Digital Photography & Imaging - Final Project: Self-Titled
Final Project: Self-Titled
29/05/23 - 03/07/23 (Week 9 - Week 14)
Digital Photography and Imaging (GCD61204)
Class 01 Sec 01
Ilhan Khairul Anwar (0361205)
Instructions
Part 1: Idea Exploration & Development
Write a biography about yourself
INTRO (Tell us about yourself)
My name is Ilhan Khairul Anwar, but most people call me Yohan since it’s easier to pronounce and hear. I was born in Malaysia on June 17th, 2004 at 1:07 PM at Gleneagles Hospital. I studied at the International School of Kuala Lumpur (ISKL) for 13 years and graduated with the IB Diploma and am currently taking the Bachelors of Design (Honours) in Creative Media course at Taylor's University.
PARAGRAPH 1 (What is your passion?)
One of my main passions and interests is narrative writing and character conceptualisation. Before I came to Taylor's, I took a gap year to figure out what I wanted to do for my career as I was still unsure about what I could do. After spending some time to myself and researching universities in Malaysia I came to the realisation that what I want to do is to bring unique and complex characters to life in media. I've always loved coming up with different aspects of a character, what do they look like? How do they act? What's their motivation? What's their story? One of my personal favourite attributes when it comes to characters is seeing how they act to changes in their life and how much it affects them which can often be seen as a reflection of the creator's own thoughts.
PARAGRAPH 2 (What motivates you to achieve your dream?)
Growing up I've always loved watching shows, cartoons, anime, movies and so on. I was always consuming media throughout my whole life and it often got in the way of important things such as school work. But from the amount of media that I've consumed, I became obsessed in the characters and world building aspects as it was always interesting to see how different characters act in different forms of media and how similar characters can be portrayed in completely different ways.
SUMMARY (How do you want to visualise your dream into an artwork?)
I want to create something that allows for me to express myself and what I like.
Write a statement about your work
INTRO (Tell us about your work:)
For my piece, I am basing it off of my love for western culture and religious iconography and imagery as those are some of my favourite elements in media.
PARAGRAPH 1 (What is the concept behind it?)
The concept for my piece is centred around the idea that inside of every individual there are two opposing sides, light and dark that are controlled and shaped by the media they consume, and while they may openly present themselves with one side of themselves, the other half will always be present in what they do even if they don't appear to follow that half. For my piece I chose to use western culture to represent the "dark side" due to the amount of gritty, harsh, stylistic, robust, and isolated themes commonly associated with the culture. Whereas on the opposite end I chose to use religion as it's always presented as something beautiful and serene that wipes away the darkness and brings a breath of tranquility and awe. I would say that both of these elements reflect myself as well as religion has always been something major in my life that's played a role in shaping who I am as while I am not the most devout Muslim, I follow a lot of the practices because I believe in them. And when there are times that I don't, I become more connected with western culture and media which happens often in my life, so to have that be the primary focus and the light aspect be in the background would best represent me and my concept.
PARAGRAPH 2 (What is the message you want people to understand from it?)
The main message I wanted to convey for my piece is that with every individual, there are always two differing ideals and reflect and dictate the way a person acts in their life that may not be visible. Through any influences that they've followed for a long period of time, they are able to shape and control the way in which a person lives their life.
SUMMARY (What is your motto / quote?)
"A man doesn't die at his last breath, he dies only when he is forgotten."
Mood Board
Figure 1.1: Mood Board
This was the original mood board that I had created to give myself a general idea of what I wanted to do with my self-titled project and how I wanted to present it. Of course, a lot of ideas changed during the creation process but having a base idea of what it is I wanted to do was always helpful.
Part 2: Design Direction
Once I had an idea of what I wanted to do, I created a basic sketch of how I wanted to create my idea on photoshop.
Figure 1.2: First Sketch
After we did our double exposure exercise I knew I wanted to do something with mask clipping for my self-titled piece as I found the style to be really interesting. Using the piece that I submitted for that assignment as well as the poster seen in Figure 1.1 (Reference 2), I came up with a very simple sketch of what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to have a smaller me inside of the larger outline of me, wearing my western outfit in both silhouettes as the main point for this assignment.
Originally, I had an idea of having an alternate version of me wearing a plague doctor mask inside of a mask clipping and having the interior be a dark forest while the exterior contrasted that with a brighter exterior, perhaps a town. Though I eventually scrapped that idea as it didn't fit with what I had envisioned.
Figure 1.3: Photoshoot Pictures
These were two of the photos that I took during the photo session that we were provided for this class. Of the group of guys that I was bunched with for our photo session, I was one of the few who actually had an idea of what they wanted to do for the pose. The image on the left was my original idea and the image on the right was something that they came up with for me to use should I feel like it. I never actually used the image on the right but it was nice to have.
Figure 1.4: First Attempt on Photoshop / Mask Clipping Photo Used
This was my first attempt at recreating the sketch on Photoshop, at the time I still hadn't come up with what I wanted to do as a background and was stumped at that point. Additionally, I forgot to take a new photo for the mask clipping outline so I reused the same photo that I used in Project 2 as a stand in for the time being. Using this, I was able to make adjustments to the curvature, colour balance and exposure levels to what I wanted as the original image wasn't as dark as I wanted.
The same goes with the photo that I took during our provided photography session, the colours didn't match with the background image so I had to make quite a few alterations and adjustments in order to recreate the dark orange hue thats visible. To create the shadow that can be seen at the bottom of Figure 1.3, I duplicated the photo of me and darkened the image until it was almost pitch black. From there I flipped it upside down and rotated it so that the feet would line up, after that I skewed the image until it became curved to make it look more real.
