Meet the Artist Series

 

MEET THE ARTIST - Joshua Cordero
Meet the Artist is a creative initiative by NEIU Art + Design Community website that seeks to promote current art + design students' work and their stories. 
Our main goal is to provide an online space for each to share their experience as they pursue a degree in Art/Design.  

We hope the stories shared by students inspire current artists and future art generations.

Our first participant is Joshua Cordero, a Graphic Design student based in Chicago. His Graphic Design works are narrative based, often showing both the depressing and happy sides of life. Some of his hobbies include photography, illustration, and filmmaking. 

1.- When did you first become interested in art? 
I first become interested in art when I was in highschool. I was looking at artists like Sophie Chan, Alex Ahad, Mariel Cartwright, and Mark Crilley works online. I had a huge admiration for them that inspired me to pick up a pencil and draw.

2.- What helps you feel inspired or come up with new ideas?
Watching movies, playing video games, or having conversations with people. I try to get something out of them that will make me go to my sketchbook or notebook and start brainstorming.

3.- What is your favorite medium and why did you choose it?

Digital. It's easier to draw digitally than on paper. I can play with scales, easily find mistakes, not worry about any smudges, and I can make as many redos without wasting any paper. 

4.- What does your work aim to say?  

That is something I haven't figured out yet. My main goal isn't what I want to say, but what I want people to feel. I want to play with people's emotions through my work. 

5.- What do you like and dislike about your work? 

What I like about my work is discovering new techniques that I can do in Adobe softwares like Photoshop and After Effects.
What I dislike about my work? When drawing, I hate how I tend to make a mistake on an anatomy of a person's body or face. For my old graphic design works, I didn't like how mostly all of them didn't have any meaning to them. I had a difficult time explaining what my intentions were for those works. 

Josh's Creative Space 

Joshua was kind enough to share a video he had created. We asked him to share the idea/process behind the video.
Could you share what the video you shared with us is about or what your intention was? How did you came up with the idea, how did you film/edit. Do you plan on making more in the future?

How I went with the story of the video: you find this old 80's computer in an abandoned room filled with mysterious vintage stuff. Out of curiosity, you pressed the computer and it started loading. Suddenly, texts start popping up and a crackling robotic voice is coming out of the computer. Trying to give a warning or message about life. My intention was to make something subliminal and retro.

I just really like Nier Automata, I consider the game a masterpiece. I always want to make something related to that game. This video was for a class project of animating your favorite quote. Mine was Nier Automata opening monologue because of how deep and relatable it was.

How I came up with the look of it: Last year, I went to an orchestra concert for the game. Whenever a song ends, a projection comes up looking like a computer screen. Whenever the character talks, text starts popping out of the screen. I wanted to reference that. As for the voice, I always wanted to recreate the computer voice from Wargames. It's so memorable. The first vocaloid that was made in 1961 was also the inspiration, for its creepiness. Sadly, my attempt to recreate the computer's voice has failed.

Everything was animated in After Effect. The voice is edited in adobe audition, I download the actress voice and try to modify it to sound like a 80's robot. I edit in Adobe Premiere, syncing in the audio with the animation.

I do plan on making more in the future, but I would rather have someone else do it if I am going to make a short film about a talking computer. Because he/she will do a better job at recreating the retro computer voice.

Written by: Jackie Sanchez