Drawing 18/6

Composition using chalk pastels and the prompt of Cybernetic Imposter. As a group we came up with a cursed furby pretending to be a baby bird in a nest. Heres hoping we can finish colouring this by the end of next class.

My concept sketches

Current progress

3D Animation 19/6

All Uvs in the library are now unwrapped and optimised. I need to separate out the roof/walls/floor into separate lamberts for substance painter so that I can texture them individually. I also need to go back in and rework the armchair unwrap as currently there is a lot of tearing around the upper arm/neck area of the uv shell. Painted Steel with a little rust and coloured white seems to be close to what I want for the bookshelf texture.

3D Animation 17/6

Today was focusing on my environment, I needed a break from the weight painting to be honest and its been a while since I have sunk any kind of decent time into this part of my project. I need to UV unwrap and texture everything in the library, and I really need to figure out some more details for my arena so its not all just the same solid object over and over in each shot.

3D Animation 15/6

More weight painting! Trying to get my characters chest to not completely fold in on itself is a mission. Its the last part to do and then I can move onto the jump/walk cycle finally. I need to stop ignoring the environment as well and get at least one of them ready to go for fridays lighting tutorial.

Hopefully with some more tinkering I can get it resembling something like a chest should when she is curled up. Its a lot of effort for only one shot but oh well.

Research 15/6

Dissertation

Project Framing and Resolution

• Title & Question:
• Name your project. 
• Colour My World
• Question driving your project – has it evolved over the semester? 
• "Can I portray contrasting emotions, with a single image recoloured in rainbow hues to create a set of 3 diptychs." 

• Aims, Objectives & Context:
• What do you want to find out? What do you want to discover? What did you want to create? 
• What is colour theory, how to use colour theory correctly, a realistic background image.

• What skills, techniques, methodologies did you want to utilise? 
• photography, drawing, colour grading, compositing

• Does your project fit within a larger plan/project? Describe where it fits. Does your project serve to push your development as a practitioner? Describe how this is important to your professional development. 
• This project was designed with some feedback from last year in regards to researching colour and colour theory to improve my work. This project served as practice in using contrast and tones for my art. Colouring my art correctly is something I struggle with and so it is the focus of what I want to improve so I can work in the professional industry successfully.

• Conclusion/Findings:
• What was the outcome of your project? Consider both the final product and how successfully you’ve resolved your question. Consider what you’ve learnt through this project. 
• I achieved the 3 diptychs however they morphed into mostly composite as opposed to the matte painting I initially proposed. Each image does give off a different feel to the landscape however I am not certain that it is moods that they portray as such. 

This is where your blogs are critically important. If you’ve been using your blog as a repository for your thoughts, progress, inspiration and research through the semester, then documenting your body of work will be a matter of sifting through your blog and pulling together the threads that make up your project. Eliminate extraneous leads and false starts – unless there is something there that you’ve used to push your project forward.

Body of Work

• Context of Project:
• Where does your project fit within the world of creative endeavour? 
• entry level experiment with colour/hue/contrast

• Who and what are the major inspirations for your work? 

• Studio Ghibli
• Disney
• John K from Hanna Barbera 
• Herman Tulleken
• Makato Shinkai
• Martin Jario
• Nagi Deepak

• Who has written and researched about the context of your project? 

• Jeevamalar Kumarasamy/Maithreyi Subramaniam/Preesha Devi Apayee. 
• Gudrun Wolfschidt. 
• Karen Schloss/Stephen Palmer

• Remember to include 6 primary and 4 secondary sources.
• Planning:
• Outline the drafts, planning, preparation, organisation, tutorials, etc
• Methodology and Analysis:
• Practice based research methodology (immersive, heuristic, etc) used. heuristic/immersive
• Analyse and self-assess your project – what criteria do you measure your own progress?

Screen Arts 15/6

Masters of Surrealism - Jan Svankmajer and Terry Gilliam

Jan Svenkmajer

Jan Svankmajer was born 1934 in Czechoslovakia. He is a puppeteer, animator, surrealist artist and filmmaker known for reinventing fairy tales with a dark twist, and 3D avant garde stop motion paired with live action animation. He is known for prioritising visual elements over plot and narrative and his dark fantasy themes.

