Evaluation

My theme was structure and I split it into 4 sub-topics: landscapes, skeletal, cartography and architecture. At the start of the course, I was thinking about structure in a very straight forward and literal way - mostly around the physical structure of buildings and architecture. But as time went on, I started branching out and coming up with more abstract ideas. I became more interested in structure as a concept, and the links between the natural and manmade.

As the course developed, I also became increasingly interested in 3D environments used to present digital art and how these structures become part of the art itself. I decided to explore this in the form of virtual galleries, and looking at how art can be both something you view but also enter and experience in a dynamic way. To do this, I needed to learn a broad range of new software packages and skills as the course progressed.

Most of the reference material I looked at was on Pinterest - different styles of maps, landscape paintings, vector art, digital renders.  This helped me to formulate ideas of how I wanted a piece to look or what emotions I wanted to convey. A lot of my work took heavy inspiration from the artist Ovanes Berberian as I attempted to emulate his scene layouts and general style. This, in turn, helped me develop my understanding of concepts such as scene composition or colour and lighting theory.

I believe my final piece shows off all the skills I developed over my two year course. I made use of newly-learnt technical approaches and methods such as rigging, organic body modelling, and rendering using different engines, as well advancing my more traditional formal art elements like composition, tone and texture. The piece takes heavy inspiration from reference material I had previously examined, incorporating composition and focal points elements from both Mikael Gustafsson and Ovanes Berberian. 

I wanted my final piece to evoke an emotional response from the viewer and I believe I succeeded in doing so. Both the visuals and the sound design pair almost perfectly, creating an immersive experience and encouraging the viewer to sympathise with the stegosaurus as its life moves towards a tragic end.  My personal favourite element of the final piece has to be the room with the changing seasons as it evokes a moment of tranquillity and it's somewhere I would most likely find myself sitting in a real gallery.

However, there are some things I would've definitely tried to and improve about the piece.  Overall, I think that it is fairly difficult to completely represent the scale and immersion of the Van Gogh experience in only digital form, and and I would explore further how to capture this sense of perspective in different ways. With additional time, I would've attempted to create floor projections to further immerse the viewers.