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Nikki Edwards | “Milk and Love”

This media file is attached to: Drawing

The video begins with a panning shot of a 2-D drawing of a woman, she is looking down with a tear in hear eye, there is writing above her, superimposed atop a rainbow, which is the only color in the drawing, the handwriting says "A new story never told before written in letters of DNA, made from nothing but milk and love", the word love is in a comic book speech bubble from the woman, as the camera pans down we see that she has a bare chest and milk is streaming from her nipples and down her empty belly, which she is clutching the sagging skin from, video fades to black, same image is shown again, this time zoomed out, and the words and rainbow are animated, video fades to black, image of just the woman reappears, zoomed in, the sketch has been cleaned up and the drawing is cleaner, the beginning of the milk animation starts, and it streams down her breasts onto her belly, video fades to black, now it's a zoomed out shot of the artist working on the animation on an ipad, the animation runs a few times, and then the artist adjusts the frame rate and the animation slows down, video fades to black, the final cleaned up, zoomed out animation is now shown, the text appears as the milk flows, video fades out to a final slow zoomed in panning shot of the final still that fades out with the music.

Nikki Edwards, "Milk and Love," Winter 2022, digital video (Procreate), 2:28 minutes

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For this assignment we were to study the concepts of time, change, and movement. This is a self portrait following child loss. For the concept of change, I wanted to show the way my body changed following birth, and the emptiness of losing my son reflected in my empty belly. For time, I included a zoomed out shot of adjusting the frame rate to hasten and slow the flow of the milk, to reflect how time feels out of control during trauma and grief. For movement I wanted to try animating something, a process I was previously unfamiliar with. Video link: https://youtu.be/AHIpaHqWlxM

A silhouette with a woman filling the background.

Patricia Claus | “Backgrounds”

This is a colorful drawing with a very light watercolor color background, the main subject is a woman who is facing away but she's looking to the right so we see just her brilliant blue right eye and arching eyebrow through her raised arms, she's holding a large white negative space circle meant to represent a hula hoop, she's mostly inside the hoop, atop her head is a purple jellyfish with white polka dots, the jellyfish has long tentacles, two of the tentacles are orange and drape down over her sweater, the rest of the tentacles are white, some reach out and coil around the hoop frame, others coil around each other, where the tentacles overlap is only negative space, there are no overlapping lines, above the hoop are three windows framed with negative space white, the bottom of these frames follows the curve of the hoop, the sides run parallel to each other, and the tops of the frames are curved, in the leftmost frame tucked down in the left side of the frame are three mushrooms with purple caps with white polka dots, orange stems under the caps that come to a bulge point and turn yellow, the base of the mushroom uses the same negative space overlapping with the frame as the jellyfish tentacles in the hoop, in the center frame is another jellyfish with tentacles wrapped around it's frame as well as the frame to the right and the hoop below, the right most frame has three crystals tucked into the right side, the center crystal is a pale green, the other two are orange, there are bubbles randomly throughout each of the frames and the hoop, and crawling across the top of the hoop is a ladybug who's antennae also negative space intersect with the bottom of the center frame above it.

Nikki Edwards |”A Different Sort of Mermaid”