Final Video

For my final video I wanted to make a cartoon about my relationship with art

The idea is pretty cheesey, but I feel like when I put myself into a project I feel like it sucks the life out of me.

The result is usually that i have something that was less than what i expected, but i'm still proud of it and it's still my work.

just like how the mosquito is made up of all my insides
Not what i had in mind, but it's technically still me in there :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL9NX0CsDNM

if it gives you any idea of how i planned for the cartoon to come out, check out all these pieces of characters i drew!

in the original idea, the mosquito was going to slowly drain away at my body, looking more like me the more it grew in size.

but because it was a frame by frame animation and due to time constraints and other projects, it became difficult to draw six frames of inbetween for each thing that happens in the animation.

RAUL CUERO’s interview

https://youtu.be/ZugtaO85T_Y

Raul's story of overcoming his troubled past and the prejudices he faced makes his story pretty inspiring.

He was born into a rough situation and grew up in a poor town with few opportunities for education or advancement and success.

He promised himself he'd keep getting better and improving himself until he gained a PhD, and made multiple scientific discoveries and is currently trying to find a way to use the minerals in the soil on mars to negate the effects of radioactivity.

if you don't find that inspiring, there is something wrong with you.

sometimes in life there are limits, and you find yourself stuck in problem situations that no one has ever figured out.

if you ever find yourself in these situations, it's your responsibility to try and find a way to solve the problem by MAKING a new solution

the idea i take away from this man is that you can't stop thinking and trying new things
because if you do stop, you never move forward.

Musical Genres

goth/punk

When i think of goth music, I usually think of The Cure.
The main singer of the Cure, Robert Smith, basically invented the look and the attitude of goth culture as we know it today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOyITVkQpEI

and when I think about punk music, I think of the first punk band I ever heard of and the guys that started the movement of punk rock: The Ramones!

the ramones are so cool, they all had leather jackets, long hair, white shoes, and torn up jeans.
To this day I've never met anyone who can sing the strange, almost incomprehensible yet somehow rhythmic and energetic lyrics always hit me right in the heart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTdbn5t3xH4

but I also want to talk about one of my favorite albums that successfully mashes up the two genres and makes something that really rocks!
I often compare this album to the Beatles' Sgt Pepper, because the band dressed up in silly costumes and pretended to be personas, rather than their real life people names.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egG7fiE89IU




The Nineties

During the nineties, I was a child. So many of the songs and music styles from this era of music are very nostalgic to me. It was an era where bands like Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins were on the cusp of a musical revolution, and the genre of grunge was born. It was a strange mish-mash of all sorts of musical styles, and bridged the gap between rock, punk, and metal.

the bands wore a lot of flannel shirts and torn up jeans, and they were really cool.

But when Kurt Cobain, writer and vocalist of the band Nirvana, killed himself, the grunge movement screeched to a halt.

Because of this, different music started to get more air time on the air ways, and the Alternative Genre of music was born. This genre was extremely hard to define, as it's mainly an overreaching word for styles of bands that are often described as "rock because it's not anything else"

One of my favorite bands from this time is called Cake, and they're amazing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGcLp5vSZqw

Oddly enough, the some of the songs I remember the best from this era are the one hit wonder songs that really captured the alternative genre. Here's my favorite, Barely Breathing by Duncan Sheik

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-oh-tP6RvA



Girl Power

I like feminism. Honestly, I think the ideas of feminism are misinterpreted by almost everyone who is radical about it or complains about it.

The idea of feminism is very simple, it's that women and men should have the same opportunities.

that's really all there is to it.

that being said, girl power was a style of music that is made to empower women, and some songs and bands are good, while others are silly and strange.

my favorite song is actually called girl power by the people who did the song for the power rangers movie: Shampoo

it's very silly, check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_S5aMe9atw


Disco

Disco was a strange time for music, after the 60's psychedelic drugs, hippies, and the british invasion changed the way music and culture were created. I wasn't alive during this time, but having watch Austin Powers, I think I have some authority on the subject of the 70's music.

The culture was different, the music was funky and dance centric, and mirrored the free ideals of the time.

The Bee Gees have always been my favorite Disco band, and my favorite song of theirs is called "More Than a Woman"
When I was a kid, I always thought the lyrics were "Small Headed Woman" but now I realize it's not...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtxBUp6hBaI



Dubstep

I've never been a big fan or electronic, house, or dubstep music. For the most part the idea of using things like autotune to make a person's voice sound nice when it really doesn't and the person sounds horrible in real life is dishonest.

a pop star using autotune when they can't sing is the same as a professional athlete using steroids.

that being said, there are exceptions.
T-Pain is ok to use autotune, because it's his gimmick and it was an original idea when he started doing it.

and talk box, the effect daft punk uses, is more selective and is more effective when the people using it actually know how to sing.

Anyhoo! the newest band I listen to and really love is called AWOL Nation, and they sound really good.
the vocalist doesn't use use hardly any voice effects, and he has a scream voice that really gets me pumped whenever i hear it :)

this is one of my favorite of their songs, it's called fat face. go check out this whole album, it's called RUN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd8pC5kjMTI

XEROX Project

For my Xerox project, I looked into an art style that's always interested me, it's called Futurism!

With the advent of photography becoming more present and advanced, the idea of art being used for the representation of the real world started becoming less practical.

Because of this, artists started thinking about how they could use their art to represent ideas and images that couldn't be represented by photography.

At the time there were no film cameras, and an artist named Giacomo Balla wanted to
represent motion in his pieces, and he created this now famous painting of a woman walking down the street with her dog!

  Isn't it great? So for my project, using black and white copies of my body parts, I obviously thought of this painting and this time of artI decided to make a similar piece based on the ideas of motion being represented by still images.so I scanned multiples of all of my limbs and face turning gradually, which was very awkward to do in front of people in the lab because I had to keep sticking my head into the scanner and finding ways to prop up the scanner's lid with various props, like my shoe!but I took the 40 or so copies, cut them up and glued them to strips of mat board, connecting them with a gold pin that made my strips of body parts rotate around the center of the piece.this allowed for the final product moveable, and the strips of body parts easy to arrange in a gradual order that made me look like i was waking up!Here are some pictures of how it turned out:    

performance art

For my performance art piece, I decided to do a social experiment!
I've noticed that people nowadays are constantly checking their phone, always have their headphones in, and always seeking distractions from real life by having digital media on around them constantly.

I feel like this kind of thing leads to overstimulation, and it makes it harder for people to just sit quietly in a room and just be still. I mean, who does that anymore?

So i decided to take over the school's computer lab, where I work, and run a different popular internet video on loop for all 20 or so computers, and film the reaction of the students there to witness it!

I also dressed in a silver body suit and stared at them silently from the corner of the room, where I would normally sit to wait and help people with their projects.
This was important for the experiment to make the people walking in feel like they had no one they could ask about the circumstances they had wandered into!

Also, it was a strange thing to have on and i thought it would make them feel even more strange :)

Check out the link bellow to see how people reacted to the sensory overload!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoeJCNIMgKg&feature=youtu.be