German Expressionism

German Expressionism

German expressionism was a form of art that was created in the 1914 as a way for German directors to create films with very little money and experience. The reason for this was because of the German government putting a ban on foreign films so they had to make their own films. Due to hyperinflation German films blew up in views and profit because the price of the cinema was virtually the same price as a loaf of bread, so more and more people wanted to watch these films as a sort of escapism from the depression of living in Germany in the 1900s.

The style of German Expressionism was created because of the lack of money and artistic education. The reasons behind this is because they couldn’t afford props or big studios so they had to create their own sets and props by painting the scenes on boards where they filmed, but they had barley any artistic education meaning all the sets buildings and proportions were out of proportion.

Then when the borders opened back up to trade the German expressionist movies became famous in other countries and especially in America in Hollywood. So when Hitler rose to power Jewish directors immigrated to America and were employed to create movies for the American public.

German expressionism is a form of art that was very gothic and monochromatic. It was used a cheap way to create sets for movies. It was very dark and depressed with a sinister vibe to it. The high contrast from dark to light colours would make characters stand out from the scenery. The style uses very sharp and pointed shapes to kind of show the emotions of the time and conveying madness and depression. 

My Ideas for the scene I intend to create. I will be creating a scene based on the style of German Expressionism.

Artists Interpretation

This piece of art was done by an artist Otto Dix. I really liked this piece of art because it really influenced the style of my art work , the whole creepy and mysterious factor of this piece of art played a lot in my piece of art work, I really liked the sketched style it and eerie feeling to the whole picture.

Here are some silhouettes that I have created to help me decide what my final development will look like, The silhouettes are to help me get a basic grasp of the themes, styles, colour, lighting, rules/guidelines and focal points of my idea. After these I will choose 4 of the silhouettes to sketch over and develop further.

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References

I used these as references because they both matched the astehtic of my theme and the spooky sinister vibe of my.
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Sketch over choices

I chose this silhouette because it was one if my favourite ideas, I liked the idea of the witch hunters standing around a witches grave, it is in my opinion the one with the most potential. I feel it will be a challenge to develop. 

This one was chosen because of the amount that can be developed to make this piece very interesting. There is a lot of different techniques

This was a very interesting piece to me because of the way the houses frame the figures that will be animated and how the houses are bent into the infinity point, this would very interesting to develop and animate.

I chose this image because of the hands mainly, I think they will be very interesting and fun to animate and develop, it will help me to develop my skills of drawing body parts with the hands, and i think there is a lot to develop with this image.

The Final GIF

Presentation Evaluation

I think my presentation went very well because I knew my information and was very confident, I think I was very prepared for the presentation and felt my speech was very good. I could have maybe had more information and not repeated myself as much as I did. I think I have kept my blog well updated and full of information. I have shown a lot of development in the lead up to the final design but could have shown more in the ways of the actual creation of the design.

Evaluation

This project was about German Expressionism, I was tasked to create a fully developed and animated concept suiting the style of German Expressionism. I chose to set my project in the Salem Witch Trials time period. I liked this theme because it was very easy to fit into the whole German Expressionist ways of being very dark and depressed and sinister which I think I have managed to execute quite well. I had many different ideas and drawings, sketches done for this project so I could look through as many possibilities as I could and come up with the best idea/ideas out of them all. For this project I did many different experiments such as silhouettes and also sketch overs to help show which variation of the concept I want to use. I did these experiments to get me assets for my final concept, and they helped me to choose what would be in my final development, I chose elements of my favourite sketch overs and put them all together into the final development to then animate.

I planned the environment by using the rule of thirds and a point of Infinity. I used all these to help me stay in line with my plans, to locate the focal point and to make sure the leading lines are actually leading towards the focal point.

I learnt how to make a full animation using Photoshop by choosing the option motion and creating a frame by frame edit animation, where I would make a new layer for each change in the concept that correlates to a specific frame, then to keep everything order I would put all the animation layers into grouped folders. Duplicating these folders allows me to keep the layers separate so I don’t create an effect on other features of the scene animation.

As a secondary source I have used the Internet to research a lot into the history of German Expressionism. I also tried to do contextual research into the styles and methods, looking at films and games that have German expressionist styles in them. For example Nosferatu, this film inspired my work because of the slender figure of Nosferatu and my characters in the painting as well as the dark and sinister mannerism of the painting is also used in my painting to create tension. Using shape dynamics in my painting I have managed to convey a dangerous meaning in my painting. Otto Dix has very much influenced my painting due to the very eerie and sinister feel to his paintings especially in his painting “Stormtroopers Advancing Under Gas”, this has affected my painting by giving me a style to work off of, using a monochromatic style to my work. I learnt how to do these by watching my tutor and how she would do it, and I needed them to know clearly the task I have been given.

Yes I am very happy with how the work turned out very good and. I could have took more time to try and refine more details into my painting and make everything neater and tidier. I am very satisfied with the animation because frames were out of place or out of time. I could have just tweaked them a little more to made the animation smoother.