Hi this my first blog
dont really know what im doing here yet, but this is my record of work i am doing in 1st yr at art school, (supposedly)
the first project we were given was based on motion and movement in as broad a sense as could be. i found this subject matter to be really exciting from the moment i read the brief. it is the kind of project that we could take in any direction that we could conceive as there is movement and motion in every possible aspect of life. the most difficult task initially was choosing the path i could take in which i could best investigate motion and movement.
to begin this task i made a mind map using key words which i could associate with movement.
the words that most appealed to me were speed, power, strength, stealth, grace, etc. then i thought what could i use to study these key words and the natural world seemed to me the most obvious choice namely predatory animals. once i had decided on this i then picked lions as the strongest source to tie in all these key words under one project
cats to me are really interesting creatures.the way supple way that they move from the graceful way thay they walk, to the stealth cunning and sureness of movement in which the they stalk and hunt their prey and also the sheer agility and power they can display whether it be in play or the the outright ferocity in the killing of food.they can jump from heights whilst retaining an amazing sense of balance, they can twist an turn and change direction while in full flight. they can hunt successfully as individuals or as an intelligent collective pack when after larger prey

all cats with no real exceptions follow the same basic physical structure an movement though for me i found the idea of the larger wild cats, lions in particular an interesting study point for my project because they display more raw ferocity speed and power that your typical domestic cat doesn't have.

 i began my research an work by gathering images of the big cats from national geographic and other magazines also from images i looked up on the internet an videos from youtube
from here i began a series of reference drawings in my sketchbook of lions in various positions including some anatomical drawings so that i could understand the way in which these cats moved

my next task from here was to try and capture through drawing and other mediums the movement of these animals. my first idea was to do a progression of charcoal drawings on the one page by drawing a lion in one position ,photographing it then erasing it slightly and redrawing it in a slightly different position an repeating this process until i had turned the lion around almost 360* whilst leaving an impression of each drawing on the page. 

Then as a further take on this I wanted to do a series of sequential drawings but to, at the same time, record the progression in stages of each drawing. Again I used charcoal for my drawings as I think this medium helps to portray the temporary nature of motion. 

To help me understand the movements of these magnificent animals, as well as looking at videos and documentaries i also studied the photographic work of Edweard Muybridge, a pioneer in the field of photography, especially in the study of the capture of movement in the natural world

With help from the work of Muybridge and You Tube I was able to construct a Zoetrope, a kind of simple form of animation or moving picture. It consists of a spinning cylinder with a series of sequential frames set inside which when looked into gives the illusion of motion.

From here I began to think on a larger scale, so how best to represent the movement of my lions than to try to make a moving sculpture. This I realised was a very big undertaking but drawing inspiration from The Handspring Puppet Company's theatre production of "War Horse" I set to work constructing my life size representation of a fully grown lion

I first of all set to work drawing out some plans to give me a sense of scale to base my newest project on. Once I had this I set to constructing the head and neck from different types of wire and pieces of bamboo

For the body i used stainless steel construction wire which I bent to shape and then welded in place. This was a time consuming task as each piece needed to be the correct shape and positioned right before welding.

well its been a long time since i've written in this. Its been an eventful year, some great some bad, here's whats happened since,,,. any way this was me hard at work building my lion

            

















             

 Some plans for the legs,,,, these were the hardest part to figure out. Drove me mad on a few occasions. I tried a few different ways and materials to make the legs but as i needed them to move i settled with timber which enabled me to make the pivot joints i needed.

   

 once i had the legs figured out i then set to building up the body using again strips of bamboo tied with wire. .

 Here's a few more pics' of me busy at work.

 

As you can see during the process of building my lion I ensured to maintain a tidy workspace at all times

My sculpture is finally beginning to take shape.

Although I mainly focussed on my lion ( probably a little too much sometimes as I was letting other aspects of my project fall to the side ), I did however attend life drawing classes every week which i found a helpful and at times a much needed distraction

whilst making my piece I was always thinking about how i would get my lion to move, and the answer was to makes a stop motion piece so I began by making a simple piece using cardboard cutouts just to see how it would be done. I created this with a small digital camera and my laptop and as I didn't have the correct software on my laptop it didn't work out too successfully however it gave me the general idea as to how i would go about making my final video.

                                  

finally my lion is complete and ready to take a bit of a walk around.......

  

  "Jeeze this lift is taking long enough"

  "lift goin' down"

  At this stage I began to do some drawing studies of the lion not to any great personal success I might add 

So now I had him made it was time to start on my video so i first had to do a test piece so i set up suspending the lion and taking a series of photographs and changing the position between each shot as you can see below

Having now achieved this to some success it was now time to set up for "take three" and do the piece for real