APD Week 3 - Play and Objects

Theme

In response to this week’s theme of play and objects, I made a series of images and an animated loop using aluminium foil and some objects I had lying around at home. I then composited and made “action” shots out of these objects.

Methods

The goal was to be playful, take the tools I had – a knife, some foil, some blue tac and a dish. The foil was versatile enough to be created into different shapes like the whale and the island. I also used it to create variations on shapes to animate the waterspout. And a slight cheat adding in some blue food colouring to bring the scene to life a bit more. The other images were made by creating two humanoid figures and posing them around objects I found in the world, some old coke cans, an orange, and a banana. Then these images were composited in photoshop, and the whale was animated in aftereffects.

Context

This work exists in the field of creative photography and stop motion animation, and the primary source of inspiration I used was the work of carl warner and his Foodscapes. Carl creates immensely detailed landscapes and scenes using foods, and briefly these can appear hyper realistic. What’s fascinating about this work is how it throws away the visual affordance of the foods and reimagines it as completely different objects – using its scale, colour, texture, and shape to do this. I chose to adapt this by making foil my medium of creation, making little figures of foil, and creating scenes with them.

Reflection

This was a big step out of my comfort zone, creating physical objects, after sitting in front of a computer for so long was a challenging experience at first. A lot of time was spent on the logistics of setting up the stop motion shots, and when dealing with water having to wait for it to settle before making movements, and then hoping the water doesn’t sway the foil. I feel like if I had to create something like this again, I would have had more time to work on more dynamic scenes with objects, and perhaps use them in more unconventional ways, but the idea of playing with foil sculptures and photography is a vast area for exploring.

References

Category: Photographer - Carl Warner

Audio used-

(52) Whales Spouting Out Water Sound Effect HD - YouTube

(52) Calm Seashore - No Copyright Sound Effects - Audio Library - YouTube

Downloads:

Download File: whaleoutweb.mp4
Download File: banana.png
Download File: orange.png
Download File: coke.png