HALEEMA

My task this week was to invent or research an existing problem and approach a solution using STEAM or creativity.

What’s STEAM?

STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths. An upgrade to traditional STEM, where authentic problem solving is stressed. Aside from this, STEAM methods also include communication, creativity, collaboration and critical thinking.

My example

A problem I’ve encountered back at school was the fact that there was no adequate way for a student’s preferred name and pronouns to be held and communicated in an easy, non confrontational manner. A lot of people I knew were scared to ask for messages to be relayed, so I proposed a quiet, inclusive system for pronoun storage and changes as a form that every single student would have to complete at the start of every year. It also would have to be resubmittable at any given time. This too can be used in any institution with a system of hierarchy, like a workplace. The results of this form need to be stored in a database, which I think should be optimised for viewing purposes in practice, but can also link to alternative tables which store the data on a systematic level.

Here’s a list of questions/fields that this form could encompass:

• Name(s) and surnames (I do not like to use the word ‘preferred’ in regards to names and pronouns)
• Pronouns, allow for multiple
• Pronoun usage details, i.e if a student has more than one set of pronouns and would like one to be used more than another, or for them to randomnly alternate
• Who can these be used by or around? (Parents, peers, teachers)
• Are you comfortable discussing your gender identity or pronoun use with support staff?
• Would you like support staff to discuss accommodations for your gender identity further?

Here are some hypothetical implementation details this database may need to have:

• The primary key would have to be a Student ID number, as storing student details by name is never a good idea. Name changes also must be included in this system.
• It needs to be checked against the Data Protection Act to ensure adequate privacy and safety of students
• Above all else, people under this system need to be kept safe and be respected. I think data should be hidden or changed when viewed by certain accounts as specified by the user in order for them to have complete control and choice as to who sees what in regards to their gender identity.

Here’s an SQL statement that could be used to query for student pronouns.

SELECT names, pronouns
FROM students
WHERE studentID = 3748374

Hi, you! Please excuse any formatting problems or ugliness with my blog as I get used to using this. This is my first blog post. I’m breaking down the end result of my Intro to Creative Practice homework.

No Ghost, Just a Shell

Research

The main path I took for my research came from our classroom resource, the ICAMIAMI website documenting this collection. This project was so difficult to find decent information for in the modern day probably because No Ghost, Just a Shell is borderline lost media from the early 2000s and late 90s and has not been properly preserved on the internet in one place; although I still could find bits and pieces. I stumbled upon these two creepy little animations from the project which told me a lot about our main focus – AnnLee. She says the spelling doesn’t matter.

Both of these had a massive influence on what I was about to make.

AnnLee

My perception of Annlee based on observation of my sources and artist intent is this: I think she’s just a little bit existentially horrifying. AnnLee is created be to a fourth wall break just for the sake of it, a lifeless entity who has been puppeteered to act aware that she is that lifeless entity through uncanny, older technology. She’s always depicted as melancholic and deep in existential thought, having no personality outside of self reflection, with no self to reflect on, though this project is said to have been made to ‘liberate’ her of this fate as a cheap, mascot shell by using her in across an entire project by many people; which is not too dissimilar to her intended purpose as a drawing, although her assigned life is now somewhat one of self aware fullfillment. It’s almost touching if you forget the fact that she isn’t real and can’t feel anything at all, that she will never be able to comprehend this good news and that she will forever be that No Ghost, Just a Shell. I feel bad for her, but I genuinely do not know what I’m empathising with when I say this. It may as well just have been a sad expression on a generic, appealing drawing that acts just human enough for me to connect with it.

My Response

Concept

I didn’t start out with an end result in mind. Instead, I put on some Youtube and some music at the same time, and aimlessly scribbled AnnLee in my big sketchbook without caring about composition or anatomy.

This is the design for her I kept in my mind. On a visual level I took note of her glaring, pupil-less cyan eyes from Anywhere Out Of The World as a show of her cyberkineticness that I wanted to keep. Her outfit comes from One Million Kingdoms which one of the few full body depictions I could find of her and I really liked the vague sense of early 2000s fashion coming off from her outfit even if it’s deliberately plain. I exaggerated it just a little bit by making her trousers baggier and her shoes bigger, styled after the time.

The doodle on the far left stuck with me and I think the pose and expression fit my feelings about the character really well. It’s cute and inquisitive, but still unrealistic and two-dimentional. Still a simple piece of art.

Foreground

In my mind an image of what I wanted to make formed a little bit, and I envisioned a cracked, black background with an idling AnnLee in it. At this point i decided I wanted it to have a slight animated aspect – a little boil or a jitter, just to make it look like she could be alive.

This led me to trace and redraw this pose about 4 times. I learnt that it takes around 3 frames to make a little boil effect on an animation, so I scanned in my frames and opened them in FireAlpaca to position them accordingly.

Issues arised when I clocked that each frame had a different line thickness from the level of grain that I left in the scans – I wasn’t paying attention! So then I spent some time cutting down each frame.

These look more alike. I couldn’t completely save one of the drawings becuase it was so thick and grainy, which lost some of the typical boil effect, but there is still just enough movement between each frame. Check out this frame I made by accident.

Background

Now for the background! I drew this shattered glass. It looks more like a cobweb like this, but it can be shaped into glass with some color manipulation which is a cornerstone of my art.

At this point, I produced a little mockup.

To add some colour to the concept, I decided to edit some pictures from the project into my artwork. I selected a few online to hide inbetween the cracks.

I didn’t get enough pictures of my developments at this stage, but everything combined here. This is because I primarily make art using my phone and so was jumping between Sketch Club and Firealpaca quite often. In the end, I produced 3 frames in Sketch Club that I was going to turn into a gif in Firealpaca. Here’s the end results (if gifs actually worked on here):

It has a slightly basic meaning – The cracked glass represent the computer screen form she tries to break out of. She’s just moving enough to feel like she might be alive and breathing, but we know that isn’t the truth. In any case, she’s there, she’s animated, and it’s up to you how you feel about her.

Reflection

I like the idea of my work being a floating piece without context, but Jazmin mentioned that context outside of the format matters a little bit, so I’d probably have taken my piece further contextually by setting it up as a projection on a white or grey wall as an installation, as a homage to the original project. The piece itself could be developed if i changed the background to have a subtle glitch effect to make the meaning more obvious and to add some more movement & keep it eye catching.