Decorating the Exhibition Space

On Thursday, the space that we will be presenting our exhibition in was set up with boards around the sides of the room to hide the furniture and equipment and to present our work on. We prepared the boards by taking pins out and cleaning them, then covered the ends and joins with gum-tape. We painted everything white and then cleaned up any paint which had spilled onto the floor, as well as some paint and printing ink that was there before. I also gave the plinths I will be using another coat of paint. By the end of the day the space looked much neater. Some places might need one more coat of paint but the room is pretty much ready to set up for the exhibition.

Preparing for the Exhibition

For the last week I have been preparing all my work for the exhibition. I had decided that I wanted backgrounds to create the sense of three different worlds housing three different creatures. I have designed and painted these backgrounds to compliment the models for each section and I think they worked pretty well. The problem with painting them was that the plinths were delayed in arriving and I didn't know what sizes to do them. I designed them so that I could extend or cut them down if I needed to. When the plinths arrived I found that I needed to cut two down and extend the other. I chose the woodland scene for the widest plinth because it was the easiest to extend and had the most to fill the space. The other two worked very well cut down and they all look very neat cut mounted onto foam board and temporarily attached to the plinths to practice the set-up. I thought that I needed to dress the sets a bit to add context, help bring the background into the space and connect it to the models. I have found some sticks for the woodland scene, small machine parts for the machine scene and some everyday objects that I can use. I think they do help with the overall effect and work very well.

Making the Models

I have now finished making all the models for my project. The most fun ones to make have been the woodland creatures. I have really enjoyed playing with latex and paint effects and I think they have turned out very well. These models tend to get a good reception from people who see them, and they are often surprised that the models are flexible because they expected them to be made of clay or wood.



The robot models have also worked very well. I ran into some problems when I was putting these together because the different parts were hard to fix, but with a lot of experimentation and some advice from my tutor I found ways that worked. On the whole, I found that the best way was to use epoxy resin, but in some places I couldn't keep the models still and pressed together for 30 minutes so I used a hot glue gun.


The success of the everyday object creature models is more mixed. I am very pleased with the umbrella-bat although it is better when you can hold it and move it around which won't be possible in the exhibition. I will experiment with different ways of positioning this. I am also pleased with the earphone model which is very interesting to look at.

A significant challenge with many of my models was how to make them stand up. I played a lot with balance, adding different weights to different parts of the models. I also tried changing the shape and positions of the feet. I glued circles of acetate to the bottom of the earphone creatures feet to help it balance; I glued bolts to the backs of one of the robot's legs because the centre of balance was much too far back and because of the shape of the legs, I couldn't shift it forwards; and for another robot I filled the legs with resin so that they would hold the weight of the body.

Finalising Designs

I have experimented with combining designs, and fitting them to different purposes. I found that I was never as happy with these experiments, because part of what I like about the creatures is that you can see what they were influenced by. I think this would be good in terms of making an animation, because different objects could come to life, or move so that they look like different creatures. Although I don't plan to animate my models, it would give them a purpose so I would create designs around the practicalities of animation. I also like the contrast between the man-made and natural objects, so I have decided to display the models as if they belonged to different worlds. I could have an enchanted forest with creatures based on plants, an everyday scene with creatures based on everyday objects and a pile of machine parts with creatures based on machines. I could also think about creating cities out of the things that the creatures are inspired by.

Experimenting with 3D

I have started to experiment with making my designs in 3D. I have really enjoyed this, both the process of converting the designs and the making itself. The first thing I did was to try to fix some parts of machines together, to see how the type of design I was doing would work in real life. The concept worked well, and I managed to create some designs that worked, but the pieces were very difficult to fix together. I have tried different types of glue, including a hot glue gun, a solvent glue and an all purpose glue. The hot glue gun sticks the pieces together firmly, but looks messy as I can't apply it accurately enough and the pieces are very small. The other glues tend to fall apart, and the all purpose glue does not seem to dry properly. I need to try some more methods of fixing them together, and work out which method works best for which piece. The next things I made were small latex masks, which worked really well and were very fun to make. I would like to make another of these which is larger so would actually be able to be worn as a mask, and maybe try a few more small ones to play with colour and texture.

Progression

After this course finishes I will be going to University. I am going to study Modelmaking at the Arts University of Bournemouth. I had my interview last year and got a place, so the purpose of this course is to improve my skills and gain confidence in the processes I will need for the course. This project has been very helpful for me in preparing for University, firstly in learning the process of writing a project proposal. I had not done this for any of my previous projects so it was good to have support from my tutor and peers when writing it, and I expect it will make me feel more confident to write this sort of proposal in the future. I have also learnt skills in modelmaking, such as making a plaster cast and working with latex, and have had more practise in following a design through to the completion of the model. These will all be useful for University and will hopefully make me feel more prepared when I start in September.

