STAGE 1
THEME
To explore the conceptual statement of ‘True / False / Uncertainty’, I looked at the themes of identity and self-esteem. I want to convey how difficult it is for many, especially young people, to be confident with who they are. Ultimately, I want to emphasise through my design that one should embrace and celebrate their identity and differences.
INITIAL IDEATION
In order to communicate my message, I decided to explore and experiment with portraiture. My initial thoughts on creating the portraits were through collaging, animation, kinetic typography and/or 3D rendering. I wanted my outcomes to be experimental and unconventional. I didn't want to create visuals relating to ideas of portraiture and identity that have been done before.
INSPIRATION
ARTBREEDER
Artbreeder (formerly Ganbreeder) is a collaborative, machine learning-based art website created by Joel Simon. The website allows you to generate and modify images such as faces, landscapes and paintings using the models of StyleGAN and BigGAN, which are A.I. systems that generate new images and ‘deep fakes’ through analysing portraits.
I found out about Artbreeder through a music video by the hip-hop group Brockhampton. I was very curious about how the animation of the video was made. Upon research, I found that Artbreeder is a free and easy program that I can use to create similar animations with little knowledge in animation, coding and GANs.
ARTBREEDER EXPERIMENTS
I tested out Artbreeder and its animation function to see how things worked. These videos are made from images that belong to the website's free image gallery. The first video is made under the 'General' category while the second video is made under 'Landscapes'.
As I want to explore portraiture, I also experimented with animation within the 'Portraits' category. I uploaded a photo of myself and the site generated an image that is an "approximations of the original". Then I had the option to choose random portrait images to generate new ones that had a mix of features.
Using the animation feature I combined my portrait with the new ones I generated. I thought the end result looked unsettling and it was not similar to the style of the animation from the hip-hop music video.
MORPHING EXPERIMENT
I wanted to see if there was another way that I can experiment with portraits through a different kind of morphing technique. I found an After Effects tutorial on image morphing that I tried out.
This time I tried out the animation with a different set of images. I edited an image of a model by applying different filters on Photoshop and Illustrator. I followed the tutorial, experimented with a lot of different settings and the end result wasn't as dynamic and unconventional as Artbreeder; the animation appears more like a slideshow.
KINETIC TYPOGRAPHY EXPERIMENT
I experimented with animating typography in After Effects. Here I experimented with the appearing and disappearing effect. I thought that the animation wasn't suited for what I wanted to communicate and I was unsure on how I will incorporate it in my final outcome.
REVIEW & REFLECTION
After experimenting with animation techniques I needed to refine the direction for the final outcome. In order to move on and resolve the outcome, I aimed to combine all of the animation elements that I learned to create a cohesive design.
STAGE 2
REFINING THE DIRECTION
For the final outcome, I decided to have three videos portraying three different people. I decided to combine the animation techniques and experiments that I learned throughout the process.
Although each video has a different model, they all follow the same direction and style. The video starts with a quick animation of cropped collages of the model's portraits with running text at the top saying "WHO AM I? WHAT AM I? WHEN AM I? HOW AM I?" This demonstrates the uncertainty and confusion of one's identity.
The portraits will be morphed and animated using Artbreeder with the running text "?????????" to further demonstrate the uncertainty and also convey the process of finding out what feels wrong or true to oneself.
In the sixth frame, the Artbreeder animation is morphed into the actual and unedited portrait of the model. With the running text finally arriving at a stop with a saying along the lines of "I AM ME", this conveys that the person is now confident with who they are.
The final frames show kinetic typography of "I AM ME" to put the final emphasis on the message and round out the video.
MODELS
COLLAGING
I edited the original portraits in Photoshop and Illustrator and created 9 new images with different filters. I then cropped them accordingly, placing the tiles differently each time and repeating them 9 times.
ARTBREEDER ANIMATIONS
Since the Artbreeder 'Portraits' animation did not create the outcome that I wanted, I experimented with uploading the models' portraits in the 'Landscapes' category instead. After uploading the edited portrait photos onto Artbreeder, the photos had more textures and they had ambiguous forms which are more in line with what I initially envisioned. I then animated the images using Artbreeder.
VIDEO MORPHING
Following the After Effects tutorial on image morphing, I morphed the last frame of the Artbreeder animation with the original, unedited portrait of the model to create a smooth transition into the full unedited portrait.
KINETIC TYPOGRAPHY
I wanted the kinetic typography of "I AM ME" to be freeform and dynamic so I looked into how to warp and distort animated type. Following the tutorial below I experimented with different settings to create the final kinetic typography animations. When making the animations the process took me a while to figure out as it was quite complex.
STAGE 3
PUTTING EVERYTHING TOGETHER
REFLECTION
I learned a lot during the process of creating the final outcomes for this project. I wanted to learn and be more confident in After Effects and through experimenting, I gained new skills that I can apply for future animation projects. In the future, I'd like to look further into StyleGAN, BigGAN and other A.I. programs other than Artbreeder to create more experimental animations. This is a valuable project for my portfolio as it showcases my learnings with animation and that I'm not afraid to step outside of the box.
