Category Archives: My Work

Concepts of Digital Imaging Assignment 4 – Dystopian Reality

Password: Stevenmeisel
Artist Statement
dystopia
dɪsˈtəʊpɪə
noun
  1. an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.

In this project I wanted to revisit my self portrait assignment “Oblivion” 2 assignments ago. Taking the same concept of a dystopian environment, I wanted to use animation and visual effects to further enhance the message I was trying to tell as an artist. To me the world is not as beautiful and naive as it seems. A lot of what we see on the internet and the media feeding us is just a curtain shielding us from the ugly truths of the world. As a result, our vision of what we think is real is blurred and only time and experience will be able to lift this curtain revealing the dystopian society that we live in.

As a step up from Oblivion, the colours in this project are more distinct. The separation between the subjects in the photo are more apparent with the different colours. The city in the background is mainly made out of muted dark blue and cyan hues representing the state of depression. The foreground has brighter highlights of orange and yellow portraying a sense of hope. Using complementary colours to create contrast in this composition made my message as an artist more apparent.

Technical Decisions

The animation can be separated into 3 components. The background of the city, the foreground of the rocks/bushes, and the human subject.

The effect I was trying to achieve is known as the vertigo effect in film. The effect is achieved by either moving the camera toward the subject on a dolly while zooming out or vice versa.

 

To imitate the real life motion of achieving this effect, I converted the layers into 3D objects and used a camera layer to keyframe the zooming in of the composition. To achieve the zooming out effect that would cause the background to push further into the distance, I keyframed  the city layer’s scale with an initial value of 200% and decreased it to 100% at the end of 5 seconds. To disorientate and further emphasise the idea of dystopia, I rotated the city layer by 45 degrees and keyframed the orientation back to 0 degrees creating a swirling motion throughout the animation. Furthermore, A camera lens blur effect was added to enhance the message that I wanted to tell with this animation, that as we unveil the curtains behind the ugliness of the world, our vision starts to become clearer. Thus, the effect of the city starting from a blurred image becoming sharper and clearer is achieved by using keyframes on the blur radius of the camera lens blur effect.

This effect was repeated on the foreground layers, namely the human subject layer and the rocks/bushes layer. The keyframes however, were reversed with the lens blur effect starting at full sharpness slowly increasing the blur throughout the 5 seconds of the animation. This was to imitate a real  camera’s change in focus from the foreground to the background, which helps the viewers understand the elements of the image throughout the animation. Apart from the focus change, the foreground elements were keyframed to retain its position throughout when the camera is zooming in.

In order to create depth, i separated the human from the foreground layer and changed the gradient of which the foreground increases in size. Starting with a value of 80% on the scale keyframe I gradually increased the human subject’s scale to 120%. The difference in speed of the camera zooming in and the human subject increasing in size helps to add depth to the animation and prevent it from looking too 2 dimensional.

Before & After

Before carrying out the animation in after effects, i composited the layers in photoshop and colour graded the RAW images accordingly to set the tone of the animation.

Before Colour Grading

 

 

 

 

 

After Colour Grading

The focus of the city colours were to make it look super depressing and somewhat having a consistency throughout the landscape. Cooling down the white balance and darkening the shadows helped to create a mysterious looking city with minimal highlights, portraying the landscape to be dull and dead.

Before Colour Grading

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After Colour Grading

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The vibrance of the initial image shot on the mountain was too saturated. Desaturating some of the unnecessary colours and concentrating on a few helped make the image more consistent in the mood i was trying to achieve.

To create a dystopian look, I duplicated the city image and stacked them up on each other. Rotating the combined image 45 degrees helped to add onto the theme of a twisted reality.

Next i had to mask out the unnecessary background from the mountain image. It was not an easy task to mask the bushes as the intricate details required close attention in order to make it look as real as possible.

Several adjustment layers had to be made in order to seamlessly combine the 2 drastically different images together.

A basic curves adjustment layer was added for the background the increase the highlights and darken the shadows in order to match the foreground image. On top of that a colour balance layer was added to add some magenta into the image and to match the warmer tones of the foreground image an orange colour fill was added with a low opacity %.

The human layer consisted of a curves adjustment layer to darken the shadows to match the dark tone of the cityscape. A blue colour fill layer was added to cool down the image creating a consistency throughout the composition. On top of that a dodge and burn layer was added to clean up some areas and create extra contrast to make the image pop.

The final composition thus looks like a seamless image.

