Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Artist post for project 2: video game
As I was imagining and sketching out my ideas for the game art, I imagined the corner of a room, with blank walls and a picture frame. Then as the second screen shot was to be shown (as the game creators described the process to us), the wall would erupt into a solid color and the picture would show an image correlating with that wall color. Well as I began to approach the subject and the image I wanted to create, I was reminded of the program Google Sketch Up. I have never worked with the program before, further then scanning across someone else's work, then trying to create one myself and epically failing with the very first attempt at a wall. Then as I began the project I was instructed and helped by Billy with a few basic tools and ways of editing already rendered rooms. As time passed I experimented more and them even began to build my own rooms and a huge hallway. I have used Sketch Up to create 12 rooms, a castle and a hallway for the game.
So for my artist post I chose to look for an artist that too uses Sketch Up as a method of building their game art work. Ken Nguyen was originally an architect and then decided to quit his job as an architect after 5 years and follow his dream of doing concept art. He has a MFA in modeling, animation and texture and is not a concept artist working in the gaming industry. He creates props, characters, weapons, armors and environments for games and movies. Since he has an architectural background he creates a lot of game environments and architecture in Sketch up with the aid of a few other programs, one being Photoshop.
In the game he worked on called "Gods and Heroes" he used Sketch up because as he said in an interview "it is so fast and intuitive". He also talked about how in sketch up dimensions and camera angles are easy to adjust which helps in a gaming situation. He uses Photoshop as a post work tool, whereas I used Photoshop in collaboration with Sketch Up to help create the textures I wanted. Nguyen uses Sketch up much like I did to create 3D models to use in a game but he uses them in a manner so that the user can navigate through them, mine are just screen shots. Works Cited 2
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Artist post
I attended the artist talk by Chris Saah. He is the visiting photography professor from MICA. He attended and graduated from SMCM. He also teaches Digital media. His focus is not only on film but more recently a lot on digital.
After SMCM he took an internship in new media because there was not one in photography. Because of this he got away from photography for about four years. After this break he began to shoot night scenes. He became obsessed with the different types of lights that were cast at night. He photographed diners, alleys and just the night scenes of LA and old Hollywood. There were dark and mysterious yet at the same time colors of light would explode out of no where into the street and landscapes. Sometimes he would get mucky and get a car headlight to go by and cast a whole new type of light on the photo. These images were timeless in a sense because they could have been set in the 50's but then if you looked closer into the smaller details of the image there were modern day clues. his goal was to create a cinematic style and look and I think he achieved it well. It did look like it could have been a still frame in a long film strip. I could imagine movement down the long pathway or into the diner.
One image that stood out to me was the image of doors and a stair case. It was baren, no trash, no people and no sense of human existence in this space. The color of this scenery was so disting and provided such a high contrast between the blue walls and white doors that it just looked fake. It looked like a cliche "photoshopped" image of today. He mentioned that while flipping though another photobook that he came across almost the exact image from someone else.
The series' he talked about were titled "Displacements" and "Untitled". In "Displacements" he used color filters to take control of the color palette. He edited these images to have random misplaced objects within a bland background while keeping the image very textural. In "Untitled he took landscapes and edited them into new images while still making them look realistic. He liked the background from one place, a wagon from another and even down to a rock that he wanted to include. Withing these images there was an odd depth of field too which came from the mass amount of editing he did to each image. These spaces he photographed did not have an analogue in the real world yet one he edited them they morphed into a meaningful place. These images were looking down as well as forward. This is really hard and impossible in a way to create these perspectives in real life without editing later on in the process. The image looks real places and spaces.
He talked a lot about how he wanted his images to be cinematic in a way and to create movement. Clearly a single image cannot physically move to create a movie but within the image you can create movement by leading lines and placement. He does a great job of this. He makes your eyes move with everyimage and it gives you the illusion of movement in a cinematic quality. I personally do not think my images create movement and I do not go out and shoot images with the purpose of seeing movement within the frame. Another quality in his images is that there is no reference point within the image. I always have a reference point and focus within my images because that is just how i ground myself when I shoot. He was also talking about how he doesn't always look through the viewfinder. I did a photo shoot using this style once and it was interesting how the images came out.
Overall I enjoyed his talk and learned a lot of new things about my professor that I did not know before. He is a good photographer and has a style very different then mine but I think it is interesting at the same time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)