Cybernetic: Piece Development

Personal Work

Cybernetic: Background Design Process 2

(1) Following up my inspiration and design process from looking back into my research, I applied this to my final piece. Although I initially liked the broken up and "glitched" effect, it didn't seem to work with what I was trying to do, as well as this, it made the piece look far too busy. I tried the pen tool (finally) and tried to work some scribbles across this, to signify my creative side. The pen tool was something I'd never used before and was pleased with the outcome, so refined this to more imperfect lines and to make a bit more flowy.

(2) I removed the digital/glitch aspects from my face and then added more shapes, creating a "fox tail" shape to signify my love for foxes. Because I'd scratched the animal idea, I didn't want it to go to waste so tried my way of adding it in without making it too obvious. Another idea I had was having a fox coming out of the work. I altered the collar on my body too so it wouldn't direct the attention away from the iconography and lines swirling out.

(3) This is where my work was starting to really take place; added icons to represent my social media presence and correcting the colour. I also started on the left side of my face, which at first, was hard to do based on the angle, and it was hard to add the same attention to detail to the left side as it took so long. I was really happy with how my project was coming along.

Cybernetic: Background Design Process

Since I was struggling with the process for the background, and what I wanted it to look like, I started to sketch out any ideas I'd had, inspired by my initial research. I expanded on the drawing I initially had of just one side of my face, to the entire piece, so I could clearly plan out what I wanted. Taken the colour research I'd looked into, I also created a colour palette to sort of follow for each side.

Keeping to the fox theme I'd gone through for my entire research, I chose to expand upon my original piece of work I did at the beginning of the project. In the same sort of style as my face, I added the background into it as a rough idea of what I waned the final piece to look like - sort of to plan out colour and shape. Because my first background idea didn't go well (or look what I envisioned) I chose to go back and look at my research and then respond to it:

 I'm quite happy with how the fox turned out, the colour contrast shows also what I'm thinking about doing for my final piece, with the blue being the opposite of the yellow & pink. I added some 3d elements to my work to imply depth to the piece, which at first I wasn't sure about, but after editing and create a cohesive colour scheme I actually came to like. This led me onto the inspiration to start developing my background and making something that I was now, 100% happy with.

Cybernetic: Development

Following up on the sketches I drew, I started working on what I wanted to be my final piece. My idea was constantly changing - whether to make two sides of my contrasting face or follow the animal mythology I'd wanted, and researched, to look at, to come out of the other side of my face. I thought for development it would be a good idea to sketch up both ideas - even though they'd take a long time to create. The fox was something that I felt may work more successfully then two illustrations of my face; but it was hard to relate it back to my 'online' self as such. 

Another point for development was the background. My face had been easy to create as I'd had direct inspiration for that via the artists I'd looked at, however the background was something that was much harder to make 'physical' and '3d' looking - I wanted it to keep in the same theme as my face, but also pushing my limitations and making it very detailed.

I really liked the style that was beginning to come through from this piece so far. The detail in my face is something that took a long time to do, however, looks great when zoomed in - the idea was that we are detailed people so I wanted to make something that when it was examined close up it would look well done.

My next development stage was to look at either the fox/face progression on the other side, or to work on the background that needed altering as I wasn't particularly happy with it. I wanted something that was more 'flowy' and detailed, intertwining icons from social media to portray my online persona.

Old photos of me I re-cycled to use in this project. These

perfectly captured the angles I'd drawn out originally, and kept

me in minimal make up so I could illustrate myself easier.

Cybernetic: Experimentation

I initially started developing styles based upon my chosen artist research. The first two prints, done with a tablet and photoshop, were directly inspired by my David Walker research. I love the slight realism to the piece yet the way my brush strokes sort of imply life, a quick pace about the work. One of the things I wanted to do for development was to limit myself to around 2 hours a piece, even less if I could. This was to not get too carried up away about 'finalising' something, I just wanted to see how many different styles I could incorporate in a short amount of time and to see if they worked well together or not. This was a lot harder than I realised, as they're such contrasting styles; one works for the flow, quick marks and one is more precise and boxy. This sort of set me off track about the idea I had for my main piece as it was becoming harder to piece together two styles, however, I felt they did mark the contrast between Offline and Online.

The second but original piece of work I did was the fox, inspired by Denis Gonchar. I felt I really captured the essence of Gonchar's work here, and loved working on the fox's done and colour. This made me consider how complicated it would be to create a self portrait, however, and how much time I'd have to put into the final piece to come up with something relatable to the project. However I loved doing each piece and wanted to really take the project further with starting to sketch out any ideas on how, maybe, the final piece would begin to look.

Overall although I have a few mishaps and boundaries to cross over to gain momentum on my final piece, I was really enjoying the experimental stage that I'd started doing and wanted to combine the two styles to find something that would look great on my final piece, which was my next task.

Ref:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/gs-geo-images/0b119fd3-2b7a-4040-81cb-ef58b24b84d5.jpg

http://sandara.deviantart.com/art/My-brushes-351007003

http://zhuzhu.deviantart.com/art/Z-PS-Brushes-V6-154905327

Cybernetic: Animal Research

Further into my design process, I initially sketched out an animal as just a test shot (later I would have incorporated a face instead of the animal).

From feedback with Jay, I thought this could be a good idea to intertwine into my project; namely, associating animals with our emotional state. Although going slightly off the basis of our self vs something else, I thought that this could be interpreted into an idea of your online vs offline self and clashing personalities that we often get with our online persona.

This took me to research into animal/spiritual meanings and what they are associated with, personality and trait wise:

Wolf - Intelligence, Social

Owl - Wisdom

Bear - Strength

Hawk - Focus

Fox - Cunning

Butterfly - Light of being, playfulness

Cat - Patience

Horse - Driving Force

Panda - Gentle Strength

Rabbit - Loneliness/Shyness

Deer - Compassion

So for example, if I were to select animals I feel would depict myself, or specifically my online vs offline self then I'd choose a Panda or a Horse, then a Rabbit to compare. I believe it's quite telling of your personality and proved for interesting research for each culture to look into. It'd also be nice to have some self portraits clashing with the animals that you choose to believe you're associated with, with what your depicted as. There's lots of viable options for mood, colour, personality etc by going down the animal route however I'm not sure how I can bring this back into my project to the Online world.

Ref:
http://www.spiritanimal.info/
https://whatismyspiritanimal.com/spirit-totem-power-animal-meanings/

Cybernetic: Sketches