 

Artist/Film References

Inception

A major influence to this concept like much of my other works is Christopher Nolan’s Inception. The idea of stacking cities on top of each other has baffled me and made me interested in exploring photo manipulation. As an experimental cityscape photographer, Inception has opened up new horizons to my imagination and paved the way to some of my latest works.

 

Doctor Strange

Doctor Strange is another movie that plays with perception and alternate realities inspiring the concept behind my project. Doctor Strange being a more recent movie, contained better visual effects than Inception. The process of how complex buildings folded and behaved fluidly amazed me.  Scott Derrickson and his team has heavily influenced this project and helped me conceptualise “Dystopian Reality”.

 

Jaws (1975)

The animation part of the project was hugely inspired by movies that incorporated the vertigo effect in their scenes. One example that inspired me is Jaws from 1975. The effect created a sense of uneasiness and surrealism that cannot be achieved with our eyes. Incorporating that into this project has hugely pushed the idea forth of creating a world that had distorting realities.

Conclusion

With this as the final assignment for this module, I have learnt a lot from starting how to mask an image in photoshop to rendering an animation on after effects. The creative process for each assignment has been unique and dear to me. Each assignment has helped me express a side of me that I will not have been able to do so in words or actions. With “Dystopian Reality” I wanted to end of on a high note and create one of my proudest works to date.

Concepts of Digital Imaging Project 1 – THRIST

Whatever you can imagine is real – Pablo Picasso

Artist Statement

With this piece I wanted to tell a story and evoke a certain feeling portraying a fantasy reflecting myself as a womaniser. The power of staged photography has helped combine the real and surreal together capturing a fragment in time where fantasy meets reality.

Upon receiving this brief I decided to create images based on my fantasies. Portraying myself in a different perspective that might not exactly be true allows me to live in that brief moment when the image is being captured what it is like to feel as a womaniser.

Image Description

The image portrays me as a high class womaniser. In this fantasy i see myself as someone that only dates women of status. To support this fantasy I had my female models to put on jewelry and have their hands all over my face to show that I am desired by them. The pearls and coloured nails on the female hands is to depict that the women desiring me are wealthy and exquisite. The expression on my face is to present that I am subtlety enjoying the attention from these women. To further support this fantasy, wearing a suit has helped to represent sophistication, masculinity and also arrogance. Unbuttoning the inner shirt and revealing some skin leads the viewer to understand that there is some form of lust and sexual desire involved.

The background and cropping of the image is also deliberate. The tight crop of this portrait is to portray a sense of intimacy. Having the hands emerging from the black backdrop hints that whatever that is going on in the image is happening in secret.

Camera Decisions & Technical Aspect

Camera: Canon 5D Mark IV

Lens: Canon 24-70mm F4L

ISO: 1000

Aperture: F4

Shutter Speed: 1/125

Focal Length: 41mm

Shooting on the 24-70 lens has enabled me to have the flexibility to zoom in and out of the setting. The lack of professional lighting has definitely made the surroundings darker than expected thus pushing the ISO to 1000 and shooting at F4 was necessary. Having he focal length at 41mm allowed me to have enough space to work with in post if I wanted to crop the image further.

Before & After

 

Before                                                                                                                   After

Straight of the camera, the image is very flat as it was shot in RAW.

Firstly creating masks for the highlights and shadows helped me separate and add contrast to the image. Thereafter masking the hands and myself i used a tone curve to darken out the background and whatever that was unnecessary in the image. Using the dodge and burn technique i have also deliberately darken and brighten the image in places that would enhance the lighting of the face and suit.

Touching up the skin i used frequency separation and retained the high frequency texture of the skin while gaussian blurring the blemishes to give my skin an overall consistency. Adding to that using the spot healing brush and clone stamp tool i got rid of all the odd speckles and imperfections in my face to make it look flawless.

The nails of my female model’s hands were not painted initially. To show the viewer that they are indeed female hands I went ahead to paint their nails in photoshop which helped the image look more realistic to support that the women were of status.

During the shoot pearls were added onto one of the model’s hands however due to the many reshoots and overlapping of hands some of the pearls eventually transferred over to another model’s hands. I went ahead to clone stamp the pearls instead of removing them to add more interest into the hands.

On top of everything I changed the white balance and made the image colder and also added fade on a overall tone curve adjustment layer creating a dreamy fantasy look.

