exchange to prague
Architecture trip to East Bohemia, day 4b: Pardubice (Gočár’s Winternitz-mills)
Architecture trip to East Bohemia, day 4a: Lázně Bohdaneč, Pardubice
Another two assignments!
Two weeks ago we got another two assignments and then the blogposts stopped, which is I guess the best illustration of the lack of time that I have now! And it doesn’t help if we go on all kinds of trips visiting other cities XD
About the new assignments: one was really short-term and in fact I finished it just last week, it’s the video up there. We had only two weeks to create a short animation of max. 30 seconds somehow connected to Ústí and Labem, a Czech town near the German border which has changed sides frequently through history. I made a kind of abstraction of that history. Fun about this is that it’s gonna be projected in three different rooms in a gallery in Ústí, which is why there are these rectangles overlays in the animation. The viewer will only see one of the three parts at any time. 😀
Circus Animation Progress
Time to show some progress for that circus animation, isn’t it? I should be ashamed, I’m working on it for months now and still haven’t showed anything! Thing is, preparing all the characters, props and backgrounds for a paper cut animation takes the most time, while it only starts coming to life in the end when you finally can start animating.
Anyway, without giving away the whole story of this 30-second animation, these are the characters, a knife thrower and his lovely assistant:
And after scanning, printing on the right paper, protecting it with fixative and carefully cutting it…
…the fun task of making the edges of the paper black begins. This is to make sure the edges don’t reflect on the plastic sheets between the characters and the background, as this reflection would be visible in the animation.
You can imagine this is task that requires full concentration, as almost anything involving paper puppets, haha! Drawback of this black line is that it bleeds into the front side a little, so all the parts have this black line around them now.
And this is where this black line becomes a problem: on the arms for example, when the parts overlap more during movement, this black line becomes visible. Oh well, nothing to be done about it!
Trip to Krakow, part 2
Etching Workshop at AVD
Yes, it’s official! I’m behind! :O
So to make up for the lack of posts, less talking and more pictures.
Two weeks ago, there was a camera lighting workshop arranged for our studio, but there places were limited and therefore there wasn’t any place left for us Exchange students. So Zuzana, one of our teachers, arranged an etching workshop at AVD, the academy of fine arts and the other art academy here in Prague.
Thing was that this workshop lasted the whole week, every morning from 9 till 13. With me having classes at the same time it was also quite hectic, but fun!
The etching itself was awesome, I made an detailed aquatint and a small soft-ground etching, which I hadn’t done before but is a very nice and quick technique too!
Studio Pictures
I promised pictures of studio a few weeks back, well, here they are! They were shot on a very rare occasion when I was the only one working there.
Main entrance to the left. There is a kettle and like ten brands of tea, as well as a small cooking plate if we are feeling hungry. 🙂
Beige door is to the teacher’s office. Screen in the back is for projecting animations, of course! Sometimes people take a nap on the blue couch. 😀
You see, no one actually likes cleaning up here XD Although this is primarly where our teachers will be working, we can freely enter here by using the key right behind the door. We actually have been given a key to the studio, so we can work here whenever we want to!
We also have an ‘upstairs’! Can you spot the little dinosaur from here?
The main reason why it’s such a mess is because all the work from previous semester is still there. Though I don’t think it will be cleared up soon. 😉 Also the Mac is one of the few here, most computers are operating on Windows. Bummer!
Prague’s Jewish Quarter
Last week I visited the old Jewish Cemetery and the Spanish Synagogue.. Also other things but these two stood out the most for me!
I wanted to be there at 9 am because it was Sunday and it sure would be crowded during the day, so I got up early at 7 and guess what? No water and no light! 😀
So I ate breakfast with the little water I still had from yesterday, but at 8 am we still didn’t have water. In the end I went out without having brushed my teeth or taken a shower. 😀 Later I heard from Penny that it took until 10 before we had water again XD
Well, for 185 euros rent a month you can’t be picky, haha!