Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Today we watched Invasion of the body Snatchers. The film was set in 1950s America where the meaning of uncanny is explored.

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The Uncanny (Ger. Das Unheimliche -- literally, "un-home-ly") is a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange.

It was made uncanny by making the aliens take over human like bodies and steal their minds, so it was always unclear who was affected or not, thus the uncertainty of this makes it creepy without the need for any actual special effects and unconvincing costumes or anything directly creepy. At the time in America everyone was afraid of being the same as everyone else and in this film, the main characters were afraid of losing their emotions and thus being the same as everyone else in the small town.

This is a picture showing a half formed human alien who is a duplicate of the guy on the right.


I didn't quite get how these pods were changing people. When the main female character finally changes at the end, there were no pods in the cave, she changed at the blink of an eye, whatever was happening to the duplicate bodies was not explained clearly.

Completed All Maya Tasks

So here is the completed rendered street. The air conditioner unit is in the street, just very small and barely visible. ( At the very end of the left side of the street. It was barely visible in the HD version of the image... that's how difficult it is to see.)


Final Image




Colour Pass




Occlusion Pass



UV Maps Fire Hydrant


Lamp



Railings

The Final Three

So this is it. The final three.

This is the final picture of the pit. It is a slightly edited version of one of my preparatory images. It has the added detail of damp green slime and dirt between the metal tiles. It is also the most realistic of the three final pictures in my opinion. Due to the camera angle, it is missing some of the other details of the chamber, ie, the pit, but from this view, I think it shows what the character would be seeing as the pendulum moves ever so slowly closer. Where as the others just show a dark room with a few features. I thought it also had the most depth to it as it does show just how tall the room really was.




The two of the house of Usher have a less realistic quality but I think are the best I've done of the house throughout the project.
I decided to have this view because, the text described the windows of being tall eye like, giving the feeling of being watched, so I thought of having the viewer watched over the grounds.




This is by far my favorite of the three. Although simple (again in terms of detail), the trees are what I think make this image creepy but also a combination of the chosen camera angle where you can also see the silent tarn (the patch of water) dividing the land. It is also easier to see that there is a slight fog too.



My pictures really don't show much about the house but of the journey to the house. A very bleak desolate spooky landscape with not much life. Ive used colour sparingly.



Here are the last of the preparatory paintings for the final three paintings, in order from oldest to newest.

The house of Usher from the front.



I found for me, the easiest way to start a picture is to just paint silhouettes, assigning all the objects a different shade of grey, and then to use them as masks and add the shading. This can be seen in these examples.





The house of Usher from a high window.





Notice with theses two pictures I originally had detailed grass. I decided to take the detailed grass out of the picture because it seemed out of place. The shading and details were all streaky except for the grass. he grass was trying to be too realistic compared to the rest of the picture and was, in my opinion failing as a final piece.





These last images were just a couple of tests before I attempted the final three. I was trying to create a better detailed house but ended up looking more like it was made out of wood.

More Houses of Usher

This was the first image I created today. It is a slight variation of one of my previous pictures, but more brightly lit and generally an improvement, although the roof still isn't detailed enough. This is definitely one of the views that I want to use in the final three.



This is the second one and as you can see, its only got the basic shapes. This will probably be the final picture of the house from this angle.



This was just another experiment in creating better textures. still needs some work though.

An almost final Pendulum

I've done three more pictures of the Pit and the Pendulum.

This was the first picture I did.



I think it was a nice idea but hasn't got the same atmosphere as some of the others. I was trying to get a reflection of the pit in the pendulum (which I admit, looks more like a shovel) but hasn't really worked as a picture. The pendulum doesn't look like its hanging.

These two I my favourites and I would like to call one of them my final picture, or at least an almost final picture.

I prefer how the pendulum hangs in this picture and how it is lit. but is missing the pit and the rats because of the angle of the camera.




I like this one because of its colour. The lighting is good and there is more content in the frame (The pit and the low wooden framework), but I am not so satisfied with the pendulum.




I realize that all these pictures are missing the rats, the drawings of the demonic figures and the main character, but I would really like to come up with the final look of the room and the pendulum before going any further with these pictures.

If I could get some opinions and advice on the above, it would be most helpful.


Additional



This picture was done last Friday. I think it has a good atmosphere but has some badly drawn demons on the walls. (one of which looks like its dancing happily)

Experimenting with Ideas

Here are just some sketches, coming up with more ideas, experimenting with different shapes. Not compositions for painting.




