Head Down

In these times where trauma is an international phenomenon, I find emotional refuge in creative works. 

Last time I wrote, I described the process of modelling my teenage bedroom circa 1985.

I’ve pressed on with that to a point of 75% completion of the Blender modelling stage. There are a few technical problems to overcome regarding texturing and finding the correct level of detail for some elements in that process. This is likely to entail jumping onto a Udemy course in order to gain proper understanding of the problem and how to resolve it in an efficient manner.

Through technology, the 3D recreation of a room and its contents, provides the affordance to make a time travelling camera, which can capture details that the human eye only saw hints of. This is demonstrated in the above image, where the room is reflected in the steel ball bearing  which would have been in my marble maze desk toy.

I expected this year to start on a fluid level of chopping and changing efforts. By this, I mean that I haven’t been able to fully step away from my former vocation of conservation stone masonry, nor have I been able to fully exit works for the company I’ve been subcontracting to for he last ten or so years.  Factor in some overdue major household improvements, creativity has had to return to a ‘grab a moment when I can’ level of activity. I’m doing it now as I write. I should be dismantling a shed, but it’s raining.

Learning 3D modelling and learning how to do it efficiently, can seem like staring into a yawning abyss of one’s own ignorance. I find myself confronted with a seemingly endless array of rabbit  holes.

Take for example, the fabulous 3D software Blender. It can take a week or so to become capable of making things with it and gaining some confidence, yet having reached a level of proficiency, it rapidly becomes apparent that every aspect of this software has its own branch of sciences. Texturing objects can take several approaches. The traditional methods using textures and carefully wrapping them around a freshly made object can be one of several approaches. This can gain heaps of complexity when looking into using the software’s node system, which in turn begins to overlap with a method of texturing known as PBR (Physically Based Rendering) , which then moves into another science known as Texture Baking, which is necessary if one wishes to then move the fruits of one’s labours over into a game engine like Unity.  Unity is its own scientific entity with further fractal branches of various problems to overcome. 

I like getting my teeth stuck into problem solving, but this sometimes just feels overwhelming. So I’ve put some time into beginning to tackle further 3D modelling skills. Some of February and this month, I’ve begun to address the issue of a subject known as Hard Surface Modelling.  This is a process where real world objects are created, such as machinery, equipment, robots etc. Why do this?

Well, any given 3D environment, be it a game or a VR scene with buildings, sci-fi elements and er…robots, does require that these sorts of modelling skills are part of the artist’s toolset.

I decided to scratch an old itch when considering my first venture into this realm. You might like the wiggly path I’m about to take you down….

Something you should know about me. I absolutely LOVE music. I place it among my core survival tools for a hostile environment. Music is an essential to be included with other things such as : love, food, a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in.

Another thing you should be aware of is, that in loving music, I also love the imagery of sleeve art from the musicians I admire. Maybe because of my artistic temperament, I’ve never seen my record sleeves as static entities. If a record sleeve has a particularly compelling image, my mind has always automatically conjured-up an internal 3D, animated model or scene based on that artwork. This has always been a factor in the background of my influences. This is also a key component of why VR has always carried with it, such an allure. 

During 1993, the British band Jesus Jones released a single called The Right Decision. It was an excellent and upbeat pop tune. The sleeve art was by a design company called Stylorouge, who decided that a Japanese robot on the sleeve was just the look that the record needed. I bought the CD single and fell in love with both the robot on the cover and the remix by  Tony Thorpe , who made a stupendous acid house extravaganza known as  Moody  Reconstruction. 

Here, have a listen: 

The sound is very much what got me excited back in 93, but the love of this tune has endured the subsequent decades. I still think it  sounds incredible. As mentioned, good sleeve design for good music have always generated a mental fusion which has been visual. Listening to the Moody Boys Reconstruction always made the robot dance in my head, the background would flicker like a monitor screen with computerised data and graphics. It was my own internalised acid video. 

