Digital Photography and Imaging: Final Project - Self-Tilted

WEEK 10-14: (26/10/2021-23/11/2021)

NAME: Sasilvia Cheong Pei Hoong

I.D: 0345031

COURSE: Bachelors of Design in Creative Media

Digital Photography & Imaging

Final Project: Self-Tilted



LECTURES

Week 9 - Digital Surrealism

Realism vs Surrealism

Realism
Takes subject matters of the ordinary and common world which we call "reality". It almost always takes non-exotic and non-extraordinary subject matter and theme.




Surrealism
It explores the subconscious mind, with subject matters concentrating on dream-images and often aims to distort the ordinary and what we call reality.


What is digital surrealism?
Surrealism is a cultural movement focused on type of arts to express about the artist's idea themselves.

Week 10 - Intro to After Effects
Adobe After Effects is a 2.5D animation programme used for compositing, visual effects, and animation. It is a video editing programme that is used in the production of movies, television shows, and web videos. This software is used in the post-production phase and has hundreds of effects for manipulating images. This allows you to mix video and image layers in the same scene.

When it comes to producing movement, Adobe After Effects takes a unique approach. Motion graphics animation creates and tells a story by manipulating vector and rasterized art. Photographs and videos can also be used to incorporate physical media.




TASKS
INSTRUCTIONS





Part 1: Idea Development (Week 10)

1. Write a biography about yourself

Tell us about yourself
My name is Sasilvia and I am half Malaysian half Thai. I have a hard time expressing my feelings through words so I often show them through my artworks or listening to songs that perfectly expresses how I feel.


What is your passion?

I value alone time and freedom where I spend it doing the things I love like watching animes, reading manga, listening to music, playing genshin impact and drawing. 


What’s motivate you to achieve your dream?

The motivation to achieve my dream is knowing that I will be ending up doing what I strive to do .


How do you want to visualize your dream into an artwork?

I want to include elements I like hands, eyes, elements I like while making it twisted and dark.



2. Write a statement about your work


Tell us about your work I would like to create a dark and vintage theme poster with .an oil painting texture


What is the concept behind it?
I have a hard time telling people how I feel through words so I want to show what I am feeling, what is going through my head through my work. 


What is the message you want people to understand it?

That there is no need to be afraid of expressing your feelings or what others think, being afraid and hiding it deep down will just lead you to more suffering. Try to find the beauty in it.


What is your motto/ quote?

There is beauty in everything, even in silence and darkness.



Mood board
To start off the project, I went hunting for surrealism photos on Pinterest which will be put on my mood board as inspiration for my poster. Since I wanted to go for a dark theme these posters caught my attention. 

Fig. 1.1-1.3 Mood board


Part 2: Design Direction (Week 11)

Sketches

Fig. 2.1 First sketch


For my first sketch I drew to hands wearing chains behind me to act as a throne that is trying to hold myself back. I also added a crescent moon and dark cloudy sky as I love the night sky. Tears can be seen flowing down my eyes showing that all the pain and suffering that I am trying to hold back is leaking out.

Fig. 2.2 Second sketch


This sketch shows two hand blocking my face that represent myself trying to hide my emotions. The chains above me area restrains and the flowers represent beauty. But after that I decided to change my mind and replace the flowers with eyes to keep that dark theme I want and the eyes represents people looking and judging me.



Photos Taken:

I started taking pictures of my self portrait, hands and also chains. 



Fig. 2.3 & 2.4 Self-portrait and a crop of my eye



Fig. 2.5 & 2.6 Hands


Fig. 2.7 Chains

The photo of the chains were a bit harder to take as they keep saying and it was also hard for me to mask it in photoshop as the chains were too tiny, so I decided to search up on images of chains instead as the pictures area clearer and bigger.


Additional images:

Extra images that I took from the internet.



Fig. 2.8 Chains image from the internet


Fig. 2.9 An old script

Fig. 2.10 Cloud

Fig. 2.11 Milky way




Poster digitalization:

Fig. 2.12 Photos without background

Before proceeding with the alignment for the poster, I did a quick selection of the subjects I want and mask them.



Fig. 2.13 & 2.14 Digital posters

I digitalized to different poster and got feedback from Mr. Martin. After a quick discussion we went with the first one. He also said to not use too much noise on my self portrait as it looked low quality, he also said to brighten the colours of the eye and readjust the colours for the hands to suit the poster. He mentioned that the paper at the back looks out of place. Other than that he said maybe applying a purple colour background will be better, he also suggested to make the chains sway when I do the animation.


Part 3: Execution and Post Production (Week 12)


Fig. 3.1 Final poster

For my final poster, I changed the background colour to purple as suggested by Mr. Martin. I also matched the colours of the eyes and hands with a purple grayish tone so that my self-portrait will stand out more. For the final touch I added a paper texture plus a little bit noise to achieve the vintage oil painting look that I am going for. Big thanks to Mr. Martin for sending me various YouTube tutorials on how I should achieve the texture I wanted.


