NEW LENSES: Experimental Capture and Release

After doing the speed projects over the unit I had a general idea of a direction that I wanted to go in. I wanted to pull something that I was already very familiar and used to and turn it into something almost unrecognizable.

I enjoyed the first, speed project, “Dimensional Still Life”, and decided to use it as a place to start brainstorming. I considered creating a photosphere with some of the characters or something do with something more 3d, however, I disliked the idea of how the final product would turn out to be something so similar to the in-game image. I wanted something that would explore the game a little more. In the first speed project, I used one character for all of the lands and regions. I then thought how could I display the differences in the regions in the game? Each land has its own music, landscapes, monuments, and colors; all things that gave it its identity. Then I thought how could I pull what each region felt like. In almost like a Ratatouille, food-eating visual kind of way. The solution was to do a full circle and to do a more deliberate image average.

I created three images in this project, each representing a region using a character native to that region. I reconsidered the first project and how I could improve the original images to create a better final product. After all, it averages what it takes in. I recognized two things, my own character model would be distracting and there was often no horizon line making it hard to distinguish anything. First, I looked back to photogrammetry and thought about how to reduce clutter. Simple solution: reduce character motion and use the same angle. In effect, this strengthened the lines around the character and the background almost making it two different ideas, juxtaposing the idea of the user separate from the entity of the game. Second, keeping a steady angle where the horizon should be allowed for the averages to create a blur with more composition. In effect, this created skies, landmarks, and landscape, while being ambiguous leaving just enough color and shape to give identity to the region.

Overall I am pretty happy with how the images turned out. I think the colors and shapes overall really accurately represent the regions, making me respect the world making in it even more. Although one thing I wish I figured out was how to turn off the screen capture vignetting. Because each capture would have an effect on the image, the average would have a pretty intense vignette. Otherwise, it’s been really cool staring at the images trying to find things or try to imagine what kind of world it holds from a fresh set of eyes.