Collaboration Project | Matte paintings

Granny's and Blind Guy's Background Matte Painting

Side Matte Painting

Blind Guy's Background Matte Painting

Side Matte Painting

Road Matte Painting

Maya #16 - Lighting & Rendering | Geometry Override Sets

Maya #15 - Lighting & Rendering | Toon Shader

Maya #14 - Lighting & Rendering | Stylised External Lighting

Maya #13 - Lighting & Rendering | Sky Dome Light

Maya #12 - Lighting & Rendering | HDR Images

Life drawings #7

20min Pose

5min Poses

30min Pose

Maya #11 - Lighting & Rendering | Stylised Internal Lighting

Character Design Class #7

In today's character design class, we were given to draw staging exercises with a combination of couple characters. The ones that I got were: a mad scientist and his creation.

As for my character project, I have moved to storyboarding.

Maya #10 - 3D Animation | Body Motion (Part 2)

Maya #9 - Lighting & Rendering | Light Filters

Maya #8 - Lighting & Rendering | Maya Lights

Maya #7 - Lighting & Rendering | Ray Depth

Maya #6 - Lighting & Rendering | Sampling & Noise Reduction

Maya #5 - Head Modelling | The Mouth (Part 4)

Maya #4 - Head Modelling | Rough Blocking (Part 2 & Part 3)

Maya #3 - Head Modelling | Preparation (Part 1)

Character Design Class #6

During the character design class we were given a task to draw special props for a specific character. Once again, I got Popeye character. I was quite familiar with that character from the previous lesson.

Reference

For the rest of the lesson we were given the task to draw a sidekick from a randomly chosen culture. These are couple of the drawings I did for the culture of Rome.

And this is my current progress on my elephant character showing some of its facial expressions.

Maya #2 - 3D Animation | Body Motion (Part 1)

Collaboration Project | Car Orthographs

 

Collaboration Project | Car Design

Collaboration Project | Character & Props Design #2

Perspectives | Why Is "The Truman Show" Postmodern

"The Truman Show" Poster

The Truman Show is a 1998 American satirical science fiction film directed by Peter Weir and written by Niccol. It contains the story of Truman a middle aged man who was born and brought up in a simulated utopian city/society. Truman soon becomes suspicious about his idealistic life and tries to find out the truth and eventually discovering that he has been held in a simulation merely for the entertainment of other people. But what post modernistic traits does this movie have exactly?

1. Mise-en-abyme - The audience does not realize that the life story of Truman is actually a TV show until the director behind the reality show is shown at his set and manipulating the environment around Truman. The viewer realizes that he/she is watching a show within a show.

2. Fourth Wall - The movie breaks the fourth wall by intelligent product placement and the introduction of commercials. When Truman seeks a private conversation with Marlon he gazes into the camera holding his beer up and says: “This is a beer!” revealing its brand making it an obvious commercial even Truman’s everyday life consumables  items and household sets are considered articles the viewer of the show can purchase from a catalogue.

3. Utopia - The world Truman is placed in is bright, happy and ideal, every person in the city is happy and the emotion of sadness never crosses the audiences mind while looking at the utopian city. Truman leads an ideal American life possessing a house, a car, a beautiful wife who is already planning for a future child symbolizing again this utopian image of the perfect American life.

4. Hyperrealism -  Throughout the movie Truman is troubled with the inability of distinguishing whether what he is experiencing is real or fake. Truman soon doubts the reality of his world and tries to escape it by attempting of leaving the island where he spent his whole life however, every actor tries to stop him by first trying to cause traffic jams or power plant accidents to block the road leading toward the outside world and eventually even catching him.

5. Simulation - Everything in Truman’s life up until his discovery of the exit into the real world has merely been a simulation of a perfect life with some limitations (no leaving the area). The nature can even be manipulated by machines set up in the studio which is located behind the fake moon. In addition his wife Meryl and his best friend Marlon are merely actors who do not even see him in a way they should; one scene shows his wedding day where his wife crossed her fingers while swearing eternal love meaning that she was lying about her statement.

Perspectives | Key Words #8

• Hyperrealism - in art hyperrealism is a style of painting that depicts objects or environments with ridiculously accurate details. As for the hyperreality in postmodernism, it describes the inability to consciously distinguish reality from a simulation of reality.  Especially in the modern society with an exceptional technological progress those two realities are seamlessly blended together that one cannot determine where the simulation ends and where the reality starts.
• Simulation - a virtual imitation of a certain event or act for example a flight simulation which simulates the pilot flying in the sky even though he is down on the earth. Simulations can also be used to imitate/test certain outcomes of certain events which are complex to execute in reality due to unmet conditions.
• Simulacra - a simulacrum is an object, an image or even an imaginary thing that represents a person or a certain object. This term has its origin in Greek which combines the two words “simulo” which means mirror image or illusion and “simul” which translates to similar or equal. As an example a photorealistic painting of a certain landscape can be considered as a simulacrum or even a statue of a god.
• "Fake news" - "fake news" is a form of propaganda commonly seen on the internet, especially on social networks and social media where the information can easily go viral. The main purpose of fake news is to spread wrong information about a certain topic, person or a certain agency, mostly fake news is practiced in politics to win elections etc., which leads to wrong accusations of certain groups, people, agencies etc. Fake news creates an alternate reality which is mostly attention-grabbing and therefore making it appealing to a large group of people. They cannot distinguish the fake news from the real news unless they practice detailed and accurate research; this is comparable to hyperrealism in postmodernism since the individuals cannot consciously distinguish the reality from a simulation of a reality.