The third group of images from the resulting film – Sheeler for this weeks Charles Sheeler inspired Kick about on Red’s Kingdom. As always the yearn to see these images large scale on a crisp white wall is something I daydream about, as well as seeing the film projected on multiple walls to feel transported somewhere else
A second set of shapely images from the resulting film – entitled Sheeler created for this weeks Kick about on Red’s Kingdom. Galvanised by the art of Charles Sheeler, I had this film in mind, aiming to see those geometric shapes moving through space accompanied by lots of colour that interject and melt into each other. It was a joy to create and felt as though everything flowed and fell into place better than I could have imagined.
Charles Sheeler being the muse for the latest creative Kick About over on Red’s Kingdom stimulated me to create a film. Sheeler’s modernist work makes me ponder the industrial revolution, the building up and tearing down of sprawling metropolises in all their in-betweens of metal, cement and beams. The shapely blocks of colour makes me think of movement, like a time-lapse of something that is always being altered. I created my film by modelling quick and dirty shapes in 3D, then tinkered with the camera to pull the focal length back and added many of the shapes in a line, through which the camera cranes. I added little movements here and there to the shapes to make things feel dynamic.
A second set of compositions created as part of the Cephalopod kick About prompt over on on Red’s Kingdom.
There was a few failed attempts at different iterations for this weeks Cephalopod kick about over on Red’s Kingdom, one of which was a lot less colourful and leaning towards the macabre. I decided to salvage one of the 3D models from that attempt and use the gooey textures from another previous kick about and laid them onto the 3D models of Octopuses. Things started to take place when I composited the Octopuses on-top of each other – as if the octopuses are in some sort of lethal dance together”
A second set of cosmos created initially from ingredients found in my kitchen and composited into orbiting planets and galaxies. What I loved about these experiments is that they were initially all accidents, I didn’t know the chemical reaction of vinegar, vegetable oil, alka seltzer tablets and some food colouring along with a bit of staging and lighting could produce something so other worldly. I distinctly remember feeling so elated from this practice and spending countless hours into the night snapping away.
This weeks fortnightly kick about creative prompt is the short film Powers of Ten 1977 directed by Charles and Ray Eames. This film made me think of how minute our little planet is and wonder about the possibilities of life many light years away. I wonder what those other planets could look like and the beings that inhabit them. I decided to create some Nebulas using the textures from a previous exhilarating kick about and stamped them onto simple 3D spheres, superimposing them atop those same textures while painting galactic elements to create milkyways that possibly maybe could be.
When reading about Sheila Legge’s inspiration behind her walking real life surrealist exhibition for this weeks Kick About and how she was so inspired by the paintings of Dalí, I decided to create some Dalí-esque dream-like landscapes while paying homage to Legge’s face full of flowers. The female models were downloaded and imported into Maya where on their heads I glued an abundance of multicoloured flowers- tiger Lilly’s, Dahlia’s, Delphinium’s, African Lilly’s and Daisy’s. Combined with a quick and dirty rig and skin of the figures as well as some mountains in the background to complete the scene and move the figures to my every whim. The rig on the figure on the left of the above image messed up and I loved how fluid and melty the resulting movements turned out – I tried to replicate this mistake with the other rigs but my efforts did not gratify, It was one of those moments where a mistake tuned out to be a blessing but could not be recreated.
This prompt also reminded me of one of my favourite films – Annihilation (2018). In particular when the team walk across a baron land called “The Shimmer” where their bodies start to turn into plant matter. It is a strange and beautiful film that left a lasting impression on me, much in the same respect that surrealist paintings do.
I completely forgot about these experiments that never seen the light of day when creating the pools film. I thought about possibly interspersing short elements of treetops that I filmed and have these otherworldly orbs float amongst and behind the tree trunks to encapsulate and cocoon the texture, colours and nature with the forestry into mini universes. These orbs were created by using the filmed footage from the Pools film and turning it into image sequences and applying them to spheres within Maya, then adding lots of depth to them by applying bump and displacement maps. Displacement and bump maps basically calculate the white and black of texture maps within a 3D space and in turn raise or decrease the geometry to extrude and add depth, without these maps the sphere would have been a basic sphere. As I was editing the pools film I knew they weren’t going to make the cut and it was best to leave it be. Still enjoyable to play around with though! Especially with its uncertainty and since the filmed footage is basically plugged into the spheres and changes frame by frame it would have been really interesting to see what happens when finished rendering I can imagine those water ripples causing Synesthesia like effects. Maybe something will happen with them in the future, even to just full-fill my curiosity…
I have always wanted to learn how to use cinema 4D as its stylistic animation possibilities seem endless, so I made these cute little houses as a starting off point and couldn’t help but turn them into sims houses with the famous green plumbob and using the parallel camera to render.
Gentle Giant 