Project B 'The Tyger'

4/11/15

THE TYGER 

By William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright 

In the forests of the night, 

What immortal hand or eye 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry? 

In what distant deeps or skies 

Burnt the fire of thine eyes? 

On what wings dare he aspire? 

What the hand dare sieze the fire? 

And what shoulder, & what art. 

Could twist the sinews of thy heart? 

And when thy heart began to beat, 

What dread hand? & what dread feet? 

What the hammer? what the chain? 

In what furnace was thy brain? 

What the anvil? what dread grasp 

Dare its deadly terrors clasp? 

When the stars threw down their spears, 

And watered heaven with their tears, 

Did he smile his work to see? 

Did he who made the Lamb make thee? 

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright 

In the forests of the night, 

What immortal hand or eye 

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? 

1794

             
This is a video i found online of an animation that is creating visuals for Williams poem. This is similar to what i will be doing for project A as well as this project and is a good starting point for inspiration for this project. I will be make multiple small experimentation pieces for this project however and so i will not have time to create a full animation to this poem.

SAMULI HEIMONEN

Finnish visual artist Samuli Heimonen through his surrealist paintings uses animals as a metaphor for human emotion. For him painting is a good tool to bring up stuff that you don’t normally see, or you see but don’t understand. This is the basic idea of surreal picture: something quite normal becomes something exiting and intriguing.

He says about his work:

"My works are not about the animal world, but I have wanted to use the animal figure as a metaphor for human hopes, aspirations and fears. For me, animals seem to crystallise in a great way something fundamentally human. An animal or the nature is a mirror which provides an interesting platform to study the human being"

Examples of his work:

I thought this artist would be good to look at for this project as he uses the idea of using animals as metaphors for human emotions in his work which is what Blake is doing in his poem. The tiger is a metaphor of his wonder of the world and his exploration and questioning of the world around him. 

From reading the poem one of the themes i picked up on to work with was the idea of questioning good and evil  william say did he who make the lamb make thee which i saw as questioning wether the creator was cruel for making animals that would kill one another (a tiger would eat a lamb) as well as how he mentions that the tiger is beautiful and perfect in appearance. He talks about a tiger and who created the tiger but his thoughts are seemingly also referring to the creation of man with the tiger being a means of symbolism in a way. I decided there for to create this piece showing half the face of a person and half the face of a tiger showing this metaphor. I covered half the image with a black rectangle and placed a section of Blake's poem inside of it that allowed parts of the image on this side to come through. I used the section of his poem that says "in what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire in thine eyes" as this is a section that is basically say who created the life of the creature and the use of using the rectangle to show only parts of the image through creates this sense of unknowing and mystery. I have placed this on the side of the face with the tiger in my image to show connection to Blake's poem and his metaphor of the tiger as a means of pondering god, with the normal face on the left side being in a sense the reveal of the pondering of who created man.

To create a connection to the words included in this image also i made the eyes really pop in these images as the text says "burnt the fire in thine eyes" creating a picture of bright burning eyes. I therefore made my image in black and white and had only the eye visible of the persons face. The poem also starts with "tiger Tyger burning bright" and therefore i made the tigers face also in colour to make it stand out and 'glow' in comparison to the black and white face. 

I experimented with using different facial expressions for this image and matched these expressions with those that the tiger half of the face is pulling for example this image where the persons mouth is open in a roaring motion i used a roaring tigers face for the tiger. this one is my favourite version as it seems more passionate and could express frustration, connecting to the idea of the frustration of the unknown (who is the creator etc). 

i decided to make a small gif of these expressions as they were all fairly similar and therefore would create an easily flowing animation that i thought might look as though the face was actually moving into these expressions. I was rather pleased with the results. 

This is the next piece i created. I made an abstract image of a roaring tigers head out of all the words used in 'The Tyger' poem by William Blake. I thought this was a nice metaphor as Blake is creating images and questions with his words so i thought i would take this to a more literal level and create an image out of his words. 

