- vr painting
I decided to Instagram message Manards, a fictional designer combining his background in graffiti, classical fine arts, and graphic design in his unique portfolio. I came across his work on Behance and was instantly mesmerised. I couldn’t find a lot of information about his processes and his workflow so decided to message him on instagram. He provided me a lot of useful information and I will continue to use this research to delve into the world of messy interface further. The main link between his work and our brief is that he creates his futuristic three dimensional design from a reconfiguration he creates of famous “grandmaster” paintings in the idea of them centuries ago actually being exposed to computer softwares and programmes. This is a real life example of juxtapositioning analogue and digital works. The original painting therefore being analogue and Manards design being digital. A messy interface.
To the right is a colour palette I have created colour dropping colours from of his pieces and editing them on nomad sculpt.
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I took my inspiration from graffiti in the 80s/90s in height of rave culture. I wanted to incorporate and experiment different ways of working and I always love to inject some sort of illustration within my design work so these seemed to be a fun route to explore. Graffiti is created on architecture around the world, but especially within rave locations. Due to the derelict surroundings and creative, energised ecollection of people it draws. It is a perfect breeding ground for graffiti to emerge . Further developing my exploration into industrial diffusion x human experience.
The first exploration was into sculpting a 3D pill. To reference the acid house of the 80s and the rave scene in industrial, derelict buildings.
A rave (from the verb: to rave) is a large dance party featuring performances by DJs and occasionally liveperformers playing electronic music, particularly electronic dance music (EDM). The music is amplified with a large, powerful sound reinforcement system, typically with large sub woofers to produce a deep bass sound. The music is accompanied by laser light shows, projected images, visual effects and fog machines. The word “rave” was first used in the late 1980s to describe the subculture that grew out of the acid house movement.
In his autobiography Laurent Garnier’s “Electrochoc” – the bible for any electronic music lovers, Garnier is telling the story how the dance scene rise from the early 1980s at London’s Mud Club and Manchester’s Hacienda. the first parties, which later bloomed into the rave culture and everything we know now, were born in the UK in the 80’s.- Link to Manchester and the architecture within
The underground get-together’s of acid-loving music-heads were being held in various unexpected locations out of the cities – abandoned warehouses, old plants and parking lots. People used to get information about locations by calling a phone number. They dressed up, took their friends and went to be free and dance.
Acid House has its origins in Chicago where the first supposed Acid House record was created.
Acid House continued to remain prominent throughout the 90’s rave scene with the emblem and predominant logo of the culture being a yellow smiley face symbol which was commonly associated with Acid House
the third Shoom flyer featured the smiley face that became the defining symbol of acid house. This period became known as the Second Summer of Love.
“It was all one love, everyone together. Anyone can dance all of a sudden, freedom of expression. Dress down, not up. Converse trainers, smiley T-shirts – a sort of tribalism took over. Everyone was happy to be the same”. – Pete Tong
When rave culture took over the world, the UK youth had to fight for their right to party. Section 63 of the 1994 Criminal Justice Act was the law that made raving impossible. The law forbid gatherings and police was raiding the suburbs and outskirts of the cities, stopping any activities they considered suspicious.
I experimented with some other paint illustrations that were more inspired by the graffiti realm ( my graffiti illustration idea starting to develop ) and tried different backgrounds, HDRIs, ambient occlusions etc. All to be used to layer over my moving image visuals that will be compiled in the VJ'ing software to give some variation to the visuals and other mediums/textures.
industrial elements
I wanted to then ensure I injected some industrial elements into these 3D pieces to fit to my brief. I decided to sculpt 3D elements that were more industrial objects to give the impression of reconstruction and tools for development.
object that represented a toolbox.
industrial x human experience
adding the infrastructure
I wanted to then experiment and explore the infrastructure side more, as my main focus is on the mill. I wanted to recreate rooms in cinema 4D to create more of a backdrop to my 3D design and have these walls actually move and interact with the object ( give the illusion of rebuilding ). I was focusing on the more beige colour palette for this piece, referencing brickwork of the mill and Manchester's industrial architecture that's prominent throughout the city.
the glass texture
taking reference to industrial windows
that are key features of old mills
experimenting with lighter materials and
colour infusions of yellow to reference acid house
- with the smiley face being a direct reference
this was really a process of learning my way around the software as before this
I would use blender and nomad sculpt as my main 3D sculpt softwares ( before I downloaded the student cinema 4D Maxon 6month subscription). However after many tutorials the software was I think
easier to use and the rendering for lighting and animation took some learning but I got there in the end.
The images above show different settings of ambient occlusion and global illumination, and showcases the different settings I processed through to achieve the best quality settings. This work really helped where the project eventually ventures of to ( ***future annotating me )
I really like the final product. The different animation movements I gave to the objects makes them seem to have a life of their own. I think the beige is beautiful but a little dull for event visuals, and feels to mundane - doesn't capture the energy of the times
graffiti route
reference images
I really enjoyed creating this it was really relaxing slowly building up the layers of text
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different textures I experimented with and lighting colours. I also inserted a texture of of brickwork that I took at the mill which complimented the glass element I experimented with the piece. The different coloured lighting reflected beautifully in final renders, but it felt like I was delving into the glass texture to much and decided to refrain from this.
*** I created this using nomad sculpt on my iPad instead of cinema 4d as this is the device I use to illustrate as it is much easier with the pen. Therefore I could not transfer this over to cinema 4d, as you can export just OBJ files but its looses all paint work in the transfer. So this unfortunately didn't allow me to be able to experiment with brickwork textures ***
making textures
I decided to take screenshots of my drawn graffiti on the head close up to then upload onto cinema 4d to create textures. As I mentioned above ^ paint work doesn't transfer in OBJ files so this was the next best scenario if I wanted to have this drawing as a material on the computer software.
I also took a picture of my oriental top and lantern to create a texture for an object you will see in a further website page
