A critical study of how narrative, as an artistic device, is multifaceted and stretches beyond telling a structured storyline/ definitive purpose.
Final year project
The Question of Narrative
The Story
This is the first frame of my major project stop motion animation. It is called the story because the focus of the project was on connecting with the audience in order to generate the viewer's own opinion of the film's narrative. Naming it 'The Story' immediately makes someone ask 'what is the story', which is the exact intention of the film. This project was very intensive in terms of workload, patience, organisation and media creation, everything in the film is handmade and the shooting of stop motion took many reshoots and edits, with around 2000 photos being used for 45 seconds of footage.
'The Story' Continued
A frame near the end of my major project stop motion animation. Continuing the purpose of the work and utilising changes and additions to promote audience engagement, in this case, the addition of characters, colour and a change of camera angle.
'In Peace'
This image is from a previous project that helped build my major project. This project was a study of visual narrative creation in regard to 'what?', 'how?' and 'why?', explore the methods and components of an image that are integral to generating a narrative response from an audience. This specific work was a study of characterisation of found objects, this image is an edited photograph (of shadows of a knife block) with the only additions to the photo being the bright eyes and hand, showing how with only a few contextualising components one can generate narrative.
'Hedgehog'
This work was a part of my visual narrative project and was inspired by a filmmaker's approach, experimenting with creating a still image that encourages thoughts that there is a larger story to be told as if the image was still taken out of a film.
'Icarus'
This was a work that preceded my narrative projects and sparked an interest in the narrative as a focus for my work. The intention of this piece was the depict an existing narrative, that of Icarus, through the practical methods I was working with, combining ink work with photography and digital editing.
Abstract in Space
This is part of a side project that explored the relations of natural forms, with a focus on space, and abstract imagery. It was a material and process experimentation project that vastly developed my digital skills and helped form a greater understanding of the type of work I would specialise in.
Abstract in Space #2
This is part of a side project that explored the relations of natural forms, with a focus on space, and abstract imagery. This piece was instrumental in encouraging my use of found objects and photography of raw materials and models, e.g. this is a photograph of squares of soap.
Abstract in Space #3
This is part of a side project that explored the relations of natural forms, with a focus on space, and abstract imagery. This piece was an important part of my artistic development as it solidified my interest in exploring conceptual ideas that people had to decipher through a refined and eye-catching lens, leading to my interest in an audience's creation of narrative.
Eden Cox
Final year project
The Question of Narrative