Heather Van Walden

Sharing the Creative Process

This week we were asked to share the creative process behind a project through documenting it via filming and making a video to share.

For this particular assignment I photographed the tiniest bottle of Versace perfume using a technique used in product photography where you take several “plates” of the subject to blend together later in Photoshop. This is great for hitting highlights on several parts of the subject which would be nearly impossible to do in camera – either because of glare or reflections or just needing a freaking ton of lights! With this technique you only need one light and pray the camera and light stay still while you move the light around to hit those highlights (a lot like stop motion in a way but with all the frames smashed together to make one still instead of a moving picture).

All that said, here is the video I made showing my progress! (The maximum file size on WordPress is 20MB which is kinda ridiculous because even when I put the video down to a potato quality of 480p it was was still 45MB, so I’ve listed a link to YouTube where I uploaded it instead)

Product World Building

They were smiling on the Visual Media students with this one, haha – this blog assignment was appreciated!

The ask was to take a photo of a product within a visual “little world” or “story” around it. This assignment coincided nicely with another product shoot which we’d been assigned this week, so I got to practice styling this bottle of Walgreens aftershave before the bigger shoot, which also explains why I have a bottle of aftershave in my possession (in case you didn’t know, I have no use for that product, but it was in clearance and I’m a cheapskate hehe). It was also an interesting exercise to try taking a “professional” photo with my phone – curse the auto settings! I didn’t know how much I appreciated manual mode before battling with my phone’s idea of what it thought was a good exposure.

That said, I wanted to highlight the warm color of the aftershave and also pay homage to it’s Western influence – it’s Stetson after all (fun fact, there’s a Stetson in my family tree somewhere way back – that’s all my memory can pull up right now though XD ). I also wanted to put a bit of a modern twist on it with the white collared shirt and tie to show its versatility of being for anyone, ranch hand or city slicker.

The loose tie and unbuttoned shirt suggests a rebellious nature, a trait we might associate with a cowboy, while the aftershave’s box with an actual picture of a cowboy makes it clear about what this aftershave represents.

The guitar was an obvious choice for me since there’s there’s nothing that says gathering around the fire to tell yarns and sing ballads like a steel-stringed guitar. And it’s warm color paired perfectly with the honey-like hue of the aftershave.

This was a fun one! I made a few versions of this concept and wanted to share them as well since it was hard to choose which one to be my main photo to break down.

That’s all for now! I would love more blog assignments which are photography focused, but I know the amount of people who would benefit from that are outnumbered at least two or even three times haha.

Supa Bowl Commercials

The ask:

Watch at least 5 Super Bowl ads and pick 2 to analyze and review. This was an interesting ask because I didn’t actually watch the Super Bowl, never have, so any gifs or pics I choose don’t reflect my favorite teams or anything, I have no idea what any of them mean XD.

That said, since I didn’t watch the Super Bowl live, I went the perhaps less intricate but necessary route of watching a compilation on YouTube. These were the 5 I watched:

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I chose to review Budweiser and Oreo’s commercials.

Review número uno: Oreo

This commercial did a twist (ahahaha, pun very much intended) on their slogan “Twist, Lick, Dunk” where they introduced the catchphrase “Twist on It.”

In the commercial we see several important and well known events being decided by twisting an Oreo just like flipping a coin except it’s based on the bet the player’s choose, such as the cream being on the right after twisting.

In my opinion, the message for this ad is to show Oreo as a dependable and trustworthy option in people’s lives. The cookie is everywhere and familiar so it’s not too big of a reach to introduce the twist as a substitute for the tried and true coin flipping method.

Besides the obvious answer of the audience being Super Bowl viewers, this ad is for the average consumer who probably reaches for the main stream brands when it comes to snacks. They look for dependability and predictability in those snacks most likely.

What did they do well?

1. I think they did a good job in showing the trust people have in Oreos since they’re kind of a constant in this world – people putting their trust in “the twist” for making important decisions like whether to report the sighting of a UFO like in the ad demonstrates this.

2. I also think that the pacing of the ad was relatively well done – nothing too fancy, just showing a basic storyline and introducing a new catchphrase and idea.

What could they have done better?

1. Their choice of important and historical events were not particularly interesting to me. I know a lot of people are probably complaining about the Kardashian appearance. While this isn’t a huge issue of course, I don’t personally think deciding to air Keeping Up with the Kardashians was as interesting an event as the Greeks invading Troy in the famous wooden horse.

