Summer Task

For our summer task we had to choose a book from a list of six books that the tutor sent us with the objective of doing research of places, characters and props that may be identified in the chosen book.
I chose The Burrow by Franz Kafka which tells a story about a creature (not specified) that lives underground in the comfort of it's burrow.
Even tho the book doesn't specify the creature it can speculated what the creature would be, and the animal i speculate that it would be is:

The Burrowing Owl



Not only it would be cuter and more interesting to have this animal but also the author writes lots of passages using the words "fly" and "descend" which point to a bird. I don't know if he uses it to exaggerate the  quickness of how the creature acts but he uses too many times for it to just be that.
That is my main proof, the rest has to do with the fact that the creature catches small critters like the owl does, it has a beard like the owls have and I don't know... they dig burrows or take over already made ones.

So for the first research for this project, i went to Highgate Wood and to Queen's Woods.


Research:


Chislehurst Caves

Thought the caves would be a good place to get some research done as it can be compared to a burrow for its darkness, wall texture and other elements.



Books:

The painted caves by Geoffrey Grigson
Franz Kafka by Sander L. Gilman

Web Links:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16168254-the-burrow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5G7hxznyRo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkPR4Rcf4ww
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niIf080qSfE
http://www.kafka-online.info/the-metamorphosis-page5.html
https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-123408620/franz-kafka-s-the-burrow-as-model-of-ipseity-in
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epOYHrL_bqc

Biography Project

Different person's names were given to each one of us in class, chosen at random. The objective was to research as much as we could about that person so that we could do an animation, object, poster, book... about that person.

I was given an author called Patrick Leigh Fermor. In resume he is a travel writer that travelled though Europe and his greatest deed was capturing a Nazi german in Crete, Greece,World War 2.
Personally i had no interest in the author but i grabbed what i could about him, did the research and decided to do something that i dont usually do, an animation.

For the characters and backgrounds I inspired myself in some Cretan and Minoan art (which are shown in the research below). 

Characters and backgrounds

Research:

In my research i went trough some of the author's books, biographys, youtube videos about the world war 2 in Crete and watched a movie about the same matter.

Images:

Books:

Links:

https://archive.org/details/MoviesSeries5.IllMetByMoonlight1957AndCockleshellHeroes1955

http://the11thday.org/home.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRyb6hQVSCA

https://www.google.co.uk/search?
q=crete+art&sa=X&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=652&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ved=0ahUKEwjg7IWoo6PMAhUC2hoKHUfZCIAQsAQIGw#imgrc=9wTpyYu86jt-SM%3A

http://arthistorysummerize.info/ArtHistory/crete/

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=patrick+leigh+fermor+art&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=696&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwifgp6Yp6PMAhUISRoKHZmlCWEQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=patrick+leigh+fermor+drawings&imgrc=CM5cHsOGL6y5-M%3A

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=patrick+leigh+fermor+landscapes&biw=1366&bih=696&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiempHr1K_MAhVqDsAKHfMKALYQsAQIGw#imgrc=lhLsisBgPz-ExM%3A

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=crete+flag&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjk5O7-1cHMAhViCsAKHcQLBgoQ_AUIBygB&biw=1366&bih=696#imgrc=Y5zJ3EHsp3hN1M%3A

Workshops done for Biography Project

Note: these workshops had a duration of 4 hours, where it was only given a small introduction to some aspects of the subjects.

Object Workshop

We had to create a sculpture by only using tubes of 3 different diameters based on our "persons".

Animation Workshop

We had a brief and very superficial introduction to some aspects of animation and a recommended software (Dragonframe) to use in our final animations (if anyone was to do them), but we didn't use it on the workshop.

Painting Workshop

I didnt do much on this workshop, it was a repetition of a painting workshop that didn't have any specific objective or brief.

Thoughts:

I was expecting more from these workshops, i was expecting them to be actual workshops where i could learn in depth about the theme. In the end the point of the workshops were only to help us decide the way we wanted to do the biography project by experimenting the subjects we were interested in...

Adrian Narrative Workshop

In this workshop our tutor Adrian read us a story about a young girl and her friend. with that we had to group with people that wanted to do an object, animation... related to the story. I joined the group that was doing Object where we had to only make studys of the sculpture we would do if we were to work on this story like a project. 

the two friends in the story isolated themselves a lot from the other people around them, as if they were inside their own bubble, so we followed with that idea and picked up the black walnut tree, where the girls used to sit and relax, as our main focus and then build the rest of the concepts around it.