So here I am in 2022, learning 3D and have some skills with VR. Hard surface modelling suddenly presented a test project. I asked Stylorouge for some advice regarding the robot on the cover, I wanted to know where they’d procured either the image or the robot. This didn’t yield anything useful. To model a 3D object from a 2D image will only go so far. Once the frontal image has been made, there’s so many unseen and unanswered questions regarding the back. I happen to be persistent and tenacious. I had the date of the image being early 90’s, it was a typical Japanese toy style droid, so I posted the image to a few Gundam  collector groups and asked ‘Has anyone seen this robot?’

Various people offered multiple opinions, several of which were along the lines of “No, it’s just a bit of Photoshop, this isn’t a real toy.”

Well, you could have fooled me!  I don’t care how good you are at Photoshop, THAT is a photo of a toy! (Which might have been partly Photoshopped)

I cast a few more lines out , then someone helpful said “That has the same legs as Psycho-Gundam MK2” I  checked and It appeared that the person was totally correct.

This is a small model of the Psycho-Gundam Mk2. I picked one up for a fiver. While the robot on the Jesus Jones sleeve isn’t identical, there were sufficient similarities to work from. I suspect that the robot on the sleeve had been altered from a model like this, or possibly the model was a custom job. It didn’t matter. Detective work paid off, so I started working on it.

The recreated robot is a work in progress. The modelling side is almost complete. My next objective is to apply a character rigging system to the model. This will allow me to manipulate the limbs other body parts to pose it as if it was a real object. Once this has been applied, I intend to use some motion capture software to capture my dancing to the music and apply those moves to the robot.

And now for something completely different.

I didn’t fall out of love with Media Molecule’s Dreams software on the Playstation 4, I just realised that developing a career as a 3D artist required a much broader toolset. That doesn’t mean that I don’t see any value in this amazing piece of software. What I have learnt in my last couple of years is that Dreams is an unrivalled tool for prototyping.  An idea or scene which screams to be quickly realised  can benefit hugely from being tried out in Dreams first. 

During late February, I had a vivid nightmare which concluded when I found myself wandering into a cylindrical room with a high, waffle textured ceiling. A living conical shape was moving around above me and could be glimpsed through the lattice of the waffle. The conical creature appeared to rapidly descend from above me, in the same manner that a spider quickly descends on a silk thread to catch its prey. I fell to the floor in fear as this conical giant beast sniffed the air above my body, sensing that food was below it. Terrified, I awoke. 

Believe it or not, I see value in nightmares. Not while they’re happening, of course. When I have them, as soon as I’ve realised that I’ve come into a new day with all my limbs still attached, I tend to find the auto-generative imagery of dreams and nightmares  the most wonderful gift. It’s raw imagination, undiluted by waking ego. To me, it’s a rich source of free creative visuals, often with a narrative and occasionally a soundtrack. 

In the case of this horror, I knew that I’d seen the menacing cone before, in another nightmare.  In this previous bad dream, I’d written it down but hadn’t produced anything illustrative, even though it had haunted me for some time. I decided to fire-up Dreams and have a go at telling the story. Here’s what I managed to make, it took roughly an hour to produce.

I know that it’s dark, uncommercial and weird, but my sleeping mind doesn’t give these matters any concern. 

Part of my job as an artist is just to offer an honest projection of what was seen during the hours of sleep. I’ve never shied away from expressing the darkest parts of my dreaming mind. I was emboldened to do so during my teens when I read a book about H.R Giger. He referenced that his nightmares were a rich source of inspiration for his artworks (No shit?) Giger also said that the process of expressing these nightmares artistically, empowered him to turn a negative experience into a positive creative gesture. At the age of 15, I remember reading these comments and having a mini-revelation. It seemed so obvious!

Years later, reading another excellent book about psychology, called Owning Your Own Shadow by Robert Johnson, the author suggests that working with nightmares and dark thoughts in a creative way is a path to self mastery. To deny these things through active suppression is emotionally unhealthy. 

I mention these things as I feel that insight into process helps demystify some of the process. However you view these images is entirely up to you.  I’ve learnt over time that showing my dream art isn’t to everyone’s tastes. On the other hand, if you’re interested in my work, then it’s probably a useful insight into what makes me tick.