Professional Practices - Opening Night and Final Blog

 Greetings Humans

Today is 17th of November 2020

Opening Night of Connections Art Exhibition, I don't know what to say about this but I'm highly disappointed in this exhibition. What I was expecting was people with multiple artworks and possibly large artworks, not small and minimal artworks. Yes, you could probably say that's a bit of high hopes coming from a beginning artists, but so, we got given an area that isn't too huge to fill, easily. You would also say that I'm critiquing the others too harshly as the biggest piece of artwork there was, my little display of D&D (Dungeon and Dragons) World, which to be honest, yes, I am critiquing the others too harshly (also myself as I didn't take the rungs of creating this exhibition).

This duration of putting this exhibition on, I felt like others were lazing this paper behind. I will give credit were credit is due though.

The Design team did do well with designing the imagine of the exhibition with the posters and broachers, but yet, I understand this was later on when realizing when putting the pieces all together, we didn't have large labels of names, also "Don't Touch" signs (which I created and printed off). Lastly, the artist statements were all different fonts, layouts and font sizes, which I would prefer all artist statements the same layout, font type and size. 

The Catering, did alright, the food was interesting, but there was no napkins and even through the food was visually pleasing, the red onion was a bit over powering. I do question how much it fully cost for the food, cause I don't see where the $100 went. 

 

Installation team, I don't know where their heads were. Unsure where to put thing, not even an idea where to put things. Probably also, not start printing off things like half a week before time, to see the sizing and amount of artworks people have for the exhibition. Not even just artworks but see if the artist statements are all the same font size, font type and layout. On top of that, I felt like they should have also sorted out folder in the Y drive, in the NZCC folder, a folder for the exhibition for people to any of there work needed to be printed, folder for films and animation and a folder for the Artist Statements (which on a side note, I did that yesterday as no one was going to do it).

Media team, that was my team, thing is, I don't think there was a team, it was just me it felt. Putting that aside, I would admit I would have done better, like maybe asking the radio to say something and probably ask the Design team for some A4 sized posters as most places I went to don't put up posters that are bigger than A4.

But most of all as Chairman, (forgive my language) I should have dragged people's arses through the mud to get this done. I believed as Chairman I have disappointed this exhibition cause I didn't do that. I thought too hard on my other papers and my own display that I didn't think of the exhibition as a whole. I was too wrapped up on when Argus, he message me on behalf of the Installation team stating that they don't have the time or resources to get the things I needed for my display. So angry with that statement because, that was not honesty, that was pure laziness, as I knew I could get the resources with the "limited" amount of time we had.

But hey, look at it now, as my invited guest and I was waiting for people to look around, we saw a few people more interested and invested in my little display than the other works. I admit it was a little too much compared the rest of the exhibition, but that's only cause I thought about it.

 

I wanted an area where people that walks in can come in and enjoy the atmosphere of a D&D world. Unfortunately the my prints didn't want to stick to the wall, causing them to peel off. I will be reprinting them again tomorrow, but on normal paper and pinned to the wall.

Animation - Final run to the finish

 Greetings Humans

Today is the last day!!!!!! Friday the 6th of November 2020

What I gotta do:

• Scene:
• 7 - Still drawing, back of Lerissa looking into fire - done
• 8 - Campfire Story - done to what I can do
• 9 - Crying Lerissa

• Parts of animation to do:
• Still drawing of journal open from behind
• Fire turning to tent -done
• Fire people walking - will keep it a bit animatic like - added a glow to it as I dont have time to animate them
• Still Drawing 3/4 Lerissa Back. - done
• Edit Looking up from journal still drawing to just boots and legs - done

• Editing:
• Credits - Add, Ruby to it as she did an amazing job tutoring us.

• Other:
• Artist Statement
• Send in the Animation to Think and Create

Animation - Artist Statement

 

Artist Statement for NZCC101

Title of Work: The Beginning of My Story

“Greetings Humans, have you ever had to make a decision that is so hard to follow through but you know it is the right thing to do? Or have people made your decision of what your life is going to be? I’ve experienced both of these. See, as a young tiefling, or others would call my kind demons or devils, the living evil on this world, and we’ve been put into a group where we have to act or be a certain thing. But we aren’t all that. Here is a short recreation of myself, relaxing after a hard day of research of my family and you can see what really happened to me on my 18th birthday. A decision that I wished went differently.” - Lerissa

Hello, I’m the creator and the player of Lerissa, she is my Dungeon and Dragons (D&D) character. Creating this short animation was really fun to do and I'm super proud of how it ended up. The reason why I created this scene is, I would like to show that we shouldn't judge a person by what happened to them, what they decided to do to get them to where they are today and that we shouldn’t let people choose what our life is going to be. Our destiny is caused by our own decisions, our choices, and personally I have experienced this in the real world.

