A Brave New World: November 2015

Sunday, 29 November 2015

Evaluation of Hybrid Project

Overall I am very happy with the way my hybrid shots turned out. I had a lot more fun with this part of the special effects unit than I did with the previous project, in all areas. I found researching hybrids as a concept both fascinating and surprising, for example Ralph Fiennes' character 'Voldemort' from the Harry Potter films is a hybrid made up of both snake and human elements and qualities. This was very enlightening for me, when we were first introduced to our second project, I had no knowledge or understanding of what a hybrid is and I had always just seen his character as the 'villain' of the famous 'octology' but after the information I had learnt from both studio sessions and my own research I felt I had been enlightened into a world in which I wasn't even aware existed.
The process of developing my hybrid concept was quite easy for me. Once I decided on what two elements I wanted to combine (a fish and a human) my ideas and gathering of research flowed easily. I looked in to why fish need gills, how they work, how other people had carried out similar projects etc. and as I got more and more information I began to enjoy myself more and more.
When it came to creating my prosthetic I was very nervous, due to struggling so much with the previous project. Therefore I went above and beyond to ensure I would be able to create the gills prosthetic with as little stress and as few problems as possible. I used a whole 4 hour studio session and, having already created two moulds so I could make two prosthetics at a time, I followed the steps to make my prosthetic and waited for it to set. I am glad I decided to make two moulds as when I removed the prosthetics from them, I felt there was a huge difference in standard between the 2 different pieces. This enabled me to move forward with what I felt would be the most effective choice, without panicking about time restrictions and model availability as I had already booked someone in to shoot the following week.
When it came to shooting my hybrid I was prepared with face and hair charts, costumes and all the makeup I needed. The fitting of the prosthetic went smoothly and so did the rest of the shoot. I enjoyed being creative with different materials, using the netting fruit comes in to create scale like makeup on the face and using the alcohol activated palette to colour the prosthetic.
Looking at my final shots, in general I am very pleased with my work and feel it is some of the best and most elaborate work I have produced since being at solent. However when I look at the shots closely it is clear that the blending of the super-baldiez into the skin was not as clean and neat in front of a camera lens as it was to the eye.
If I was to change or improve anything about my work it would be two things, first of all, as mentioned above, I would have inspected the prosthetic as I went along by taking photos to make sure it would look flawless on camera. I would also, in hindsight, reduce how deep the mould was, as I feel the prosthetic is too thick and doesn't blend well with the natural skin, making it obvious it is a prosthetic piece. Instead of making one prosthetic piece, in future I would create 2 or 3 completely flat prosthetic pieces and then individually fit them, creating the gilled effect by overlapping the pieces. I feel that this could perhaps be more effective in making the prosthetic look more realistic.

Other Shots

My Final Hybrid Shots

Making the Prosthetic - Technical Folder

When it came to making the gills for my hybrid unlike my previous attempts to make the a prosthetic for the wound project, everything went smoothly. I decided I was only going to make one set of gills for my hybrid as the model was going to have half her body fish like and the other side completely human. When I began making the clay mould I decided to make two so I could make 2 prosthetics at a time so I was covered if anything went wrong with one of them. After nearly running out of time with my wound prosthetic I thought I'd learn from this and avoid any excess stress I could possibly cause myself.

This worked out great as when I released my moulds I was a lot happier with one of them than the other, so decided to use this one to make my prosthetic. As I have done quite a few times before, I mixed all the necessary chemicals, added the pigment I thought would match my models skin best, poured the mixture into the mould and left it to set.

As I had a whole 4 hour session to create my prosthetic as my model was not coming to shoot the hybrid till the following week, I had plenty of time to leave my prosthetic to set and then also remove it from the mould to make sure it turned out well so I could make another one if it went wrong.

This level of organisation proved to work a lot better for me and meant everything went smoothly.

After 90 minutes my prosthetic had set and, using talcum powder I eased it from the mould. The prosthetic looked exactly as I had imagined and wanted it to look and the layer of super-baldiez was overly sufficient and even around the edges of the piece.

Overall the process for making my hybrid prosthetic was very straightforward and successful, which I was very pleased about. I am really happy with my gills prosthetic and can not wait to fit it and shoot my hybrid as a whole next week.

