Thursday 11 October 2012

Cinematic Spaces: Online Greenlight Review


1 comment:

  1. OGR 11/10/2012

    Evening Samantha,

    Your OGR impresses - less than 3 weeks into a totally new cultural and educative experience, and you've settled in with gusto and with determination. Your studentship is very satisfying; it has hardly escaped my attention that you're making the very most of UCA in terms of attendance and creative, discursive working with your classmates and wider CGAA community. You listen, you observe, you contribute - great stuff.

    It's decision time!

    The thumbnails you present here are highly evocative and richly impressionistic - and yet, I'm still unsure of which design world I'm in. As you already know, the 'green thumbnail' with the conspicuous illustrative style has sparked my interest previously because it goes beyond the impressionist effects of moody digital painting, and ushers in 'design' and 'a complete world'.

    If you were to now convert this style into actual CGI, the challenge I would want you to meet would be to ensure that you maintained that same illustrative style in the final animation - i.e. that your world WAS this place.

    In Disney's new animated short, Paperman, the technical quest has been to ensure that the energy and life of the production drawings is kept within the cgi models - i.e. that the production drawings aren't production drawings to be discarded, but rather to be folded into the design of the final cgi:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eHhExk9S0E&feature=relmfu

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug79QOshhUY

    So - you have a series of painterly, expressive concept paintings and an odd-one-out - the green one. The green one is from a different place. It's doing something else. If you were to decide that the green world IS the world of your adaptation of The First Men In The Moon, you will have to re-think your other scenes and bring them in line with that style. If you decide against it, your life is a bit easier - but maybe your world is a little less memorable. Maybe. Maybe not. Like I said, it's decision time.

    So - I think the issue is this; the difference between the green thumbnail and the other paintings is the difference between designing a world and painting a world. I look forward to seeing how you resolve this 'problem'. It's a good problem. It's a great problem.

    However, I do think there's another issue - a simpler one, perhaps. I just don't think your third composition 'explains' itself. I've read the extract, and I see it, but I'm wondering at the choice. Is it strong enough? Is it 'necessary' enough as key space requiring the skills of a concept artist (as opposed, say, of a digital painter?). I'd like to see you return to your excerpts and think more iconically about the purpose of your concept art - because, essentially, your third thumbnail isn't 'designing' anything, rather it's illustrating another moment (more rocks). Don't misunderstand me - the lightness of touch, the skill on show, the flair - it's all good - better than good - but you're a concept artist challenged to design a world...

    I am watching with interest! :)

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