Roxana's Portfolio
Roxana Neacșu
I am a Graphic Design student, currently enrolled in ArtEZ University of the Arts. I am passionate about storytelling, stop-motion animation and set design.
@rox.m.design
roxana.neacsumi@gmail.com
Roxana's Portfolio
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This project started from my fascination with Stop Motion Animation (more specifically, set design and building). This house is inspired by Harry Low’s mansion, an infamous rum-runner of the 1920s. This age is well known in the US as the Jazz Age, or the Roaring Twenties. It was also the period of the Great Prohibition, when the production, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages was outlawed. This is a place with a rich history, having exchanged a few owners since its inauguration. I decided to take it as my starting point and build it in a way that is quite timeless, so that it could potentially be used in telling a diverse set of stories, set at different points in time.
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This stop-motion animation video is a reenactment of Haruki Murakami's short story, "The Ice Man", from the book containing his short story collection titled "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman". I used the text of the story in order to create the environments, and generated the randomized spacing within certain pre-established ranges between words and rows using basil.js, which created ideal backdrops for my characters. In the story, an unnamed woman meets the Ice Man, a strange individual, followed by frost. She falls in love with him, but her family scorns her for it. They decide to continue their relationship, she becomes pregnant and they take a trip to the South Pole. The second part of the story represents their emotional separation, as he becomes more and more immersed into the background, into the iciness of the South Pole, and she is left alone to wait for the birth of her child. I used the song "Ladyfingers" by Herb Alpert. As the story reaches its final stage, the song begins again, but it's slowed down and sounds a bit eerie, in order to illustrate the change in the Ice Man's attitide towards the woman and his coldness, once they reach the South Pole, his suppsoed homeland.
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This project was created in collaboration with Balint Korka and Jonas Riemersma. It is an experimental video story, making use of still images, that tells a story of loss, grief and acceptance. We translate the theory of 'Five Stages of Grief' through our main character, Sarah, who is processing the loss of her child. She goes to a temple and pleads with the Gods to return her loved one back to her. She is rejected, therefore must take the long road towards acceptance.
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This is a project focused on plastic trash found in the marine environment. Our current era, the Anthropocene, is about to be marked by the plastic-filled sedimentary layer, which is being deposited on our planet’s surface at an alrming rate. The plastiglomerate is a new type of rock that emerged due to the pollution in the marine environment. It is a combination of molten plastic litter, organic or inorganic composite materials, such as sand and seashells. My research consists of a speculative solution to this. I imagine a future where we would take the already existing material, the plastiglomerate, and use it in our infrastructure. We would use it as a building material, slowly cleaning up the sea and ocean seabeds, while eliminating all kinds of future plstic pollution. It would not only serve as a useful material, but also as a monument of humanity’s long and damaging history with the excessive use of plastics.
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This video is inspired by the obsession with beauty standards, following them until there is no individuality anymore, until everything starts to look mass-produced. It is a glimpse into a society obsessed with reaching perfection. I created the doll heads in order to showcase the tendency towards achieving the same impossible standards of perfection.
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This is a short story of a late night conversation under the moon, contemplating the vastness of the universe, created with Balint Korka. It is a reenactment of a memory we once shared. The project's aim is to represent this story in simple ways, vague human shapes, a light bulb that resembles the moon and the illusion of a playground swing. We investigated the simplest ways to convey the feeling of the experience, creating a cozy, warm atmosphere, in the midst of an empty, dark space.
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This is a book based on Star Trek. I drew information from a database that contains all instances of the characters of Star Trek: Next Generation speaking to the Enterprise’s (the story’s main ship) computer, whether it be giving orders, or asking for information. The pages’ design is directly inspired from the computer screen in the show. I then Riso printed the book, to give it a bright, raw kind of aspect. I then drew from the database to insert the information of each character speaking. This creates a vague kind of storyline, where the reader can piece together a story that flows nicely.
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This is a short story I wrote and illustrated. It explores different thoughts, ideas and concepts related to invisibility. The story draws parallels between the reality of a mundane, repetitive corporate job, and the implications of invisibility with its many different sides and facets. I printed the final publication with black ink on black paper in order to better portray the invisibility, overlooked aspect of the story. The book is thin, simply bound, easy to glance over. But, if you look closer, there's an entire world residing in there.
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This project was created in collaboration with Joelle de Jong, Leonie Wessling and Irem Adiguzel. It is a redesign of "Blind, Willow, Sleeping Woman", a book written by haruki Murakami, which contains 24 short stories. We created a style for each story, in terms of dreaminess. As we flip towards the center of the book, the stories become increasingly surreal. Then they slowly get more grounded in reality, as we reach the end. The paper we chose is thin, floppy, as we decided that all aspects of the book should reflect the surreal, dreamy quality most of the stories contain.
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This is a conceptual issue of the OASE Journal for architecture, making use of several articles found on the publication’s website. I tried to encapsulate the text in the style of the subject matter, architecture. I created a typographic solution for this, in which the first article on the page is tilted, while the second one is always solid, like a foundation.
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This is a project created in collaboration with Joelle de Jong, Balint Korka and Lucas Zuidema. It is an experimental place for free discussion about art, and lives surrounding it. As a group, we decided to create a rotating system, in which we all get to try out and improve our skills in being hosts, or interviewers, and editors. We create storylines, completing a puzzle of audio only experience. Our newest season has the theme of "Home". Each team member investigates an aspect of this, in search of the true meaning a home. "What is home?" This is a question that we ask ourselves, as we try to understand the tangled web of information. Is it a feeling, a place, a warm meal, is it related to people, family, close relationships? Maybe it is all of those things. Maybe it differs from person to person. There is much to explore regarding this topic, which is why we decided to step outside the bounds of ArtEZ and expand our horizons.
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This project's aim was to create a tense atmosphere by exaggerating 3 base sounds: feet pacing the room, pen clicking and tapping the keyboard. As the tense atmosphere intensifies, so do the sounds, rising to a crescendo of madness. Everything becomes amplified, distorted. I gave the participants a list of instructions. They were not allowed to step outside the confined space. They couldn't speak, or look into each other's eyes. The range of feelings expressed go from a general state of discomfort and tension to a sense of connection, relaxation, and even playfulness in some occasions. The absence of any direct communication led to a complex social dynamic, being connected, and yet isolated from each other. They were following each other’s movements and actions subtly, but, being unable to speak or imitate their peers, they had to find their own ways to express themselves. The experiment resulted in 3 very different group dynamics, in which each one found different ways to interact with the world within the confined space and with each other.
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This video was a commission for SneakerKit. I worked alongside Joelle de Jong, Clara Chirila-Rus and Ana-Maria Cojocaru to create a promo video for this sneaker company. As the most important aspect of the services the company offers is the fact that people who order get a kit with materials and their chosen patterns and build their own sneakers at home, we decided to showcase the "DIY" aspect very clearly in the video, conveying how easy it is to build, upon following the instruction manual.
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This is a commission I worked on for Low Gear Special, an overlanding event, during which participants must prepare a car that they customize and navigate to GPS coordinates that lead to different areas. It is a car adventure, through mountains and rough terrain, that will have its first event commencing in August, in Romania. The road will take participants through the Republic of Moldova. I designed the special logo for the first edition as well, named "Moldova Special". I used traditional patterns and colors, according to traditional wear and decoration.