Artist Reference

Sean Lee’s Two People

Flora Borsi’s Iréel

Some artists that inspired me to create this image are Flora Borsi and local talent Sean Lee. Both series are focused on the human body and how hands are used as a semiotic. Sean Lee’s images inspired me to create a very contrasty feel which gives a more exaggerated overall look. Flora Borsi’s series helped with the art direction of THIRST. I liked the pastel palette of her series however I think the colours would not fit in the context of my image.

Conclusion

This assignment has helped me look deeper into how i can use staged photography and digital image post processing techniques, to further enhance my images and my voice as an artist.

 

 

 

 

 

Forrest Gump

The interpretation of words that connect to visuals have always baffled me. Being tasked to create 4 original designs from movie quotes was not an easy task for someone with little background in Photoshop. However, through this assignment I feel that I have grown as a designer technically and also creatively through the incorporation of symbols, composition techniques and principles of design into my works. During the research phase I went online to search for quotes that were in my favourite movies. As someone who loves to watch superhero and action films, I went ahead and looked into Batman, The Avengers and my all-time favourite, Inception.  I will be going into detail about how I conceptualized my ideas and ultimately give an overview of the designs of my 4 pieces of work for this assignment.

Your Mind Is The Scene Of The Crime – Inception (2010)

I really loved how in the movie Inception, everything was based around alternate realities and dreams. As a first design of this assignment, I had issues with keeping things metaphorical and was instead making the design too literal to the quote. After consultation and some feedback, I kept some elements from my initial design that were literal such as the crime scene tape that is extended from the head of a man.

I wanted to relate this quote back to modern day issues that people are facing around the world. Social media as the name suggests, is used for connectivity and socializing. There are many positive uses to social media however, being connected might not always be a good thing. I decided to design a visual that sheds some light into the issue of how social media can sometimes affect the masses negatively.

The composition of my design for this quote is relatively simple and easy to understand. The silhouette of the smiling beer bellied man with the negative emojis in his belly represents how society is trying to wear a mask to show that they are happy on the outside however they are stomaching all the negative emotions caused by social media on the inside.

The position of the man’s neck is pointing diagonally downwards which brings us to the second focal point of this design. The old school television represents “media” and the white noise reflected on the screen of the television is a metaphor of how social media is feeding irrelevant information that is slowly hypnotizing and manipulating us. To further emphasize the idea of hypnosis, I added black and white lines like rays extending out of the television which create leading lines to help the viewer navigate around the composition. The leading lines create movement towards the man and also connects to the third element of this composition.

I have included a literal description of the part of the quote “scene of the crime” into this design. At a scene of a crime, evidence of the crime can be found and upon closer speculation by forensics, the culprit/s can be identified. I took that idea and used it in this design by including some of the major social media platform logos and embedded them into typical objects found at a scene of a murder crime such as, a handgun, bloodshed and also a chalk outline of a body. To relate it back to the quote more I created a border around these evidence with a “police do not cross” tape.

Overall, I think this design is very literal and easy for anyone to make out what I was trying to convey using the different elements to describe social media and its negative effects on society.

You Are Confined Only By The Walls You Build Yourself – Inception (2010)

For my second design, I wanted to focus again on how social media is sometimes feeding us only the information that we want to see. While we build virtual walls around ourselves we block out what’s happening around the world like the issues of terrorism, mass destruction, corruption and global warming. Compositionally I made this design symmetrical and positioned the different elements in the design as leading lines to lead the viewer to the focus of the design.

Starting in the center I placed a guy sitting in a chair with his hands on the back of his head suggesting how relaxed he is while he is facing a huge iPhone screen. The Facebook page on the iPhone screen represents social media. Initially I used 4 iPhones with 4 different social media pages however that made the design too unnecessarily complicated thus I decided to just include one. For the walls surrounding the man I also used iPhones to metaphorically represent how we are so caught up with social media that it becomes a barrier.

On the exterior of the design I started with elements of destruction like tanks and missiles all of which are slanted at an angle toward the focus of the composition.

Initially I added children crying on the sides to emphasize how there are innocent children suffering because of war. However, it was too distracting and did not coincide with the overall feel of the design, thus to further display the innocence of children involved in these wars I replaced the children from the sides with children playing on the missiles. The hands located at the bottom of the composition also forms a triangle with the apex pointing toward the main focus of this image.

Also at the bottom of the composition are chemical plant chimneys emitting black smoke conveying pollution and acting as implied lines pointing upward.

The background of the image are drought patterns on soil which symbolizes global warming.

Having all the elements working together and acting as leading lines, the focus of the composition is made obvious. The symmetrical balance used in this image also creates a sense of stability which is aesthetically appealing to the viewer.

