Project Update No.1 The Divine Irreverence of Images

 For this weeks progress report, I have a small test video to show of an animation I made from a stock image of a cat jumping in some grass as reference using the program Adobe After Effects. Before working on animating my physical illustration, still work in progress, I need o figure out how to work the program  itself. To learn basics of the programs I followed a tutorial video by PremiumBeat By Shutterstock called "How to Animate 2D Photos Inside of After Effects - Free Project File Included - PremiumBeat.com." The link to the video will be bellow. From the video, I learned to navigate the after effects UI and learned some basic animation/effects such as movement, zoom, masking, stamp tool, keyframing, exporting, rigging, and more. I used what I learned to animate the image I found on google of the cat adding blur, zoom, some movement, and some rain effects. The video was very detailed and taught me how to actually use the program rather than work on one example project which was useful. I learned somethings I will be using on my final project as well.

One thing that really stood out to me while working on this study was the various simulated effects a person can put on their work. This relates directly to some aspects of the book "Simulation" by Jean Baudrillard. On page 5, Baudrillard explains "Someone who feigns an illness can simply go to bed and make believe he is ill. Some who simulates an illness produces himself some of the symptoms." He then goes into describing how simulations threatens the difference between true and false, and real and imaginary. Now compared to the test I did, a lot of the effects are still a bit tacky and is unrefined. But when seeing some example work of veteran After Effects users, it can be really tricky to figure out what is a simulation. Even in my test with the cat, the rain effect is something that would not have seemed possible 20 years ago. It was so easy to place on my stock image and it works decently well. It simulates the real world in a virtual space. The rigging tool which lets me put anchor points on images not too dissimilar to how humans and animals have joints to move from. This allows an artist to simulate "real world" movement. It makes me wonder what makes people, including myself, so keen on simulating the world we live in, in a "non-real" world of art. If we want to see a cat jumping in grass on a rainy day we can just go outside to see them. Yet I decided to use a simulation program
to simulate this situation. I think this notion will change when I start using my original artwork that takes place in a fantasy world. I feel like then it changes from one trying to imitate the real world to that of trying to make a fictional world come true. It makes me both excited and fearful of the day we will learn to simulate the real world perfectly in the digital space that at some point a simulation will cease to be a simulation and become reality.

Link To Tutorial Video Followed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4sQMt9eBi8&ab_channel=PremiumBeatbyShutterstock