He spent 5 yrs at the School of Applied Arts in Prague between 1950-1954 then shifted to the puppet dept of the Academy of Performing Arts. His first short film is about 2 magicians who participate in a competition of skill called The Last Trick(1964).

His first feature film was Alice(1988), a dark adaptation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. His most famous work is Faust(1993) which is set in a foreboding puppet theatre and involves giant puppets and clay figures in stop motion. Little Otick(2000) is a dark comedy about a wooden baby that comes to life and devours his parents, heavy inspiration from fairy tales for his plots.

Although he has won more than 30 awards and honours in international film festivals, he remains fairly unknown. His films were restricted from a wider audience after 1968 due to the Soviet Union invading Czechoslovakia and deciding his work is unsuitable for what they wanted. He became more well known once the Soviet Union fell.

Terry Gilliam

Best known for his work in Monty Python - Flying Circus animated sequences and directed The Holy Grail. He also directed The Imagination Trilogy(Time Bandits 1981, Brazil 1985, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen 1989), The Fisher King(1991), Twelve Monkeys(1995), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas(1998), The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus(2009) and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote(2018).

He is known for his surrealist imagery, dark satire, dystopian scenarios and battling with studios over his distinctive artistic vision. He was born in Minnesota and moved to England in 1967. 1969-1974 was when he worked on the Flying Circus shorts.

He co-directed The Holy Grail with Terry Jones but there was a lot of conflict between the two directors due to their conflicting styles. Gilliams focus on visuals and perfectionism hampered shoots frequently. 

Brazil received rave reviews in Europe, but screened badly in USA so Universal Studios made them cut it down to a 93 min rom-com. This film got Gilliam is first Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

The Adventures of Baron Muchausen bombed at the box office, only taking $8 million despite winning major awards and the budget hitting $47 million after blowing the initial sum of $23.5 million. The Fisher King and 12 Monkeys were both massive critical and box office hits, but Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas wasn't.

How to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ7JTB2CaN0

Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s Monster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q2WPneqhhs

Monty Python’s Personal Best: Terry Gilliam

Netflix, 55 minutes

Research 12/6

Exhibition Day!

As team leader for the install team, it was my job to talk to the other team leaders, and ensure my group fulfilled its required tasks on time. Due to our location challenges, there was less work for install than a physical installation would require. This proved  a complication for me as I had to try and provide jobs for 6 people, specifically when the two websites we were using only allowed single user editing. Overall I knew this project was going to require only a couple of individuals doing the grunt work, but having the full group as sounding boards and idea men was great for progress. I do wish I could have given the others more work to do, but there really wasn't much else without that collaborative editing feature. 

I ended up organising the virtual gallery with final placement input from the rest of the team. As part of this install, we added the artist statement to a interactive link on each image so that we had enough space for our images. This was due to the decision to follow a template gallery to ensure a higher quality atmosphere for our viewers. 

I spent a lot of time uploading the digital art images and adding in the formatted statements, however Artsteps is a rather finicky website to use and there were several errors along the way which meant I had to remove and replace images several times. Overall I didn't have to spend too many hours working on that, but it was enough that when Artsteps decided to crash the day before we were due to go live I was a little disappointed. Due to the potential that Artsteps would not be back up in time, Emma and myself made the decision to move the images onto a separate page on the exhibition website. Because Emma had spent so many hours formatting the website, I nominated myself to create the image gallery and got Emma to double check I hadn't broken anything. This also enabled us to pick up issues that weren't previously noted, and I fixed them as we corresponded.

Thankfully, this morning Artsteps was back up and running and because of the work I had previously done, all I needed was to add a couple more submissions and place the final art pieces on the wall. Once this was done, I set up the guided tour, added a couple of logos and our 3D gallery was now part of our exhibition again. This required me to go back into wix and update the website back to the original summary that mentioned the 3D atmosphere, and add in the 3D link. This provided yet another opportunity to spot and fix another error, and instigate a suggestion that Traci had made in regards to linking the artist statements to the gallery pages.