2. Someone also made an amusing comment on the inaccuracy of the Troy soldiers’ armor, noting that it’s actually Roman armor – now I’m no history buff but that was kind of interesting to me that a multi billion company made a mistake like that.

Ok, on to:

Review número uno: Budweiser

In this commercial, the power cuts in a remote bar in the mountains and all of the highways are closed due to the snowstorm. However, the iconic Budweiser Clydesdales come to the rescue and they’re able to deliver the beer the old fashioned way in a horse drawn carriage.

The message seemed to be similar to that of Oreo’s – that they’re a reliable and familiar company, with the added touch of serving since 1876. They seem to be wanting to establish themselves as a drink that brings people together since there were many people at the bar just waiting to drink some.

The audience would be for those who look for traditional and long standing choices when it comes to their purchases. In people’s minds, surely a company that’s been around for 147 must be doing something right – right?

What did they do well?

1. They showed their values well that they’re a dependable and traditional company through the effort the delivery people went through, as well as showing the iconic Clydesdales coming to save the day. Lines like ” Let’s do it the old school way” further emphasized their effort to showcase tradition and legacy in this ad. They also reminded of how long standing they are by saying “Delivering since 1876”.

2. They also portrayed the cozy and traditional feeling of the scenes really well by showing the bar as a friendly and warm place in contrast to the snowy and storming outdoors.

What they might have done better:

1. I found the darkness of the majority of the shots made it feel a little more tense than I think it needed to be. Sure there was a big storm happening, but when they showed sun coming through in some scenes I wish they would have kept that for the rest to better show the hope and almost saving grace that the Clydesdales are bringing.

2. Maybe it’s just because it’s late and my comprehension is really low right now haha, but I’m a little confused on why they needed to deliver the beer in the first place. I’m not familiar with how beer taps work, my thought was that maybe they run on electricity and since it had been cut they couldn’t serve the beer anymore and needed old fashioned kegs to pump from. But if I’m confused, I’m sure a few more viewers were as well, so maybe this was a small issue in helping the audience understand this commercial.

Since I haven’t watched any Super Bowls ever, I unfortunately don’t have any to recall for the bonus so I’ll stop here – If anyone’s reading this I hope your team did well!

The Ask:

Personal projects outside of the everyday grind of work or school are important since they give us a different way to use our creativity. They give us a chance to break the circle of creating a certain way and maybe even give us inspiration to use in our work or school!

I was asked brainstorm at least 10 ideas for a personal project and pick “The One” to elaborate on and outline.

Let’s start with the brainstorm…

This is the list I wrote on a Post-It note which I think I unfortunately threw away prematurely so I’ll have to be content with this less personal version from Google Docs:

Ideas:

1. Drawing a class group “photo” memento
2. Photoshoot in the fine arts studio, maybe of people painted to look like statues, placed around the space.
3. Clay life-size bust sculpture
4. Comic of funny moments from school
5. Learning some kind of dance with others in a dance studio
6. Photoshoot at a skating rink
7. Self portrait series in different locations from home to public spaces to out in nature
8. Painting a mural/street art
9. Learning to make latte art/foam characters
10. Shooting 5 self portraits with 5 different types of cameras (e.g, polaroid, point and shoot, film, etc) Maybe they could be composed the same but each camera would give them a totally unique look. 
11. Stop motion video of little bots throwing out data from photos in little pixels, then they haphazardly put their own interpretations back in. (like how jpegs compress images and fill it in with larger pixels/interpretations)
12. Series of cloud photos with the shapes I see brought to life for others through tracing/making into art
13. Atompunk themed photoshoot/dystopian or lost space traveler

But which one is “The One?”

I really like the ideas that didn’t have so much to do with photography or videography since sometimes I get the most inspiration from things that aren’t related to Visual Media. It would also give me a chance to make a switch from one medium to another – I love Visual Media but I was an artist with pencils, clay, and paint before I was one with a camera and I haven’t had as much time to put towards that side of myself.

That said, I think it would be really sweet to do a portrait of my classmates as a little memento of this time with them – growing up, my favorite gift to give my family were personalized birthday cards where I would draw the birthday person celebrating with the rest of my family – there’s something special to me about drawing the people close to me and my classmates have been such amazing support over the past months we’ve spent together – the fact I didn’t know any of them just 5 or so months ago is so strange and so cool to think about!

The skills I hope to gain is improving my skills in drawing new faces and a lot of different people and poses on one piece of paper – I haven’t drawn much in a hot minute and drawing semi-realistic pictures of people which look like them without being too realistic, which is kind of my style, can be a little tricky but always fun.

