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Welcome to Vitamin C! No. 19, a mid-year update. 

Hey there, stranger. It’s been a while. I’ve been putting down roots in Manhattan, growing my tribe, hitting a stride. Other than dealing with a few burdens of adulting, things are mostly awesome.

New York has become the home that I never had. Manhattan isn't an easy place, and I deal with long lines, transit problems, high prices. A small price to pay for magic and opportunity. There's an almost unfathomable amount of creation happening here. Everyone is hell-bent on making, and the making of themselves. It's electric. 

I love having access to four seasons again: eating outside on balmy evenings, fireplaces during snowy winters; contrasts. I love how easy it is to strike up conversations with strangers, how solitude and independence are seen as healthy vectors rather than as marks of involuntary isolation. I do miss California produce. And old friends, of course, but they call on me when they come to town and it’s lovely. I don't take that for granted.

In many ways I feel that a life has just begun. And that's what this is, a demarcation. If I visualize the significant transitions in my life as the rings on the cross-section of a tree, they likely collapse into three widely-spaced ones. And suddenly here I am as clear as anything, on the open side of a fourth.

The theme this time: A Voyage Out.

"Polaris." Detail, digital. For Playbook.


FRUITS OF LABOR

Project news & updates

Late last year I was at an impasse with myself; stuck, and low. I’m in a better place today, partly because of a shift in how I’ve been approaching my work.
 
"Libertad." Full 30 sec animation with sound on Instagram.

I started doing “morning pages” (per Julia Cameron's methodology) where I dump my brain onto 3 pages of paper first thing in the morning. I don't feel the pressure to be linear or conclusive, like I do when journaling. I write about the ostensibly banal, random, and unimportant. Laundry. Anxiety about a FedEx package. The pleasure of lunch. I feel free to be desultory, unconnected, small, illegible, unfinished. My head clears; I process a lot of creative problems this way, however indirectly.

"Faces." Swipe through 5 explorations with sound on Instagram.

Cameron also promotes thinking about art in a way that removes the artist from the center. It's incredibly liberating to feel as though the work already exists in its complete and ideal form, that the artist's job is simply to uncover it. It allows me to have more fun.

Just a head trick, perhaps, but isn’t that 90% of what makes one succeed or fail, given reasonable odds? I lack the sort of brazen and blind confidence that, say, Elizabeth Holmes and the like have, so sometimes I have to figure out other ways to battle the blank page. YMMV.

As far as other projects: I'm collaborating on a children’s book with Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee about sisterhood rising above war. A sneak peek:


And I published “How to get started with hand-drawn animation Part III” back in March! Part 1 of the series continues to be one of the top Google results for hand drawn animation and it delights me that so many find it useful. Lastly, My sister’s book ReEncounters is out. I contributed the art for her cover (watercolor and digital). Temple University Press provided the cover design (layout and typography).

On the design side, I'm still at Sequoia Design Lab where I focus on story and strategy. Sometimes I'm able to take on other clients. Most recently, I worked with Compass, and it was fun to get my hands dirty: component-based systems, design specifications. More collaborations are afoot with new friends in NYC, so stay tuned.

A recent design leadership dinner in Manhattan, hosted by DesignerFund.


MISE EN PLACE

Behind the scenes & up-coming

Animating Libertad was a months-long process that began with sketches on the A train. Sketches don't need to look beautiful. They just need to pave the way. I sourced CC0 sounds from freesound.org and added some distortion to a beloved soprano aria by Handel.
 


Next came key frames, timing. Sound and flow took weeks to get to a decent place. I had trouble figuring out how to end the sequence. But I put something in and moved on until I could iterate.

I originally had the girl meet herself mid-plummet and exchange places. Didn't feel quite right.

I steered away from spending a lot of time on perfecting in-betweens. It's important to master the basics but I'm not interested in becoming the next Milt Kahl. I'd been over-indexing on technique, bleeding my stories (and me) of emotion. It's much more pleasurable for me to focus on what I do well rather than slogging away on what I enjoy least. Fine balance.
 

After I cleaned up my lines, I started adding fills.
For the glitch effect I used a displacement map in After Effects, with tv static as the source.


As for what's cooking...People have expressed renewed interest in the84days, a multimedia experience about transit that I'd kicked off ages ago but realized needed time to mature. This may get attention from me soon.


I've also been noodling on an animation about depression and memory, called Windows. A script and initial storyboards are finished. I'm playing with a few other projects but these are the main ones. SO. MUCH. TO. DO. Stay tuned!

Blocking sketch for Windows.

RECOMMENDED DAILY INTAKE

Inspiration & ephemera
  • Graphic novel: Mira Jacob's book, Good Talk—about explaining race, immigration, sex to her kid—sucked me in. Read it in one sitting.
     
  • Fiction: I fell in love with Catton's The Luminaries; a lyrical, quirky novel. Winner of the Man Booker Prize.
     
  • Non-Fiction: No Visible Bruises by Louise Snyder, about domestic violence, is intense but empathetic and engaging too.

Until next time, toodlepip!
Copyright © 2019 Coleen Baik, All rights reserved.

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