Phew, another project handed in. Can’t believe how quickly this year has gone already, now I just have Major Project, a small compositing assignment and my exam to revise for!
The point of this project was to explore, experiment and innovate in a specific field of computer animation. I chose to create a digital artefact that embodied the formal qualities of a Tamara de Lempicka painting (which in less fancy terms just means make something in 3D in the style of Lempicka :P).
Photorealism has been the main driving force behind CGI for years now, and with my largely traditional artistic background, I felt like I wanted to break away from photorealism and use CGI in a more artistic, stylized way. And who better to study than my favourite artist who I’ve revisited time and time again in my art studies, only all the other times I’ve been using the traditional medium of painting.
I love Lempicka’s style for a number of reasons: the bold colours, the high contrast shadows and clean-cut, angular forms, the immaculate smooth blending of paint with not so much as a hint of a brush stroke, and the captivating subject matter – sexy, bedroom-eyed women in luxurious dresses.
On the left, “Young Lady in Gloves”, 1930, Tamara de Lempicka. On the right, my A-level Art final piece.
(please refrain from laughing at my slightly robotic, monotone voice!)
I’m pretty pleased with how this project turned out. The end piece was a little bit dodgy in terms texturing and rendering. The face texture wasn’t great due to the roughly modelled mesh causing texture stretching and the automatically unwrapped UVs causing small problematic areas that wouldn’t texture properly. Also, there is a slight flickering on the models at the seams of the UV texture maps in the final render. That said, these minor problems aren’t overly noticeable in the finished piece, so on the whole, I think the piece has a strong resemblance to the original painting and I think I achieved what I set out to do!
Lucy Ashfield 