Project 2: Duality Self-Portrait Project
"Me, Myself, and I"
One of my class projects required me to find a duality in myself and turn it into something visual and representative of myself as a person. For this project, I took it a step further and rotoscoped over myself. This project represents the two sides of me: one being my normal real-life side, the other being my artistic side. I consider art to be my passion and almost my second nature. I never go a day without it, and I feel like it's a part of my self. So, I tried to incorporate it into this design with my half-being real, and half-being artwork.
This was my first attempt with rotoscoping animation so while it is a bit simple, I think it encapsulates me as a person and puts on display what I have a passion to do.
Purpose
Assignment for Art 264, Fall 2022
Techniques/Software Used
Toon Boom Harmony for MacBook Pro (animation); Procreate for iPad (for thumbnail)
Concept Development
Coming up with this project took a bit of time. I had initially conceptualized something that was to be done in Photoshop: something that involved either me and a mirror or a puddle (reflection), or something that involved me in the present day versus the past. The rationale for these made sense, since I am a student of art and history, and like to look back on myself and see that I am a combination of both and could reflect that in a duality project. But I also had no idea how I would pull that off, since mirrors are complex, especially when they are shattered. Also, I didn't want to make it too edgy or deeper than it needed to be.
I had always thought rotoscoping would be a cool thing to do; I just didn't know if or how I could pull it off in just a few days, since it requires drawing over every single frame. I also didn't know if animation would meet the criteria since I would be pushing the bounds of the fact that this was an Adobe class. After battling with myself on whether I should go down the Photoshop route versus the animation route, I eventually went with the rotoscoping route and pumped out around 400-450 frames in a day or so.
I decided not to color or clean-up the rotoscoping for this final, final draft, since I thought it brought some character to the animation itself. I think it shows how chaotic my art can sometimes be, but also reflect some of that creative flair I bring to my projects. I am very happy with how it turned out.
