Final Project Part Two! and reflections.

Watch Me Draw The First One

Watch Me Draw The Second One

These are the frames I made for The Johnny Cash Project! Technical difficulties caused me to lose two completed frames before I could take snapshots, so really I put in the work for four! Despite the setbacks, I really enjoyed contributing to this project. This is something I can see myself coming back to frequently in the future, both to make new slides and to see how the overall video has evolved. Amongst the four options we had, I think this one was the closest thing we had to a perfect crowdsourcing project; Each individual piece was vital to the project as a whole, but when watched together, no single contribution was ever getting all the attention. It was the overall effect that the frames created that made the video so interesting.

Regarding my thoughts on our Final Project as a whole, as much as I enjoyed being a part of The Johnny Cash Project and the Man With the Movie Camera, I have to say that I'm a little disappointed. This whole class seems to have gone backwards in regards to the assignments we've been doing; most art classes start with projects that have tight creative constraints and gradually loosen those constraints with every new project assigned. In this class, our first project gave us enormous freedom, but every project after that has become less "make something of your own" and more "reproduce something someone else made". Sure, we were always given plenty of options on exactly who's work we were recreating, and we were always encouraged to put our own spin on it, but it still bothers me that the closest we ever came to being able to create something truly original was back when we were still bleary eyed, confused and (for many of us) totally unfamiliar with the kinds of digital media we would be exploring in this class. Personally, I think a smaller version of this final project would have been a perfect first assignment; the only technical know-how you really need for it is the ability to shoot video and maybe some editing. Even the drawing programs are simple to use and built right into the site they correspond to. Our first assignment, on the other hand, could have been expanded into a very interesting and elaborate final project, one where we could call on the vast array of imagery and ideas that we had learned about in class and produce something reminiscent of other works but was, at it's core, truly our own. I've had a good time working on all of the assignments we've had in this class and I don't ming finishing everything off with a project that's so simple, but I was really kind of excited to put all that I had seen and learned to use in one big final creation that I could really be proud of. Instead I made six tiny little creations, each of which is now filed away in some database amongst hundreds if not thousands of other tiny little creations.