FREAKING TURTLES

note to self.. in order to bake normal maps.. make sure model is air tight!!!

TURTLES!!!!!!!!!!!

Baking High to Low

At 4 last night I decided to learn how to bake high to low poly meshes. Have had a little success, will now make the model properly in order to do this for real :)

My first step to dominance war

I have entered the minicomp for dominance war which is to create a general using a premade bass mesh. I have quickly whipped up this concept in about an hour in zbrush and I am really happy with it so far. I am making a roman general. I will have to finish all of the extra accessories so I can uv them before I resculpt this. Even if I dont finish it gives me an excuse to practice this stuff.

Discovering zbrush... and whether i could pull off having a beard!!! ...as you do..

Have done a tonne of tutorials today on zbrush to get myself ready for if I want to do Dominance War and stuff :). Had amess around with a sphere trying to make a head and came out with this. I intended to mirror it... but then I messed it up by not having it aligned properly... Oh well! Learnt something there!!



Also for fun decided to give my self portrait a beard! Why not! Better than growing one and finding it doesnt suit me!! haha. Turns out it makes me look like George Lucas... and nobody wants that! haha.



I have enjoyed this all a bit too much and have probably been doing it for about 4 hours. I hadn't used zbrush before today and had only made physical sculptures in sculpey. I was loving the fact that zbrush has a sculpey shader! Made me feel right at home! Great stuff.

Bed Time!

sketchy sketch sketch

A quick drawing from a photo with the aim of colouring it correctly without grabbing the colours using photoshop. Then I will move on to drawing the same person from life and painting them with traditional materials and possibly photoshop.

Our adventure to London town!

Yesterday, myself and a certain young lady made our way to London to have a look at some galleries and see some sights together. We went to a couple of galleries with the aim that I would be able to come home and feel inspired and have an artist I could study and produce a series of paintings. First we went to the Tate Modern as I remembered that the last time I had been that they had a series of impressionist paintings. However this time there weren't any there that I could find. I did find some interesting paintings there.

Some of Monet's water lilies were there and I found them to be quite incredible. Although it was one of the smaller copies, I was struck by the amount of different colours that there were on the canvas to just represent the water. This particular painting was after 1918 and it appeared quite abstract but what it taught me about colour was important. The colours in the painting all seemed exaggerated to an extreme, I remember my tutor told me this could have been due to cataracts in his eyes. Even though it may not have been deliberate that he painted it like this but it helped me realise that colour is a matter of perception. There are colours where you would not expect them. When painting pictures from now on I will try and paint what I see as the colours, not what I think they SHOULD be.



Another painting I saw in the Tate Modern was a painting of Matisse by Andre Derain from 1905. It stood out to be because of the simple use of thick paint to produce areas of light and dark on the portrait. Also the shadow areas of the face were made with blues to suggest an diffused light. There is one area of red which really helps the whole face to seem more fleshy. I think I just found it facinating that this painting could be so simple but give you such a feeling of form and shape. I think that again, although the colours are exaggerated they help to teach me about what kind of colours I should place onto a portrait.



A concept I had not come across was used in one of the paintings by Gunter Brus. Although I did not intially like it because it was so abstract I thought that the idea of it was exciting. It was an "action painting" which was not so much about the aesthetic of he work but more about how it showed the movement of the artist. The strokes were frenetic and excited. When I started looking at it in this way it became much more enjoyable to look at, every smudge and scratch of paint showed how the artist had moved. I guess that is something similar to the way in which Jackson Pollock would work and it has a similar appeal. I think that photoshop can never really show how the artist has felt when painting it in the same way that physical materials can, however the production time is so much shorter.

Once we had been around the Tate Modern I had become far too annoyed at the stupid paintings (something I never used to do.... hmmm) we moved on to the national gallery hoping to see some Turner paintings, my favourite painter. We had no luck in finding anything besides religious paintings and I became quite frustrated... but I was extremely impressed by the understanding of anatomy that went into these pictures. I found that alot of the paintings really tried to hide how they had been painted, something that I really stuggled with because I love being able to see expression and brush strokes.

We did then try to go to the Tate Britain but by this point they had just closed, we were very dissapointed. I would have really liked to have found something that was really inspiring. I don't think that the day was unsuccessful though, I had a really great day with my girlfriend and we did get to see some great artwork. There are so many memories from that day which I want to keep forever!

Just before we came home I did a couple of sketches of my girlfriend that I plan to develop later. I will probably paint a portrait of her so that I can get a bit of practice.

Today I have done a couple of painting samples of the flowers I have growing in my room trying to learn from what I saw. I would really like to study Freud a bit more. I love the way he manipulates paint, even though alot of his paintings are more than slightly vulgar, I believe I can learn alot from them. I think I will try to see how he paints light and shadow as well as colour and produce a couple of paintings of friends from this.

L.A. Confidential

Continuing our film studies in lectures, we have been watching several films that come under the category of film noir. LA Confidential is a confusing, yet exciting journey through 1950's Hollywood and the corruption, vanity and the nature of man. The reason that I found it confusing was that the story would suggest that the film should be presented in a certain way due to the fact that it quite clearly shows the common features of a film noir: a dangerous yet seductive woman, a twisted moral code and what is in this case, a detective story. Instead of resorting to making an immitation of a 1950's film, the producers of this film have made a 90's film with 50's roots. I found this to be very interesting throughout the film as it made you feel like you were watching something very familiar with an original twist.

After watching the film, I have found that I keep thinking about each of the characters and finding that I really related to a couple of them in very strong ways. The story surrounds Los Angeles policemen that are caught up in all kinds of corruption, sexually, politically and in terms of drug abuse. Counter balancing this is the seemingly pure concience of an aspiring detective Edmund Exley who lives his life trying to succeed where his father failed. Wendell "Bud" White is a violent and fiery cop that is often used as the muscle for tough jobs. The story arc between these two cross several times throughout the film and with a third cop, Jack Vincennes, who is only truely concerned with his personal wealth and fame.

I think that I related mostly to the experience of Exley as he tried his very hardest to be pure and noble in his job. He constantly puts his reputation on the line in order to do the right thing and stands by what he beleives in for a very long time but it clearly puts a strain on him. I really felt a connection with him as I have faced similar experiences of being outcast because of what I do and what I beleive in, especially when it comes to my relationship with God and how I respond to it.

Exley's fear of doing the things wrong that his father did is something that I have seen in both my own Dad and myself aswell. I think many sons fear to inherit the darker characteristics of their fathers and they were most likely subject to them. I did also find Bud to be a very interesting character that I could empathise with. He had a real anger towards woman-beaters due to a horrific event when he was a child and it had clearly changed the core of who he was. I could see how that could happen and I could start to understand who he was based on this. Jack is a policemen who has completely lost sight of why he became a policemen in the first place, towards the end of the film there is a real feel of salvation when he starts to collaborate with Exley. Exley seems to act as a catalist for the whole station to realise why they became policemen in the first place. They do the best job they can and in a just way.

For me the most facinating thing about the film was that both Exley and Bud both end up becoming exactly what they set out not to. Exley shoots a man in the back, something that he said his Father did: He used this as an example of the kind of actions he wanted to completely avoid but yet he gets dragged into doing it. Bud, as mentioned earlier, had set out to stop people who abuse women, yet in his anger he strikes his lover. Maybe this is a comment on the corruption of man or maybe it is simply a clever way to make the characters more believable.

I really enjoyed L.A. Confidential, it was exciting and gripping in all the right ways. Do watch it if you havent before! Yes thats right! Even if you do despise Russel Crowe!

Messing around

Well this week I have been unsure what to do at home so having a bit of a mess about i've made the PG Tips monkey. Mostly because I have a toy of him on my desk and he ROCKS. No where near finished, admire the smiley face! It is at this stage still just a black line haha!

A little more practice

Did a painting of my friend Dan while we were at uni today just as practice, especially in terms of colour and skin tone.

United 93

Last week we watched a film that I think could possibly be the most stressful film in history. United 93 is a real-time reconstruction of the events surrounding 9/11 from the perspective of the air traffic controllers, the passengers on one of the planes and surprisingly also the terrorists themselves. The cast is made up of unknown actors and the people that are working that day at air traffic control are the ACTUAL people that were there on the day. They play themselves and say the exact things that they did say at that time. Knowing this as you watch the film makes it even more haunting and tense.

It starts as just an ordinary day at the airport. The air hostesses are getting on the planes and the passengers are having natural conversations about what they are going to do when they arrive at their destination. The dramatic irony is that they don't know what is going to happen to them: Most people watching the film will already know what is going to happen and this creates many opportunities for tension to rise.

One of the things that shocked me about the film was the fact that before 9/11, nobody even suspected that somebody ould hijack a plane in order to use it as a weapon. When the word "hijack" is used, many people laugh and say something like "Hijack, serious? We haven't had one of those in years!". When I was watching this I felt like I could scream out to them to tell them how dangerous this was!

The film is so immersive, probably due to the fact that it runs in real time and because it is rooted in fact. I actually felt really emotional at the moment when the first plane struck the trade center. The last time I had seen that footage I was about 12 and I guess that over the years I had lost the full impact of it. The first time that I saw this film, I felt much like the passengers on the plane. I became so involved that I actually felt the desperation to overcome the terrorists and stop their plan.

One thing that I really admired about the film makers was that they actually took the time to consider how the terrorists would have acted and felt about the whole operation. I think that the way it was portrayed was probably quite accurate as the processes they went through in order to complete their plan, and their motivation was believable. I didn't really question this at any time during the film.

I think that the film was a very good tribute to the events of 9/11. I guess that many people won't see this film because they will think that it is simply a way of making money out of a horrific event: I think that actually it is a shame that it is being viewed like that. I felt very moved and affected both in terms of my emotions and my understanding of the current world situation.

Colour! Learning to see again!

Ok, so last term I learnt loads about shape and form. This term I intend to learn alot about colour and light. I did a colour-study of a self portrait by Benjamin Sullivan in order to look at what colours to use on the face and what subtle colours are shown around each area of the face. I took alot of time before I started just trying to find the correct colours on the colour pallette in photoshop. I DID NOT colour pick at all OR use any overlay layers once I had finished. I want to stop depending on fancy effects in photoshop and simply learn to see the colours and light correctly.



I did however do this from a photograph which is bad but I intend to take what I have learnt and draw another portrait of a friend from life. I didnt cheat in any way making this picture though. I drew it as if it were in front of me, no tracing or overlaying. Still, it could be better and I will keep trying to improve!

Doing this study followed a really good conversation with my tutor about how we see colour and light. I was struggling making up an environment and getting the feeling right. I wanted a feeling of temperature and moisture that I couldn't quite convey. It looked like it was dull and grey. My tutor took a look at it and then got me to look out of the window at the sky. We saw purples, oranges, pinks and many other colours that at a glance would just be grey. The way in which these colours in the sky affected the environment was very important. Distant buildings that were made of concrete made me immediately assume that they were grey. However, on further inspection, they actually looked pink! This was due to the light of the sky changing the way my eye was seeing it. My brain was filtering this out and just saying it was grey.

This is the painting I produced following this talk. Throughout I was battling my brains natural tendency to simplify colour and materials into catergories. Time to break free and see things the way they really are!!