Animations

Here I am attatching the motion path to the rocket. Its time to make it fly!


After batch rendering the Animation, I looked at it through FCheck. Lots and lots of files to make such a small thing happen!

Heres some scenes from making the Robot Animation:



Selecting and Animating certain assets of the Robots body, such as arms, head, anntena.



Using the Graph editor to ensure the specific assets of the Character move correctly with the Animation. Setting the course for the Robot to walk on.

Ensuring rendering settings are correct!

Batch rendering, which took absolutely ages. Afterwards, the additional long task of saving as a TIFF format.

Concepts and final peice work

Hey folks

I am currently creating my final peice, which shall we say, is rather tedious. I have come across many different ideas over the past 4 weeks, finally bringing them together to hopefully create what I can see in my head.

The Artists I am taking insperation from are:

• Robert Mapplethorpe - for his ability to really grab the attention of the onlooking audience, through means of shock and disturbance. I came to the conclusion that this method is the strongest of all and provokes a serious reaction.
  
• Barbara Kruger - For her stab at the heart type word play, its amazing how upfront she can be even on a metaphoric level.
  
• Andy Warhol - For his unpolished, rough, vibrant style.
  You will notice in my images I am not going for perfection, far from it in fact. This art must represent my soul in some manner, and as it is corrupt as everything is on this planet, nothing should be perfect.

Heres a few images from things ive worked on:

This image came from when I was depicting myself in a more Cartoonish type manner. Ive been experimenting with the construction of lines on my face, which build up the anatomy to become recognisably me. I decided upon a photograph, which I had sketched (look in my previous post about self sketches) and kept working from it as I felt the angle of my face with the given expression gave a lot of heart about my character. Although somewhat cliche, observe how im surrounded by darkness, with the light being pinpointed on my face. This represents how ive felt vunerable in the past, how ive been put on the spot many times and how ive faced many other difficulties in life, such as epilepsy. The red stands for blood, where the shading would be. This shows how even though I am my own blood, I dont understand it. The use of the blue in my hair is saying, who really are we? Why are our visual identities as they are? Can you tell who I am from something else? This is just a mask of questioning such ethics.

This image represents how I am hidden inside myself, to find me you must get close to me first to see within. I wasnt actually finished with this image but for some reason I felt inclined not to work any further. The rough, messy finish also helping to portray this identity clash: the person people think I am, or expect I am, is what they expect from themselfs. I am constantly shrouded by ongoing perceptions of myself, just like every other human being. Therefore, do we truely know our identities? Its a very messy subject indeed. I for certain am not clear about who I am at all.

This image is truely taking a leaf out of Robert Mapplethorpes book, I aimed to shock my audience. In fact, theres clear insperation from Barbara Kruger as well via the text. Although on first glance, someone may think "Chris is suicidal!", thats not what the message is at all. Im trying to depict the image that to know yourself you must look inside, not be ashamed of who you are. Notice how the barrel of the gun aiming at my head symbolises how precious life is, how were only flesh and blood at the end of the day and we dont live forever. This is also shown through the blood around my eyes. I appear to be looking away from the Gun, almost ashamed, somewhat intimidated. Time is of the essance if we want to learn about ourselfs, so just as the image depicts you've got to dare yourself to look inside... Again this image isnt to be perfected, its still got rough edges which show how unless we actually bother to observe ourselfs properly we will never be complete.


This image was purely just playing around with metaphoric concepts to describe identity. I was going to recreate this image, but I felt it was somewhat weak and there wasnt much else I could do for it. The images meaning however is rather strong, purposfully inflicting horror and disturbance towards the onlooking audience. You will notice the text around my face is worded as if the alien is speaking to me. The text depicts the message of "who am I?", making my character appear lost and uncertain about my mortality. In a sense, the word Alien means unknown, therefore the whole image is simply a paradox of itself. The Alien, is actually me, on a quest to find oneself.

In my task to understand the structure of my face for my portrait, ive produced many sketches and a few paintings of myself. Ive used different styles to depict my image, from Charactures to two tone posteration. I felt I needed to do this because my final peice relies strongly on the lines that structure my face, so becoming familiar with them is important. Notice to capture the lines efficiently ive used a thick brush for the above painting.

AND HERE IT IS! Im working on my tedious, time consuming final peice.

It is built up of words used to describe me, which is also contrasted with my reactions to the opinions. I even put in random text from "of the moment" thinking, thus making this image feel far more alive and a part of me than any of the other concepts. It will have some colour to it when completed, with other text based layers following different themes to my questioning of identity.

Lighting scenes

This is the one point lighting (front) image showing the light from a single object hiting the subject, with colourisation from the light source.