I have enjoyed this course a lot, especially the wide range of projects we have been able to work on and new things I have been able to try. I am glad that I chose to follow the photomedia pathway because I think it has given me the most freedom to make things I want to make, as well as encouraging me to try things I would not normally do such as photography, film and animation.

Initial Creature Designs

I have begun to draw a few designs for this project. I did a few drawings based on plants from my garden, some based on everyday objects and some based on parts of machines. I did not initially intend to base all my designs on humans, but when I started drawing some of the designs I decided to make them bipedal/humanoid creatures. I think this will help me with designing characters because it will act as a template to work from and I can adapt different objects or arrange them to form a human shape. It will also be useful moving forward in the project because I can adapt the designs to suit a costume or mask as well as models for photography or animation, so it will make a wider range of outcomes possible. The different starting points lend themselves to different types of characters. The designs based on plants are more suited to natural, woodland creatures, and the mechanical parts are more suited to robots. It would be an interesting challenge to try to design a robot based on plants, or an animal based on parts of a machine, and I would like to try this, to see if I could design more interesting creatures.

Final Major Project Beginning

For my Final Major Project (FMP)  I have chosen to look at character and creature design. I think this will be a good opportunity to develop my skills in drawing and making. I hope to learn different methods of model-making and work with clay, latex, plaster and recycled materials/everyday objects. I have begun to look into films, books and T.V. programmes that include original creatures and research the design and production of the models, costumes and illustations. I am looking forward to working on this project. I plan to create a wide variety of designs to begin with, inspired by a range of objects or ideas, and then choose a theme that works well and refine a variety of designs based on that theme.

Liquid Emulsion

Liquid emulsion is similar to the emulsion found on photo paper, but in liquid form so it can be coated on a range of surfaces. We prepared a range of surfaces including wood, fabric and different types of paper and card by painting them with a few layers of PVA glue. When they were dry we moved them to the dark room and coated them with liquid emulsion. We projected the films onto them in the same way as normal photographic paper, and used a test strip to see how long they should be exposed for. I found that they needed longer than photo paper to produce an image, and exposed most of them for around 12 seconds.

I experimented with exposing photos onto a few different materials. I tried one on newspaper which didn't work at all. The image only appeared in streaks where the liquid emulsion had been painted on, and when I put it in the water it was washed off the newspaper. I think it may have needed more coats of PVA glue, and the liquid emulsion painted on more carefully or in more layers. I also printed photos onto two types of fabric: a white cotton with grey embroidered leaves, and a textured fabric with painted wave shapes. The images came out quite well on both the fabrics but not on the patterned parts. I think this could work quite well depending on the photo being printed. It would probably need to be more of a pattern based image so that the two would overlap and combine well together.

Infrared Photography

 Infrared film is sensitive to the full spectrum of visible light and also to infrared radiation. This means the images differ from normal black and white film because normal film is only sensitive to visible light in order to replicate what we see. The effect of infrared film is most obvious when photographing leaves and plants because they reflect a lot of infrared radiation. This should mean they appear brighter in photographs. There are also some types of dyes and pigments that reflect more infrared radiation than others, so would stand out more.

There are different types of infrared films, some more extreme than others meaning they are sensitive to longer wavelengths which allows them to pick up more infrared radiation. The film we used was Rollei Infrared IR 400 which has sensitivity up to 820 nanometers(nm) with filtration. I didn't use a filter on my camera so the sensitivity will have been lower than this. Wavelengths of infrared radiation range from around 700nm to around 1,000nm so the film I used was one of the least sensitive. This means it produces a less extreme effect but is easier to handle and less likely to be ruined by light leaking into the film canister. Most infrared films can only be inserted or removed from the camera in complete darkness but this film can be handled in subdued light.

I developed my films in developer for 10 minutes, agitating every 30 seconds; then stop bath for 30 seconds, agitating constantly; then fixer for 5 minutes. I then rinsed it with running water for 30 minutes. I exposed some of my photographs onto photographic paper in the dark room, using a test strip of different exposure times to work out how long was needed. I exposed most of my images for 3 seconds.

I don’t think my photos were entirely successful because although some of them were quite crisp and detailed, a lot of them looked washed out and foggy. The foliage didn’t stand out much and they didn't have the high contrast of many black and white infrared photos. This could be because I didn't use a deep red or R72 filter which would have produced stronger effects, and may also be the result of some light leaking onto the film when I was developing it or moving it in or out of the camera.