mi4014ellawatson

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[mi4014ellawatson]

[mi4014ellawatson]

[mi4014ellawatson]

Julie De Bleeckere - Fading Memories 

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Quick sketches of my ideas 

Here is some sketches that I did to inspire my storyboard. I will keep adding to these sketches when brainstorming ideas and getting my visual ideas out. I am going to try and create some more detailed concept art of both the box and the setting as well as a better more 3D looking sketch of the child. 

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Storyboard 

I have been starting to jot down some of my ideas into a storyboard. This is still a wip so it will likely be very different and the order may be moved around, I just wanted to show my progress up until this point. I used my moodboard as an inspiration, looking at KInszki’s angles and the weird faceless and faded/dreamlike state of my memories. 

I am slightly worried that about wether it makes sense, are the shadows relevant and a good part of the story? I do feel like the add to the slightly uncomfortable aesthetic and dreamy nature. I suppose they also add to the strange angles, maybe they are a good thing that have in there. I also am still unsure as to what should happen once the box is opened, going back to my original story, I used to keep hair clips and little bits and bobs in there. Should he find something inside or should, when he opens it, should he have a memory of where the box should have come from. I would quite like to have a shot of the box running his fingers around the inside of the box, feeling all the cracks and textures of the wood. That is something I used to do quite a lot and it adds to the childlike curiosity and mystery around what they box is. This also plays in with the attention to detail that we see in Kinszki’s “microphotography” and McQueens work in general. 

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Moodboard - Story One, Truth 

This is a moodbaord that I started to develop based off of my original story and inspiration Imre Kinszki. I really loved the angles of his work so had a clear idea of the camera angle I could use for my final shots. I also kept thinking of the film The Third Man (1949) by Carol Reed when looking at his photography. The Third Man uses some of the same jagged and uncomfortable angles that I loved about Kinszki’s work. I also looked at the shadow scene from Nosferatu (1929, F. W. Murnau). When thinking about my true story, that no one really knew where or when we got the box or even why it was there, it made me think about faded and forgotten memories. Bit personal! but after having a few seizures last year my memories are somewhat fuzzy and murky and a visualisation of this murkiness is what I had in mind when I was thinking of the box. It was hard to find photos to fit my visualisation, I didn't know what to search. I may look into artwork about dementia or memory loss as maybe these faded images that I am thinking of, I will look this up soon. For now I like these two faded photographs that I found. You can still see the outlines but other details have disappeared over time. Lastly I found the very interesting animation “Flut” by Malta Stein, I just think its really cool honestly. Its quite dreamlike and uncomfortable to watch and it features some of the strange, jagged angles that I want to include. I also love the faded colours, like the photographs that I found. 

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Original Storyboard - Not Using

This was the original storyboard that I had started drawing out, it’s not great and I don’t feel inspired by it but I still wanted to include it in my blog. My idea for this was originally inspired by the story of a woman effected by the death of one of the warriors on the box, she realises that part of him is still with her through this box. Honestly I just think that's cheesy and a bit rubbish and I didn't want to go further with the idea but didn't know what to do. I was feeling a little lost so returned to my first story and decided to follow this path instead. 

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UV Mapping

I have spent the last two days working on piecing together the pattern/uv map for the box. It was really tricky, creating the map was not too bad but actually collaging and placing the pattern in the right place was stressful. I decided to use photos of each side of the box to create it, I will post these next to show what I mean. I mainly did this because I was finding the painting of the character tricky, because I had to stretch them after painting the quality wasn't great and it was just getting the worse the more I was moving them to get them in the right place. Because of this I decided it wasn't the best option. 

Getting the patterns in the right placement and size was the most tricky, I had to keep saving them and adding them into Maya to check it was going okay and then going back into photoshop to fix any issues. Because I mapped the lid and base seperatley it also meant it was confusing to make sure I got each side in the correct order and that the images would match up from lid to base. There are still some bits which I am really not happy with so I may go back into it later to try again but for now I am reasonably happy with how it turned out. 

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Mapping - Attempt and problem solving 

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UV Mapping 

Today I began to correctly UV map my box, I already had started mapping it but it was while the box wasn't modelled as cleanly and nicely as it could have been meaning that there was some odd extra sections on the UV map that I wasn't sure what to do with. After help from Gary and a half hour or so just going round the box checking and perfecting any bits that were a bit off I managed to get it as good as I possibly could. This made doing the UV map a lot easier, I had a bit of trouble with my computer lagging when trying to unfold it but overall it was not too bad. There is a bit of an odd section, the first map on the last picture, I really can't find out why one side is bigger than the other. I will see what happens when I come to add the pattern. I did unfold both sides as much as possible so I do not think its that. I know need to figure out how I am going to add the pattern to the outside, I do not have a drawing tablet to use on photoshop but I do have my iPad so I may draw the pattern on procreate and then take it into photoshop from there. 

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Origin of the box 

I was interested in find out a bit more about the paintings on the box. After quite a bit of searching online and on eBay I finally think I have found the origin of the box and am pretty sure it is Persian. There was quite a few styles that it looked similar too, Hindu, Arabic and  Islamic but Persian artwork was definitely the most similar (see image one for Persian box and image two for a Hindu box). 

I am now going to look into Persian/Iranian artwork and its backstory 

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Fixing the lid

As mentioned I was having some trouble with the lid, the bottom half was curved for some reason that I couldn't figure our. I asked Gary and luckily he sent a video explaining how to fix this. The video was really helpful and identified that it may have been a problem with the threshold when mirroring. I was then able to fix the by deleting the wrong diagonal edges and using the multi-cut tool to add new edges in. This fixed my problem and it'll make it a lot easier to UV map I think. I will have another go at mapping the bottom of the box tomorrow. 

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Update

Overall I am finding this project pretty hard, I am doing okay with the mapping but I am finding coming up with a story and idea pretty challenging. I also think that with this project being very open and not having as much direction as the other modules its really difficult. I need to spend a good few days just thinking about what it is that I want to create and doing research into other artists and ideas. I really benefit from direction so working more alone like this is something I should work on.

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Here is the more detailed tutorial that I found on UV mapping. I have not yet watched it but I do plan on at least watching the parts of the video that cover things I can't remember from the lesson. I still find the idea of UV mapping slightly confusing, I understand that its like a net that wraps around but there is certain parts that I am a little puzzled by like cutting and sewing it and wether you can resize parts to fit them in the one square.