Gore Moodboard

Ideas for gore within the environment. I will be using decals in Unreal Engine 4 to easily apply them to areas of the environment.

I've been looking at tutorials by a youtuber:

 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3QBWg9pMnaFF-q0qjXPDEg

He provides easy to follow demonstrations on how to do certain things in ue4. From applying decals to creating cutscenes.

Research- Horror Atmosphere.

Humans need contact with others and find comfort when in the presence of other people. Having nobody to rely on for aid can have a psychological effect on the player as nobody has their back. Its leaves the player relying on their senses. Sound effects, music, and the design of the environment heightens the player’s awareness to all these parts.

Environments likewise have an effect on the decisions a player makes as they feel under more pressure being in an uncomfortable atmosphere. An example of this would be in horror games. The gameplay is usually dimly lit with a sense of the unknown, which triggers a human’s fear mechanisms as they are unable to detect what is nearby. The scale of an environment can also create tension from the user such as being alone in a vast environment with no other human contact.

           Outlast (2013)

Games such as outlast capture the feel of terror very well. The vibrant red of the blood against the dirty, dusty browns allows it to stand out and emphasises the gore.

Within my environment i want to have a contrast like this, by using lighting and vibrant reds against the darkness of the old prison.

Environment Moodboards- Research

Ideas of the sort of layout i want. Two sides of cells with 2 levels. Allows me to place more assets in the centre.

Change of Direction

Currently not enjoying my choice of project, so have made a change to something that i will enjoy more and what i feel is my strength. I'll be producing 3D environment concept art. I have already decided it will be based in a prison/jail with a horror theme. I'll be looking at what creates a tense atmosphere within this type of environment and put them into my practice.

I Feel a lot more positive moving forward with this.

Presentation Semester 1

Research - Seeing faces

"Pareidolia, as this experience is known, is by no means a recent phenomenon. Leonardo da Vinci described seeing characters in natural markings on stone walls, which he believed could help inspire his artworks."

As mentioned in the post before, I kept seeing faces in my drawing exercises, so i further researched the reason behind why our brains seem to pick out faces from everyday objects, shapes, textures etc. 

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140730-why-do-we-see-faces-in-objects

As I'd like to develop environments on 3D using a surreal approach, my next step is to take photos of landscapes both of nature and urban areas and see what i can see within the images themselves, then highlight areas that stand out to me.

Research - Automatic Drawing Exercises

Automatic Drawing

Automatic drawing is a highly expressive form of image making first proposed, developed and promoted by the Surrealists – Andre Breton, one of the movements founders, described surrealism as ‘Pure psychic automatism’. Essentially, automatic drawing is the ‘thoughtless’ creation of random mark making and subsequent reflection on what has been drawn; in this sense automatic drawing can be a powerful tool for art therapists. People who are being treated and diagnosed using art therapy – this could be children coping with issues around abuse, imprisoned criminals, the elderly, people undergoing detox and withdrawal from drugs and alcohol, or people in numerous other difficult situations – may be asked to produce drawings without thinking about what they’re are creating. The results can be used as a form of diagnosis to reveal subconscious or suppressed emotions and thoughts. Automatic drawing has also been associated with ‘mediumistic automatism’, in which people claim to be drawing or writing on behalf of spirits and ghosts.

http://www.finearttips.com/2013/11/six-creative-drawing-exercises/

I thought i would try out the automatic drawing exercise as I was having a few problems getting motivated and inspired. I was hoping it would free my mind and get the creative juices flowing, and by creating random marks on the paper, i may see other images within the marks them self. 

This exercise was drawing without actually looking at the paper, and keeping the pen on the paper at all times. I then began darkening certain lines and it began to give the appearance of a face.

For this image i randomly shaded the paper with a pencil, then again randomly began erasing shapes and lines from the pencil, again for some reason I saw a face, 

This exercise was just creating pattern and shapes, , I'm not sure what it could be,but again I keep seeing a face.

This was another doodle i did, I just drew what was in front of me, i then tried to capture movement from actors on the TV.

These 4 excersises have led me to another point in my research and somthing that I'll look at. "Why do we see faces in everday objects?"

Research - Surrealism

Surrealism was sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of imagination. The most frequent types of imagery is nature, Salvador Dali's work often included ants and Joan Miro's work was heavily influenced by birds. Surrealism grew out of the "Dada" movement, the main influence for the surrealists was the work of Giorgio de Chirico.


Giorgio de Chirico, 1914, The Song of Love, oil on canvas, 73 x 59.1 cm

"By employing fantasy and dream imagery, artists generated creative works in a variety of media that exposed their inner minds in eccentric, symbolic ways, uncovering anxieties and treating them analytically through visual means."

