Reflective Statement

What If Metropolis was a more enjoyable project than Invisible Cities, I loved creating my painting in a 3D space, I liked the challenge of thinking like someone else to create art as Cornell not as myself, I feel it has made me less ignorant in an art sense and broaden my approach to architecture.

Environments are a weaker skill for me, I find it difficult to paint a decent looking city however I am very pleased with my final render and the feedback I received, people mainly honed in on the scuba diving helmet which was my most complex model and the one I'm most proud of. Time management for this project was so much better than the last project, I created schedules and committed to them, I did again get it slightly wrong at the beginning in terms of understanding the brief as I thought we had to use their work to create a city rather than think like them and use their ideas to create a city and architect buildings, using their work as a guide or reference for ideas. OGR 1 didn't get a greenlight as I was on the wrong track but I managed to catch up and resolve everything by OGR 2 and more getting the greenlight.

During my crit presentation unfortunately my nerves took over and I had so many things I wanted to say about my work and get across a good explanation, I made notes to help prompt me but they became blurry when I looked at them and I began forgetting things in addition to pretty much just giving my presentation to the screen rather than my audience which I know I should never do so don't know why I did... Luckily my work was able to do some of the talking for me like how in my final image the air brush haze makes it looks like you're waking up and the memory or Merveille is fading and that it is a space of collected objects as that's what Cornell does and I wanted these objects to look like a city park.

Merveille Travelogue 2 - UPDATED

Updated Final Render of Merveille

Changes made: Lighthouse is more visible and crown isn't so tall, lighting increased and air brushing redone.

Merveille Art Of Document

Merveille Crit Presentation

Merveille Final Render

Today's Textures (15/12)

Now to put everything together in one scene!

Todays Textures (14/12)

Experimented with doing an Iron cage - didn't work well

Wooden cage with brass bars works way better

Lamp posts, all shaders are blinns and poles have textures and bump maps with them.

Animated GIFs

Testing Renders with Matte Paitnings

Just done a test render, I won't be putting the sky painting together in maya because shadows appear on the sky and doesn't look realistic.

Merveille UV Mapped, Block and Wireframe

 After much struggle I finally managed to UV map everything I'm going to use texture for, everything else will be have a shader and the gazebo will be mirrored... Now to texture everything!

Close up of  Lighthouse UV Map

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover 1989

Fig 1: Movie Poster

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover directed by Peter Greenaway is the most disturbing film I have ever seen, it is up there with slavery films on a disgust/disturbing level if not higher. The film starts with a man on the floor beaten up, naked, bleeding, and force fed dog excrement immediately you’re horrified at this thuggish behaviour and group bullying, two vs one is hard to watch but five on one plus dogs - it’s horrible. Greenaway also treats viewers to a lovely display of animal carcasses that the dogs rip up and this is just the first scene! But it’s only the first scene by the end you leave the screen very disturbed and it stays with you, it’s not just watch and go, this film has effects on you depending how you react to vultures the same species as you. “It comes as no surprise to learn that it took director Peter Greenaway a very long time to find a film company that would consider his script for more than 30 seconds” (Mount, 2000). 

The plot is very repetitive every night at the restaurant watching the thief (Michael Gambon) and his group of thugs ruin everyone’s night, disrespecting the chef, abusing his wife, belittling his associates, yelling and wrecking the place. His wife (Helen Mirren) has an affair with fellow restaurant regular Michael (Alan Howard) in parts of the hotel, Greenaway isn’t shy with his camera direction or characters during sex and violent horrific scenes. This affair, that’s supposed to be her lovely escape from her violent husband, “Greenaway gives a nightmare tinge to … by using a different colour scheme for every locale - red for the dining room, white for the toilets - and having the colour of the character's costumes change as they walk from one to another.” (Ebert, 1999) I believe he’s done this to give suggest the idea of camouflage and that is counter acted by the thief finding his wife (see figure 2) and assaulting her - she is never safe and the audience can sympathise greatly. So when wife Georgina flees with her lover Michael we know it won’t be long before Albert and his gang hunt them down and force feeds buttons down the young delivery boy’s throat in an attempt to find out the delivery address. Georgina goes to visit the boy in hospital meanwhile the thugs get a hold of the lover and force book pages from the book he always read in the restaurant down his throat with a stake of some sort, a cruel, slow, torturous, unjust murder.

