 20 minutes

Today is a little different. I picked up a copy of the national enquirer today. Had some plans to collage, but found when I actually read the headlines they had quite a bit of alliteration instilled into the prose. So today is another form of erasure, with ransom wordplay?

image time: 1 hour

So i’m introducing a new rule to my project (full summary posted later) but the short of the matter is that weekly themes (loose!) are going to be added. This week is “appropriated printed material”. I have a few tricks up my sleeve for this one, but I decided to start the week with the Saturday issue of the new york times. There was an interesting article on the post-paterno world at Penn state, but before I got to that I came across this FULL-PAGE prada spread… next to a significantly dwarfed image of car-bombings in Syria.. So being a huge fan of literary erasures, I tried my hand at a graphic one. I traced the exact dimensions of the headline photo for the bombings and blocked it out on top of the prada ad.

There are a few different kinds of printed materials I will be using after today, but I figured a classic newspaper was a good place to start. I’ll be starting to post my process/notes on the project along with the images very very soon.

image time: 2 hours (from reading the paper/drawing)

Today, I’m very excited to announce the first film installment of this project, and i’m calling it “Witchcraft” (due to its content, and as a btw, because I have lineage back to the Salem Witch Trials………). It took the majority of the day, but I got very excited about it towards the end. It stars the fabulous Gabby Datau. The music is “Shadowtricks” by Bonobo. It’s been a whole week already! Nine more to go!

Since the film portion represents the end of my week, I decided to also catalogue my findings. What I learned, what I found difficult, what I want to set out for the following week’s images/films. These may be posted on here later tonight, or early tomorrow. But it doesn’t make sense for this project to start with a specific theme, since I won’t be working like that (in my personal work) after this project, but it does make sense to have a process on a much more micro scale (maybe themes? goals? we’ll see).

film time: 10 hours (filming + other)

Worked with papercuts today. Last day of classes for the week. Just made something quick, mostly excited to make film number 1 tomorrow. Need to get a leg up on next week’s homework tonight, plus checking out the galleries.

image time: 2 hours

So at least once a school year I fly instead of drive back home (16 hour duration difference!) and I always get so excited about the agricultural grids, all the variation, and just how far they stretch, and the interruptions within them. Took me a while to get to something that I liked, more after the jump.

woke up super late today, made a list of stuff that needs to get done and freaked out just a little bit….. just gotta power through. another image tomorrow, and a film on friday (though it may be posted later due to a trip up north)

image time: 2 hours (to get to something I liked)

I struggled with both time and ideas today, went through 3 possible ideas (between classes) today that just didn’t work. But in the past, i’ve just picked up books I thought “might come in handy” from goodwill/etc; and that very same scenario occurred.

This is a sweet little book called ‘Black Holes and Warped Spacetime’ i came across sometime last year. It has some excellent diagrams, mostly black and white, and i love love love the cover.

Had my first sessions with the End-of-the-year-show class, and advanced motion. The latter is gonna kick my butt, but in a good im-gonna-get-alot-out-of-it kinda way. Almost lost my house/studio keys as well today. But going to see the fabulous Gabby Datau’s surfrock band Sandy Pussy later.

I am also looking for a better/more-real name for this project. Its just kind of a stand in to be more searchable for now… but seriously, something else needs to introduce this project.

image time: 30 mins

Jazmyn put it eloquently: “how often do you have a birthday during a project about each day!” So for the occasion of my 22nd birthday, I mailed myself some festive cards. Our P.O. boxes here are awfully small, so they just burst out when I opened mine!

I got some lovely office supplies (favorite!) a Dali watch that you’ve seen in a few other pictures here already, some of my favorite coffee from my favorite shop back home, and several different kinds of cookies, and a sapporo from Gabby! My family/friends pretty much rule always.

image time: 1 hour

I’m endlessly intrigued by hand imagery, so that might be a common thread here. Perfect temperature outside, lots of reading homework, and drinks tonight since my birthday is tomorrow.

The marker won’t come off my hand without a fight, that’s for sure. Guess i’m committed to leaves on my hands for a while… and possibly on my face depending on how I sleep tonight. Btw, Is today the superbowl or the end of the world? Because the lines at Vons were out of control…

image time: 3.5 hours

Took a trip to Ventura today with some classmates, and brought my plaster hand from mold-making. The hand was created using an Alginate mold (for life-casting) and poured plaster. It was a beautiful day, bought a literary publication from 1907, went to a few pubs, and ‘like a homing-pigeon’ came back to the studio.

I had gone with a plan to take pictures of the hand for Day 01, however, it was actually a struggle thinking of what to make with it. Finally came up with something I was happy with. The project has really begun. Less than half an hour until I can start thinking up ideas for Day 02. Also thought this other image came out kinda nice, might have to get some of the mold-making supplies, its a medium I’m not at all familiarized with.

photo time: most of the day
image time: 3 hours (from idea to completion)

During the final semester of our BFA4 year at Calarts (Graphic Design) we’re asked to develop an independent project – a thesis of sorts. The scope can be broad, or very specific. I went through several ideas, outline them, realized I wasn’t interested in certain parts; finally, I landed on an idea in which I was intrigued by both the theoretical, and material aspects of. The hope is that I’ll end the semester with a large body of self-initiated work, I will have revitalized a personal practice and an alternative work ethic, as well as practice for the “real-world” (coming up with ideas, and executing them QUICKLY). The prompt is as follows:

For a period of 10 weeks, I will make an image a day, and a short film every friday.
By the last day of the tenth week, I will have at least 60 images, and 10 films.

THE REASONING
I went through a ton of different ideas, and finally landed on one simple enough to accomplish, but with enough potential to take away something significant. I want to make something every day for a period of 10 weeks involving image-making and film/animation.



During the first three years at this school, most projects we’ve done through class have had a hefty process aspect to them; research/planning, prototyping, making, revising, and finalizing. Because I chose a profession based on something I enjoy doing in my spare time, it has left my spare time pretty bare. Therefore, I have planned a project around many fast-paced projects (there is still a process aspect, but the project focuses more on the making, and the overall body of work).



Additionally, a favorite book of mine titled “Be Here Now” by Ram Dass (while it focuses more on a spiritual practice) preaches the idea of acting presently, letting emotions come and go, and not dwelling, never dwelling. It is a good analogy for my reasoning behind this project; I enjoy the many traditional phases of a design process, but often times I dwell on a specific stage and end up getting stuck. I am hoping to establish a personal practice that keeps me inspired and busy whenever I work on projects supporting my livelihood that place me in that aforementioned rut.



“Make something every day just keep the work coming” has kind of become a personal motto of sorts over my time spent at this school, and it’s time I begin to apply it.



One image/post a day – though the point is the still image, the elements can be prepped for animation when it comes time for that week’s film.


One film a week – The film will be based in the images/elements created that week, though not limited to that. Things can be shot/animated additionally, but again, I will be “repurposing” those original images. 



All of these will be posted daily on this blog, arranged by day of the week, image vs. film, or chronological order. The journaling will be posted with the work, but not the central focus.

10 weeks: I have chosen to do this over a period of 10 weeks because a) it sets a concrete beginning and end to the project, allowing for a contained body of work; b) to have a long enough period of time where the collection of work is significant and challenging; c) to allow for a few extra weeks at the end to plan a final culmination, be it an exhibition, reel, book, web gallery, etc.

There will be more writing to this very shortly!