Digital Painting Final

 

This is the final iteration of my project. I blended the trees into the setting a little more using the digital paint brushes (Mostly Kyles Real Oils 01 because I liked the look of it and it's blendablity) and tried to focus on tying everything into one image. Some parts of the image, like the top of the tree closest to the moon, look more drawn in than other parts that I drew in, and I think it offers a flatness to the image that changes it's perception. 

The images I appropriated, which can be found in the previous post, were chosen because of their ability to be adjusted and morphed to fit my idea for the work. I sourced most of my imagery off of Pinterest, because I felt that I would be able to find images that fit the vibe I wanted easier. I wanted to emulate a moody pond that as a kid,  you might've been told to not get too close to, because you can't see the bottom, and who knows what's down there? I thought droopy willow trees and rough banks would allow for that feeling. The tree on the right was chosen because it had both of those things, and because the grass the tree is on stretches back, which would help with a level of depth in the background. There was also a person in this image but they got cut out because I wanted to make it feel more empty, like the swans have the place all to themselves when the sun goes down. The other set of trees was picked because it had that willow tree, and because it was so dense that it didn't allow for much extension of the background, and I wanted that aspect to be handled by the other image. The swans were picked because of their positioning, I liked the one that's calmly moving over the dark water, and the one swooping in to land on the water would add a sense of movement to the image. I wanted the moon to be a different colouring from the rest of the image, to offer some sort of break from the dark tones, it being the attention catcher wasn't intended but I like how it went. I was originally going to use an image of the moon that had those oil-spill like colours in it's craters, and I considered using one of the images taken from the Artemis II mission, but I thought the one I picked worked best with what I was going for. 

While working, I utilized mainly one brush (The Kyle's Real Oils one mentioned earlier) to paint overtop of the appropriated images. I wanted to have a seamless feel to some of them so they didn't look like I pasted an image in and called it a day. I would colour pick from the images themselves to get as many tonal ranges as I could, and then add my own colours to further blend them into the atmosphere, like the pale yellow colour on the closest swan. When working with the images I adjusted the colouring of them in photoshop to make them darker and a little more blue, they still look like they're out of place when it comes to lighting but not enough where it's harsh to the eye. The only image I didn't adjust colouring for was the moon, I really liked the yellow tones and I think having it so large and bright, and then none of the lighting lining up with that makes it feel like a surreal environment. 

Overall, digital art is not my strong suite, but I learned a good amount about digitally painting and tools within photoshop while working on this project. I enjoyed making it, and I think I might continue to practice working in a digital painting space.

Digital Painting Editions

 

These are my first three editions for my project. The first one is 4 of my images just placed where I might've wanted them on top of the start of my painted background. As I worked I would erase the visible background in each of the appropriated images to blend them into everything better, which you can see in the second image. The last image is the start of me using the paint tools on Photoshop to add colours and merge the appropriated images into the painted background. Below are the appropriated images.

Photobooks

When making my series photobook I was thinking about advertisement. Advertising is a huge part of the modern world and a large part of the photography and graphic design industry. We see products and people and beliefs advertised to us no matter where we are, in the digital space as well as in real life, you can't escape it unless you live on a remote island with no wifi. A lot of advertisements feature a model, someone to utilize or hold the product, and in video advertisements, talk about the product. This model is important to advertising, as it connects the product with a face, with another person who is supporting the use of the product. It's influential, people are more likely to purchase a product if a familiar face or persona is attached to it. If you were a big fan of Tom Cruise and he starts promoting a specific brand of protein powder, the likely hood of you purchasing that protein powder over another brand is greater. In my first photobook, I photoshopped my face onto different appropriated billboards alongside some kind of slogan and a product. I am not a celebrity, nor do I promote the products featured in my faux advertisements, but I wanted to poke fun at how absurd advertising can be. Since the photos of me used are just the same scanned image of my ID, there's no deliberate posing or dramatics, just my face and the product, and in this world where I am a celebrity, maybe just that would be enough to convince the average consumer into purchasing something as common as a cardboard box.  I organized the photos to slowly, as you flip through the images, start to shift from actual products you could find for sale, to trash. I feel as though we as humans have started to push the limit when it comes to product creation, we've made a lot of things in our time, and they all serve a purpose, but how many times can you recreate something before it's considered garbage? How many times can we revolutionize an idea before we realize all we're doing is selling future landfill pileup? Funny thing is, we're already at that point, but what are we without money?