Fig 2: White Bathroom

The thief, his wife and her lover all have dominating roles which make them worthy to be in the title, however the cook has great significance but a smaller role compared and yet he comes first in the title, “the cook's role is the weak spot in the script. Though he is meant to function as a chorus and witness, it is Paul Russell as the boy - part Shakespearean, part messenger from Godot - who fulfills that role best.” (James, 2016).

Just when you think you’ve seen it all: the tortures, group gang up, animal corpses, child abuse, force feeding, sexual assault, bullying, murder, nudity, when you think you’re at the worst part - the point of no return along comes cannibalism, Georgina begs the chef to cook her dead lover so she can force feed it to her husband, he agrees, she feeds it to him and shoots him in the head. You’d think by the end of the film you’d be somewhat relieved that Albert is dead but no… More like traumatised. Worst 120 minutes of life spent watching this film. The lighting in this final scene is dominated by the red and little lighting to strengthen the darkness, it adds uncertainty and danger. (See fig 3).

Fig 3: Final Scene

Bibliography

Ebert, R. (1999) The cook, the thief, his wife, and her lover movie review (1999). At: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-cook-the-thief-his-wife-and-her-lover-1999 (Accessed on 16 December 2016)

James, C. (1990) Movie review - - review/film; Peter Greenaway’s elegant and brutal ‘cook’. At: http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9C0CE4DE1F3DF935A35757C0A966958260 (Accessed on 16 December 2016)

Mount, J. (2000) The cook the thief his wife and her lover. At: http://www.empireonline.com/movies/cook-thief-wife-lover/review/ (Accessed on 16 December 2016)

Illustration List

Figure 1: The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. (1989) [Poster]. (Accessed on 16 December 2016)

Figure 2: White Bathroom At: http://www.mondo-digital.com/cookthief.html (Accessed on 16 December 2016)

Figure 3: Final Scene At: https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/1990/04/art-film-by-numbers/ (Accessed on 16 December 2016)

This Week's Progress

Matte Paintings

Worked into a section of one of Monet's Paintings

(PNG) (The bottom of each piece won't be seen behind buildings)

Sky and field broken up into separate paintings

Models

 

Bird Cage (Will have glass jar)

Mirror Building

Crown

Scuba Diving Helmet

Wind Turbine

Lamp Post

Train Carriage (Not Textured)

Gazebo

Suspiria 1977

Fig 1: Movie Poster

Suspiria follows young ballet student Suzy attending a prestigious ballet school in Germany, from the moment she arrives strange things start taking place, a student running away from the school yells “Iris” and “Secret” to someone inside before sprinting away to a hotel room where she is brutally killed in a horrific way by some demon thing you can’t quite make out until the very end. Not letting Suzy into the building she returns the next day, when being introduced and shown around, the police are questioning the heads of the school. From there on its more murders and mystery that to some degree gets answered but in the end everyone escapes and thats enough - you don’t want to know the rest. 

The plot is good as a good mystery holds your attention but at moments that attention gets lost and its not long before you’re back in the plot. “Argento doesn’t rush things. He gently pulls you from scene to scene, ... deliberately presenting you with puzzle pieces at every juncture without ever letting you see the picture on the box. Suzy never completes the puzzle. You never complete the puzzle.” (Hall, 2016).

Another praise for Suspiria is its cinematography, the use of the newly invented (at the time) steady cam, the close ups, the set designs and most importantly the colour scheme used to create atmosphere and convey suspense. It’s fair to say that “Suspiria could be criticised for its lack of story, for how it emphasises atmosphere over plotting, lavishing attention on individual scenes while letting the overall structure feel a little shaggy.” (Hall, 2016).

An interesting way to look at Suspiria is like a dream, we all believe the school is a real place and we watch the scenes as if everything is real like we would in a dream, Argento knows that we are at our most curious when we are sleeping so like Suzy we subconsciously follow her into the depths of the school and all its secrets. The title Suspiria is a perfect one from the Latin phrase “Suspiria de profundis" meaning "sighs from the depths” it’s these sighs from the depths the film investigates.

Fig 2: Colour Atmosphere

Colour is key to conveying the surreality of this nightmare, the blue lighting to reflect nighttime/moonlight is too blue for the real world, inside the reds are too strong, these two colours alone speak volume, blue for sadness and sorrow and calm juxtaposed next to the burning red of danger, (see fig 2). The colours of Suspiria are beautiful, but they’re deadly and are like sirens making the audience aware of certain doom, acting like warnings, declaring when it is time for the characters to flee. “These colours are an unnatural assault on logic, a constant reminder that you are inhabiting a dream. That no one takes notice of their unnatural world only heightens the unease. No one knows how unsafe they truly are.” (Hall, 2016).

