Link: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/269050554/

I had a lot of fun using Scratch for the last project so I knew I wanted to use it again for my final. I think I like it because the art preparation for it reminds me of the visual development process in animation, so I also knew that I wanted to form a lesson based around some aspect of that. I think it’s important that art educators know whats going on in the art industry in terms of career options and be able to help to prepare students who show promise or an interest in tapping into those highly competitive fields. Visual development and character design are just a couple examples of the many exciting career paths that are available to artists in the animation and gaming world.

I decided that for my final project, I wanted to focus specifically on character development through the exploration of facial features. I originally thought that I might take a more “realistic” and painterly approach, stylistically. My lesson was going to include a more in depth look at anatomy and form for facial structure BUT I then decided that would be biting off more than this lesson could or should chew. I think it would be easy to get overwhelmed and caught up in unnecessary details – Encouraging a more simplistic and cartoon approach would allow students more freedom to explore expression without the weight of feeling like they have to “flesh” their figure out too much. I was inspired to create this lesson plan because it seems to me that portraits and figures tend to be one of the most challenging subjects for many students and artists to really nail. Humans are so intricate and it can be really hard to capture the essence of the human spirit so that it doesn’t look like a lifeless bag of flesh… Often times, features are drawn too predictably (ex. the standard almond shaped eyes, the same nose over and over, etc..) and the expression tends to feel stiff and lifeless.. Through cartooning, one can feel a little more brave to explore a range of emotions and stylizing through exaggeration and simplified drawing techniques.

SO…. I started out by visualizing a character in my head. “Abigail.. Yes, that’ll be her name. She lives in an old stone house in New England with her pet rabbits. Her favorite holiday is probably Beltane but we still know nothing about her emotions or mannerisms.”

I first sketched her out on paper while lightly building up the form of her face with a rough idea of where her facial features would go based off of the positioning and 3 quarter angle of her body. I also roughly started sketching little facial features for her and began playing with combining and rearranging them around….

THIS proved to be harder than I thought it would be. There were so many different things to take into consideration (like if this nose and these pair of lips line up nicely like this, then the moment I swap out this nose for another, suddenly the lips are now being cut off. Or if these eyes are at this angle, the moment I use these brows, they overlap in a way that they’re not supposed to.) It is easy to run into many small problems that effect the accuracy of how all of these facial features should flow and interact with each other. The lesson that I learned from this is that keeping things slightly simple is key. Students must be mindful when drawing the facial features of how they lay on the face and how they will work in different combinations, like a puzzle.

I also created a background just by drawing a little design and repeating it on photoshop. I wanted the background to feel like wallpaper to compliment my character Abigail. Just as all aspects of the character should be well thought out (From the hair, to the clothes) so should the characters’s environment. All design elements should feel like they belong to the same world. Students will of course be asked to create their own characters but creating a background is optional.

Once I began uploading my files into Scratch, I then realized just how SMALL and pixelized everything is on there. *ouch, that hurts my detail oriented soul!* Each facial feature will be uploaded as a separate sprite and in order to get them to fit onto the face of my character bust, I had to size them down until they were so tiny, that they lost all sense of detail and now look like mere blocks of legos or like they belong in minecraft…… As I said before, simple works best for this particular assignment 🙂 The most important part of this assignment is that students are able to explore emotions through cartooning and how this expands their perspectives on the limitless ways one can portray the human figure/character.

For this project, I wanted to create something that I could give to my Mother. When asked to come up with the four images that would make up the sides of the lantern, I decided to keep it simple and draw graphic shapes that represented my Mother’s life style and interests. I chose the deer antler because she is from the Adirondack Mountains where she was brought up as a very forest savvy and survival minded hunter. I chose the maple leaf because she grew up with a sugar shack where her and her siblings would tap trees and make maple syrup. The harmonica because my mother plays the harmonica and the daisies because her favorite flower is the Adirondack daisy. I enjoyed the guidelines that required us to work with illustrator and the templates. As an artist who tends to work very meticulously and detail oriented, I also recognize that sometimes less is more and my brain also enjoys the occasional opportunity to work more symbolically and minimal. I would say that the only thing that hurt my creative process was the amount of time and energy that was put into the Arduino and LED’s. For me personally and speaking honestly, I am not fond of the blinking lights as an aesthetic or creative choice. It’s not something that I find to be aesthetically pleasing and since so much time was dedicated to all of the many steps that went into making the Arduino work, much less time was spent on the actual art and designs of the lanterns themselves. I do think I would have designed my lantern differently if more of my time and attention could have been put into that aspect of the assignment.

How did your process reflect (or not) design thinking?
ASK – I had to ASK myself what kind of theme or imagery did I want to use to incorporate into the design of my lantern. I immediately thought of my Mother as her being a source of light in my life!
IMAGINE – I had to imagine what kinds of shapes and lines would work as a laser cut. I had originally planned to create more detailed drawings in illustrator but when I started trying to envision how that would translate as negative space cut out of wood, I realized that I’d rather save myself the headache and create some simple and clean silhouettes instead. Imagining and being able to think ahead was very important during this design process.
BUILD – I then had to BUILD the lantern and bring all of the components of the wooden sides and the Arduino together.
EVALUATE – I had to EVALUATE every step of the Arduino process over and over. There were so many steps involved and it was very easy for any little thing to be missed or to go wrong. My brain felt very numb to the technicality of it all. Having to continuously evaluate and revise each step along the way, while slowly inching closer and closer to a successful end result felt exhausting. Every creative design process involves this kind of dance with the project where the artist is continuously evaluating and revising but I think it depends on the artist’s personal vision and sense of passion attached to the particular assignment, that determines wether the struggle felt more rewarding or frustrating in the end.
SHARE – Then of course the SHARING aspect of any assignment, wether it’s through class critique, blogposts or even working amongst others and watching the other projects evolve along side yours is always rewarding and an important part of the design experience.

What did you learn? Describe your learning process.
I learned how laser cutting works! I enjoyed the experience of planning and designing something intended for a material that I haven’t worked as much with, like wood. During my wood cutting appointment, I was excited to watch how it all worked and it got me day dreaming about how I might be more open to exploring working with wood on personal projects in the future. I also learned that it is possible for something to feel harder the second time! For some reason, the steps that it took to get the LED’s to work felt much harder than it did on the last assignment. Probably because there were more challenges and steps within the process this time around.

What was most challenging? What was most fun?
The absolute most challenging part of the assignment was the….*drumroll*… Arduino! The most fun was planning the art work for the lantern and watching the laser cut process.

How did this activity connect (or not) to your prior knowledge of art and art education?
I’ve worked with illustrator in the past but it’s been a few years. I mainly work with Photoshop so tweaking and editing on PSCS6 was a breeze but I believe the last time I used illustrator, it was CS4, so I was happy for an excuse to play with the program in CS6. I forgot how satisfying it feels to draw in vector (Ahhhh, the sweet simplicity of infinitely smooth lines!)

How might you use and/or adapt this activity in an art classroom?
I would simplify the lighting aspect of the assignment and have students put more focus into their art and the overall visual development of the lantern. I would create a presentation that looks into the history of lanterns and lighting design and I would like to focus on inspiring them to think conceptually and outside of the box when it comes to what they can dream up as a possibility for the art of their lanterns.  Of course planning and building the lighting is an important aspect of the lantern assignment but it feels more like it should be “the cherry on top” and not the majority of the time and focus for the assignment. For time’s sake, I wouldn’t want the Arduino process to compromise the focus that student’s give towards the artful approach of designing their lanterns – I think I might even skip the Arduino all together and with younger children, I would incorporate tea lights instead.