FILM DRAWING
Drawing was utilised as a method to communicate ideas at the birth of the film. It became much more than the production toolset. The digital form of the film and two dimensional drawings became intertwined to create the broader aspect of the artistic landscape.
VISUAL NOVEL
Thinking sequentially in images to tell the story of the written script allowed the establishment of comprehensive awareness of the final film. Shot type, camera angle and mies-en- scene were critical decisions to make. Research into the making of the storyboard brought insight into general understanding of the level of detail in the film. Those became key characteristics for the creation of the concept art and look development for the further artistic practice.
Wide shot, where we see the character in relation to the environment that reveals her body and surroundings. Close-up, with the face and expressions and extreme macro close-up of the human eye. The research question of the artificial visual apparatus as a practice aims to outline the storyline within a single eye. Across multiple shots of the story the eye appears quite frequently, yet the idea of the eye working is only possible when it is supported by the contextual environment.
SURREALIST VISUAL AESTHETICS
To understand how the final film will appear on screen in relation to colour information, a series of drawings were created using pencil and one distinct colour of paint. This was designed so the work stands out in film festivals. It has additionally served as the visual effect of artificial intelligence inside the human body. This is specifically represented by the distinct colour as opposed to the pencil drawing.
FICTIONAL WORLD
The world of the character had to be imagined first to create the environment in conjunction with the atmospheric design of the narrative. The heroine is connected to the world that she is in and her body movement is limited. This way, the environment had to tell the story by being there for her. Her name is Sandy and she is on board the spacecraft that is in space serving the purpose of artificial intelligence to take over the galaxy. This world is dark, cold and dominated by machine technology. It exists in the year 2050. Arguably, to the contemporary vision of the hard surface design, robots, etc., this world has been put together by an intelligence agent who did not have access to the parts of the perfect manufacture. It was crafted with hand-made tools and materials from the remaining pieces of the aircraft crash. In this world there are objects from unexpected times or environments that are making it rich. Lighting in the room is flickering, a lot of shelves are broken. Wires connected to her body are not perfect and unified but all in different profile.
The character is assembled by the forces of artificial intelligence that were found in the place of the aircraft crash.
From the perspective of technical direction there are two architectures converging in relation to digital graphics. Facial performance with the photographically real human face and fictional world around the character realised by the means of digital modelling. In the most contemporary three dimensional digital films the lack of concept art does exist. This was the reason to investigate and iterate on the process of conceptual design for the film. The character body was deliberately designed to embrace asymmetry of the cyborg manufacture. The right leg is different from the left one and similar for the arms. The originality of the work is in the concept art work’s ability to converge influences from different genres of science fiction, cyberpunk and steampunk, reflected in the forms of the character’s cybernetic body and her world.
The concept art went through stages of iterative practice via drawing the first concept on paper with pencil. This was supported by the visual references of numerous fictional characters and original concept designs. Secondly, it went on to the digital painting stage where the refinement and expansion of the environment took place. This was realised with the help of visual reference to mimic quality of the character and shapes it was made of.
Digital painting allowed the creation of the final line work of the image and the understanding of how each wire and surface was made. During this stage, disobedience from the three dimensional drawing had brought the ability to iterate on the version for each part of the image and embrace the creativity aspect.
DIGITAL DECOR
The design of the digital set was established by the conceptual art work. The making of three dimensional models of the character world was the most time consuming process in the early stages of digital design of the film.
Persistence with creating shapes according to the concept art became the fundamental approach to the design of the digital set. Specific attention was given to shape creation for each wire and panel brought out of the two dimensional line work.
D E S I G N
The transition from two dimensional art work to three dimensional forms was done via the method of curve modelling. This made seamless teleportation of the high level drawn artwork into the virtual world. The use of scan data created by means of photogrammetry was utilised to constrain realistic proportions of the human head and body in relation to scale and alignment.
CRAFT
Research into the hard surface modelling method of contemporary work in the science fiction genre in computer generated imagery was developed as a visual thinking approach to create a digital set. Several third party libraries of generic hard surface objects were implemented in the design of the cybernetic suite of the character. The library helped to speed up the process of modelling and provided the knowledge of topological structure of the models for wires, panels, cyber muscles, frames, etc. The project deliberately aims to stand out from the wide range of computer generated imagery artworks by breaking the symmetry and idealistic traditional methods in hard surface design. It was essential to dematerialise the character by digital shape creation using a synthetic approach to cybernetic anatomy.
To create a human similar to the process of stitching together a Frankenstein monster using the materials from mechanics, metal surfaces and wires was a fundamental driving thought during the character design work. This way the intelligence and the place of the life form to exist is implemented in the character’s ability to speak and wake up when the original ghost of the human is present. The concept design had been an intertwined theme across the development of the environment and the character along the stages of technical iteration. Hans Bellmer and his work on the creation of dolls was the prime inspiration for the cybernetic design. The world and imagination of Tim Burton’s artwork was a secondary source of craft design and tactile texture of the film world.
Similar to the process of doll making, the character was put together one part at the time, the arm, the stomach, chest, etc. The digital set as the room had to give an impression of the laboratory of a cybernetic doll maker similar to studio of the J. F. Sebastian character from the film Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982).
PANELS AND WIRES
From the modelling perspective it was a lot more profound to approach the process by separating the work of creating wires verses panels in the environmental design. The major reason for this is to narrow the focus of modelling digital surfaces in relation to the type of topology that is being utilised.
ASSYMETRY
For most digital characters we encounter on screen either in film or interactive experience, the design of their suit or armour is symmetrical. This is highly relevant to the comic art characters, science fiction robots and human avatars with outstanding abilities. This is highly pronounced in vehicle design, hard surface design of space aircrafts, engineering and product design. Digital technology as a form of storytelling breaks the perception of reality in a fantasy way to create disruption of the visual communication in film. As in the motion picture classic Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), the first representation of a cyborg was realised in the form of a perfectly symmetric design.
The idea to break symmetry came from the influence of European animation artwork and the study of human anatomy. For example, the right human eyeball is completely different from its left neighbour in terms of its shape. The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003) is an illustrative example of expanding the boundaries of physical reality by means of animation technology.