(and, it just sounds fun XD )

Visual Proof of Concept piece (Sounds very professional and serious doesn’t it?)

Doesn’t it look just like us? Who knew there was a faceless class on the mysterious Fifth Floor? I’m just kidding, I did make sure there’s 15 though (I hope I got that number right) – I just drew a general concept of what it might look like, keeping in mind each person would have something that represents them (maybe an object or their expression or clothing style) And body types that actually matched up rather than my default person sketch type XD.

But will I actually do this?

I almost didn’t pick this as my “The One” since usually once I share my intentions to do something I end up not doing it since I feel (even if it’s not true) that there’s an outside expectation placed on it which can take away from the fun of just creating (another symptom of perfectionism I’m working through hehe…) Also, it’s doubtful I’ll have the time to do this while school’s in session – if I do though, I actually might give this a go!

The BAR Method

(aka subtly bragging about your accomplishments)

This is a pepper. But it’s special right because there’s water splashes happening and smoke and it’s dramatic and you might wonder – how did they do that??

That was the challenge, i.e. Step One:

The Background:

It was Fall Quarter, 2023, and I wanted a challenge – I love splash photography and vegetables are very willing subjects so I knew what I wanted to do. My vision was to make it look like the hot pepper was being extinguished by the water – hence the smoke – and I had a vague idea of how it would be executed. But the challenge was that I’d never done splash photography in my life – I needed help (Cue, RESEARCH) and my teacher Matt, product photography wizard, had many suggestions for me. I got visuals from the University of YouTube as well and soon the basic plan was a fish tank, a can of aerosol smoke, two flashes, and a black background. 

Actions:

About 3 hours later, it was 8pm and I had taken about 20 pictures of the purest black. My flashes, which I had never used before on my own (EXPLORATION) weren’t flashing and I was getting desperate. Panicked calls to my teacher and Second Year Brooklyn answered my question but the issue still wasn’t resolved. I needed a high shutter speed and the sync speed of the flashes were too low. I’d have to use constants, for a photo with 1/1250th of a second shutter speed. 

Cue my classmate Cedar to the scene who took one look at my set, where I was hunched over the fish tank with peppers in one fist and a can of smoke in the other and firmly revoked my solo shooting privileges. Grateful, I handed her the smoke and peppers and that’s when one of my favorite shoots of that quarter started. 

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In two hours, I’d captured peppers and smoke frozen in space hundreds of times, Cedar and I both chanting “more smoke, more splash!” each shot, both having the same vision for as dramatic a scene as possible. (Tip: If you think you’ve got “The Shot”, do not stop there. My favorites were from towards the end when we thought we’d “just try a few more”.)

Utterly grateful to Cedar (I would not have been able to do this without her), I had the splash shot of my dreams, Big Splash and Big Smoke. 

Results:

This was my first attempt at splash photography, but I feel pretty proud of this photo. It was exactly what I’d envisioned and since it was taken in my first quarter and my skill set was (and still is kinda) pretty limited, so to try something so new to me was exciting and also showed me what I’m capable of. It was also the first time I’d shot with someone else – up to that point I’d been a solo shooter – most of the time late at night, like when I shot this skeleton for 4 hours in the dead of night, bopping to Doja Cat and getting spooked at least 3 times when I saw it out of the corner of my eye.

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Impact:

It was well received in the final critiques! My teacher Matt liked my second picture better than what I’d originally chosen (and which also was one of the pictures I’d taken after thinking I’d got “The Shot”.)

I also showed this picture to one of our guest speakers, Steve Hansen, who’s a splash photography guru and got a well-done which was very affirming. 

This shot will always have a special place in my heart and I also got a stir fry out of it with the leftover peppers – a win overall!

The Game:

This is a mobile game offered by Netflix and is free with your subscription – I played this game in the peak of my Stranger Things phase and it had me HOOKED.

I don’t play a lot of video games but this one was so immersive, I spent way too much time playing it to be honest and when I finally defeated the final boss and the game ended it felt like the end of an era, not exaggerating.

How to play

The game play is quite simple: It follows the plot of the third season of Stranger Things and you get to play through every twist and turn from the show – there’s money to collect and supplies to buy for gadgets to make which will give your characters new skills, each one having a unique gadget to be made. There’s missions to follow and quests to fulfill plus many battles to be won, which aren’t ridiculously easy to do thankfully!

