Assignment 4: Technoscope

Project 4:

Hello! My idea for this project was to show how the television affects my anxiety when I sleep. The TV is like my security blanket. Everywhere the light touches is safe from the creepy monsters that hide in the darkness, making me feel safe enough to sleep. This piece clearly has a lot of personal meaning, but I know that a lot of other people who sleep the same way can relate. 

To begin the project I tried a few methods of creating the bedroom space. Digitally painting it did not go well, so I switched to a media that would take less time to create and I was more comfortable with. I used watercolor and prismacolor pencils to create the ghosts and background, and then scanned those in with a flatbed scanner. I first animated the light from the TV to make it clear that it's on, but very abstract. All that is is tampering with the opacity at key points. Then I used a scan of water color splotches to make the ghost-like shapes and animated them hovering back and forth. The tentacles and the black drippy sludge I animated by hand using the onion skin feature. It took a while but I'm pleased with the end result. 

The television effects the way I feel comfortable falling asleep in the landscape of my room. Without it I feel nervous and exposed. It's much easier to think about the anxieties, represented by the ghosts and tentacles, in my head without the distraction of a television occupying my mind. I wanted to show how protective technology can be in a setting that was once peaceful without it. 

-Avery Violet