Fig. 3.2 Final poster layers in photoshop






Part 3: Animation and Finishing (Week 13)

After I finished with my final poster in photoshop I then move on to after effects to animate it. The elements I wanted to animate was the eyes falling and fading, hands covering my face and chains swaying slightly.

Fig. 3.3 Animating in After Effects


Fig. 3.4 Hand animation

For the hand animation I moved the left and right position of the hand to make it look like it is slowly coming in the cover the face and then looping it back to the hand going back to the original position.

Fig. 3.5 Fading eyes animation

I only adjusted the opacity for the fading eyes, to make it slowly fade in and fade out.

Fig. 3.6 Falling eyes animation

There area a total of 13 eyes falling where I adjusted the position of the eyes, other than that only two of the eyes at the bottom are additionally animated with rotation to make it look like it has weight when it fell onto the pile of eyes.


Fig. 3.7 Chain animation

For the chains I used the cc bend it to make the chains sway.


Fig. 3.8 Poster animation

After I am done with the animation in After Effects I exported my file and it was a total of 2.6GB since the file I exported was an animation file. Since, I did not know how to use the quicktime app to compress my file I used media encoder instead and used h.264 format, match source-high bitrate and my file drastically went to 18.4MB.

Right after that I went straight to Premiere Pro to add my music choice which was Lacrimosa by Mozart.


Fig. 3.19 Music choice


Fig. 3.10 Adding music



Final Outcome


Fig. 4.1 Final poster JPEG




Fig. 4.2 Final poster animation


Title: Desire

Artist Statement: 

My final outcome of my poster might be a bit dark but this perfectly represents the concept that I am going for. I want people to know that “There is beauty in everything, even in silence and darkness”.

The eyes falling and piling up represent my fear and anxiety of people constantly staring at me as if they are judging and looking down on me. The two eyes above my head slowly disappearing and the two hands covering my face shows that every time I get stares from people I just want to disappear and be alone at that moment. The chains on the top represents me having to lock up my own emotions as I have a hard time explaining them to people and might sometimes lead to certain awkward situations.

But through all these negative emotions I have where I keep myself in silence and darkness, I feel peaceful and calm, I want to find the beauty in it, I want to achieve this desire to find my true emotions and maybe one day actually tell people how I feel.




FEEDBACK
Week 12 (8/11/2021) - Mr. Fauzi
The idea looks great but try to go for a more positive theme since other people looking at you work will be thinking "Is this what you are doing at University?".

Week 13 (15/11/2021) - Mr. Martin
Any design you want to go for is okay, it does not matter if your going for a negative or positive theme as long that it is what you want then it will be fine.

Week 14 (22/11/2021)- Mr. Martin
Go with the first digitalization . The self-portrait looks low quality try not to use noise on it. The eyes area a bit dark so try to adjust the brightness, also try to adjust the colours of the hand to suit the poster more. The paper behind your self-portrait looks out of place maybe can remove it and change the background colour (maybe purple) so that it does not blend with your black shirt too much. Addition to that, try to make the chains sway slightly for the animation.



REFLECTION

When I first started this project I struggled so much with writing my biography as some questions were a bit too hard for me to answer and I ended up taking 2 whole weeks to come up with a final decision. After showing Mr. Fauzi my biography and sketches, he told me that it was a bit too dark and negative, maybe try going for a more positive theme as people will be looking at my work and be thinking why did I pick such a dark topic for. I was super stuck after that and did not know what to do since I already fully decided on what I want and most of the time I love doing dark themed works as it expresses the other side of someone, not everything should be bright and happy sometimes having a bit darkness in your life is beautiful in a way.

But the following week, Mr. Martin gave me feedback and said any theme is fine as long as it is what you want. I want to say thank you to Mr. Martin for being supportive with my idea!  Since a lot of time was used up on writing my biography and sketches, I was a bit worried that I would not be able to finish my poster within the time I have left, but thankfully after some intense time management and grinding I got it done. The poster editing part took way longer than I expected, but thankfully I did not face any difficulties with the animating part which saved me time. I am pretty satisfied with my outcome as it goes very well with the theme and music choice I went for.



REFERENCES
Fig. 1.1-1.3 Mood board
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/858780222700976201/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/858780222701027095/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/858780222700976208/

Fig. 2.8 Chains image from the internet
https://au.toyscentral.com/collections/jewellery-accessories/products/mxcostume-anime-hunter-cosplay-kurapika-five-fingers-rings-hunter-bracelet-chain

Fig. 2.9 An old script
https://creativemarket.com/LiliGraphie/4842039-Used-paper-sheet-Grunge-vintage-text

Fig. 2.10 Cloud
https://sabrina-sohn.format.com/

Fig. 2.11 Milky way
https://uni.wroc.pl/uniwersytet-wroclawski-na-drodze-do-uczelni-badawczej/





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