Self Portrait Plan

For my self portrait project, I plan to try putting together a stop motion video. I anticipate this being an extremely challenging undertaking for me, because I’ve never done anything stop motion before. I’ll have to research different methods before I begin so that I can make myself a little more comfortable with the idea. I’ll also try to experiment a little beforehand in order to catch my bearings and establish an idea of how to take my photographs and at what intervals in order to get the effect I want.

The choice to use stop motion is inspired by my interest in animation techniques.

For the specific subject of the project, I want to explore art in my life and the influence it’s had on me. One of the most important aspects of my life has been the constant presence of art and creativity in my life, varying from writing to visual. I hope to be able to portray both writing and visual art in the project, though I’m not completely sure yet how to represent writing.

The visual idea I have now is to first create an image of myself. This will most likely be something extremely simplified such as a felt cutout of a person. Then I plan to take different colored embroidery thread which I own a plethora of from my own cross stitch projects and sew, wrap and otherwise combine these with the person cutout. I hope to move these around in different ways to represent the beginning and build up of creativity. I may also bring in other representations of people in my life such as my grandma who has always encouraged my art and different teachers that have helped to inspire me and move me along with my creations.

I know this is going to be an extremely time consuming project considering the medium, but I’m also extremely excited about how it will turn out.