JeffJag.com Time-Lapse & Artwork

http://prints.jeffjag.com - JeffJag Prints
http://artblog.jeffjag.com - HOT MAY
http://jeffjag.com/live.php - Live Drawing - More below
https://soundcloud.com/jeff... - The soundtrack from the video

STORY
I started this drawing at my latest art show at the el Camino Community Tavern in Denver, CO in April 2013. It is a spontaneously created drawing. I took a box of prints, my kit of Copic Multiliner SP pens, and my Strathmore Multimedia 11"x14" vellum surface sketchpad and started drawing what began as a bunch of rounded square things, and eventually started resembling some kind of flower. I took pictures as I went and posted them on my Artblog. The drawing wasn't finished that night, only just started. I continued work on it another night and catalogued the process then as well. At that point I had spent roughly 2 or so hours on it.

On Monday, April 22nd, I had the night off so I decided to finish the drawing. I had just been experimenting with live-streaming from my laptop, which didn't work out very well. I decided to try mounting my iPhone on an old desk lamp with painter's tape (so it wouldn't leave a tape residue on my phone). This would also allow me to position the camera above the drawing for a better point of view on the action. Here's a photo of my setup. http://artblog.jeffjag.com/...

I sent out a Tweet from @JeffJag that I'd be live-streaming the rest of this drawing on UStream and my personal website http://jeffjag.com/live.php in a few hours. After I got started, I spent another 3 hours working on the drawing while a couple people tuned in to watch. That makes the total time spent on the drawing 5-6 hours.

UStream lets you download an FLV file of your broadcast after it's aired, but if you're familiar with video formats, there's not much you can do with an FLV file, as far as editing goes, if you don't have a program to convert it. In addition, 640x480 was the only size they made the file available to me, so this one is limited to SD quality, not the HD that I usually shoot my time-lapses. Through a couple searches and a bit of trial and error, I eventually re-encoded the file to an H.264 MP4 at a very high bit-rate then did some editing in Adobe Premiere. I cut out the boring parts, the parts where I take a break to get a new beer or to go to the bathroom, and the parts where my phone (the camera) comes loose from it's mount and falls toward the drawing. There are still a couple parts in the video where the camera starts slowly falling toward the drawing which I kept in because they don't look so bad, and it kind of looks like it's on purpose... ha. It's not.

Lastly, I took the edited file and converted it to individual frames, then color corrected, sharpened, added titles, psychedelic effects, sounds, my voice-over, and the watermark in After Effects.

The soundtrack was another experiment. Lately I've been creating my own audio soundtracks for my videos after my weird voice tracks had mixed results. I've been getting a lot stronger feedback on my synth soundtracks than my weird voice experiments. I'm using Adobe Audition to mix the files, which I create in Moog Animoog and Korg iElectribe on iOS. I sync the phone to my computer and copy the tracks over, one by one. It's tedious but I don't really have any musical experience (as you can probably tell) and so I'm kind of figuring it out as I go. I'm interested in eventually using more professionally produced tracks and would gladly give credit where it's due to anyone with a track that fits my time-lapses and is the proper length. If that's you, send me a message at jeffjag.art@gmail.com with a link to your work. Looking for more ambient synth sounds and moods that run 3-5 minutes. If in doubt, hedge toward 3min. If anyone reads this...

I'm happy with the way this drawing turned out and I'm excited to show you guys and gals what I've been up to lately. I've got more than 4 projects currently going which I would like to finish so subscribe and check back for new videos in the near future.