Inspiration

I have put together a moodboard containing elements of the ideas behind my hybrid, for example the black fish and mermaids in the moodboard are representative of the fish part of my hybrid. In addition to this there is also elements that I hope to be physically present in the shots of my hybrid, for example the black lips, brown smokey eye make-up, gills and the poses.

My Concept

WHERE IS THE HYBRID SUITED TOO?
My hybrid would live in the sea, being part fish it has a set of gills to enable it to breath under water, however it only has one set of gills so would stay near to the surface of the water as it would need to come up for air every so often in order to rejuvenate it's respiratory system.

WHERE HAVE SIMILAR CONCEPTS APPEARED?
Although it was not my intention, the cross of a female human being and a fish is commonly known as a mermaid. This hybrid has appeared in an endless number of novels and films, for example one of the hugely popular Disney films 'The Little Mermaid' where the protagonist 'Arial' is a mermaid longing for human feet, or more recently and I feel a lot more compelling than a cartoon film, the fourth Harry Potter novel and film contained mermaid-like creatures that were a complete contrast to what comes to most peoples mind when you think of a mermaid. They were fierce and ugly and very dangerous, nearly taking the life of Harry Potter. However because it is a completely fictional concept there are no documentaries or factual resources regarding the hybrid. However a short 'mockumentary' was shown on the television show Animal Planet that told of how, 3 million years ago mermaids travelled in 'pods' and had to avoid giant sea predators.

HOW HAS ANATOMY AFFECTED THE HYBRID?
Due to my hybrid being part human-female it will have many of the characteristics you would expect a woman to have, such as breasts and a waist, this will be simple for me to achieve as I am using a female model to create my hybrid so these elements, common and obvious in a female person will already be present.

MY PROSTHETIC.
My prosthetic is not going to be very big or complicated, I want to create something that is effective but at the same time is not too extravagant for the very limited experience I have in prosthetics. It is going to be quite small, as it needs to fit neatly on to the neck and enable me to blend it into the skin without any creases or bumps.

http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/mermaids/videos/mermaids/

http://howtobearedhead.com/10-ways-to-incorporate-the-little-mermaid-into-your-everyday-look/

http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Great_Lake_Merpeople_colony

Gills

WHY DO FISH HAVE GILLS?
The gills on a fish enable the animal to survive under water, without them, like humans they would not be able to live in water as they would not be able to breath. If it wasn't for the gills on a fish or if a fish's gills got severely damaged, the likelihood is they would drown.

HOW DO THEY WORK?
Gills have small rows and columns of specialised cells grouped together called the epithelium, this is one of the four basic types of animal tissue, the epithelium is thin tissue that forms the outer layer of a body's surface, however it also lines the alimentary canal (the passage food passes through from the mouth to the anus during digestion) and other hollow structures on the body.
Deoxygenated blood in the fish is supplied directly from the heart to the epithelium via arteries, and even smaller arterioles. As seawater is forced across the epithelium membranes, dissolved oxygen in the seawater is taken up by tiny blood vessels and veins, while the carbon dioxide is exchanged. The process begins when the fish gulps water through its mouth, the water enters the mouth and then passes through the filaments in the fish's gills. These filaments absorb the oxygen from the water and move it into the bloodstream. The fish's heart then pumps the oxygenated blood around the body, distributing oxygen all over as it goes round. At the same time carbon-dioxide in the blood passes through the gills and back out into the water.

WHAT DO THEY LOOK LIKE?
Gills have a car radiator-like appearance. Most fish have 4 gills on each side, consisting of a main bar-like structure that has numerous branches as that of a tree, and those branches consisting of even smaller branch-like structures. This arrangement of cells allows for a very large surface area when the gills are immersed in water.

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=what%20is%20a%20epithelium

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/09/how-fish-gills-work/

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=what%20is%20a%20alimentary%20canal

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=what+is+a+epithelium&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=728&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiPuvaNvrbJAhWBPxoKHTwTDMMQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=what+is+a+epithelium+in+fish&imgrc=bUv152fOZiqYSM%3A

http://www.dkfindout.com/uk/animals-and-nature/fish/how-fish-breathe/

Scales

I have decided to create a part human, part fish hybrid for my final hand-in, similar to a mermaid. For my prosthetic piece I was debating between attempting to make a piece that looks like scales for half of the face or whether to mould gills for the sides of the neck.

