Emlen (Cape May Travel Series)

Emlen (Cape May Travel Series)

Emlen Psyhick Estate is located at 1048 Washington St in Hartford CT.


  • Music Video Created by Katherine Barnett (beantikblends)
  • Song in video: Loyalty Freak Music by High Technologic Beat Explosion

The moment when I stopped working on the design I instantly thought that’s Emlen…

I’m searching for those sweet moments when color becomes electrifying. It’s like an electric current of pure bliss. Certain designs, I have that moment and then seconds later sometimes I feel compelled to keep blending trying to find something that’s safe. With these albums designs, I always wanted the perfect balance. I want my designs to be colorful and strange but yet you can still see the main subject. I struggle with this concept. My objective is to create something that perhaps you could see in a distant reality. I know I said it before but Cape May had a wonderland vibe to me. I want to create something similar for this album. I would like to have a theme for every album. I want to definitely focus on blue, white, brown, and red.

I was working on the design for 3 days. I was stumped until close to the end. I wanted my abstract drawing to stand out but I didn’t want the estate to disappear. The balance I talked about… I started to notice that something felt missing so I went back and played around with the abstract drawing more until I found that beautiful sweet spot. It’s not exactly how I thought it would be in the beginning but I still love it. I always love the journey despite the challenges. To reach beautiful ending moments feels so wonderful to me.

The music video… I really struggled with this one. I had to recreate the animations three times. I was completely off sync the first time. The next two times I was either off sync with the beats or trying to fix the animations so it wouldn’t look too repetitious. The fourth time, I created a different sequence but I found an error when rendering. I tried fixing the error and it was still there the next time I rendered it. In Sony Vegas, I see no error. The video stalled for about 2 seconds. Found out after rendering for the 6th time that the error was in a different location. I was going by the video but in Vegas the error was seconds later. See… these are the problems that make creating videos more difficult than it has to be. I can’t even tell you how long it took me to finish this video. It took me several days just to get to this version you see. Overall, it took me a week to finish the design and the music video. I’m not 100 percent happy but I do think the video looks good. I really want to play around with effects. The beats help spice up the animations. It’s always a challenge. I added footage of me creating the abstract drawing in the beginning. I’m not going to create digital drawings permanently. I do think it’s nice to see the drawing made in the video. I like how it looks in the video but I love using a pencil. It’s relaxing.

I visited the Estate while heading back to my car to drive back home. I started walking from Washington Street Mall to Emlen Physick Estate. The estate kind of reminded me of the Mark Twain house in Hartford but more whimsical in color. To me, the area was very calming and relaxing. I was taking lots of pictures. Unfortunately, the camera I was using is not so good. It may be an oversight on my end but I do believe I have all the right settings in place. My phone took better photos. The photos are ok but there’s a blur at each corner on every photo. The blur doesn’t really matter when designing but I would like to post photos online. I’ll figure it out before my next trip.

I mentioned that I was planning a trip to Chicago in March. I am postponing the trip until hopefully the end of April. I think it will be a better time for me. The weather should be nicer as well. I really don’t want to travel in a snowstorm again. I love my time in Hartford I don’t want to go through that again while traveling to Chicago. I am hoping to finish every design for the Cape May album before March.

 

Katherine