For moving the character, you can either tap where you want the character to go or drag your finger and the character will continuously follow. Attacks are as simple to do by simply clicking on the object of your attack and your character will take it from there.

You can only play one character at a time but can switch between two characters which is a great feature if you need their skills or position in a pinch. They’ll also tag along and help you fight automatically – you’re only allowed one companion at a time.

What do I like about it?

I love the design, first of all. I also played the first season version of this game which has a charming 8-bit design, but this one is also nice – I appreciate their effort to bring an 80s-esque vibe to the game.

Another thing I love about this game is that the battles are actually hard! Granted, that was before I realized I’d made an enormous stash of gadgets but hadn’t actually activated any (make sure you do that!), which probably would have saved me a couple hours of replays and retries. But there can be strategy to the battles which I love, I feel there was a lot of effort put into this game.

What do I not like about it?

Honestly there’s really not much I don’t like about it – though funny enough as soon as I wrote that I reopened the game to see what I might dislike about it and it opened at a few steps back from where I’d been, undoing a least 4 minutes of work – that’s happened both times I reopened the game, maybe it’s my fault for not saving but I can’t find an option for that yet.

Who is this for?

Definitely for the ST fans! You get the chance to play through the show and I know most fans from any fandom are just happy to have more media from their favorite show, movie, etc to consume – it can happily fill in that ST phase if you’re in it!

On that note, I honestly think anyone would enjoy this game, particularly those who like a game that’s not too complicated but still complex enough to keep you engaged – and the storyline is awesome of course since it comes from a fully fleshed out tv series (there’s probably some plot holes somewhere but I try not to look haha).

Should You Play It?

Heck yeah! If you like a game that’s charming to look at, simple to play but still interesting and especially if you’re a ST fan, this game is for you! And if you like this version, check out the Season One version as well, it’s a little less complex but just as fun and worth giving a go in my opinion!

(note: I made a mini ad above instead of taking a photo since I don’t have another camera to take a picture of myself playing the game – hopefully this will suffice…)

Pocket Knife

I edited this image to show what my ideal pocket knife would look like : )

These are the tools I think I’d need in my career after SCCA:

Tools I currently have:

Pocket Wizard

A clamp

Lapel Mic

Grey cards

Pencil

Spork (I have a lot of spoons and forks but not a spork, yet..)

Tools I have that need developement:

Penny (To tighten the screws on the bottom of the tripods stands lol – but I think it would need something to get more leverage, like a stick attached to it which would also attach it to the pocket knife)

Time management, hehe…

Tools I don’t have that I need to learn:

Color screen Callibrator – which I will use soon!

Light Meter

Taking the bus to the roller rink

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I picked the roller rink prompt because it prompted me to think of the roller rinks from the 80s, when they were all the rave – I can’t personally testify to this of course, but they had one in Stranger Things and I think that’s a reliable source of the retelling of life in the 80s (minus the gooey monsters and nose bleeds – well, telekinesis-power-overload-induced nose bleeds that is)

I used Runway as my software and I was glad to see it gave a reasonable amount of free prompts, over 100 I think. You can also generate videos there too which could be a cool feature!

Pros would be that is was simple to use, had a reasonable amount of free prompts, and had many options on how to generate images, letting you choose what style you’d like from a menu, like cartoon or ultra realism.

Cons would be that I couldn’t choose an image for it to generate more versions of, I would instead have to write a new prompt entirely. It also was really, really, bad at generating images from other images, and would take you on an instant trip with indecipherable colors and shapes. For example, when I tried to get it to make versions of my sketch for this prompt, it turned this drawing into that…… that, basically.

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I do kinda dig the Dr Who/Delak guy on the right though. XD

Now, on with the show!

I didn’t do 3 prompts. I did 5 and then 9 and then did a new set and did all sorts of mismatching and on and on haha. Reading back on my prompts, it’s kinda a wonder ai was able to make what it did because my wording was pretty interesting. XD Almost like ai wrote it in fact which is very meta.

Before I get any further though, this was my vision. I kinda gave a spoiler by showing it earlier, but I won’t tell if you won’t. : )

My vision was to have actual roller skates going to the rink, because why not and I wanted ai to show what it had – as you’ll see, it really didn’t have much, but that’s another spoiler.