I googled how other people may have carried out creating scales using a prosthetic on the face and found an image similar to the kind of appearance and texture I would want to achieve with my prosthetic below ...

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvld4J81cSiZuRpXkAnPsSt8N8lfNoZRLw41ziR15lQyC4eGmqBi-DJ9KFww4JksZ_HcADuJM3PGqx0HnxxeGeDd0V4NtvaNBeuxz0v151XZ6wJUCslKiyep2VcBznB6vnRbwgcuUlFcc/s1600/silurianwoman.JPG

After experimenting with the moulding clay I don't feel I will be able to achieve great results if I make a scaled prosthetic for the face, therefore I am going to move forward with the idea of making gills for the sides of the neck. This way I can use makeup to create a scaled effect on the side of the face and it gives me more of an opportunity to experiment with what kind of makeup look I would like on the face.

Saturday, 28 November 2015

Hans Rudolf Giger

Hans Giger was a swiss surrealist artist and was most famous for his work combining humans and machines in a biomechanical manner.

He was born in 1940 in Chur, Switzerland, and as he got older his interests led him to study architecture and industrial design in Zurich, before beginning a successful career in art and interior design from the mid-1960s onwards.
In the beginning he worked with with ink and oil paintings until eventually he progressed on to using airbrush, which helped portray his work in a "vivid, often disturbing style, characterised by dark sexuality and cyberpunk energy".

Giger created a painting called 'Necronom IV' which depicted a creature with 'a human torso and grotesquely phallic skull'. This was then seen by Ridley Scott, an english film and director who used it as the inspiration for his sci-fi horror film Alien. His designs also inspired 'the derelict spacecraft, the unfurling alien eggs, and the masked 'Space Jockey' gunner' also found in the film. The film's producer Gordon Carroll described Giger's work as "sick", but Ridley Scott later commented on the work and including it in his film, saying "I'd never been so certain about anything in all my life."

Images courtesy of google images.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=derelict+spacecraft+alien&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=684&site=webhp&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjnsY2wv7vJAhXFXBQKHbkbDnoQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=hans+giger&imgrc=h9CNsS_4F1UzzM%3A

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=derelict+spacecraft+alien&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=684&site=webhp&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjnsY2wv7vJAhXFXBQKHbkbDnoQ_AUIBigB#imgrc=3Oeuta5vEpjPpM%3A

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/may/13/hr-giger-dies-alien-artist

Friday, 27 November 2015

Jordu Schell

Jordu Schell is a famous American sculptor and concept artist who has been working in the television and film industry for over 20 years.

He began his career as a sculptor, making Halloween masks but soon progressed and ended up working on some well renowned films such as Predator 2, Edward Scissorhands, Avatar and Batman returns. He also designed aliens for the opening season of Babylon 5.

Schell mainly works using clay and other physical materials, preferring that to CGI or 2D drawings, which he has done aswell.

Photos and information courtesy of en.m.wikipedia.org

Neville Page

Concept design is a form of illustration used to portray ideas for films, videos games, comic-books and animation before it is put in to the final product.

Neville Page has had one of the most successful careers as a concept designer and has been a part of some amazing work.

Born in Britain and moving to the United States with his family in 1970, he began his career in Hollywood as an actor in 1985, when he was seventeen years old. He graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts with an Associate of Arts in Theatre in 1989 and embarked on a professional acting career. Eventually he decided his acting career was not sufficient in allowing him to support his family and he ultimately decided on a career in art and design while attending the Art Centre College of Design, from which he graduated with honours in 1990, receiving a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Design.

Since then his role in the industry has influenced amazing works such as Planet of the Apes (2001), The Chronicals of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (2006), X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand (both x-men sequels), Avatar, Star Trek and many, many more.

In addition to all of this he has also done design work for car companies BMW and Toyota.

The list of his work goes on and on and he is still furthering his success today in his early fifties. Below are just a few images providing a small insight in to the world of Neville Page's creations.

pictures courtesy of nevillepage.com

www.memory-alpha.wikia.com

www.creativeskillset.org

www.moviescopemag.com › Crew

Hybrids

In our session with Kat we looked at various forms of hybrid characters such as Angelina Jolie's 2014 part bird, part woman character - Maleficent and The famous Harry Potter character 'Voldemort' who appears to be part snake, part human.

