Chelsea Butler

It has been a while since you last saw any form of life along the dusty, barren pathway. The road ahead is a long one, and the rocky terrain at the foot of the towering mountains is a treacherous path to travel. Any traveller is advised to remain cautious of the cavernous depths of the mountains’ pathway. Trekking onwards, the path becomes thinner; more narrow, as you progress. But wait. You spy an opening. Perhaps a way out. The light draws nearer as you push forward, tip toeing between the tight spaces of the rocks and rubble scattering the path. It gradually becomes closer. You finally make it out. And there it is. Amplexus. Stumbling through the gap, you venture on to this strange environment. As you gaze upwards, you are only just able to decipher the peak of the monuments buildings aligned along the road into the city. Each building varies in height and shape. The abstract forms of the mass amount of structures leaves one puzzled, as it is difficult to determine where the en...

So guys, we had our first nude model in today! It must've been pretty weird for some people at first, but the session was enjoyable nevertheless! I think our model had some really interesting and definitive features to him, so he was great to draw. I think I became more confident in my mark making towards the end as well, it's getting there! :)

Admittedly, I am starting to struggle with generating ideas as to how I can approach Richard Deacon's style, so I thought that maybe making some silhouette thumbnails would help me improve my train of thought. I combined multiple works of his and rendered them to create new forms.  Because his work is so abstract, and his thought process and style is ever changing, I'm considering on incorporating that sort of element into my Travelog. Perhaps I may create a city that is "unfinished" or "simply done" due to the city constantly expanding to fit in the "ever-changing" architecture. Who knows?

 So again, this is more of just marking the page with varying shapes. In a way, I want to portray how various Richard Deacon's approach to creating is, and he has even stated himself that his style continuously changes due to his ever changing mindset. I've also been experimenting more with the lasso tool on Photoshop so produce these obscure and somewhat rigid shapes. I may consider developing this technique, and then refining the initial shapes into what could look like a building.

Figure 1. Alien Movie Poster One can only think of how much suspense and jump scares a film can offer when considering Ridley Scott’s “Alien” (1979). For what is considered to be a classic, “Alien” (1979) simply excites you with the creature in the dark out to kill the crew one by one. This film has been noted to share a few similarities with the movie “Jaws”. The plot line is as follows. A crew of seven astronauts are travelling through the never-ending abyss that is space. As they arise from their slumber from what looks to be like large incubators, we then have the experience of getting to know the crew members over breakfast. From the beginning of the film, all the way through, the camera angles are usually set at eye-level, or just below. This technique is used to allow us to create an attachment with the characters, creating an atmosphere as if to say that the audience member was part of the crew. Even at the beginning of the film, before we meet the crew, we are pannin...

So here's my starting point for my ideas for my set. My initial influence map is of Richard Deacon's work. I then used this to help me produce some of my first thumbnails so that I can then develop my ideas and later on bring in exterior influences to help build up my final influence map. Below are some images of where I'm pretty much just thinking out loud at the moment. I started off considering what materials I would use, basing it off of Deacon's work. He tends to use a wide variety of materials, but I thought that I would stick with one or two. This then lead me to looking at iron works such as gates, fencing and pipes. And as for the structures for each building, I looked at the curvy and flexible bone structure of a snake. This is a reference to how fluid I want the buildings to look. But I also need to consider the negative space for the in-between bits. And so, here are my starting thumbnails! I think these thumbnails were more of a ...