ejstannard

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Overall Evaluation: 3D Project

Visual flow map

Cyberpunk, sci-fi, illustrative

Perspective, tall, stretched

Detailed, sci-fi, perspective

Tutorial, 3-point perspective, temple

Materials/processes used during this project

For this project I used a variety of different mediums to support the mixed media idea of the project. I also used this project to create a variety of digital pieces as well as traditional pieces, which is something I don’t often do as I lean more towards using inks and creating traditional art. One of my first tower drawings used fineliners and marker pens:

I really enjoyed creating this and developing all of the small details in the drawing. I used research of cyberpunk/sci-fi structures to figure out as I went along how to create an illustration with that theme. I learnt a lot of things along the way, such as shading techniques using brush pens. My pens were actually close to running out, but I realised it created a really soft effect in the shading.

A lot of my digital pieces were very experimental and made up as I went along, but I ended up liking how they turned out. My favourite digital one I produced was this one:

I really liked making this because of how unsure I was at the beginning. My inspiration was very low and I wasn’t sure what to draw, so I ended up drawing whatever I wanted as I went along and letting the creativity come to me as the drawing developed. What started off to be a one-line drawing of my towers, turned into an experimental, abstract piece which I really liked the result of.

Problem solving

There were quite a few problems I faced during this project, but I like to think that I managed to solve all of them in the end.

The main problem I faced was gaining inspiration. Sometimes I just had no clue what to create out of my towers, and it definitely affected my work speed. I feel like this was partly to do with not being onsite at college, as I work a lot better when I’m onsite than I do when I’m offsite. However, there were a few processes that I went through which worked for this issue well:

Do lots more research. Researching other people’s ideas often gave me the inspiration boost I needed. For example, when I started my cyberpunk lineart piece I was a little unsure of how to create an effect that would represent that theme. So I went over to the internet and researched artists who draw cyberpunk buildings, and read some comics with cyberpunk themes and buildings. This really helped me to inspire myself.

Make it up as I went along. Sometimes if I’m really out of ideas, I’ll just let my hand draw whatever comes to my brain first. Sometimes it came out not exactly as I planned—but other times it’d come out as something I was proud of. At the end of the day, I’d created an outcome from it.

Pushing my work

After creating my work, I’d try and find ways to make it better. This was mainly a result of my independent work aside from my 10 outcomes. I went off and researched perspective to better my understanding of how it works and how you can make an accurate drawing from the techniques used. I found this research to be very helpful to me and could help me better understand how to create accurate drawings in the future, as I wasn’t entirely aware of it beforehand.

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Research: 3-point perspective

For this project, I thought it would be good to research the idea of perspective in buildings and settings. Perspective is something I’ve really wanted to improve at for both my personal and my college work, so I thought I’d use this week to research it further.

I went over to YouTube and found an art youtuber who creates helpful tutorials for things like comic, character and setting design. He created a video showing a tutorial on how 3 point perspective works, and I followed the tutorial to better my understanding of how it works. The video broke it down into 3 points on the page, all across certain places on the page. One dot lined up with the square to the left, the next dot sat somewhere at the top of the page, and the third at the bottom of the page (example):

It started by roughly sketching out the setting, pretty much guessing where the lines would go with light pencil sketches. Next, a ruler would be used to line up the points on the page with the rough lines created to fix the perspective lines. It looked something like this:

And lastly, add the details to the drawing.

I found the video incredibly helpful for my research, and will continue to use his videos in the future.

Video link: https://youtu.be/roGH5pL_rKY

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Towers in lockdown #8

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Towers in lockdown #7

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Towers in lockdown #6

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Towers in lockdown #5

For this I decided to use a more geometric approach. It ended up being quite experimental in the end.

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Towers in lockdown #4

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Towers in lockdown #3

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Towers in lockdown #2

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Towers in lockdown #1

References:

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Tower editing progress

5 words: Cyberpunk, sci-fi, comic, pollution, dystopian

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My towers (unedited)

My aim for these towers was to create a cyberpunk-themed structure. When I’d built my structure I decided to edit the photos with green/blue undertones so that it gave off a much more sci-fi vibe. I plan to edit these further on my drawing tablet.

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Research: architecture #2

Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread’s sculpting work gives a a clearer idea how I could stack and put together my objects for my sculptor. These images have been the most inspiring to me in particular. The first building almost looks as if the pattern is created from books in the walls, creating a bumpy but interesting effect on the walls. The second image shows cubes stacked on top of each other in various different ways. It reminds me of ice caps in somewhere like Antarctica. This box stacking method could be used on my own work to create mountains or hills.

