For my transformative portrait, I wanted to focus on my niece, Emma. She loves all things princess and is absolutely obsessed with my mom's flower garden. My whole family loves visiting my mom's house throughout the year simply to admire the flowers and sometimes, when she's in a surplus, she lets us pick as many flowers as we want. My niece has a very outgoing and energetic personality and I wanted to focus on that for this project. I placed her in a mystical garden and had her "running' through it. I also added images of flowers she's picked from my mom's house all around her, some in a dynamic motion to symbolize her personality and some in a more static motion but growing nonetheless, to show me watching her grow up, but I decided not to make some move to symbolize how no matter how much she grows up, I will still always see her as that little 4-year-old who loves to play princess. I also played around with creating "glitter" or "shimmer" effects to push the narrative of a whimsical garden.
Liz Garcia’s Transformative Portrait depicts a young child dressed as a princess, sliding down a stone path lined with vibrantly green colored trees. Pink flowers float and spin across the screen.
ReplyDeleteThis video gives off a whimsical, fantasy vibe like an excerpt from a children’s story book. The child’s pose and expression adds a playful feeling to the image, as she looks very excited about her dress. Many little girls see princesses in different forms of media as a principal fantasy role and imagine themselves in those roles, wearing the sparkly dresses and having magical adventures, and when I see this image I get that nostalgia of living in that fantasy and playing pretend.
I believe this work is transformative in that it places the princess character into a fitting setting, but I find myself wishing more had been done with the background to heighten the fantasy. Perhaps adding a castle far in the background or having some fairies flitting about or a unicorn hanging out in the background. Really push that “little girl’s fantasy” imagery.
I think more could have been done with the motion. Perhaps adding more variation or softness to the movement of the flowers. Maybe having them wave and float about instead of spin. The speed of them compared to the speed that the princess is moving at creates confusion as to where the focal point is meant to be. Keeping them smaller would also help to keep them from distracting from the primary subject. At the risk of dating myself, the sparkling in the background gives the image a 2000’s internet “Blingee” vibe (Feel free to Google that). I don’t dislike the sparkles, I just think you either need different colored sparkles, or to go way harder on the sparkles, cause I couldn’t even see them until I full screened the video. Perhaps making the clip longer and having the princess leave a trail of sparkles behind her using masking or a track matte behind her would help draw attention back to her and add more whimsy.
I mentioned earlier in a previous paragraph about little girls aspiring to be princesses and emulating princesses they see in children’s media, and just wanted to make sure that was highlighted here. I think that imagination and the ability to fantasize is an important thing not just for children but for humanity as a whole. Imagination and the ability to express ourselves is part of what makes us human and what makes individual people unique, and many of us have that beaten out of us by our peers or the world at large as we age. I see this image as a celebration of the innocence of childhood imagination.
Overall, I really enjoy the concept of this imagery, and I think the princess picture is very cute. I think that this image is very nostalgic and depicts a whimsical depiction of childhood imagination and playing pretend. I would alter the motion to create more focus on the princess, as the current motion is very short and distracts from the star of the image.