Abstraction

Abstraction is a type of art that deals more with ideas rather than clear images. Most abstract animations contain geometric shapes that move to create a sense of flow. There are various types of abstraction. For my project, I planned to make an animation based on music and rhythm. I wanted my viewer to be able to feel the music through my piece and follow along with the tune. I wished to use either a violin or piano piece to have my animation follow along to. I believe I was able to reiterate the concept of abstraction fairly well. I used circles, geometric shapes, to create a sense of movement through a piece of music and used watercolor paint to give color and life to my piece.

In order to create my work, I researched other animators and examined their work, frame by frame, to get a better sense of movement. One of the animators that I was inspired by was Oskar Fischinger. The pieces I viewed of his included Alegretto and Kreisse(Circles). Fischinger’s works were often abstract animations tightly synced to musical pieces. I wished to use circles for the piece to imitate the movement that Fischinger made. However, my song and animation were much simpler and didn’t require such intricate and difficult motion.

The other animator that I looked at was James Whitney’s Arabesque and Lapis. Although my work does not reflect the mobilized, complicated computer graphics, I did draw inspiration from his works. I admired how the colors intertwined and changed accordingly to the music.

It was my first time trying to use cutouts for a project. I found it difficult to photograph the frames to get my final animation. There were times when the shapes had moved unintentionally. I had to try to sync the images back to their original state so as to not disrupt the flow of the animation that much. Also, in order to add a piece of music, I used Adobe Premiere. I had never used this program before and had to learn the basics. I found it most difficult to sync the music accordingly to the animation. I had to speed up or slow down certain parts of the animation to have everything match up. I found that the most fluid motion was during the first 2 seconds of my animation. The piano matched perfectly to the circles appearing on the screen. Although there were mistakes, I feel that I am learning to understand how to create motion clearly. My mistakes only show my progress.