Prompt 1:  Rollar skates on a bus going to a rollar rink, colorful 80s themed

As you can see, not like my drawing at all. There weren’t any shoes inside the bus, and maybe too much color? I also made sure to specify for it to only show the inside of the bus which leads us to prompt #twooo:

Prompt 2: Interior of a bus showing Rollar skate shoes on the route to a rollar rink, 1980s themed

I copied these prompts word for word from what I typed in the ai and as you can see, I definitely misspelled roller skate. I think that confused the ai and when I fixed the spelling it gave me closer results, as you’ll see later (that wasn’t a spoiler, that was foreshadowing). Again, not what I wanted, the bottom left looked a little more hopeful but my excellent english skills confused ai enough to just forget the rollAr skates and do just shoes instead.

It was getting closer with the 3rd image but I wanted them to stand up this time, like in my sketch so I added “The shoes stand like people” in an attempt to get it right which leads to my “final” prompt (“final” for the bounds of this assignment, but trust me I kept going XD)

Also, those top images give me the creeps, if you’ve seen the Backrooms before, it gives that same uncanny vibe and it’s an instant no for me. XD

Prompt 3:  Interior of a bus showing Rollar skate shoes on the route to a rollar rink, 1980s themed (the shoes stand like people)

And yes, I did write that last prompt XD. As I said, reading back on the prompts was interesting.

This didn’t match my vision either so I decided to simplify things and ended up with this picture from this prompt (with roller skates spelt correctly this time XD)

Roller skates standing in a bus, on a bus ride to the roller rink

I think that did the trick! I guess in this case, less was more. And that golden hour light was just *chefs kiss*, so well done AI!

This was from the same prompt, but I much prefer the other one, this one was becoming pretty uncanny-valley.

In one last attempt at reaching my vision, I tried one more prompt (with very interesting phrasing once again) and ended up with this nightmare of knee caps which I’ll share for your viewing pleasure : )

Prompt: roller skates standing in a bus, on a bus ride to the roller rink, 80s themed – one skate standing close to us (sounds so ominous omg)

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No thank you, thank you very much!

So The End?

I guess so! I didn’t end up with exactly what I wanted, but I got as close as I think I could’ve.

So there you have it! What I tried to make vs what I got – it honestly made a pretty pretty (hehe) picture in the end, and it seems like the skates are just chilling in that golden hour, looking forward to some fun on the rink (no knee caps in sight thank god)!

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Keeping Up With Technology

This isn”t technology so much as equipment… BUT, I do think these armature kits from Amazon would be really nice for stop motion. I know it’s not a very popular visual media form but it’s something I really enjoy doing.

It’s so hard to keep things still in stop motion and the articulation and small size of these things would make my life so much easier when animating.

Sorry I didn’t have much to say on these, but I’ve seen them used by Robot Chicken and pretty much every stop motion studio ever and I would love to start using more equipment that the studios I look up to use!

AR Project #4

Another AR experience I like! It’s actually pretty fun and satisfying to put the animations together, trying to figure out the puzzle to get the results you want.

The idea:

I’m afraid mine is pretty simple, but I wanted to make something for Christmas since it’s that time of the year again! I saw the drop shapes and instantly thought they’d make fantastic ornaments. I thought quickly and knew I wanted to a card which would be simple to use and elegant, with all the gold and the delicate snowflake.

The process:

I needed a refresh on the process but I got into a groove pretty quickly! Luckily for my sake I remembered using the folder feature and that saved lots of time with those drops since there were a lot of those little drops!

The rest of it was pretty straight forward – adding Copper into the mix was pretty fun, but I did run into some issues with her which I’ll get into later.

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I also added this GIF to make it clear for the viewer to know what to do when they see the snowflake.

Challenges:

So Copper didn’t want to cooperate XD. My original plan was to have her walk up to the snowflake and point at it, but unfortunately the animations for the direct-able characters aren’t working and a quick google search showed that this is an issue for other users too. So I had to keep it simple and only use the move feature for Copper.

Copper is a free thinker and takes her own path in life – when I previewed it on the app I couldn’t get her to go in the right direction no matter what I did XD. This is what it was supposed to look like:

At the end of the day, I had some fun with this! Like eyejack, I think it’s another AR tool I’d like to use in the future since I’m finding this all pretty fun and fascinating!

As for Copper, I’m pretty sure there’s no thoughts in that copper skull, she’s just happy to be here. XD

I also just realized that this is our last class with you, I wish I would’ve done this assignment earlier so that I could put more ideas into it, but here we are. 😅 Thank you for introducing us to the world of AR, I liked how you kept the class very simple, to the point, and also not too stressful!