Project Update 2 - Coloured Resurrection

 For this weeks update, I actually made a lot of both technical and physical progress of learning Adobe After Effects and getting started on my physical project. Last week I spent time learning the basics of After Effects. This week I used what I learned to start experimenting on my actual illustration and I learned a lot, and I mean a lot. I was able to rig macho cat and animate his breathing animation while creating cinematic elements such as rainfall, ninjas moving in, and smoke spreading out. Not everything was a success though. I spent more than enough time trying to initially import my massive 210Mb photoshop file with multiple layers into after effects, and I had some issues keyframing individual layers and rendering the final project. One thing I learned that needs to be fixed for the sake of this process specifically is to extend certain elements of the illustration. I figured I need to do this because when animating each layer, sometimes the image gets cut off because of the original borders I created in the illustration. I need to paint things I wouldn't normally see in the original drawing so there are no empty spaces when animating. This is something I need to go back and fix to make it work for the final. Over all I am super happy with how much I was able to learn from this weeks process.

When it comes to the relation this project has with the idea of difference as seen in the book Simulations by Jean Baudrillard, it is something I struggle with during this entire project. The world that I am creating my characters in live in this "fantasy" medieval Japan setting. As the description goes, it has a lot of influence from Japanese culture. When I design my characters I make sure to research traditional clothing: how they are made, how they are worn, and what situations people may wear them in. Being born from two Japanese parents I also incorporate my personal knowledge of the culture as well. However there is apart of me who knows there are things I am missing. Things I missed from my lack of knowledge, experience, or simply just overlooked. On page 22, Baudrillard said "In the same way Americans flatter themselves they brought the number of Indians back to what it was before their conquest. everything is obliterated only to begin again. They even flatter themselves they went one better, by surpassing, the original figure." Here Baudrillard explains how Americans try to "fix" the cultures they have destroyed in the past and make it seem like the result is better for it. They once destroyed the lands and culture of the Native Americans, and now some years later come back as the "hero's," "giving back" the land and help "repair" their culture. I always respect the reference and culture from which I borrow from, and do not think this quote from the book directly points to me. But it does make me more aware of what I am representing in the work that I create.