Motivation
Dreams have been powerful creative tools for me to break off from normal way of thinking and all kinds of constraints and come up with a normal approach. Thus, I would like to dig deeper into the field of irrationality and come up with a surrealist object or artwork that based on dream and impossible objects. This has a lot of potential because the object doesn’t necessarily have to make sense and there are a lot of rooms for more warped and organic forms. I also want to take the next project to break off from my old style of using a lot of hard curves, black metals and black plastic, which starts to look cliche.
The object that I want to examine is the nail. Nails contain very interesting screw curves that can be further explored for meanings or modified into other kinds of objects. Minimally, I hope to create some kinds of objects or buildings that can represent the nails, and somehow use the curve of the nails to create some wild and elaborate geometry.
The project potentially relates to Twist and Bend command. These are the commands that I really want explore more of their potentials.
Visual images collected
Some sources of Surrealists artworks:
- http://www.beautifullife.info/art-works/surrealistic-paintings-by-vladimir-kush/
- http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/surreal-photo-manipulation-40-amazing-artworks/
Surrealist artworks turned out to be plenty. Thus, I would have to figure out a unique style for my objects.
Critical thinking about the project
The theme I chose is the wearing down of human’s emotion in the face of social challenges and constraint. It seems that as humans grew older over time, they start to have troubles finding sweetness for their long days. People can still buy a pack of candy, but they don’t know how to eat the candies like a child. The project aims to demonstrate the complexity of human’s emotion based on surrealist arts. Objects can be warped and modified wildly to be more expressive. My aim is not to follow the traditional style and goes for more organic materials, even though these organic materials might not fit the smooth nature of my geometry and demands more meticulousness. I also would like to use Adobe After Effects to apply some flat color into my work because as a “formalist,” I want to apply flat color so that the renders appear more expressive. Flat colors will also served to hide some of the weakness in geometry and make the final results look more natural.
Intellectual research
I am really glad that I was able to bring the model into keyshot to apply material. Initially, I resorted to my old styles which use mechanical and plastic materials. The result looks quite dull and doesn’t have that much emotional emphasis on it. I was initially very unhappy with the result.
I decided to completely overhaul my own style, switching to a more flat and comic approach. The result turns out to have a lot potential! Since materials are almost completely vanished, the focus of the picture was turned completely into form. Even though there are little edges or contour, the form are still very recognizable. The audience would take the form as it is instead of getting distracted by the material.
Several possible modifications for the final render:
- Make the hour hand and the minute hand more visible.
- Extending the background to the hold picture frame and add a sun into the background to represent sunset (or the down fall)
- Adding buildings and windows.
- Adding sky castles and possibly some more “building circles” to truly represent unplanned growth. The circles right now still look to have some what an order into it.