Blog Assignment #5

When I started off in this class, you could definitely tell that most of my work didn’t really have much meaning or purpose behind it. I was more making things that I just liked or wanted to see what I could do in general, but as we started to progress and learn more advanced things I started to put more effort into creating meaning and purpose behind what I was doing, giving the artwork a significance that I didn’t have in earlier quizzes. This especially came out during my final when I could use whatever theme I wanted. When I heard that we could have any theme, my first thought was to Joe Hisaishi just because in all of the music that he does he gives his all and put such meaning and emotion into it that it can bring anyone to tears. So as I edited my final I just thought of how can I really convey these emotions to my audience and how can I get them to feel like I feel when I hear his songs, and I felt like with all of the techniques and other things that I learned that it really did convey that great sense of emotions that none of my previous works did and I’m glad I took the time to do this. Overall I really enjoyed this class all the way to the end and hopefully I can use these skills to help me later on in life. 

Blog Assignment #4

For my Final I chose to do the Big Idea of Life and Destruction. For this big idea I use two images from Ghibli Studios films. The first one was from the film “Laputa: Castle in the Sky”. In this picture we see a giant robot offering a young boy and girl a small delicate flower. This image is from a scene in the movie when the two main protagonists, the two children pictured, arrive on the castle in the sky that is known to them as the city of Laputa that has been lost for many years. When they first land on this seemingly dead and run down floating castle, they are approached by this robot who eventually leads them into the inner working of the caste were they find a great tree in the middle of the castle. As they approach the tree they see a large memorial stone that talks about the great people of Laputa and at the foot of this monument there are several flower that have been laid there. And to the children’s surprise it is the giant robot who is bringing these flowers to the memorial because we was created to protect this garden and in an iconic scene of the film this gently giant extends out his arm holding the smallest flower that he wants them to have. I felt that that moment in the film just really captured the true essence of life and a new. That even after this giant castle had been lost to the known world for centuries this one lonely robot still had hope and kept this castle alive. The second picture that I used is from the Ghibli film “Howl’s Moving Castle” in this movie there is a war going on and in one of the scenes the village that the main protagonist is living in is being bombed by one of the forces in this war. And as this scene unfolds we see complete carnage and destruction as houses and roads are completely demolished by these bombs and in the scene depicted in the photo, we see Sophie, our main protagonist, observing the carnage as it unfolds in front of her and see can’t help but cry for this senseless destruction that is going on around her. I just felt as though this display of destruction and absolute disregard for the lives of fellow human beings was a real textbook example of what destruction really is.

Blog Assignment #3

For this assignment I am choosing two artists that give me inspiration for my Final in this class. For my first artist I am choosing some one who is not a visual artist but a musical artist. He has composed hundreds of songs, most of which have been used by Studio Ghibli in Japan for their films. That man is none other than Joe Hisaishi.

Joe Hisaishi, pictured above, is a japanese pianist/composer who has done some fantastic work over the past couple of years to bring life to Studio Ghibli's animated films.

This song, One Summer's Day, by Hisaishi is the main feature of the animated film "Spirited Away" from Ghibli. This movie eventually went on to win an Academy Award for "Best Animated Feature" in 2002. This Movie was actually the first movie that I saw from Studio Ghibli and I distinctly remember this song. This song just brings such emotion with it and tugs at the heart in a way that not a lot of music does these days, and even just the melody of this song is so beautiful which is usually a trademark of Hisaishi. Even the first time you hear this tune it is under extreme sorrow in the film and the main character is being comforted but yet she is still crying because of her sear frustration and abandonment that she feels at the moment thus giving this heavy connection and sympathy for this character. It is this sympathy that helps draw you farther into the film making you feel more and more for the character and it is all because of Hisaishi's music that you feel this way.

Next song, Kaze no Toorimichi or Path of The Wind, is one of the main features of the film "My Neighbor Totoro". This film depicts a small family of a father and his two grirls moving into a new house so that they can be closer to their mother who is in the hospital. Throughout the stroy we meet a character named Totoro that lives in a large tree next to the house. This song is just played when the two children join Totoro one night and go on an adventure. This song is very playful and once again shows how well Hisaishi can make a melody that can get stuck in your head so quickly and how well he can covey a feeling. It also amazes me that Hisaishi went all out even for a children's film. For some of other films he has composed, they seem more serious and he usually does a very good job of conveying these serious emotions, however for even this children's movie he still conveys this array of joy and happiness very well and doesn't make a typical child friendly movie.

This last song is called Ashitaka and San. this song is featured at the end of Ghibli's "Princess Mononoke". This song if heard just after the main conflict has been resolved and all of the forest starts to regrow and flourish again. This song has a deep meaning of hope and starting a new. Just the overall feel and melody of this song just seems to be so uplifting and happy that it truly brings this film to a complete end that makes you feel like everything is going to be all right now. Also the choir part of this song gives me chills every time I hear it. I also find it amazing that this video is eight and a half minutes but yet almost half of that is just the applause from the crowd just showing how great of a composer he is. This video also shows one of the great aspects of Hisaishi that I also admire and that is that he doesn't just compose for other people to play, he actively takes part as well as conducts which is a feat just by itself.

