James Cameron Avatar Trailer Revised

First I have to talk about the original trailer before I talk about my revised trailer. The original can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1_JBMrrYw8 if you want. I found the original video to be very tense due to the music. I kind of wanted the notes to move faster because they take too long. Of course that is because of the suspense they were trying to create form it. It had a kind of eeriness in the beginning but right after the suspenseful part where he gets into his avatar, I don't know what I am suppose to feel. It almost seems like the audio is skipping. 

My video is more darker than the trailer. All the images are the same but I added some dark techno music. I know that is weird but it fits with the mood. I cut the music so it would fit in with the song because it is around four minutes and the trailer is two minutes. The only thing I had to force to fit in where it was not suppose to is the very end with the avatar kiss scene where it was important to make the mood more romantic even if it was dark music. I kind of made it mystical at the end so it didn't look like a romance. I made it so the piano's first appearance into the trailer was between the view over the forest and the military base to hint that there is mystery behind both the wild and the base. I had the drum come in with the armaments of the marines to create that "up" in tension and make a possibly normal thing turn into a race to arms. You then get set uneasy because nothing else seems to be violent until the organ comes in and the avatar smiles. You can't hear what he says, but you know it is malicious. The rest of the video is fighting and it fits the disturbed, eerie music. I used sound effects in the same areas as the trailer's maker did except for the roars of the monsters. I used a lot of subtle sounds like the helicopter and the bubbles in the tank to create and atmosphere when I thought it was necessary. I think the Trailer's creator used the helicopter too much and didn't allow enough scenes to create there own suspense from lack of noise. I felt the roars brought a person into the trailer, and if I could increase there volume compared to the music I would. The roar of the avatar (which is my own voice so see if you recognize me, probably not) kind of acts as a sudden realization that you are just watching it and not part of it. My whole video makes things seem like it is an image with no sound (which is different form a video without any sound) and makes you enter yourself into the trailer to hear there voices. 

El Anatsui

El Anatsui  is an artist that was born Ghana, Nigeria in the year 1944. El Anatsui got his Art Education Postgraduate Diploma at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi in 1969. He later went on to do many solo exhibitions, two person exhibitions, selected group exhibitions and international exchange workshops. He worked as a teacher and curatorial still staying close to his art. He has accumulated 8 award so far, the last being in 2000 from the Forum of African Arts. 

El Anatsui's art revolves around physical objects. El Anatsui makes art out of the style of natural or common things like sticks and bottle caps. He is not known for making paintings that hold a lot of meaning made by every brush stroke he takes. He has recently created a blanket out of bottle caps that is now going to be part of the Art Gallery of Ontario. His art has a great deal of texture and sleekness to them. They also produce a kind of aww at the way they are positioned and to there scale. 

His art does help the re-use of objects but that does not fit the goal El Anatsui is trying to fulfill. The message El Anatsui is trying to portray is that even small useless objects can be converted into art. It is not a matter of reusing but a matter of converting things into art, and the aww of a blanket made of bottle caps. 

Personally, I don't have a real connection to his art because it is just a blanket to me. What I do feel is the ascetic his blanket has. I prefer very clean things that are (if a physical art/architecture) unified and connected to interesting things. The positioning matters to me a lot and although his pieces don't pull me in on that sense, the wonder of the materials and the suspected maneuverability of the object is what interests me. 

The Fine Line

I call this piece "The Fine Line". It is a collage of beauty, growth life and of death dirt and wilting. The piece is meant to bring your eye in a triangle between the woman leading her eyes to the mummy and the mummy leading its eyes to the woman drowning and the drowning woman leading you back to the face of the large woman. It moves slightly into the rule of thirds but not dominantly enough to create a large effect. Line and shape are used in a unique way compared to any other median because it uses many shapes (and in turn lines) to make a larger shape in which the whole background uses this technique. This piece also has many little connections with different parts of the art work. The mummy's eyes use the color of the lake to bring itself closer to it and the woman's eyes are used to bring the dirt closer to the woman. The largeness of the woman’s and mummy’s face helps bring your eyes to them first, and emphasize the difference between life and death. Along with all the pieces that make the background, the value and hue is varied between how far away you look at it. It has a line in the center to balance out the picture and creates a lot of contrast between those two lines.

Piano

This is a little experiment I did a little while back. I did it just to familiarize myself with illustrator. I took a photo off the internet and put it as a an illustrator image. It was pretty fun but nothing to go crazy about.

Self Portrait

This is an illustrator version of myself. I did use photoshop to cut off the extra of the picture this self portrait was based on. I was trying to create a feeling of being squished but I think it fell short. It took me forever to got the background but I don't think that it helped making you feel squished but instead irritated which is better than nothing. I did the portrait in Art Deco style which I think I did a pretty good job on. I wasn't truely inspired by anyone, I just started thinking of how I could use the requirements to my advantage. The square frame made my think squished, and the Art Deco came from having to do a painting version, and the hard man made curves of Art Deco on the computer would have good contrast with the natural curves of Art Noeuvou that will be my painting. As a pair, I think they will go well together.

Illustrator Bamboo

This is a picture of bamboo that I made in illustrator. I used the brush tool to make each stock. The numbs on each joint were made by a brush already there, and the stocks itself I made by placing many different brushs on top of each other with some transparency. The leaves were also a brush tweacked slightly. I think it's pretty cool.

My Avatar

This is an Avatar of myself. I made it using Adobe Photoshop CS2 and zoomed it in to get every detail. We didn't use anti-aliasing(blurring the edges) to blend it automatically and we had to do it manually. I made two practices that are my entire body because I misinterpreted the instructions.I put myself in Samus's Armour because she is my favorite character. I also placed Samus's helmet on me. I think that I should fix it up a bit. Anyway, you can expect more of these because it's easy and it actually looks good.