Cowboy and Kung Fu Fighting Stereotype Comparison...

Here's a comparison I put together after researcching into both cowboy/sheriff and kung fu fighter stereotypes. After i created the list, i started to see some similarities or ways of combining the traits to create a kung fu western. Here is the list of commonalities i found...

- Both kung fu fighters and cowboys are known to wear bandanas.
- A spur and the sheriff's badge both resemble a star shape which we can connect to the idea of the ninja star.
- The robe in kung fu and long coat in westerns could be integrated.
- A stereotypical Asian hat is the conical hat whereas in westerns we are used to seeing a cowboy hat.
- Both Cowboys and Kung fu fighters wear gloves.

Character Design Workshop Week 3...

Our third character design workshop began with a further continuation of the shapes of characters, building on from last weeks basic shapes. We looked at introducing shapes at the key points in the body and drawing interconnecting lines to create our characters. To get some practice in how to use these key points, Justin gave us a randomised group of characters that we had to draw using simple shapes to create a 'naked' outline for each character. I started of with Mushu from Mulan. When i first attempted to draw his shape, i got the idea of key points wrong and found myself drawing circles for the whole body. Justin came round and showed me that i firstly needed to see what shapes the character was made up of then put in the key shapes for key areas and then draw interconnecting lines. After Justin showed me on the page what he meant, I found it a lot easier to map out the shapes for these characters and i ended up doing Daffy Duck, Tigger, and Obelix. I enjoyed doing these drawings, and i felt that i completed them fairly successfully. However, i did notice that they were all rounded characters and if i had chosen a squarer or triangular shaped character, it's possible that i may have struggled more because of their complexity. After doing these drawings we were shown the key stereotype differences between male and female characters and then asked to pick an image of a character and try and turn them into a female. I decided to take Hercules and try and recreate a female version, but this didn't go to plan i found myself really struggling. When Justin came back round, he chose to take my previous drawing of Mushu and create a female version to help me get a better idea. I started to see how elements like more curvacious lines, feminine eyes, smaller features, and longer hair all helped to create this look. Shortly after that, we were shown how to do turnarounds, with Justin using Hercules as an example on the white board. We were then asked to take one of our characters and create a turnaround for another angle of the character. I chose Obelix, and although i was able to draw from the image fairly successfully, i found it extremely hard to make up the rest of my image and therefore i felt that my turnaround wasn't particularly successfull. I really enjoyed this lesson and i felt it gave me a further insight on how to develop the shapes for my own characters. I'm looking forward to integrating what we've learnt so far into my own character designs.

Maya Tutorials - Week 2... Mustang...

Postmodernism Lecture 2 Notes...

Introducing Postmodernism or 'The Apple, Auschwitz and The Incredulous Frenchman'...

- Jean-Francois Lyotard argues that the postmodern age is characterised by an 'incredulity towards meta-narratives.' (The Postmodern Condition: A report on knowledge, 1979).
- Incredulous is to not believe in something.
- Meta-narratives are large-scale theories and philosophies of the world.
- Examples of meta-narratives include religion, science, history and art.
- Meta-narratives are Teleological.
- Teleology supposes that there is inherent purpose or a directive principle at work in nature; put simply, it describes the inevitable 'coming-to-be' of something - the guarantee of progression towards a higher, greater level of development or definitive form.
- Religion is teleological because of its emphasis on transcendence.
- Art is teleological because of its perceived evolution from art movement to art movement and associated notion of the 'avant-garde'.
- Science is teleological because scientific discoveries are seen as unlocking the secrets of existence and revealing it finally.
- History is teleological because of the perceived progression from epoch to epoch, with each age more advanced than its predecessor.
- Meta-narratives are Utopian.
- Utopia is an ideally perfect place, especially in its social, political, and moral apects. In other words, they all lived happily ever after.
- Meta-narratives are Essentialist.
- Essentialism is the practice of regarding something as having innate existence or universal validity.
- Meta-narratives are Modern.
- "Modernism is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology, and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic." (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism).
- "Simply put, the overarching goal of Modernism... has been the creation of a better society." (Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe, Roots of Modernism, witcombe.sbc.edu/modernism/roots.html).

All the planets and other objects in the universe move according to gravity; this mutual attraction explains the orderly and mechanistic motions of the universe.


The Universe can be explained completely through the use of mathematics; mathematical models of the universe are accurate physical descriptions of the universe.


The universe operates in a rational and predictable way following the mathematics used to describe the universe; the universe is mechanistic.



One need not appeal to religion or theology to explain any aspect of the physical phenomena of the universe.