Testing different shaped walls.




Here is another different look where the walls are slightly curved and leaning over, giving a sort of claustrophobic feeling.




For the pit I've tried to focus on drawing some rats. hopefully slightly better than before.




Here are just a few more sketches of the pit at different angles.






For this last picture, I've come up with the idea of a close up on the pendulum with the rest of the picture of the pit in it's reflection.

Completed Maya house Tasks

Maya house. All UV mapped with lots of spare space.


Windows




Wall and Roof




Ground and Stairs




Final Modeled House

The Cook the Thief His Wife and Her Lover

We watched the film The Cook the Thief His Wife and Her Lover today. I thought the film was good although I probably wouldn't watch it again.

I noticed that bold colours were used in this film. Red was used predominantly in the eating area, green in the kitchen and white in the toilets. I also noticed that the colours of the wife's dresses change colour corresponding to the room that she's in. The lighting looked very much like what you would see on stage, very saturated. The coloured lighting set the mood of the scenery to an extreme which made it very theatrical. The other main thing that made it very theatrical was how the film was divided up into days like a series of scenes with the curtain closing at the end of the film.

Green in the Kitchen

Adobe Lecture Cancelled

Phil has had to reschedule todays adobe lecture but the film is still going ahead at two o' clock.
Please let everyone else know.

Edward Scissorhands

Today we watched Edward Scissorhands. I enjoyed the film.

I thought that the small American town looked very toy like. A complete extreme opposite to the spooky house where Edward lived. The town was very basic, samey and standard as opposed to the spooky house which had interesting architecture with little intricate details apart from the fact that it was in ruins.

I think that Peg had good intension's in bringing Edward to the rest of the town but was bound for disaster, or else there wouldn't be a film. I knew from nearly the beginning that someone was going to accidentally get stabbed by scissors. I think the film had a good ending, I couldn't imagine a happy ever after ending but the fact that the bad guy dies instead of Edward makes it happy enough for it to not be a sad ending.

A Few More Paintings and Maya

Today I've done two more paintings, one of the house and one of the pit. I spent much more time on the house as you can probably see. I spent ages just drawing all the highlights on the trees and am happy with them. Again like the last, I've made this image very dark and creepy.




The pit was done quickly (starting to loose enthusiasm in painting) but shows sort of what I imagined it to look like. This image does show a lot of movement, probably too much but the angle of the camera really focuses on the pendulum and the pit, more than my other images. I've really focused on the house more than the pit today.




I also found this other image that I done and forgotten to upload, of the house. I think theres definitely an improvement in lighting but something the lacks in all the paintings Ive done is texture.





Here is the house done in Maya so far.

More sketches, looking at camera angles

This was just another sketch of the pit but I'm still not happy that the angle is any better than before.



So I decided to go into Maya and create the scene with basic geometry, so that I can play around with camera angles and focal length. here are what I came up with.




I think Ive lowered the focal length a bit too the extreme here.




These are the sketches based on the scenes from Maya.






Sinse the last picture of the house looking out into the open, Ive come up with three more alternate images. (shown in chronological order) The first one was just looked much the same as the one a painted as seen in one of the previous posts. I didn't think it was any better. The second one I thought was too broken up by the pillars but I'm happy with the third image as it looks like the house is watching over the grounds.



The two archways split the image in two and it looks as if the the other objects are just squashed in.


so this is looking from over the top of the house, looking out into the night. there are some dead trees to the left and a few fading out into the distance with moon half covered by clouds.


I think Ive got something good to work with for tomorrows painting sessions.

Where I am at the moment

I have been preparing more of my essay on The Dark Knight. One of the things I will be looking at is how the design of the production has made the film more realistic from the comics or other batman films.

Ive only started this weeks batch of Maya tutorials and still need to do eight more parts for the house.

I've never seen Alien before and I enjoyed it. I thought it looked very up to date except for the scene when the baby alien run away. It was jumpy rather than scary. This was created by long scenes of not much happening with a sudden appearance of the alien, hidden in the shadows.

See the latest drawings and painting below in the previous post.

More sketches and paintings

So here are the latest pictures and paintings for The Pit and The House of Usher.

First, here are some sketches.












This was what I've done in Fridays session.










And this is what I've been working on over the weekend. This happens to be the first proper painting for The Pit, that I've done.









Technically there wasn't any light as this point in the scene but then you wouldn't be able to see anything if I didn't add light.

When painting I find that it is easier to paint in black and white first, and then colourize afterwards.