With essays and reports completed for semester 2, it is on with the production of work for semester 3. I have re-grouped after my assessment and hope to continue work on the sculpture piece, adding textures from electron miscroscope images using UV mapping, adding a camera to journey through and around the scene, animate some more of the components, and redesign the composition. I also hope to revisit the Arabadopsis project that I started at the beginning of semester 2. Plenty to get on with in the next few months.
This blog will document progress through the year on my Masters in Animation and Visualisation at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design
After reviewing my latest creation with Paul, I was pointed in the direction of Jean Tinguely (1925-1991), who was one of the most radical, inventive and subversive sculptors of the mid twentieth-century. A founding member of the Nouveau Réalistes, his work was playful, ironic and often anarchic. In the early 1950s he created kinetic sculptures that included geometric shapes painted in bright primary colours. Below are some examples.
His wife Niki de Saint Phalle was also a sculptor who created some very interesting works (see below). I like her use of colour and texture, and that people can interact with the sculptures.
This week I entered the world of coding……It wasn’t as bad as I thought and I managed to write some expressions to rotate the components of the sculpture I have been working on, in opposite directions and at varying speeds. Although this still needs further work in terms of animation and composition the result of the coding can be seen in the following film.
This is the film I want to work on in the near future for my Masters project and a camera will be added to move through and around the space.
Having just attended a talk by Prof. Martin Boyce, I enjoyed his take on urban landscapes and how nature works in an urban space. His trees constructed from fluorescent light strips caught my attention and make up part of the landscape. The sculpture I am working on has a tree like quality.
I have been inspired by contemporary artist Jim Pattison, who is a fine artist working at the interface between science and art. Here he can be seen talking about his work with scientist turned artist Professor Brian Robertson .
Jim has advised me on some aspects of the cube animation, as he created the original visuals for Prof. MacDonalds model (see previous blog posts).
Today I have been adding colour and materials to the various components of the new motion graphic. I have been playing around with mia materials preset menu, which includes amongst other things; matte plastic, chrome, glass and then also adding 2D textures onto these, such as fractal patterns and marble effects. This can easily eat away at time, as there are so many options and it is difficult to know whether to pick one and stick with that or mix and match. Anyway below are some of the results, although these will likely be changed in the future. I am drawn towards the metallic effects for some reason.
This week I have been working on the modeling and lighting of a new motion graphic adapted from Illustrations of Waddington’s work. It still needs a lot of work and has to be animated, but thought I would show a work in progress.
Final report for Placement module.
Well I finally managed to get my cube animation to render (200 frames instead of 500), although there were a few frames that went a bit wonky. They are quite pretty, although don’t know what went wrong, see picture below.
Here is the animation on Vimeo.
I have been trying to refine the cube animation seen on previous blog posts, by adding area light and enclosing the cube within a room (suggestions from John). However I am currently experiencing some rendering issues. Frame by frame render is fine, playblast is fine, but batch render is a no no. I have just received some suggestions from Dylan about how to resolve this, so will give that a go. In the mean time here is the play blast version.