In order to gain some insight into how difficult it can be when trying to make prosthetics we watched a video about the making of the prosthetics for Voldemort and the struggles they had with trying to make his face snake-like as well as the whole thinking behind the character.

These sorts of issues are also things I will need to consider when planning out and developing my own hybrid, making sure they don't restrict any breathing etc. One of my ideas was to create a bird/human hybrid, moulding a beak prosthetic for the nose and mouth, however after watching this video I am going have to rethink that idea.

Studio Notes - Real Life Hybrids

- Hybrids are created by combining two or more different elements (e.g. 2x animals)

- Some hybrids appear in everyday life, such as a sphinx cat. Throughout history this breed of feline has been developed through both the natural combination of two different cat breeds as well as careful scientific experimentation.

- Completely artificially produced hybrids also exist, one example of this would be the 'Liger'. This is a combination of both a male lion and a female tigers genes, these species hold characteristics of both species, for example the Liger enjoys swimming which is a characteristic of tigers but they are also very sociable just like lions. Ligers are kept and bred in complete captivity as the tiger and lion do not share the same habitats and therefore would never meet to produce the hybrid offspring in wild conditions.

A Brave New World

For the second part of the Special Effects unit we have been introduced to the concept of 'A Brave New World'. After discussing what this could mean and looking over the brief we came up with a list of ideas. For this task we are required to create a hybrid - a thing made by combining two different elements.

The idea is that we create a concept that would completely transform the world around us as we know it! We must create one or more prosthetics for our model that will help to emphasise and create the idea of the cross of elements.

At first thought I have so many ideas about all the possible animals I could mix to create my hybrid but I am going to sit down and carry out a lot of research over the next few days into various types of animals and make a decision on exactly what I wish my hybrid to be.

Thursday, 26 November 2015

Evaluation of Wound Project

Overall I have enjoyed the majority of the wound project however I have also found it very stressful. When we were first assigned our wounds I was pleased with what I had been given - a burnt mark. It didn't take me long to come up with my concept of branding and to generate the whole prisoner character behind it, making me very excited. I began my research into different types of burns at different stages of the healing process in order to decide what type of burn I wanted to create, in the end I settled for a burn that was towards the end of the healing process with scabs. I decided to create a branding of 3 numbers across the back of the neck, which proved harder to mould than I thought. The first mould I created didn't work out very well, the numbers ended up being backwards and they sunk inwards instead of protruding out of the prosthetic. The following session I attempted to recreate the prosthetic piece again, however this time it had a lot of holes from air bubbles in the mixture and the super-baldiez layer was ripped and was not in any state to serve its purpose of blending the prosthetic into the skin.
By the time I had made these two attempts the time had come to start moulding the hyped prosthetic and making it so I no longer had the time in my studio session to create and shoot the wound. This became very stressful for me, trying to juggle two projects at once and finding the time to create and shoot both felt almost impossible. However for 2 weeks I also attended the special effects group that takes place between 1-5pm on a Tuesday. As a result of attending the extra hours of studio session I was able to make a third and final attempt at creating my wound, which finally came out successfully. I was then able to shoot it in plenty of time before the deadline.
The amount I struggled with creating the wound was very disheartening for me as I thought special effects was something I wanted to do as a career after completing my degree, however after the struggle I had to create such a basic piece I am beginning to think maybe I should consider looking in to other areas of the makeup industry.
After taking a look at my final images of my wound I have mixed emotions. Although I feel it is the best I could have produced in the circumstances of the time restrictions and I am pleased with the makeup on the prosthetic and the rest of the character the only issue I have with my final piece is that I feel the blending of the prosthetic into the skin is not as seamless as I would have hoped, when shooting the project, to the eye I thought I had done quite a good job but analysing the photos now it seems quite obvious that the burn is prosthetic. This would be an issue if it was for a film or TV programme as it would again be behind a camera lens that would pick up the edges and lack of effective blending.
If I was to be faced with making a prosthetic again I would put all my energy into trying to make sure it turns out well the first time I make it and also I would concentrate a lot more on my blending techniques, to enhance the appearance that the prosthetic is part of the skin.