  Well as you may have noticed I can't get enough of this guys music but if it were not for Studio Ghibli then I would have never even heard of him. Which leads me to my second artist, Hayao Miyazaki, also known as the Co-Founder and lead animator for Studio Ghibli.

Hayao Miyazaki is one of the many great artist that help bring the worlds he depicts to life using the old pencil and paper method even to this day. however they have made a few changes like including 3d model elements in some of their films and using editing software to enhance some of their films, but most of these scenes are hand drawn.

Above is an actual piece of art used in Miyazaki's film "Howl's Moving Castle". In this picture we can see Howl's moving castle that is out in the wasteland of this area. underneath we can see Sophie, the main protagonist, and Turnip Head (yes, Turnip Head), a brief but important side character. This picture just shows so much detail about this amazing yet dilapidated castle that Howl lives in. It just a magnificent display of how intricate one artist can get when they have an idea.

This picture is a drawing from the Miyazaki movie "Laputa: Castle in the Sky". In this scene we see the actual city of Laputa floating in the sky. This movie is basically like a reverse Atlantis. A race of very smart people decide to leave the surface and fly in the sky living in a Utopian society, however they end up disappearing but their city remains. this picture is actually the first time that the main characters get to see this magnificent city just hanging in the sky, and once again we can see the complexity that we see in all of the other main focuses of the films that he makes. there also is another beautiful scene in this movie that shows interior of Laputa and a great garden that in within the castle. Just the shier time it took to make these types of scenes in amazing to me.

This last picture is of the bath house featured in the Miyazaki film "Spirited Away". on the left is the outside of this mysterious bath house for the spirits and on the left is the inner working of the bath house itself. One of the thinks I find fascinating is that he went through the trouble to map out the entire bath house and not to just draw what he need when he needed it. I think this eventually lead to him being better equipped to not over estimate the size of the bath house because he could now have a template work off of for each scene making sure that the rooms and  hallways were consistent for the whole movie.

Well, after analyzing both Joe Hisaishi and Hayao Miyazaki's work it gives me a lot of inspiration for my Photoshop final. it will help have the main theme of conveying huge emotions of fear, joy, and sorrow through these massively detailed and meticulous scenarios.

Blog Assignment #2

For this assignment I chose to do the ice parrot tutorial on www.worth1000.com, except with my own personal twist. the tutorial can be found here http://www.worth1000.com/tutorials/163129/ice-parrot.

This was my Base Image that i was gonna turn into an ice sculpture. It is the character Alduin from the video game "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim". I got this picture from a game screen capture and just selected it out.

In this step I first turned the saturation all the way down and then I used selective color to turn the neutral black down. Then the picture was inverted to give it a whiter look.

Then I used selective color again to turn the neutral blacks up and the white blacks down giving a more icy look to it. 

This is the final product of the tutorial. all I did was move the image to a background and then use the eraser tool with a low opacity to give it that see through effect. That is how I an Alduin Ice Sculpture.

Blog Assignment #1

The artist I choose to write about is Gilles Beloeil. He is a graphic artist that mostly does concept art for video games and mostly for the video game series Assassins Creed. Here are a couple of pictures that he drew using multiple programs including Photoshop.

 

 

In this first picture we see the main character, Ezio, looking at a village before him that has candle light that is setting the small courtyard a glow. Now Ezio's back is to the viewer and his head is looking down and possibly pondering some thought in his head. This picture has the connotation that he is possibly grieving someone or thing. This may have some sort of meaning that pertains to the game that Beloeil is trying to convey so that the game designers and story composers can get a feel for what they are trying to address. In the second picture we see Ezio again with his back turned to the viewer. He looks to be in the same place as before but in more of a marketplace or main road because there are many people around him now. In this painting his head is up and he seems to be almost surveying the area planning something whether it is an escape route or a possible hiding spot. There also is a man in white that seems to be looking at Ezio and there is another man that is eyeing the white hooded man as well. This could possibly also be a meet up for Ezio with a contact that has more information for him. This also has some connotation of suspense because we don't know what could happen next. Ezio could be walking into a trap or he could be ambushed by the crowd that is seen in the distance. In the third picture we see Ezio once again with his back to the viewer but now he is walking down some steps in what looks like a cemetery. We also can see in the distance what looks to be a big city and I know from playing the game that the city is Constantinople. It looks as though Ezio is walking rather casually and possibly has paid some respects to a dead friend or family member. So this picture could have two connotations. It could be perceived as sad because of the graves or adventurous and new because he is walking towards a big city and could possibly be starting a new and exciting adventure. Well that is my analysis of Gilles Beloeil, here is his website that has more pictures by him and I hope you enjoyed these pictures as much as I did