Jason.T

Jason Taylor


 * COMIC BOOK RESPONSE**

The “Bound By Law” comic by Daya Filmmaker was quite interesting to say the least. To be completely honest, I’ve never truly looked at, or investigated copyright laws and uses in pop culture. I always just assumed that copyrights only applied to mostly inventions, and explicit uses of songs and/or productions. Little did I know, basically anything and everything is covered under copyright laws and can be tried in court.

Fair use is often a tactic for outside artists to use other people’s works unknowingly. In many videos/productions you can see several works by other authors in the background. It’s bound to happen, and it is almost inevitable. To defend against this, artists can plead ignorance, and say that they had no idea that it was in the production. This works only some of the times though, depending on how prominent the other author’s work is. Another way to combat this, especially with more prominent pieces, is to parody the piece. By changing the name slightly, and the object itself, if it strays from the mainstream item far enough it's fair use to use. This is extremely common in today’s culture as satire comedy has been making a stronger and stronger appearance in today’s everyday society.

Fair use can only get you so far though. In areas such as music, you see licensing as commonplace. In songs, you may hear a certain segment of the song divert to an audio clip from a famous movie, or other song. In these instances, you cannot argue fair use because you are deliberately placing someone else’s work directly into your own production. In these cases, licenses are a strategy to avoid copyright lawsuits and claims. This can get extremely expensive though, because if the song hinges on this clip, the price is almost irrelevant because of its necessity. One example that I can specifically name is the song ‘Otis’ by Kanye West and Jay Z. Throughout the song, they use clips of audio from Otis Redding. I know for a fact, even though he is deceased, they had to pay his estate to use these audio clips in the song. Stealing is an entirely different situation. Stealing is literally taking someone's work, altering it slightly, or not at all, and posing it as your own. A specific instance that I remember was someone in my writing class in high school took an essay offline and didn’t change it at all. He then went on to just change the name on the essay and call it his own. Sure enough, the teacher realized the theft, and failed the student because the essay that was used was one of the guideline essays found online for the AP website. Clearly stealing is illegal, but depending on how popular the work becomes, it can either go completely unnoticed or even brought up to the courts for litigation. I thoroughly enjoyed the comic all together. It got me thinking about a topic that's involved in my everyday life, but that i rarely ever think about. To top it off, it was interesting too. To tackle a monotonous subject and topic in an interesting way, such as in a comic book scene is cool in itself. Then to utilize the ‘comic book style’ in explaining the topic made the read not only possible but interesting as well.


 * PROJECT 1: RETOUCH AND COLORIZE **

Original



Touched up, and colorized.


 * WRITING**

FIRST DESCRIPTION Right off of the bat, I notice the landscape. It appears to be an island, with the coastal areas prevalent in the background. It looks like a very rural area, with no apparent beaches. The coast meets the island directly, so the grass meets the water immediately. The skies are dark, but they aren't stormy. It is a normal skyline, but the borders of the entire image are darker than the direct center. At the center is a young girl, with a bow, overalls, a light shirt and what looks to be boots. She is holding a lighter and a ring (presumably for the fish to jump through. The fish has a passionate red color to it, contrasting highly with the green and blue of he background. He is jumping through a ring that is set aflame (presumably by the girl). The Ring is just floating ominously above the tank, not being held by anything at all. The girl is resting on the chair, which is a dark wood with a cushion that has red and green symbols on it. At the base of the chair is a watering can, and next to the can on either side is vegetation but in a bright purple/blue wrapped around separate fence posts. Again, the image in the center is much brighter than the dark borders, drawing the viewers attention directly to the girl and her circus fish. SECOND DESCRIPTION

Judging from the image, it looks to be eerily quiet. The only sound that could probably be audible would be the fish jumping from the bowl, the fire around the ring, and the waves of the ocean in the background. There is an ominous glow of the image coming from the direct center. The image starts to fade to darkness as you leave the center towards the edges of the background. The background is much darker, but illuminated almost by the girl and her daredevil fish. She has no expression on her face at all, as she leans on the chair holding her lighter and ring. The fish and the fire have a mesmerizing affect, as the fluorescent red from the flame and the fish provide a stark contrast to the green and blue surroundings in the image. She wears a denim pair of overalls with a very light colored shirt and bow. Eve thought he borders are much darker, the blue color of the forestation is clear as it clashes with the green vegetation and grass throughout the entire image. The bowl is crystal clear, and the skies are dreadfully bleak. they aren't stormy but they are dark, and far from the blue you would expect to see in nice weather. The can seems far from smooth as there is noticeable scratches and rust around it in its entirety. Te bushes and vegetation appear prickly, even though there appears to be no thorns.