There were to main methods of distinguishing surrealist paintings, one was the use of hyperrealism which can be seen in Dali's works, with the crisp detail and fine illusion of three dimensions. Automatism on the other hand, was another approach used to "tap into the unconscious mind" this helped the artist bypass reason and rationality, forgo conscious thought and embrace chance when creating artwork.

http://www.theartstory.org/movement-surrealism.htm

Sigmund Freud

Freud legitimized the importance of dreams and the unconscious as valid revelations of human thoughts and desires.

The Unconscious

The concept of the unconscious was central to Freud's account of the mind. Freud believed that while poets and thinkers had long known of the existence of the unconscious, he had ensured that it received scientific recognition in the field of psychology. The concept made an informal appearance in Freud's writings.

The unconscious was first introduced in connection with the phenomenon of repression, to explain what happens to ideas that are repressed. Freud stated explicitly that the concept of the unconscious was based on the theory of repression. He postulated a cycle in which ideas are repressed, but remain in the mind, removed from consciousness yet operative, then reappear in consciousness under certain circumstances. The postulate was based upon the investigation of cases of traumatic hysteria, which revealed cases where the behavior of patients could not be explained without reference to ideas or thoughts of which they had no awareness. This fact, combined with the observation that such behavior could be artificially induced by hypnosis, in which ideas were inserted into people's minds, suggested that ideas were operative in the original cases, even though their subjects knew nothing of them.

Freud, like Josef Breuer, found the hypothesis that hysterical manifestations were generated by ideas to be not only warranted, but given in observation. Disagreement between them arose when they attempted to give causal explanations of their data: Breuer favored a hypothesis of hypnoid states, while Freud postulated the mechanism of defense. Richard Wollheim comments that given the close correspondence between hysteria and the results of hypnosis, Breuer's hypothesis appears more plausible, and that it is only when repression is taken into account that Freud's hypothesis becomes preferable.

Freud originally allowed that repression might be a conscious process, but by the time he wrote his second paper on the "Neuro-Psychoses of Defence" (1896), he apparently believed that repression, which he referred to as "the psychical mechanism of (unconscious) defense", occurred on an unconscious level. Freud further developed his theories about the unconscious in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) and in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), where he dealt with condensation and displacement as inherent characteristics of unconscious mental activity. Freud presented his first systematic statement of his hypotheses about unconscious mental processes in 1912, in response to an invitation from the London Society of Psychical Research to contribute to its Proceedings. In 1915, Freud expanded that statement into a more ambitious metapsychological paper, entitled "The Unconscious". In both these papers, when Freud tried to distinguish between his conception of the unconscious and those that predated psychoanalysis, he found it in his postulation of ideas that are simultaneously latent and operative.

Dreams

Freud believed that the function of dreams is to preserve sleep by representing as fulfilled wishes that would otherwise awaken the dreamer.

In Freud's theory dreams are instigated by the daily occurrences and thoughts of everyday life. His claim that they function as wish fulfillments is based on an account of the “dreamwork" in terms of a transformation of "secondary process" thought, governed by the rules of language and the reality principle, into the "primary process" of unconscious thought governed by the pleasure principle, wish gratification and the repressed sexual scenarios of childhood.

In order to preserve sleep the dreamwork disguises the repressed or “latent" content of the dream in an interplay of words and images which Freud describes in terms of condensation, displacement and distortion. This produces the "manifest content" of the dream as recounted in the dream narrative. For Freud an unpleasant manifest content may still represent the fulfilment of a wish on the level of the latent content. In the clinical setting Freud encouraged free association to the dream's manifest content in order to facilitate access to its latent content. Freud believed interpreting dreams in this way could provide important insights into the formation of neurotic symptoms and contribute to the mitigation of their pathological effects.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud#Dreams

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud#The_Unconscious

I will be reading further into the work of Freud as it has inspired me a lot, although not an artist I feel his work would be greatly beneficial to my research and the development of my project. I think that it may inspire me to think outside the box and explore other ways of developing my art.

Time Plan

Current plan for the project, this may change over the next while depending on circumstances.

Recent Thoughts and Research.

I've been looking at a lot of work by surrealist artists lately, and i'm really enjoying looking at the work of Salvador Dali, the way he stretches reality in his paintings has been really inspiring to me. As you know Dali worked with paints and other traditional techniques, but i would like to try creating my own surreal images (particularly landscapes) using 3D.



The Temptation, Salvador Dali


Autumnal Cannibalism, Salvador Dali

Paintings such as the ones above have gave me a few ideas of where i want to go with my work, and by using 3D software i think the outcome could be quite interesting.