Friday, August 3, 2012

ICARUS 2.0



This piece is for my second GLA assigment of the semester, the topic is “Technoscapes”. The assay that accompanies it addresses the risks and opportunities of virtual reality, modern neuroscience and the research for immortality. 
I really liked the idea and the title - I find it very evocative. I convinced my brother to pose for the figures, which gave me some fantastic photographic reference to work with.
Still, I am not so convinced about the result. I think I overdid the color once again. And I struggled once more with a stupid technical problem: how do mixed-media artists transfer their intermediate steps in traditional media into the computer to continue working in digital? Do they all have rotary scanners? Do they have fully equipped photographic studios? Do they only work in format A3? I am at a loss. The photos I get are definitely not good enough. This time I had it scanned professionally but the quality of the scan was miserable and I had to tweak the curves in Photoshop for one hour before starting.
In summary, I did the figures and the background in pastel in A1 format (to have sufficient width for the spread of the arms). Then scanned it in, fought with the levels and saturation, then added the background (a picture of the connectome) in overlay mode. I fought with the levels a bit more, adjusted brightness here and there, desaturated part of the background. I then added the mesh on the winged figure (overlay with some outer glow) and a little bit of glow around the head. Well, that’s it. Sometimes it is just not a “Uau”.


Update: This illustration was actually selected for the Fall Show at the AAU/Society of Illustrators...so it is probably not as bad as I think!

No comments:

Post a Comment