- "If the universe was a vast machine of interacting objects, that meant that it could be understood as a machine. Human reason and the simple observation of the phenomena were sufficient to explain the universe; if physical phenomena were mechanistic, that means that physical phenomena can be manipulated, that is engineered... If the universe was a machine and could be understood rationally, then so perhaps could economics, history, politics, and ethics. It also followed that if economics, history, politics, and ethics were mechanical, they could be explained without recourse to religion or God and they could be manipulated as if they were machines, that is, they could be improved, engineered, and made to run better." (Richard Hooker, The European Enlightenment - The Scientific Revolution, www.wsu.edu/~dee/ENLIGHT).
- 'The Enlightenment Project' (1668-1789).
- "Eighteenth century science saw an explosion of empirical knowledge about the physical world. A virtual flood of empirical observations and calculations inspired not only an increase in knowledge, but a massive effort to systematize that knowledge as Newton had done. The scientific revolution of the eighteenth century is, above everything else, characterized by fanatical conversion of knowledge into rational systems." (Richard Hooker, The European Enlightenment - The Scientific Revolution, www.wsu.edu/~dee/ENLIGHT).
- Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801).
- Physiognomy is when you categorise people's personalities by reading their facial features. (refer to physiognomy pictures).
- Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914).
- Categorising criminality through the human face.
- "Every measurement slowly reveals the workings of the criminal. Careful observation and patience will reveal the truth." (Alphonse Bertillon).
- "The morally best, the most beautiful. The morally worst, the most deformed." (Johann Kaspar Lavater).
- "I hence conclude that the improvement of the breed of mankind is no insuperable difficulty. If everybody were to agree on the improvement of the race of man being a matter of the very utmost importance, and if the theory of the hereditary transmission of qualities in men was as thoroughly understood as it is in the case of our domestic animals, I see no absurdity in supposing that, in some way or other, the improvement would be carried into effect." (Francis Galton, Memories of My Life, 1908).
- 'The Final Solution' (Adolf Hitler).
- Hitler was all about a better society, but only accoring to his own ideas.
- Meta-narratives are teleological?
- Largely it isn't.
- Meta-narratives are utopian?
- There aren't huge amounts of evidence that we're moving towards utopian existence.
- Meta-narratives are essentialist?
- Culturally we are at greater fragmentation right now.
- "The Enlightenment project... took it as axiomatic (self-evident) that there was only one possible answer to any question; from this it followed that the world could be controlled and rationally ordered if we could only picture and represent it rightly; this presumed there existed a single correct mode of representation which, if we could uncover it (and this is what the scientific and mathematical endeavours were all about), would provide the means to Enlightenment ends." (David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity).
- "The postmodern is deliberately elusive as a concept, avoiding as much as possible the modernist desire to classify and thereby delimit, bound, and confine. Postmodernism partakes of uncertainty, insecurity, doubt, and accepts ambiguity. Whereas Modernism seeks closure in form and is concerned with conclusions, postmodernism is open, unbounded, and concerned with process and 'becoming'." (Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe, Roots of Modernism).

Maya Week 2... Lipsync...

Mulholland Drive Review...

Mulholland Drive is a 2001 American neo-noir psychological thriller written and directed by David Lynch. The surrealist film was highly acclaimed by many critics and earned Lynch the Best Director Award at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Director. The film is widely regarded as one of Lynch's finest works, alongside Eraserhead (1977) and Blue Velvet (1986), and has been chosen by many critics as representing a significant perspective of the 2000s. The plot follows a bright-eyed young actress who travels to Hollywood, only to be ensnared in a dark conspiracy involving a woman who was nearly murdered, and now has amnesia because of a car crash. Eventually, both women are pulled into a psychotic illusion involving a dangerous blue box, a director named Adam Kesher, and the mysterious night club Silencio. The film has you under the impression that you know where the storyline is going, but everytime you feel you have it sussed, Lynch throws in a new twist. For the first half of the film, Lynch leads you into a full sense of security making you believe you are watching a murder mystery film, but by the end of the film it's impossible to pin-point what you have actually just seen. Trying to put the pieces together in this film isn't possible and as Phil explained, Lynch likes to let the audience know that it is just a film, it isn't reality, it's a made-up story and he plays with this idea really well. The non-linear storyline begins shortly after the surreal scene in club Silencio, and from then on you are taken on a rollercoaster ride. I tried to keep up with what was happening but after a while i gave into the fact that there is no sense to this film. Despite coming out of the lesson rather confused, Mullholland Drive was an extremely interesting film and i found myself on the edge of my seat throughout, contemplating what would happen next.

Ed Wood Review...

Ed Wood, was an American screenwriter, director, producer, actor, author, and editor, who often performed many of these functions simultaneously in his films. In the 1950s, Wood made a run of cheap and poorly produced genre films, now humorously celebrated for their technical errors and unsophisticated special effects, with his flair for showmanship giving his projects at least a modicum of critical success. Wood's popularity waned soon after his biggest name star, Béla Lugosi, died; with his career declining thereafter. His posthumous fame began two years after his death, when he was awarded a Golden Turkey Award as Worst Director of All Time. The lack of conventional filmmaking ability in his work has since earned Wood and his films a considerable cult following.



Following the publication of Rudolph Grey's biography Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992), Wood's life and work have undergone a public rehabilitation of sorts, with Tim Burton's biopic of the director's life, Ed Wood, earning two Academy Awards. Ed Wood is a 1994 American comedy-drama biopic directed and produced by Tim Burton, and starring Johnny Depp as Edward D. Wood, Jr. himself. The film concerns the period in Wood's life when he made his best-known films as well as his relationship with actor Béla Lugosi. I didn't find Ed Wood as enjoyable as Lost in La Mancha, i felt it dragged on a bit too long and lacked a selling point that would keep me wanting to watch the film. However, I found it very interesting to watch a biopic of 'the worst director of all time' because for the same reasons i enjoyed Lost in La Mancha, it presented the bad side of filmmaking which is something you may occasionally hear about but it's not often you get to witness it. After watching the film, i can't help but feel that although Ed Wood has deservedly earned the status of 'worst director of all time', i was longing for a bit of success for the man. I couldn't see myself watching this film again because it was too dragged out, rather dull and a bit repetitive in places, but I would say that it was another clear example of Johnny Depp's versatile acting style, with another very good performance. It seems we are following the route of 'filmmaking gone wrong' with this choice of films, so i'm looking forward to what Alan shows us next.