Another reflection of the unnatural world is the sets, the sets are supposed to look human made yet the artificialness increases its power, the Iris office set could be the best example (see fig 3), when Suzy goes further into the depths of this inhuman place she discovers black magic - using voodoo to kill students of this school. Decorating a wall with Irises obviously means something, Irises are planted on the graves of women in hope of summoning the Goddess Iris to guide the deceased on their journey to heaven. It has been raised that maybe Argento has a hatred for women that’s why women mainly die in his films and the Iris is so symbolic to this film, it can be argued that the Iris is a symbol or royalty, valour, hope and faith so either that’s how he sees women - respectfully or thats the reason he wants to kill us all of… It’s interesting he used witches as the villain - only female magical villains and maybe their magical abilities is what makes them royal. So many possibilities Argento leaves us with. 

Dream World

The whole unnatural/surreal theme Argento’s got going on works well like a web, everything links and supports the film, the voodoo in the plot backed up by the sets, displayed with enhanced colours is admired.

On the negative side, like all horror’s we watch the cliché of characters making poor choices infuriating the audience for example when Sara is about to be killed, the killer is trying to lift the latch witch a blade whilst she squirms in the corner, all she had to do was hold the latch down but no she decided to trip over some boxes, climb out a window and land in some barbed wire which she wriggles even more to get out of only making it easier for the killer to slit her throat. Some scenes are very disturbing (see fig 4) but you’re reminded it’s fake by the poor quality of blood, another reminder of the falseness within this film is the dog and winged bat attack, the dog biting the blind man’s neck was obviously a stuffed animal and the bat you could just about see its strings where it’s being dangled from the ceiling. But maybe you could argue that again Argento is reminding you its not real in a dull explicit way.

Fig 4: Disturbing Scene

The beginning and end start with the same incredible/effective music score by The Goblin’s, it grabs your attention, gives a little tingle of thrill and suspense and again increases the film’s power. “Suspiria is considered by many to be the best work ever by Dario Argento. The use of lighting, camera angles, close-up and music (performed by The Goblins with input from Argento himself) create a sinister and surreal shroud of dread and angst.” (Mike, 2016).


Bibliography

Hall, J. (2016) ‘Suspiria review: A bad dream made real’. At: http://www.slashfilm.com/suspiria-review/2/ (Accessed on 10 December 2016)

Mike. (2016) ‘Suspiria (1977) review’. At: http://horrorfreaknews.com/suspiria-1977-review (Accessed on 10 December 2016)


Illustration List

Figure 1: Movie Poster Horror posters from the 70’s and 80’s. (1982) [Poster] Pinterest. At: https://www.pinterest.com/wroy78/horror-posters-from-the-70s-and-80s/ (Accessed on 10 December 2016)

Figure 2: Colour Atmosphere. (2016) Features. Slashfilm. At: http://www.slashfilm.com/suspiria-review/2/ (Accessed on 10 December 2016)

Figure 3: Dream World. (1977). Pinterest. At: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/467037423827153266/ (Accessed on 10 December 2016)

Figure 4: Sara Voodoo. Suspiria (1977). (2013) [Screenshot] Created by Hernandez, D. 2013. At: http://cinemassacre.com/2015/10/05/suspiria-1977/ (Accessed on 10 December 2016)

Next Steps

Today I've shown Jordan my block model of how I'm going to layout my composition, he aprroved of it and has shown me techniques on how to make everything more realistic: soft selection for making a more realistic terrain, alpha maps as a simpler way to make the fogginess of this dream, also how to merge the path and field using grass.

Example of alpha maps being used for grass,
found at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/vwbA6

It's important to always be looking at references and professionals, when it comes to the grass merging bit I found this example showing progression helped.

Found at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8ZeBQ

Found at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8ZeBQ

Another example: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Ra84X

Then I was shown different ways to use lighting, ie area, point and directional - I will be rendering in mental ray. Below are some test shots of lighting.

Now I'm going to work on my matte painting by working into Monet's painting even more using mixer brush tool to make it look more painted as Cornell collages art work rather than painting his own to collage. New techniques: Mixer brush, clone tool, hue jitter and taking an oil painting texture and using a blending mode to add a layer of effect. Braid Game is an example of the sky.

Diagram of compositioning layers

More Orthographs - ALL DONE!

Now for some modelling 😃