The final animation.

Throughout the Foundation course I explored different aspects of art that were very new to me but the one thing that has fully grasped my attention was animation. The ability to make something move fascinated me; it was a way to bring your drawings to life. Over the course I experimented with very traditionally based animation exploring the movements of different life forms. I then decided to expand and push myself into a more ambitious project. I have always loved the fluidity of dancers and the stunning grace they portray. The perfect balance and poise they achieve fascinates and greatly inspired me. I wanted to capture the elegant flow of dancers in a similar style to Ryan Woodward’s ‘Thought of you’.

Floris Neususs’s photograms heavily influenced my work. The figures are ghost-like, haunting and they seem to convey a sense of longing, a need for a connection with another world. The figures have been positioned in beautiful feminine poses, and they appear to be in mid air flying peacefully or falling down. His work brings you closer to them and their plea, questioning the boundaries of life and death, or even the in-between. The actual method and processes of Neususs’s work is what intrigued me the most. He uses large sheets of silver bromide paper placing a model on top, this paper is coated with special chemicals which react to light thus ‘catching’ the shadow left behind by the model, the end result is a white figure on a black background and with reversal paper the figure would be black with a white background which appear to be more familiar and similar to the normal human shadow. It is a basic photographic process done without the use of an actual camera and explored professionally by numerous artists such as Susan Degres, Adam Fuss and Floris Neususs. 

Ryan Woodward's 'Thought of You'

Floriss Neususs Photogram