Name: Bee Mitchell                                                                              

ID no: 114176820

Project Title:

In the Woods (tentative)

Project Description:

Two years ago when I started what I see as the formal beginning of the line of pieces I have been working on, sex was an important topic to me because I felt an urgency around talking about the beauty of consent and how it could be so liberating, especially coming personally from trauma of sexual violence and as an LGBT person who experienced firsthand some of the ways that consent is intermingled being gay and genderqueer.

At the time, I was consuming media from queer people who talk about the power of sex education that prevents relationship violence for everybody from the lens of how heteronormative ideas about sexuality and gender not just on an interpersonal scale but also a national systemic level create the conditions for harmful relationships. I felt passionate about making work about the impact of sex (diluted as a metaphor for relationships in general) because I believed it was a story that everyone could relate to on some level, and I enjoyed refining my sketchbook doodles and journaling into an interesting work of art that someone could enjoy--whether consent was never an issue for someone and they felt like they knew the impact of boundaries on love or if a person knew how it feels to be impacted by relationship violence.

Stemming from these ideas, I shifted my focus toward fantasy because I was interested in how the activists I was leaning on for emotional support and learning were able to imagine better futures and the idea that gay and trans people create themselves through their ability to imagine themselves into the world.

My goal is to build off of the visual language I have created and push it further into a new version of the story. I will create an animation of a character fusing with a forest. The character will enter the forest, become curious about a plant and touch the plant, and the two will fuse.

This fusion will depict a mutually-effective relationship between a human-like figure and a plant that expresses the idea that two beings can have a physical and emotional transformative effect on one another. This animation will come in the form of three three-second digitally animated GIFS that will live online on my website and be shared with the class, as well as my family and friends. They will be black and white, drawn in a linear style, and silent to focus on the animated movement. They will be 2048x1920 pixels to comply with industry standards. The environment will be active and the natural elements will be constantly moving to create the effect that time is different than our world, as well as that the landscape is alive and that humans are as alive as plants. The GIFS will loop so that they end in the same place they started and feel cyclical and never-ending. I will animate using my Stony Brook access to Photoshop and using my small XP-Pen drawing tablet. I approximate that I will spend 10-20 hours per GIF.

Success Criteria

This project will have been successful when the audience (the class, my loved ones) feel invested in the story and like they want to spend time with the imagery. I want the audience to feel like they want to keep looking at this work and are entertained. I want them to feel like they want more or that they want to own it. And I want them to feel like they were a part of something intimate that they can relate to.

Timeline

Budget 

Expenses

Artist Fee

Salary for 56 hours of work                                                                    $840

Tuition

Cost of Spring Semester                                                                 $1,342.35

Production Materials

Sketchbook                                                                                        $3

Computer Depreciation (1% of $1,300)                                                              $13

Drawing Tablet Depreciation (3% of $40)                                                                  $1.2

        Work Space

        Studio Rent & Utilities                                                                                  $0

Total Expenses                                                                   $2198.55

Income

To Be Raised                                                                                 $2,700

Part-time Work at Chatterton Elementary School

Total Income                                                                                               $2,700