 * Jan 26th Classwork**


 * - Colorization**




 * Cowboy Puppet, Clone tool, Smart Fill**




 * More Colorization**


 * COMPOSITE COLORIZATION/TOUCH UP**


 * ORIGINAL**




 * TOUCHED UP/COLORIZED**




 * Background Image: Wall Street Protest Image**




 * Additional Images: Colorful Bird, Starbucks Cup, and an Angry Cat**




 * First Composite with the colorized image and the background wall street image**
 * Final Image, with subtle shadows/colors**




 * Magazine Response**

Augmented reality can bring an entirely new art form to the public. It harnesses the power of our mobile devices, and everyday environment to show something that isn't there. Now whether the item that is shown is created or exists elsewhere is up to the artist but the ability to change the landscape around you is fascinating. One use can be to show original work in areas where you would least expect it. For instance a political message in front of a government building. Another would be to switch iconic statues/monuments with those of other areas. Monuments that exist in the world and are famous, but in an area where they aren't currently. For instance maybe putting a painting from the Louvre into an empty wall in the Capitol building here in D.C. A third instance where you can use AR would be to combine multiple people's perspectives. You can create a AR platform where anyone and everyone can participate by sharing works/ideas all on the same landscape. You would essentially be taking an online platform and placing it into the real world in front of or near important or relevant way points. It's quite incredible if you really think about its capabilities.


 * CINEMAGRAPH**


 * Augmented Reality**

For my augmented reality project I was aiming to represent what its like to buy a ticket. Whether it was to buy a plane ticket, or an event ticket to a play, or a sporting event, people buy tickets to get away. To be able to get away from reality even if it was for just a moment, people buy these tickets to escape. So with that in mind, I used the tickets as my trigger image. I used two plane ticket logos (because boarding passes were too broad for the system to use) and a playbill from the lion king. For the overlay image i know i wanted to make an abstract composite. So I put together a composite image with an abstract background, a retro television, a colorized image of neil armstrong, and images of the annoying orange and a space cat, all with the background of a galaxy. So I clipped several portions of the abstract image out so that you could see the galaxy in the background> I followed that up by fading, cloning, and cropping the orange and the cat into the center and left portions of the open space. The colorization was pretty straightforward as i used other images (which were taken in color) to match certain materials with certain colors. Then I finally got the retro tv into place, and removed the screen. I was aiming to have the composite overwhelm you, almost like the experience you have when you go to see an event/go away. Overall I was pretty happy with the project, I was just slightly disappointed my work didn't come across as clearly as it did. It took some prodding to have people see the perspective I had envisioned for it.




 * Counter-Monument**

So from the very start I knew i wanted to do a curved representation. After looking at it for a while i knew i wanted to do an imprint of the world's map onto the inside curve of the monument. In order to create a 3D image and take advantage of the tools given to me, i needed to make the map separately. With certain image posting issues I had to freehand the map. All of it. I tried as hard as I could to be as accurate as possible, which wasn't easy to say the least. I included many of the Caribbean islands, many of the pacific islands and some off the coast of Africa and India. I put it on the face of a rectangle then used the extrude tool to pull the rectangle backwards so that the remaining area will be just the continents. I then pulled the Mediterranean away from the existing space and created a border on Africa from Saudi Arabia. So with what was left I put it all into the curved monument so that it extruded out into a third dimension for the viewer. From this spot, I tried to express my idea of the lack of clean water in Africa. I tried to accomplish this by covering the curved complex in water shades. Then I used a few different water tiles for the raised continents. All except for Africa, where I used brick overlays. A dry material completely surrounded by a diluted world and water filled continents. I hope that the message was portrayed as accurately as I had intended. I decided to put it against a green background, flush with color so that the water blends smoothly but so that the brick is also starkly different.



- An offset image under the same settings