"Kitchen Counter"

Assignment 1: Motion, "Kitchen Counter"

When I receive a new art assignment, I like to brainstorm and plan the project before I begin. It has become a habit, so when we were given this assignment I found myself picturing storylines for the animation right away. This assignment required that we work intuitively, so I had to consciously cast those ideas aside, and I think it was good for me.

I set up a tripod in the kitchen and tried to make a set that I could go in different directions with.  I assembled the box of recycling and a bowl of apples, and left the countertop egg basket in the frame. I inserted a few electrical wires under the outer layer of the kitchen sponge to make it posable. After that, I tried to do things as they came to me and be spontaneous. An interesting result of that spontaneity is that I think the animation ended up reflecting heavily on what was most prominent in my mind at the time. I really wanted to eat one of the apples, and I had just been watching some David Attenborough nature documentaries! The bowl of apples became a watering hole, and the empty cans and containers part of a rough-and-tumble food chain on the African Savannah. I don’t think there is any deeper message in this piece. I probably would have needed a plan to do that!

There were a couple of “stories” going on at the same time in this animation, but when I watch the finished video, I find that my eye only follows what’s in the center of the frame and I don’t notice everything that’s going on. For example, if you watch only the sardine cans, you’ll find that they overturn the egg basket to chase down and eat some of the eggs. I find that I don’t notice them at all if I don’t try to.

I was also influenced by the captivating stop motion animations of PEZ and Jan Svankmajer. I had their animations’ surreal moods and materials in mind, but their perfectly timed sound effects are especially nice, so I tried to make some of my own. I recorded a few sounds in the kitchen with my cell phone and added them to the animation in Photoshop. My favorite recording was of the faucet, which was dripping into a bowl of water in the sink behind me while I worked on the project. The mood in my finished animation became a bit chaotic, especially with the sound of the rattling cans, and I tried to use the water drops to tone that down.

a view of the "set" used for Assignment 1