This second image shows light behind the Character, creating a glow effect.



This third image shows the Character laying down in the sunlight, on the surface of Mars. Notice that due to the atmospheric conditions the lighting is tinged in Red.



This image shows the use of three point lighting. Notice the different tones of light hitting the subject.


This shot shows the Alien Character in an early morning lighting style.

Heres the lighting set to depict the atmosphere of a mid day setting. Its bright and somewhat happy in appearance.

In contrast to the previous lighting, heres the Character and his ship set in the dull, low light, blue tones of the night.

This image captures the Character in a tone that inflicts a "horror" style atmosphere.
Yup, its the blood red that does it...

Heres another render showing the lighting to depict a Sci Fi style enviroment. Very spooky!

Finally here is the Character in a "Fire"-esque style lighting. To give it extra warm I created more yellows fused with the red in the texture node.

The facebook test plus chosen essay question

One thing this unit has taught me is about how self perception can be such an influence on our identities. Even the smallest changes to our apperance, mannerisms or even personal interests can effect the way we are perceived by others, thus giving us "labels" and making people see us in a certain way. Our identities are constantly corrupted by this attitude towards one another, each day we meet different people, go to certain places and this as a result can effect the aura of who we are.

Id like to take this moment to breifly explain about a test I done to prove this theory. I decided while making portraits to change myself to depict different steriotypical images to gain a reaction from my peers. Just as planned it worked.

This image of myself depicts a dark, sinister somewhat evil energy. You will notice the tones of blue merged into the image, to help make the image "feel cold". The comments I got for this were of shock, people would say I "looked like a serial killer". How does this image make you feel?

I also posted this one up, which shows me following the visual steriotype of the emo trend. The long fringe covering one eye, the black and white colouring, my eye still blue to make the image more intense between the picture and the onlooker. To make this image come across more as my personal "identity" I even added my nickname to the picture. The reaction I got to this was most amusing, people would call me all sorts of derogatory terms, best freinds suddenly turning on me for conforming to another image thinking I was no longer the Chris they know and love.

Does this mean that to really observe someones true personal identity its better to be blind and socially unaware? I think so.

ESSAY QUESTION!!!

Well I was going to do my essay based on "What creates a strong emotional response in portraiture art and why does society affiliate such power so critically?"

I was told that this was not direct enough to the subject of portraiture Art, yet not wanting to conform to the typical identity question id like to somehow stick to this route.

Take it easy folks

Chris

More self analysis - do my hobbies help depict my identity?

Heres a bit of a random one, but I thought id post it up out of interest in relation to a previous blog about Artists portraying their identities through work and to help further show an inside to who I am. The video in this post will show my band playing a gig. A lot of people are quick to mention I dont appear the type to do the singing role in a heavy rock band, its as if certain things are expected from such a person. Therefore, does my role in my band help to further capture my energy? From a direct approach in observing my appearance, you could say im just using a mask to hide myself to perform my alter ego for the crowd watching. On another hand you could argue that this form of music helps to push out a side of me which holds many closed doors, secrets, frustrations and aspirations. As a result this could also further show how as individuals we are corrupted by others views on how life should be, therefore even in the face of truth having to put forward a safety mask to cover our identities.

Concealment of identity - is it possible?

I have been observing the faces of different people in the media spotlight and came to the conclusion of an interesting range of ways they depict their identities.
While most Celebrities like to be open, perhaps too open, about their personal lives, many will seek solitude in some way or another.

You could argue that some well known faces are just masks for who they really are; you never really understand the character underneath. Whether this is done on purpose or not depends on the person, but I feel it is important that someone under the spotlight should be able to have some form of privacy. Interestingly enough most people will depict a persons identity through the characters portrayed through an actors work, or how a musician provokes his audience through their work.

I have found however a minority of artists who choose to keep themselves discreet for the camera, not allowing people to catch a glimpse of the person on the inside. The mask is shrouded over them to protect their identity and push out their message further.

The one act that really stands out to me is a band named Slipknot. All of the members of this band are reformed into somewhat scary, illusive characters by the addition of wearing masks.


http://folk.uio.no/perbenn/Slipknot%20Masks.JPG

This arouses a strong statement of how they just want their music to be heard, they want to shock, to provide some form of power through fear, how they will not be commercialised via their personal identity. In many respects they are trying to say they are your every day average person who passes you on the street, you arent suppost to know of their true identities. The question is though, this alter ego they elaborate on - does it show something deeper about themselves as individuals?

I think its somewhat retorical to ask, there is no direct answer, its down to opinion, which makes these characters very interesting indeed.

Photoshop class - merging images

In our last Photoshop class we learnt how to merge images together to make one composite.
Somewhat a simple task but here was my result: