Image two: experimenting with stock man

Here was my first tests at background removal and some texturing on this image. The effect I was attempting with the background removal for this test was not a a smooth and sharp cut but something that had an element of softness about i I used the pen tool up close on the side of his face and created a large curve around he neck line. I then used a soft edge brush to reduce the hair and to soften the edges around the neck.

I applied this cut to a black background to create a sense of darkness rather than happiness. For this look on the face there are two textures applied. The first covers the face and 80% of the rest of the canvass. It is an image of old paper, set to an overlay. (http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/?q=paper&order=9&offset=24#/d48ubt0) The second texture is of a crumbling and cracked wall, again set to overlay and had the opacity reduced so that it looked slightly more realistic. With a layer mask and a soft edge brush I masked out the areas where I either did not want the texture or if it was to intense in one place.

I think this is a good start, I know now that textures work well on this image and I think there is a lot of scope to expand.

Image two: Stock image

I have found this stock image (link) while browsing for my main focal point. With this image I feel that there are so many different experiments to develop with on this.

Image Two: Mood Board

Mood Board

To me space is quite a free and quirky platform in which to work with, which give quite a vast scope to work with. There can be a range of colour schemes and shapes combinations and the ability to work with planets, objects and natural elements. My mood board shows a range of space art and is there mainly to show all the avenues in which I can work with.

From the research of space scenes I am fascinated by the lighting, I think that the reason many of these pieces are successful is because of the artists ability to create such perfect lighting. I am now inspired to create something that has, not necessarily huge amounts of light, but simply light that is selective, has in impact and really makes the piece.

Idea

For a storyline I wanted to create a ‘History of the World’ and short that started with the Big Bang and ended at present day. I timelined this and thought that I could work well.

Although, as a consept I felt happy with this when storyboarding there were a lot fo areas that did not quite work, and I wasn’t happy with it, I felt that there was something missing that I simply could not find the answer to.

New ideas and research.

I have always been keen on the idea of creating a stop motion piece. I have looked at a few successful stop motion shorts and I am keen to create somehting along these lines.

With this in mind I wasn’t to sure if my drawing skills were neccessarily up to scratch so my first steps into testing was to use different materials to greate the image. For instance; I started with a black platform, some flour and some sugar. With this I found that I could draw in the flour, or shape it to create the illustrations with the flour itself. From the tests the flour definitely was the more practical to use and had a better range than the sugar.

3D Assignment 2: Research for a background

Background Mood Board

I knew what I wanted as my main feature in this piece, however the background and surroundings was a bit of a struggle to work out. So I researched more designs and 3D designs to see whether there was something that fit with my ideas. All of the images on the mood board showed me what was possible, however, one image in particular gave me a lot of inspiration.

This image gave me the imspiration to plan the rest of my image. I want to create a composition that has some historic meaning to it. I am keeping the ideaof having an elderly face. This would be of an elderly man, wearing an RAF pilots hat. In the background I will have a stretch of cliff faces (The White Cliffs of Dover) over which will fly some world war two aircraft such as spitfires.

3D Assignment 2: Sculptris

The software that I have chosen to experiment with is ‘Sculptris’. This is a sculpting piece of software that gives me a starting point of a sphere. (Screen capture). After looking at a few of the objects and sculpts that have been produced in this programme, I felt that the best thing to do was to spend some time experimenting with the tools. (Screen captures)

Discarding the orignial idea

This idea that I have been planning, after some issues with equipment and locatuons had to be cancelled, due to some issues that I had not catered for. To get the outcome that I truely wanted, then it would be a project much larger than I had anticipated and had the time to complete.

 

Image One: Additions

I felt that the feathers on the background were not quite enough to complete the background. I therefore found on ‘deviantart’ some more stock of a parrot in flight (http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/stockart/?qh=&section=&q=parrot#/d2ykk16). I applied the same process of painting onto this image as I had done for the first two parrots.

Flight 1

Flight 2

I brought this into the main composition, scaled it down and reduced the saturation. Also there was a slight blur added so that there was the same depth created. Just having one of these parrots in the background didn’t look compositionaly correct so I duplicated this layer and applied some transforms in order to give me a second porrot in flight which added to the framing of the main images.

Some framing

 

Image One: Texturing

Going back to my first thoughts of having almost a hand painted or artistic feel to the image there needs to be some texturing over the whole composition. Again I searched on ‘Deviantart’ for a canvass image in which I would use as a texture. (http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/stockart/?q=canvas&order=9&offset=48#/d1kwwpl) After settling on this image I placed it and set it to an ‘overlay’ and finally experimented with the opacity. The texture was slightly effecting the colouring of the corners andedges of the image which after some more work and experimentation seemed to be a happy accident.

Textured