What went well was, the atmosphere of the background and the campfire to give the feel of middle of no-where and nature is all around. Also the rigging for Lerissa went well for my first time rigging, the settle movement I did made her, in some scene, alive.

Digital Painting - Artist Statement

 

 Artist Statement for NZCC102

Title of Work: Welcome to the World Dungeon and Dragons

At the beginning of this paper I had no idea, now at the end I only have a rough idea. I used this paper for more an experimental works as I quite enjoy digital drawings but there was a bridge between pencil drawings and digital, and I despised that gap. My pencil drawing were more for realistic, creepy and disturbing drawings and my digital drawings were for more cartoon like drawings. Yet, during this trail of getting my realistic creepy drawing to the digital world, I didn't really like the process, it never looked right and I didn't really enjoy drawing them. So I tried another way, I tried making my cartoon like drawings more realistic. In my other papers, I was doing a DnD (Dungeon and Dragons) theme and I was already doing some DnD digital drawings for other papers, so I just continue that into NZCC102 Digital Painting.

My artist inspiration, JoCat (you can find him on twitter and YouTube), his expertise drawings are around DnD, and I quite like his style. Its a simple but effective art style of line art and basic colours (no shading), also these fictional characters he makes them look like they could come from this world. 

So I started doing my paper, if you look at the my portfolio, it goes in order of completion, first still life, then landscape/environment, next portrait and finally creature. The first creation I was quite happy with, the line art is clean and ranges in thickness (but mostly thin line art) to get texture. The colours are basic colours no shading, just different tones on the sides of the items to give a depth. The background is a neutral colours, for a soft backdrop, and lastly the text, I just added for flavor for story when people are looking at it.

Originally the landscape/environment was going to be creature themed, but then later I couldn't think of a landscape/environment (also I don't really like drawing landscapes), so I made another creature drawing later on. So I used the same theory of drawing from the still life but, I tried adding shading and colour with a lower opacity (for the patterns of the tabby cat and the burn marks on the DM screen). After completing this piece I agreed to probably don't use that technique again as it seems messy but it works with this piece though. My final thoughts with this artwork is that I quite like it, it ticks the box of fiction in the real world.

The portrait part I wanted to do a drawing of all the players and the characters (and DM, whose is in the middle), but I thought that the full body drawing of each player and character would take too much time. So I thought of doing half body shots and have the player and the character side by side, so if it was presented the audience can tell whos who and compare the player and character. This was an interesting experience as I was drawing the characters, as I was using a photo of the players as a refence to get the basic proportions, I just added extra features to make them the certain race they are and it worked really really well, to the point where I'll actually continue this for my cartoon/anime drawings. What I am going to continue is use realistic faces and other features when drawing fictional characters/creatures. Contradiction to that though is I didn't like how the players came out as.

The final piece, the piece which I am so happy with. This creature is a NPC (Non-Playable character) in the campaign, the group favourite, and I wanted to redesign him for awhile now, and I'm super happy with him.  I used all the experience from previous drawings and combine them into this (to me) beautiful piece. So I used the line art, basic colours in closed areas, basic background, realistic facial features and I added shading. I know before I said I wasn't going to use shading but I wanted to add a little to his armor to make it shine a little bit, and I continued with it through the whole creature. To make it final I used the creature template from the Monster Manual (one of the many books for the DM behind the screen) to show his abilities to the audience, also so for me to have in the player journal to keep an eye on him as he is my NPC. 

Digital Painting - Final portfilo

 Greetings Humans

The last run to the end, today is the Thursday the 5th of November 2020

Here is my final work.

Digital Painting - Creature Redrawn

 Greetings Humans

Thursday the 5th of November 2020

So I have completed the Creature part, here is the process.

In the past, when just starting the old campaign my character received a companion named Zhedoes, now in the new campaign, we are using our same character and Zhedoes was a favourite with all the players, so we added him in. Unfortunately he wasn't completely the same, as we had to change his previous background. Here was his original design drawn with pen and paper.

So the redesign begins, I used my previous drawing of the players to design his face:

Final Design:

The rest of the design is based off the Monster Manual that the DM has behind his screen. Here is an example of the Manticore, from the Monster Manual. This creation is from the Wizards of the Coast.

I quite like my drawing, I think I'll continue the realistic face cartoon-ish design, other than my other drawing for this paper I did shade him. It isn't complete detailed shading but its simple and effective.

The other players and DM say he should be a little bit more bulky in strength, but I like him the way his is.

Photography and Printmaking - Final Work

 Greeting Humans

I handed in my portfolio into blackboard and drop box, here is the final portfolio.