I felt like the image above was missing something slightly in order to tie it all together so i added the word tiger large across the neck area of the tiger referring to the title of the poem and in a away summarising the piece. 

This is the image i used to create the tiger text image i made. I turned the image into black and white and rounded of the neck with a black brush to make the head floating in a way in the centre of the frame to make it more aesthetically pleasing when i had made it out of words. 

This is the text i made out of all of the words from Williams poem. I then copied and pasted this a few times and positioned it over the tigers face and then used linear burn of the image of the tiger to show these words through.

I then decided to make this polly portrait of a tigers face to use in animation i want to have a go at creating somthing where i will make the face dissolve into vision and then dissolve away as this is a visual way of symbolising the mystery and questions that the poem discusses and it is a good chance for me to practise my after effects skills.

I edited the tiger image to give it more of a bold look. This is the image i will used for my animation. 

This is the original image i used as a template to make my polly portrait. 

SARAH EISENLOHR

In her artist statement Montana based artist Sarah Eisenlohr explains that her collages use places of existence to create fictional ones in an effort to demonstrate the ways in which humans have transformed the earth. These scenes often carry undertones of spirituality and faith. “I consider the figures’ desire for shelter, warmth, and something stronger than themselves as symbols of serenity that I seek through spirituality, while the use of sublime in my work points to a relationship with the divine,” explained Eisenlohr. Eisenlohr uses the collage as a medium in order to transplant the influence of humanity on images of idealized untouched landscapes culled from vintage magazines.

This artists work relates to my idea for my next creational pieces as i want to create some collage work out of found resources. This artist uses photographs to create collage pieces that represent metaphors for how people have effected the world and the landscapes of the world. This idea of using symbolisms and metaphors in the collages relates to the nature of William Blake's poem and how i will be creating my work.

This is the second polly portrait i made so i could use it in my animation as i wanted the tiger to roar at one point in my animation so i had to make another portrait with the mouth open and create a kind of short gif in the middle of my video to make it look like the tiger opens its mouth and roar. 

 This image below the polly portrait is the real image of the tiger i used to trace the shape of the mouth. I then placed the mouth of this tiger over my other previous polly portrait of the first tiger i did so that when the tiger roars the head still looks the same so it appears to be the same tiger roaring.

             
I finally got round to creating the animation for my polly portrait tiger image that i had earlier planned on using in my work. The animation has become slightly over polished and flashy and cinematic than my idea had been of to relate to this project but it was good fun and experience for my to try creating these different visuals for my video and i am still pleased with the results.
             
The sound i added to the animation really emphasises and impacts the visuals i made for example the bang sound when the tigers face first forms in the video makes it seem huge and heavy creating the dissolve effect just prior to this transformation seem even more mysterious as the multiple separate particles seem like nothing on their own. 

               

The colour changes i made to this final version of my animation create a burning glowing visual effect to it and reflect the suggested nature of the tiger the fiery personality. It also creates a more dramatic and eye catching effect (bolder, louder etc).

The final animation i created does differ slightly to my story boarded idea in my sketch book as i have added the word tiger to my animation which was not in my story board and original idea this is because when i came to making the animation the polly portrait looked too alone on the screen and so i thought text would look more aesthetically pleasing with the image. The style of the polly portrait is more graphic and urban in appearance also and so again text compliments this. Also the movement and appearance of the particles in the animation that make up and deconstruct the image of the tiger are different as i explained and planned for them to be swirling however i used a more gravitational style in my animation as the swirling vortex was too difficult for me to do so i had to adapt my idea to somthing i could achieve. The particles were also fewer and larger than i planned on too for the same reason. I added some more "logo graphic" style effects to it swell such as the shine rather than having it how i firstly envisioned as a more pictural and painting style image animation. Adding the shine made it seem slightly more commercial that my original idea but i was also partly exploring my techniques and skill on the after effects as i was making this piece and that was fun to add and i did prefer the end results of this effect. The Light that i had more across the screen and text before the shine was also an exploration of my skill and i had the same feeling about this of preferring the animation with it.