CPS Week 7 - Characters and Events

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Context:

I was inspired by the Empiricle understanding of knowledge, where characters are developed according to their environmental circumstances and the events that affect them. I imagined an innocent character turned and twisted by events that forge them into a hardened rebel. This is very much alike the story arcs of films 'The Island' from 2005 and 'Never Let Me Go' from 2010, where characters live a near utopian protected life before becoming aware that they are being bred for the eventual purpose of organ harvesting. I found this development very interesting and relevant, as it shows a drastic shift in character behaviour in response to traumatic events. 

The Island Trailer (2005)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuLjZujKNmE

Method:

I will create a short comic-like storyline involving a peaceful fruit, their traumatic harvesting and eventual sale, forging them into the leader of a Kitchen Rebellion.

Response:

See Images Below

Reflection for Folio:

This week’s topic was slightly atypical for me, as I was away on vacation to Perth during the delivery of the class. After some contemplation on how to approach this topic of characters and environmental influences upon their development, I found myself idly doodling characters that were literally a part of their environment, and comprised of it. I was also listening to Mongo Santamaria’s Watermelon Man, which may have had some part to play. The most interesting aspect of characters for me is when they evolve in response to adversity. When their environment and events conspire against the character, and they rise above. In short, I took a more behaviorally driven approach to the topic, rather than interpret a character’s development as a grand physical change.

However, the process of creation in this instance was driven overall by a sense of play. I quickly roughed out scenes in pencil and pastel on brown craft paper, and the overall exercise has a very sketchy feel as a result. I wanted my character to undergo a tumultuous emotive evolution, and mirrored this in the creation of it; splaying my thoughts onto paper in a feverish vomit of colour. This process was closely linked to the Tinkering exercise undertaken in week 2, and was informed greatly by the creative spontaneity that propelled my work in the Observation and Found Object exercises. I find the over-examination of my ideas often leads me to stagnation, which was the case here for some time. As I was taken out of the practice of immediacy that generating ideas in-class provides, I had far too much time to ponder the ‘correct’ way of approaching the material. This is a common emergent theme in my work, and a testament to the effectiveness of letting production and play propel my workflow.