Artist Influence- Alberto Giacometti

 

 For this project I have the brief to imagine, create and design a city, for a film/game, whilst working from the artistic influence of Alberto Giacometti. Giacometti was a Swiss artist born in 1901 and died in 1966 and was always interested in art as his family were. Also his two brothers also became artists. I am very glad I got an artist to work with for this project, and happy that it's someone who specialises in sculpture. To have an artist that works in 3D is an advantage for creating a 3D city scape. I also really like the style of work that Giacometti works in, however I do like working in colour, but maybe I can incorporate a colour palette

into the city.

 

Giacometti works a lot with bronze sculptures, and he is best known for his studies of the human anatomy, which he carries out in a very distinct style. His studies of people are thin, lanky, stick-like figures.

 

 

I hope to portray Giacometti's iconic style through my city, but I do want to create something truly individual and unique in my work, that has Giacometti's influence visible in it. I don't want to design a city that's going to look like something out of a Tim Burton movie. It's way too overdone, and the last thing I want to do is to fall into the trap of recreating something that's already done. I want to create something new and unseen.     

Pencil Character Is Coming

This may be late but it's my pencil character in development. Though it's getting a little difficult because I'm still having trouble with the offset option. When I select the word 'offset' and hold the middle mouse button and drag, the numbers change but there's no visible difference on the model. I can't work out why it isn't working and I checked the tutorial video repeatedly.

Anastasia Crit Presentation

Anastasia

Anastasia Final Drawing

Also done in multiple layers, this is my interior shot for Anastasia. I've created a large bathing hall that is lit by water- filled globes with jellyfish floating in them. I did this because I was looking at things that are beautiful but deadly, as it corresponds with my theme of Anastasia as being a city of desires that pulls people in and swallows them whole. She uses the desires of a person to overtake their minds and claims their souls. In this shot I have depicted the women bathing that was in the original text from Calvino.  

I Have a Plan

This is a rough sketch of the final Anastasia sketch of indoors. May look strange now but will be good for when it's finished.

Anastasia Final Complete

This is the establishing shot of the city, showing it's location in the surrounding environment. I've set Anastasia in a desert, so I felt that colour was particularly important for this image. Also I focused less on detail and more on the shapes and shades of the picture. I wanted the atmosphere to come out more from the image than detail. 

Anastasia Final Complete

This is my street shot of Anastasia. It has taken me around five hours to complete, which I fell may have been too long to do. I also feel that I have gone slightly overboard with the image, as I spent an awful lot of time on detail. Each part was done in layers on top of each other, which became very confusing to keep track of. Keep scrolling.


Layer1- Plain background



Layer 2- Background colour



Layer 3- Background detail



Layer 4- Background light and dark



Layer 5- Boat colour



Layer 6- Boat detail



Layer 7- Boat light and dark



Layer 8- Foreground colour



Layer 9- Foreground detail



Layer 10- Foreground light and dark



Then I went to the first three layers (background) and blurred them to give a more cinematic feel and make the image become more immersive 



Finished! 

Calling it a Day- Anastasia Street View Still Unfinished

I'm nearly there with this one but it' getting late, my back hurts, my eyes are falling out, I think I'll just leave it to tomorrow to panic.   

Me

Anastasia Final- Street Background

This is the background to one of my final images, which is why it is so devoid of detail. This comes from the black and white plan I drew out earlier today. Now to add the foreground that will be in greater detail, then I can go home and die a little inside.

Experimental Sketches of Anastasia

These were done last week and I've posted them late. But I feel it's important to show my original ideas here. Though they are very different to what my finals are looking now, they did lead me to my final images now.

Old Life Drawings

These were done over last summer at Loncon 3, sci-fi convention. There I did a life drawing session where the model was dressed in her own costumes.

Octopus creature costume

Killer clown bride costume

Anastasia Street View Plan

I feel that this shot will work for my street view of Anastasia. It has been taking a while finding the right perspective to draw the street from but I fell that this is the most immersive. This is only a rough sketch to help me plan out for the final.

