APD Week 1 - Play and Self (Potato)

Context

In week one, the task was to focus on the idea between play and self. I created a persona that represented me in my favourite pastime. Through our day-to-day life with our interactions with culture and that around us, people begin to claim certain aspects of those moments as our own (Henricks, 2014). I decided to go with the persona approach, “…to explore the contemporary production of the self in an era of presentational media” (Marshall, et al., 2019). I viewed the theme, play and self, quite literally. When I am not busy, I tend to really enjoy relaxing and playing video games. So much so that you could say I am a bit of a lazy person. I played around with this persona and created this 3D model. While creating this, I experimented with shapes and composition. As you can see, some parts are smooth, and some are low poly. The smooth aspects refer to the most important parts of playing a video game such as the arms, hands, headphones, and controller. While texturing, I tested various couch texture designs and went in the direction of the blue and white colour scheme. This is because my hereditary background is Greek. The top pillows can be inferred as the Greek flag. The only difference is that the blue is more towards navy and that is because I prefer it to be darker, so the focus of the image is my potato persona.

Method

This week I created this project using Blender and ZBrush. They were used to create objects. ZBrush practically helped solve the merging of objects and sculpting of higher polygon models. I used Substance Painter for texturing, this was key for the coach and the headphones. For the most part, the result I got is what I expected but some tinkering was involved in the coach which game a result I did not expect.

Response

I decided to create a 3D model that focuses on trying out different shape languages to see if they would affect the focal point of the frame. I experimented with smooth and sharp shapes to see how the composition would look like, and thus how I got to the result.

Reflection

Week one was a challenging one for me, in terms of understanding the requirements and what is expected of my work. The way I interpreted the theme and proceeded to work with was not creative nor unconventional. Upon receiving feedback, I realised that the weekly tasks were extremely open-ended, and it encouraged students to do the unthinkable. This is particularly difficult for me, and I struggled to accommodate that because I have been taught to colour within the box for so long, that the broad concepts are stumping me.

Regardless, I should have tried to push myself a bit more. I learn from my mistakes, so I am glad that I received this feedback early on. I am glad that I experimented with shape conventions and will keep in mind to really step out of my comfort zone to implement my learnings and creativity into my work for the semester.

If I could do it all again, I would work on a completely different project/approach. One that is more interesting and focuses more on my characteristics to create an outcome that is more unique, such as a brain on a skateboard to signify when my mind is racing as I am doing work.