project 471 final unfinished env/scene

project 471 - final unfinished narrative

I've been spending the last couple of days figuring out the things I could've done differently, but I didn't want to completely start over and I continued with what I had already been working with. I think this project was more of me trying to get the image I pictured in my head, find the right landscape, rather than spending the hours on the modeling of the tree branches/road signs. I ended up getting 3 posters printed out just because the first 2 came out really dark (expected) even after I'd made it brighter. I printed the first 2 at millrace, and tried the 3rd at kinkos. I lightened up the sky because it appeared grey on the first 2. The sky on the 3rd attempt print turned out to be pixelated. I think the mistake I made was starting off with a background that wasn't as good quality and it wasn't something I had put into consideration, and having spent most of my time compositing/rendering with the background would take me a while to start over with a new background. The scene is intentionally made dark just because when I think of Alice being 'lost' - that it's a 'night' scene. If it was a daylight scene, it wouldn't really make sense.. but at the same time, I'm trying to not make it make sense, so whether it was daylight or night time, the point is that it makes us think how and why those road signs appear to be there without any road leading to a certain direction. I realized that putting them into a 2d image was harder than I thought (with getting the plane in a right angle with the grass). After seeing the outcome of the image, I wonder how it would've been different if this was in a 3d environment- could possibly be something to experiment with another time!

why blender why.

march 10. i wanted to use some kind of deserted area for a landscape bg, but i started working with a field of grass type image- i realized placing 3d onto a 2d image is harder than i thought-hopefully it'll all work out.

i was compositing earlier and was working on placing the tree branches and signs to the right angles with the bg i was working with and just when i had least expected it.. 2 hours later Blender decides to unexpectedly quit on me ... and no, i didn't save, so i lost it all-but i'm getting right back to it. i still have a lot of photoshopping to do.

march 13 update.

still have another sign to place and i'm thinking to change the background- maybe adding in smaller tree branches to make them appear further away- we'll see. also, i have a feeling that the printing is going to turn out darker, so i might drop the final image into photoshop and brighten it just a bit.

writer's block

Update 3/5. So the only thing that came to mind and got stuck with is Alice in Wonderland. Alice goes through different places as she was trying to find her way home and didn't know where she was going. So for the narrative, I wanted to create a scene with forests, roads/paths, and signs. Some of the things brought up last week from the group talk was that roads seen in forests are already common and gives it away from actually being "lost". Suggestions were that I shouldn't create a road through a forest and just have signs scattered in different directions. There is no clear path or direction to go, and you could go either way.

So the plan is to put road signs and tree branches in a photograph (forest/wood). I gathered photographs I took of skies/trees, and will take parts of those pieces and photoshop them in the image. I modeled some road signs but I still need to smooth it out and unwrap/texturize them. I tried modeling trees for the past few days and had difficulty with it. Having the flu + headaches aren't any fun and I'm still not well enough to sit tight in front of the computer to model. I'll give the tree/branch modeling another shot this weekend and hope I can somehow incorporate that into the 2d image.