Jules John

Our first assignment for the subject ‘Exporting Media Arts’ was  an image project consisting of three parts.

We were asked to complete tasks relating to  drawing, Photoshop and emulation.

Below you will find an account of what I have come up with and how I got there.

Drawing

For this part of the assignment we were asked to draw an image using the techniques of one-point, two-point and three-point perspective. The assignment gave me a new-found incentive to draw, something I have never fully explored before. With that I found a greater understanding and appreciation for basic artistic techniques. Regardless of my utter inexperience, I was able to muster up some respectable images using some simple Youtube tutorials.

One-point perspective:

I found the one-point perspective part particularly easy.

I started with a simple horizon and perspective point on a blank piece of paper. All of the lines retreated to the same single point of perspective.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Working from there…

 

I created a futuristic space tunnel!

Two-point perspective:

This section was a little trickier as it requires a greater attention to detail and, of course, two perspective points.

I started out with some blocky shapes. The two perspectives diminishing into a horizon significantly higher than my previous effort. I found this aided in the believably of my buildings.

I eventually ended up with a humble sea-side town.

Three-point perspective:

I found three-point perspective slightly more challenging than the other two techniques, but after understanding the fundamentals of how it works I could apply the same logic to make this work. I found the main difference was the additional problem of distortion. This will happen if you set the third point of perspective (the bottom point in the case) too close to the image. As a result of circumventing the deviancy of distortion the third perspective point in the forthcoming image is roughly 30cm below the image.

I started out creating a city skyline.

Added some more buildings and rudimentary weather effects…

To create a stormy city using three point perspective!

Collage

The next aspect of our assignment was to create a Photoshop collage. We were asked to insert a portrait of our own face onto another individual’s.

I decided to Photoshop my face onto the cover art of ‘Windowlicker’ by Aphex Twin.

The process consisted of three main steps:

Cutting out and lining up my face onto the album art using the transform tool and with the aid of a decreased opacity.

Contracting the pixels of my face in order to delete the relevant pixels on the background layer and proceeding to use Photoshop’s auto-blend feature.

Finally I used the spot healing tool to give the two images a more seamless relation.

And there you have it, an even creepier version of Aphex Twin’s cover art!

Emulation

For the third and final part of this assignment we were asked to emulate the art from a selection presented to us. From that selection I was introduced to the joys of JapaneseRoll artists. I felt absolutely compelled to have a hand at some rolling gifs and had a blast in the process.

I ended up making four gifs using Adobe Premiere. The process consisted of me editing a series of stop motion photography like so:

And exporting the media as an animated gif. The process took a lot of trial and error to to initially get it right, but after playing around with frame-rates, resolution and general timing of cuts I ended up with a neat little selection of rolling gifs.

I decided to go for a pool theme.

  However, I felt I wasn’t dressed in the correct attire nor in an appropriate setting. My final gif remedies both of these issues:

Conclusion

This assignment has really taught me a lot. Besides some technical skills concerning perspective, Photoshop and Premiere I have found inspiration in the act of, well… exploring media arts. As an introductory assignment I am excited of what is to come as I am coming out of this project with much more than a fun experience and heightened knowledge. I’m coming out of it with brand new (at least three) perspective(s) on what it means to explore and create media.

Sincerely, Julian.