Love Is Patient, Love Is Blind, Love Means Slowly Losing Your Mind – 27 Dresses (2008)

For the third design, I wanted to dive deeper into how I could use symbols and objects metaphorically to express a message that was not literal to the quote. I settled on the health issues of smoking. I first started with designing the man smoking on a noose hanging himself. To portray the act of him slowly killing himself I included an iceberg below the man to represent “love means slowly losing your mind” as the more he smokes, the more he will slowly kill himself. To also show the damage of smoking I included a pair of deformed lungs with holes.

Tunas are not able to pump water through their gills if they are not swimming, therefore they do not stop swimming even for a moment throughout their entire life. Taking that concept, I added some tuna fishes in the water and specifically placed them in a way to form an arrow head which points towards the iceberg.

The iceberg also acts as an implied line directing the eye toward the hanging man making it the focus of this image.  

The minimalistic details in this design makes it easy for the viewer to understand the symbols and ultimately discern the message behind the design.

Sometimes To Love Someone, You Gotta Be A Stranger – Blade Runner (2049)

Out of all the designs I prefer my final one most. Being inspired by the recent Blade Runner sequel I wanted to use a quote from the movie. I felt that the quote was really evident in USA because of all the conspiracies surrounding the government being in control of everyone’s communications and information stating that it’s all for the greater good to prevent terrorism etc. However, nobody really knows what is true or not.

I used a scarecrow as the focus of this composition as scarecrows are deemed as the protector of crops from crows and birds in farms. The scarecrow not being alive can also be seen as a stranger. However, I manipulated the scarecrow’s head and included a surveillance camera. On the surveillance camera, there is an eagle emblem which is part of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) logo.

Ever since 9/11 the United States government has greatly increased the ability of the NSA to collect and investigate information on both foreign subjects and US citizens (Sottek 2013). A secret program called PRISM captures the private data of citizens regardless of whether or not they are connected to terrorism or any wrongdoing. The surveillance camera on the scarecrow represents how the NSA is acting as a scarecrow trying to protect people from terrorist attacks while being an unknown figure.

I wanted to also represent that there is a more sinister meaning behind the design by including a hand controlling the surveillance camera like a puppet. The puppet lines converging helps to direct the attention toward the NSA eagle logo emphasizing the focus of the composition.

The angel wings at the back of the scarecrow portrays how the United States is known for their freedom however are they truly free? The globe on which the scarecrow is situated on shows how the scarecrow is watching over everything on earth exerting dominance.

The US government claims that this is for the good of the nation thus relating back to the quote about “sometimes to love someone” and the unfamiliarity of a scarecrow represents the “stranger” in the quote.

In conclusion, the Forrest Gump assignment has put me in situations where I needed to think out of the box to interpret messages through media. I have to admit it was rather daunting in the beginning however with the help of my friends and the class consultations I was able to come up with some designs that I really liked. Overall this assignment has helped me put the lessons I’ve learnt through class to use and I grew as a designer to effectively use visuals to convey a message.

My Line Is Emo

It has been a very fun and frustrating few weeks of experimentation trying to describe emotions through visuals. Taking ordinary household items and making them into mark making tools to express my emotions has certainly changed how I will view these items in the future.

As an urban landscape photographer, I am inspired by modern architecture and how shapes can portray certain emotions/feelings. Bewildered by this phenomenon I decided to research on this topic and revolve my emo lines based on geometric and organic shapes.

Irritation

As a start, I decided to find objects lying around at home that gave me a sense of irritation. My sister has always been annoying and irritating however I couldn’t figure a way to make her into a mark making tool so I settled for a cleaning brush instead. The bristles when brushed upon my skin caused an uneasy bothersome feeling that I thought was perfect for expressing irritation.

Trail results for irritation emotion

First I dipped the brush in ink and used only parallel strokes in one direction, after which I repeated the process in a perpendicular motion to the original strokes.

Final cropped line for irritation

The result of the process created brush strokes that intersected each other to form sharp edges at the ends of each stroke. The sharp edges represent aggression which is often the by-product of being irritated. The converging lines make the pattern more complicated and messy which amplifies the effect of being irritated. I decided to use the bottom most corners of the paper making use of negative space that gives definition to the pattern.