The Streets of Anastasia- Thumbnails

I have a clear picture of what Anastasia's streets will look like, I'm just experimenting with creating a perspective to draw. So here I'm trying out different angles to see what works best. I'm trying to get the shot of the street with the giant statue clearly visible in the background, though I'm having trouble trying to get the buildings look really tall. I will draw on paper plan out the image then do it again digitally.

Anastasia Nightlife Digital Drawing

I found it very difficult to depict Anastasia in a drawing. I still do, and find it hard to simply draw down what a street in Anastasia would look like. But now I have a theme that I got from one of my thumbnails. This sketch of Anastasia is based on Las Vagas and Amsterdam, and the style has become more modernized because of it. My style of working can be very fantastical which is what I don't want for Anastasia as it may cause it to look too vague. Drawing this was difficult and took me around two and a half hours to do. So I will practice with pen on paper so I can partly memorize how I'll draw it digitally again. I think I will try this sketch again, as it's a bit of a mess.

 

Anastasia Digital Drawing Exterior

I thought mainly about the colour scheme of this sketch, as I wanted to get the strong hot atmosphere that a desert has. I was also careful with lighting and made sure the shadows faced the same direction. The design on the mountains in where Anastasia sits in deliberate. I made it so that the city is situated in between two mountains and have fours others behind it. By doing this I tried to make the mountains look like the body of a woman who is lying with her legs spread open, and Anastasia sits between them. I did this because I feel that the city plays on the desires of men and has a theme of beautiful women.

Anastasia Exterior Shot Development

I chose the thumbnails I liked most from my pencil sketches and developed them further into more detail drawings. I decided to go for Anastasia being situated in a desert, as she will draw you in away from the harsh environment. Also deserts have been known to create an environment in which people suffer from delusions and see something that's not there. It plays on their desires and shows them what they want most. My interpretation of Anastasia is to hold to that characteristic.

Anastasia Pencil Thumbnails

I decided to experiment with more ideas for Anastasia so I did ten thumbnails per final piece so I could have a clearer idea of what I want in this city. These sketches were done in pencil but they hardly showed up when scanned in, so I edited them on Photoshop.

Egg Cup on Maya Finished

This is very late and I am currently catching up with the Maya tutorials, but here it is.

Anastasia Sketch

I really need to plan out my city before I do anything more and I need to work further more on architecture. Also need to develop my colour palette for Anastasia.

King Kong- Film Review

King Kong is in my opinion the most widely recognized motion picture of all time. The scenes and imagery of this film is massively iconic, as the depiction of a giant ape in New York is shown over and over through out history. I had never seen the original King Kong before now, yet I did have some expectations and ideas of what was in this film. And I can safely say that I was very surprised by the amount of gore and horror in the film. I always assumed it could only be so violent because of the time it was made in, but it very explicit in that sense. People were crushed, burned and eaten alive, a dinosaur had it's head split in two, another dinosaur was repeatedly shot to death and a giant gorilla was gunned off a sky scraper. This film terrified people of the time of its release and I fully understand why.

I really liked the use of stop-motion animation for this film because of how much effort must have gone into creating each animatronic. I thought it must have been particularly difficult with creating the dinosaurs as there had never been an attempt to animate dinosaurs in a moving picture before King Kong. This must have been a daring task to take on for a film crew of this era.

Overall I found King Kong to be an exciting adventure movie with airplanes and dinosaurs thrown in. It stands out boldly as the first adventure thriller that took on a massive brief to create the most memorable film of all time.          

Anastasia Sketch

I drew this in pen on paper and it looked a lot better than this to be honest. I haven't really focused on the city so much apart from basing the buildings on the shape of a jellyfish. The idea came from Phil to look at things that are beautiful but deadly. I will look more into the architecture again, I'm still unsure of what I definitely want yet. Though I'm not happy with this drawing, and I need to practice more on Photoshop.

Very Stuck on Maya- NEED HELP!

I've been doing the egg cup tutorial (late, I know) and I having trouble with this part. I've been told to select the offset button and drag so the numbers would change and create a rim to hollow out the cup, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything. The picture below is what I'm stuck with. :(

Any ideas?