http://www.mexicantextiles.com/grouppages/mazahua.html

'The man who merged science with art' released a number of scientifically accurate drawings of some weird and wonderful species. I love the symmetry and mathematical nature of these drawing, which I want to incorporate into my drawings/ animation. This bring back the idea of mathematical iteration in nature. 

I want to incorporate the design style or at least colour scheme of Art Nouveau. The designs are beautiful in their own right, but I love the idea of ordinary things being works of art and design with the influence of the natural world. Grasset is a great example of this with a fantastic use of iterative design that mimics natures complex symmetry. 

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam
Acquire the air

Nobody sees us
Stops us, betrays us
The small grains make room

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles
The leafy bedding

Even the paving
Our hammers, our rams
Earless and eyeless

Perfectly voiceless
Widen the crannies
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water
On crumbs of shadow
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek
We are edible

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves
Our kind multiplies

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth
Our foot's in the door

I always feel more comfortable illustrating poems or literature written by someone else. This Sylvia Plath poem works perfectly, as it explores the aesthetic theme of growth using mushrooms as a metaphor for womens struggle and lack of autonomy and freedom. Here my project is changing slightly to be more to do with this poem than just the them of nature alone.

Here I used the colour pallets from the above research to begin animating. I quickly realised this wasn't going to work as the multiple layers of colour were going to be far too difficult to animate. I initially really didn't like this image as a stand alone drawing and so abandoned it as an idea, however a recent tutorial showed maybe it wasn't as awful as I thought and maybe it was a personal resentment from process frustration. 

Tweening between keyframes of drawings 

This turned out to be a massively lengthy and taxing process. About 45 hours of drawing these tiny lines ruined my motivation for this project. I started to get very tired of the repetition and the end line product wasn't as satisfying and gratifying as animation has been in the past for me. 

I started playing with colour for the background. Because unfortunately animating the foreground took so long, less time could be spent on this portion which is a shame as i wanted a certain grainy effect where the colour transitioned to day and night. I could not find a way to do this effectively in the time I had so instead stuck to one colour. 

examples of this colour play

I enjoy key framing and so this started to become more effective than changing the background colour. I decided to have a rising sun and moon on loop to illustrate the constant change in time which holds growth and decay.

The two end products. 

I much prefer the black linework, however the blue is I think too dark for this and so the white is more effective. I am overall satisfied with this product and do not wish to continue it further as I don't see any more directions it could go in. The labour unfortunately did not pay off in the way I wish it had. 

I do love some of the drawings as still images so may use these going forward. I can imagine using them to screen-print possibly overlay with text. 

Moving forward I may try to have a more personal affiliation with my work and make it more authorial as this lacked that direction. I don't think it communicates anything particular and so maybe is less gratifying as a final animation.