Guilt

Researching about interesting techniques of design and perception, I chanced upon a technique that many designers use in their works, The Gestalt Principles. The gestalt principles are very useful in playing tricks on the mind. Some famous logos that make use of these principles are, the Fedex logo and the panda in the WWF logo. Using the Gestalt principle of closure I created rounded curved shapes without borders and within these shapes were concentric patterns with varying thickness.

Trial sketch of organic shapes

Firstly I experimented with drawing curvy organic shapes extending from the borders of the line.

Trail sketch with concentric patterns

I then inserted some rounded concentric patterns to create a sense of emptiness and incompletion.

Final sketch with addition of parallel lines

I tried adding lines to further complicate the pattern however it looked too messy and busy to express guilt.

End result for guilt

The previous iterations of my line were not exemplifying guilt enough thus I decided to draw the curved shapes with pencil and erase the borders after including the concentric patterns in them. This boosts the visual effect of guilt even more. Even though the curved shapes are incomplete, enough is present for the viewer to complete the shape. The mind portrays a shape however the eye does not see any borders, much like guilt there is an ongoing conflict based on conscience of distinguishing right from wrong. I also exaggerated the difference in thickness of the concentric shapes to express a feeling of uncertainty and doubt.

Ecstasy

After researching on the effects of the drug ecstasy, I decided to create a visual representation of what it feels like to be under the influence of the “love pill”.  After surfing around the internet on techniques that create interesting patterns I chanced upon one that gives the impression that the shapes are being warped and definitely embodies some similarities to the effects of ecstasy.

Mid process of creating ecstasy line

Making use of a ruler and marker, I created lines to impose an illusion of heightened perception and hallucination as the shapes seem like they are winding. The gradual change in spacing between each line as they converge at a single point creates a deception that the shapes are intertwining.

Side view of ecstasy

When looked upon as a whole, the patterns suck the viewer in with its complexity and much like the drug, you get hooked on the pleasures of looking at the lines as they intrigue the mind.

Love

Sticking to the theme of creating patterns using geometric shapes, I wanted to express love in a very unfamiliar way. A lot of times love may be expressed as this overflowing burst of emotions with fluidity however, I took a different approach and portrayed my view of love as being fragile.

Circular makeup sponge to create circles

First I used a circle makeup sponge and dipped it with black ink to create some clean circles which represent love. The circles’ completeness suggests unity and harmony, often times also associated with sensuality and love.

Tea leaves added to drying ink

Next I added some tea leaves on top of the drying ink to represent thorns. Although love is seemed to be perfect in its entirety however it can also hurt thus using the tea leaves as they resemble the thorns of a rose.

Thin lines that overlap to show complexity and fragility
Final view of love line

Finally to show the fragility and complication of love, I drew some thin lines across each circle. The lines overlap each other and represent the sophisticated network of emotions that are associated with love.

Surprise

Hexagons are one of the strongest geometric shapes as they have 6 sides and present reliability and dependability. The honeycombs in bee hives inspired me to create a systematic formation of hexagons to represent human beings.

Lightbox used to create accurate rendition of hexagons onto newsprint

Using a light box I traced over a pattern which I photoshopped together onto the newsprint paper to ensure perfect distribution and size of each hexagon.

Trial experimentation with different patterns in hexagons

After which I went ahead to draw different patterns in each hexagon to represent the experiences of different people. We are all products of our own experiences and everyone is special in their own way. I wanted to portray that everyone has an element of surprise within them however we are always trying to put up a strong front which is represented by the hexagon surrounding the patterns within.

Scothbrite to create pattern

To make the line more interesting I also used different elements to create marks like a scothbrite and my thumbprint!

Fear

I’m sure most of us have witnessed a scene in a movie where a murderer gruesomely kills someone. Blood is splattered all around and to get rid of the body the murderer would drag it away leaving a trail of blood. I wanted to recreate that with a brush and focused on messy strokes while still retaining the visibility of how it was created.

Cropped version of fear

The messy strokes show randomness and there are blotches of ink splattered everywhere which shows instability therefore invoking fear. The black ink resembles blood which is often times viewed as threat.

Final combined My Line is Emo

Some of the challenges that I faced during this assignment was trying to form a theme for my lines. After which another challenge was trying use the mark making tools to depict my theme of using geometric shapes to portray emotions. I ended up using only geometric shapes for some of my lines and stuck to good old fashion mark making tools for the more expressive emotions like fear and irritation.

Overall my understanding of how shapes, form, lines and contrast can be used in expressing emotions abstractly has been greatly enhanced through this exercise. I really enjoyed cracking my brain to come up with creative ideas and I am very happy with the results of my creations!