Figure 1.5: Updated Outline / Mask Clipping Photo Used
Because I stay on campus in the U-Residence and my real home is roughly forty minutes away, I had to wait until the weekend so I could return home and take a new photo for the mask clipping. I much prefer this one as it's more symmetrical and provides for a nicer look in my opinion. Once I had all of this part done, I had to move onto the second part of this piece, which was to add in a background.
Figure 1.6: Original Background
Figure 1.7: Angelic Addition
Using an artwork I found online, I added it in for the background and I really liked how well it fit in with the rest of the piece. The wings coming out of the hat creates a unique effect that I can't put into words, there's a certain je ne sais quoi about the way it appears. The sword as well is a nice touch as it harkens back to my poster design assignment from Project 2 where I represented Justice for my piece. I also added in the moon as I wanted to have it mimic the "high noon" trope commonly depicted in cowboy and spaghetti western media, an iconic time where a lot of duels would often take place.
After making adjustments to the background as well as any other things that needed fixing, I came up with the final version for this piece.
Part 3: Execution and Post Production
The Empyrean Vagrant
Figure 1.8: The Empyrean Vagrant JPG
Figure 1.9: The Empyrean Vagrant PDF
Artist Statement
The piece that I created here is titled 'The Empyrean Vagrant,' I named it that as it best reflected both the piece and what I wanted to express about myself. Empyrean is a term used to describe the heavens and is often associated with the highest point while a vagrant is a person who travels aimlessly. This piece reflects me as it reflects two areas of my life that I enjoy and like to express in works that I do. The western inspired outfit and mask clipping area of the composition is meant to represent my love for western culture that has always been present in my life. Specifically the cowboy era and style of clothing has always been something that I've loved and wanted to explore more of. I like to describe myself as a vagrant, though there are other better words that I could use like wanderer, vagabond, drifter, nomad, traveller and so on; I describe myself as a vagrant since I don't really have any strong goals set for myself, I prefer to wander and take my time with things, doing whatever I feel like at my own discretion without needing to worry about other issues. I chose to present myself in the night as that is usually when i am most active and my overall preferred time of the day as it feels the most natural and comforting for me.
The angel in the background is meant to represent my love for religious iconography, imagery, allegories and ideas in media and fiction as there are so many wonderful and unique narratives that hold strong beliefs and ideals. While I am a Muslim, I've always loved exploring the themes and cultures of other religions and pantheons and having the angel appearing in the background adds onto this being a reflection of myself. Religion isn't something I like to focus on in life, I prefer to live my life how I want and do things that I enjoy without having to follow all of the strict rules that come with religion. But above all of that religion is still something I carry close to me and I will always cherish it as whenever I felt down on my luck or needed time to myself, I could always retreat to religion as a way to seek guidance.
I really liked the way this turned out in the end, I was able to recreate most of what I planned to do and the addition of the angel adds a strong contrast to the piece while still presenting one of the main ideas that I had envisioned.
Part 4: Animation and Submission
Figure 1.8: Animated Composition
Youtube Link: (https://youtube.com/shorts/X1Pu3i5FkmM)
I decided to use two different green screen effects for the animated aspect of this piece, a black smoke for the western half and a radiant light for the angelic half in order to add onto the contrast within the composition. Using a video tutorial provided on how to remove green screen, I placed the radiant light behind the cowboy outline so that it wouldn't cut off abruptly and so that the moon wouldn't be affected by it. The same could be said for the smoke effect though for that I had to lower the opacity of it so that it wouldn't block out the lower half of my body and the shadow.
The moon was an interesting element as that was the first thing I decided to animate using the tools provided in After Effects as I wanted to have something in the composition be moving. In the end I liked how it look sand it almost feels like a vinyl record or a CD being played alongside the music, which was another deliberate choice that I made after hearing some songs from TikTok to gain inspiration. The song that I used was Amend by j^p^n, mainly due to the vocals of it as I was enamoured by how beautiful it sounded and it blended well with the angelic radiance for the top half while the strong bass-y instrumental worked well for the western half.
Reflection
Our final assignment and project for this module was probably the most entertaining project we've had so far and in my opinion, this semester as it's allowed for me to express my personal interests and ideas without any restrictions unlike some of the previous assignments that we've had. It was fun seeing what kind of work my other classmates had as well as they all have completely different compositions in terms of style, tone, effects and overall look as well which suit their own tastes.
I had a lot of fun planning everything out for this assignment as when I first learned about this project at the start of the semester, I got really excited with what I could do and how I could present it. I originally thought this would be a project where we can do whatever we wanted but when I found out this project is meant to be a reflection of ourselves I started thinking about this more carefully and thoughtfully. This project really helped me better understand myself and fully understand what it is that I like and don't like as I've never stopped and thought about who I am as a person and rather focused on just following along with everybody else.
Using After Effects as well for this exercise was an interesting experience as I'm not as well versed with it compared Photoshop however, being able to work with it for a second time after our first practice with it was great as I was able to understand the application's system better and I also got to learn how to remove green screens from effects that I downloaded which is incredibly helpful.
Overall I had a lot of fun with this assignment, it was great being able to compress everything we've learned into one project that had very few restrictions as it allowed for me to be able to present almost everything that I wanted to. I hope that my classes next semester will allow us to have the same amounts of creative freedom as it often leads to me performing better.
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