Art of Advertisement

My second photobook pulled inspiration from the two books I checked out from the library, Museum Photographs by Thomas Smith and Antiquity & Photography by Claire L. Lyons, John K. Papadopoulos, Lindsey S. Stewart, and Andrew Szegedy Maszak. Most museums hold artifacts and artworks that once belonged to someone, or to a group of people. These objects are viewed hundreds and hundreds of times on the daily by thousands of people, all who most likely weren't there to experience them being utilized. Antiquity means the ancient past: especially the period before the Middle Ages. A large portion of these museums hold objects of antiquity, things that haven't been used since probably around their fabrication. People are fascinated by these artifacts, people flooded to see objects pulled from the tomb of King Tut just to revel in this 'ancient beauty' that we wouldn't get to see otherwise. In my photobook, titled New Perspective, I thought about the objects we put into museums. When we look around our personal spaces, we have things that we probably don't even think twice about, a poster on the wall, a deck of cards, our phones. If you go to a museum, maybe one like the British Museum, you'd see these sort of day to day objects displayed in a glass case never to be used again. The people who used them never thought that hundreds of eyes would see the comb they use every morning, I couldn't imagine any of my belongings behind glass, catalogued in a collection. Thinking about this, I focused my imagery on things that are a part of my every day life. Objects I use and see every day, posters I was excited to buy because they represent the things I enjoy. None of them are in a museum, nobody but me is seeing them of a regular. They hold absolutely zero importance to anyone but myself, but maybe 500 years in the future, someone might decide that my magnet collection is of cultural significance. Probably not, but that's what I was thinking about while creating the book. My images vary from very close up to eye level, certain things might have more detail or brighter colouring than what surrounds it. I focused a lot on what I see as a representation of me and how someone else might decide to view it.

New Perspective

Video Project Part 1 Updated videos

 Here are my video sketches, I originally had problems uploading them to anything but I fixed said problems.

Video Sketch 1

Video sketch 2

Video Sketch 3

Video Sketch 4

Foley Project Research

 I did some research on the history of foley and how one would pursue the career. Foley dates back to the early 1920's when it was used to create additional sound effects for radio shows, but it was later adapted to filmmaking by Jack Foley in the later 1920's. Sounds are often created using objects from the everyday, and in many cases the objects don't visually represent the sound being made. Some objects commonly used include vegetables, used to recreate the sound of a bone snapping, or coconut shells for horse hooves. Modern day technology allows for the seamless addition of foley art to media, most people wouldn't know it was happening unless they were to directly listen out for it. 

I found the history and usage of it fairly interesting, it made me think about how important foley art would be for animation media and video games, where there is no real life sound being recorded while the actors are performing. Without it, I feel like a lot of well loved pieces of media would be a lot duller. 

I don't have much interest in getting into foley art, but I always find it interesting to research what education goes into these really specific careers. I found that to get into foley art professionally, you typically need to have a degree in sound or recording arts. Which makes sense.

Foley Sound ACMI

SAD Entertainment

Reel Canada Foley Artist

Video Project

Cat- A Documentary 

I picked the document theme for my video, with the focus being my cat, Mitsy. I didn’t know what to film over reading week, and I couldn’t think of a subject I’d be around frequently enough to make a video about, other than my cat. I was thinking about those David Attenborough documentaries, and how intense they feel. Obviously there aren’t very high stakes when it comes to filming my cat around the house, other than the dog trying to play with her, so music and Martin’s lovely voiceover helped. I mostly just followed her around the house for a couple days, trying to get videos of her doing anything but sleeping. I set the camera up on a table for one of my shots, so I could play with her without the camera being all shaky. I really tried to focus on the fun and playful aspect of filming, just because my subject felt so unserious. I enjoyed the editing process as well, though the most draining part was cutting up the voiceover audio and having to listen to it over and over again. I really enjoyed making this project though!

Video Project Prt 1

 I worked on part one of this project over the span of a weekend. I mostly walked around Inglewood in Calgary with my boyfriend, as I find that part of the city really interesting, visually and historically. I also did some filming on campus by myself.

Here are a couple of my video sketches