APD Week10 -PLAY and STILLNESS Theme

Context

I always consider “Stillness” as the time we stay in silence but all the senses are open for observation, which is reminds me about the time I spent at the museums and studied the art of old paintings. What kept me wondering at that time was the feeling that all the eyes on the paintings just follow me around as I walked away. To call it a study that involving psychology and how the brain works to create the hallucination, people named it the Mona Lisa effect.

https://thevideosuite.com/look-out-how-the-eyes-on-portraits-follow-you-around-the-room/

The idea of play, to me, is abstract to the term of stillness, which gives me some hurdles to think about this week’s respond. Thus, inspired by the study of Monalisa effect, I want to do the photo manipulation to just highlight the impression of stillness.

Method

Choosing some famous oil paintings and play with the eye expression/ movement in Photoshop.

Response

When I first thought about this, I had the urge of guiltiness being disrespectful to the art history and all the artist themselves. However, considering this as a form of play based on culture remix, I decided to give it a try.

I chose the famous Monalisa painting to start with. The first thing came to mind when I observe all the paintings was the question of what will happen next if the painting was an animatic scene. I used Liquify to adjust the eyes and the smile on the painting, and the first result turned out to look weird and unnatural.

Noticing that those oil paintings were made to resemble the real human beings, thus, adjusting the emotions based on cartoon characters will not work,  I went through some references of how the muscles on face work to form the expression, and after that, the result seemed to look nicer.

I thought about the emotions that I want the character to have and try to have them conveyed and communicated through the eyes and the lips. At some point, the picture quality is just blurry, and I had to draw over with some lines and shapes.

After a while, I just adjust the images spontaneously without the order, then I place them randomly to create the gif images.

Reflection

The idea of stillness appeared clearer to me throughout the process of spontaneously playing with the photo manipulation and put them together. Rather than just not moving, in contrast, it seems to work well as an expression to create the surprise factor and excitement. In other words, for me, stillness can be used as an alternative to play with emotions. What made me happy about this project was an opportunity to look at something in a different perspective and give them a brand new context.

Downloads:

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