More texture tests

During our Maya lesson yesterday I spoke to Alan about how to get a more sketchy rough effect around my model, and he showed me a few settings in the toon shader to play around with and I think these texture tests are much more successful. I now know how I am going to be texturing my model, a toon shader with pen on grey paper. To make sure it works I'm going to have to have a few experiments when I have my proper model done. 

Pitch Presentation

An example of the music that Morgan Pearse the composer that has agreed to work with me has previously done.

Structure design Progress

I've spent a lot of time staring at the 16 etching trying to figure out how I'm going to make my environment in Maya and the longer I look at the etching the less they make sense. So to try get my head around the whole thing I started to see if I could connect some of them together and below is what I managed to get.

Since trying to connect these images by drawing would just be far to difficult, I gave it a go in Maya. It was still really hard but I've made some progress. It took me a little while to get the hang of trying to connect the etchings but after spending so long imagining them as a 3D space I have a much better understanding of how my environment is going to work. I'm going to give it another go and hopefully the next one I'll get exactly what I'm looking for.

Texture Tests

One of the difficult things to figure out about my project is how I am going to go about texturing my environment. I would quite like to keep the same roughness that Piranesi's original etchings have but that is something that is very difficult to achieve in Maya. I've done a tests to see if I could get the effect that I want. I don't think I have it quite yet so I'll need to play around a bit more and see what else I can come up with.

I was shown this animation Blik and I really like the style of it, if you look at the models closely they have a very sketchy outline which I'd love to figure out how they have done it because I think it would help me achieve the type of look I want in my own textures. 

Minor Project Overview

Now that all my research is done and I am in the process of acquiring a composer I though it would be best to have the idea of my project summarised into a short overview.

Below are the second sate etching by Piranesi.

Updated idea

After doing a bit of thinking and talking to Alan about my idea to get another perspective. It was pointed out to me that I have two paths to take my project down, either I make it all about the mind, an interpretation of Piranesi's state of mind when he made the etchings. Have the camera movements and the music to help convey the feeling and atmosphere I want. Or I make it more educational and have it perfectly constructed, get a voice over and try to make it as accurate as I can. Both take the project in a completely different direction.

After a while I decided I liked the idea of making it abstract and about the mind. So I'm going to start by looking for a composer who I am going to give the 16 etchings to and a few guidelines to stick to and allow them to respond to the etchings and compose a piece of music for it, which I will then in turn respond to and create an environmental animation for.

The imaginary and Eternal Prisons of Piranesi

I found an hour long documentary on Piranesi and his imaginary prisons series, in which Yo-Yo Ma investigates the relationship between music and visual art. In this film, the talented cellist plays the music of Bach in a virtual prison based on the Carceri, the imaginary prisons found in the etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Along the way, audiences hear from architect Moshe Safdie and others while learning of Piranesi's only built church project, the Santa Maria del Priorato.

The exhibition, Piranesi, Rome, and the Arts of Design, includes a complete set of the prison etchings as well as an innovative 3-D video projection based on them. Before the film, Dr. John Marciari, Curator of European Art and Head of Provenance Research, will give a lecture about the haunting, nightmarish world of Piranesi's prisons, architectural fantasies that demonstrate the dark side of Piranesi's imagination. Prefiguring the dark imagining of the Romantic era, the Carceri are thought to have been the later model for everything from M.C. Escher's designs, to the city of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, to the moving staircases of Harry Potter's Hogwarts.

Below is the video of Yo-Yo Ma's investigation into the relationship between music and visual art using the Prisons series as inspiration for the set. I really like the way it looks and I think the whole thing creates an atmosphere the represents Piranesi's Prisons really well.