5 words: Outside-the-box, unique, interpretational, inspirational, creative.

Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy demonstrates how to create structures from nature. He reconstructs things in nature with different materials, for example in the first picture he reconstructs part of the tree with rocks. As well as things lying around the house, I’m definitely going to take a look around my garden for things I could use, because they could come in handy for what I’m doing and add a touch of nature to the final sculpture.

5 words: Nature, outdoors, reconstructing, experimentation, garden.

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Research: architecture #1

Brutalist architecture

5 words: Dystopian, jumbled, futuristic, creative, melancholic

Dystopian urban worlds

5 words: Depressing, melancholic, bleak, post-apocalyptic, futuristic

Soviet monuments

5 words: Historical, remeberance, ancient, sculptural, large-scale

Ancient sites

5 words: Egyptian, Greek, sandstone, large-scale, historical

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Research: City scapes (sci-fi shows/films)

Neon Genesis Evangelion

I was watching a sci-fi/mecha show the other day on Netflix and I noticed some elements of the city it was set in that struck my interest. The show is set in the future in a location called Tokyo-3, and the layout of the buildings really interested me.

At first I just thought it was an average big city with many futuristic builds tightly packed together, but there was actually a lot more to it than I first expected. In the show, there’s a lot of scenes where robots are fighting against angels that plan to take over the world, and I always wondered what happened to the people and the buildings around them as they weren’t present in the fight scenes. After watching more I realised that it actually works as how I like to describe it as nails on a board, where the buildings sink to the ground and function underground until the fighting has ceased. I found this idea really fascinating and futuristic. Thinking about the fact that there’s also a structure directly below the ground is an interesting idea to me.

This idea really encourages me to think outside the box when I start to put together my building structure, and maybe to “reflect” one of the final drawings to recreate this idea of life underground and above ground.

Inception

I also had a look at some ideas from the movie Inception. A similar idea was presented with the buildings being in a different position, and defying gravity. I found a wooden recreation of this idea which demonstrates the idea well.

This once again encourages me to think outside the box with the building structures I create and experiment with creating floating pieces which create an illusion of defying gravity. Really interesting idea.

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Words to describe the given structures

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Wider World research: Theories of the universe

The universe is still a very unknown place, and with its infinite space it won’t ever fully be explored. Because of this, curiosity creates many theories of the universe that no one can confirm nor deny. I find these theories really fascinating to think about, because it reminds you of how the wider world is still a mystery to us.

Holographic universe

This theory suggests that the universe is a 3D image encoded on a 2D boundary. Another word for this would be called the holographic principle. This theory came from Stephen Hawkin’s discovery of black holes emitting small amounts of radiation, meaning that eventually the black hole will disappear. This concept then evolved into the black hole information loss problem, and arose the question of where the matter went after the black hole disappeared. If particles cannot be destroyed, then where do they go once the black hole disappears? This question led people to question 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional possibilities of the universe.

2. The steady-state universe

The steady-state universe theory is the theory of the Universe remaining unchanged and remaining the same. This greatly contrasts with the Big Bang theory, where the universe started with a large explosion which has gradually expanded ever since. While the two theories contrast with each other, they link together with help from Einstein’s calculations, which concluded that the Universe is either expanding or contracting. The theory of expansion is the theory that many think is the most accurate explanation, however the steady-state theory suggests that matter is constantly being created and that the density of atoms doesn’t change rather than atoms becoming mostly empty space as they expand.

3. The multi-verse

The multiverse theory is the suggestion that our universe started off as a bubble amongst empty space, and gradually more and more bubbles sprung up creating multiple universes. This theory is also called ‘eternal inflation’. I find this theory especially interesting because of the fact that different universes could have very different laws of physics to us. It’s also speculated that, if this theory were true, there would definitely be a possibility of a collision of universes.

4. Simulation theory

There’s no way of proving this theory scientifically, but philosophers have theorised that perhaps the universe is just one big computer program and everything around us is simulated electronically. While it’s a theory with little evidence, it’s an interesting concept to think about and really makes you question what may lie ahead of us in the afterlife.

I found out about this theory while listening to an album dedicated to this theory of the universe, it’s called ‘Simulation Theory’ by Muse. I feel it really helps me to visualise what it would be like when I listen to it.