Gretshelle Rivera Advanced Digital Prof.

Friebele 2/21/14 The central theme of my first project was to explore the possibility of blurring the lines of reality and the imaginary by showcasing the interaction between my original characters and myself. In the process revealing the intimate reflections of myself that are personified through these characters. The inspiration behind the first project was based off of an image I saw on tumblr a year ago. It was a saturated nature photograph of flowers and foliage. The artist introduced digital drawings of a little leaf creature- somewhat similar to the woodland ghosts from Miyazakis movie Princess Mononoke. I liked the idea of introducing drawn elements into a realistic environment to confound an observers sense of actuality. Furthermore, I wanted to reflect upon the current digital artforms that go above and beyond reality and the implications of this trend. Hyper-realistic digital artwork tricks the eye into believing that a 2dimensional image is a 3-dimensional object that possibly exists in the real world. Video games have become a huge player in escapism by using similar realistic graphics that blur the lines of reality and the imaginary. I wanted to capitalize on this by trying to paint a character and place Icarus, the featured character, in the space so that it seems as though his mass is in the photo. I did not want to make him to graphic in style- otherwise he would pop out too much from the atmosphere of the photographs. For the process of this project I started out with the intention of animating Icarus, but I realized this was not possible because of my time constraints. Instead I

point my attention towards painting detailed elements to make sure Icarus melded well into the photos lighting. Since digital painting is a time consuming process I found that sketching the pose, taking some time away from it and returning allowed me to see the mistakes faster. After correcting the body posture I laid down flat bodies of color. This allowed me to work faster because I did not have to paint up the image from the foundation. Also eyedropping the background colors and light source helped me figure out how to adjust the coloration of his clothes and face. The habits I garnered from working on this project are to draw the gestures first on all pictures. After that take some time away, make corrections and then block in the body shape. After blocking in the shape of Icarus pose I then added his colors. I had previously made a reference sheet so that step of figuring out what palette to use is skipped. The step before painting is to quickly slap on the colors onto his body shape. I adjusted the scheme according to how the light was playing across the walls and the blankets. I also used my face as reference to get a better idea how the laptop light affects the color of my face. Since Icarus is paler than I, bluer color is applied to his skin and mixed it with the greenish-brown of my blanket. For the darker areas where Icarus legs drop off I eyedropped the blanket, combined it with the browns of his coat then muted the colors. For the leg closest to my laptop, I combined the brown and blue with a slight dull grey purple. The coloring was the most labor intensive part of this project because I needed to be sure Icarus fit the color scheme. The issue that I had with the painting was sometimes I would get to caught up in the details. When looking closely, an observer can notice that the colors I used in scene one versus scene two and three were less fussed over. Then by the fourth panel I

remediated this by trying to time myself and paint as fast as possible, being concise and thoughtful of where I placed my colors and how I mixed. For the final product I realized that the artwork would be ineffective without some kind of extra stimuli to capture a passerbys attention. The issue was I had no time to do some fancy animation. Plus it is harder to animate something painted without having the splotches of color shift around oddly when other slides are perfectly still.I was given advice to add music and reuse panels to give a sense of active narration. As an objective observer I would say that the reused panels are a little jerky and even lazy. However, it is easier to ignore that with the music since it helps the viewer to adjust to the pacing because it follows the musics beat. The music definitely adds more to the artwork and pushes a more relaxed and friendly mood. Without the music the scene could have come across as a creepy, angry old man in a girls bed. This could be taken in multiple negative ways, but this is not the artists intent. Thematic music is key to get a certain idea across for characters that are misleading in appearance. For the grade of the project I would give myself a B. I felt I put a lot of hours and thought into how I wanted to portray this character. However, I understand the actual scene itself is very short. I believe next time if I wanted to do a narrative motion based work it will be more simplified in style so I can add more panels and frames. The realistic-ness of it will be lessened but at this point I do not have the time to take on an animation that has copious amounts of detail unless it is short. I know my limits and I know how to push myself safely without missing deadlines.