Archives for January 2012

Our course, as well as inviting an abundance of industry professionals to come and talk to us this term, has organised a small sculpting course for Thursday and Friday afternoons. I have just joined in on the advanced sculpting class provided by Val Adamson, of The Sculpture Studio. This week we sculpted from a live female model in clay at half scale. It was nice to relax and spend a few afternoons away from my current project; we used the clay very loosely and fast paced to focus mainly on the form of the figure, we were instructed to not become too bogged down with any detail. The session will continue next week, the arms on the sculpture will be ignored until later.

For my first 3^rd year project, we were asked to approach a company within the industry that we were hoping to enter and ask them for a brief to complete. I approached Propshop Modelmakers Ltd, I have been on work experience with them a couple of times and I really enjoy their working environment. They gave me a dummy brief, one in which they had just completed themselves for the McCain’s ‘Chip Perfection’ advertisement campaign. I was asked to design and build a machine to test the crispiness of a chip, the chip must not be hurt, or feel in danger and I must use materials sympathetic to the farmyard theme. I also had to create my own storyboard to show how my interpretation of the advert would run.

Unfortunately, it is not quite finished, the image below shows the machine at its most complete followed by a few work in progress images. This was also my first attempt of using a green screen, which I think needs a bit of work :-).

For my 2nd year digital project, I was asked to model an object of my choice, from scratch in Autodesk 3ds Max, I had to add my own textures, mapping and lighting; from this, I made a short animation.

For my final project of 2^nd year, I completed a facial reconstruction, using traditional methods of the forensic industry. I obtained my skull from an Anthropology tutor at Portsmouth University. The skull was European, Caucasian and between the ages of 28-35.

Caroline Wilkinson heavily inpisred me, she is a pioneer in this field and her book ‘Forensic Facial Reconstrcution’ was immensely helpful with this project.

I used Plastiline an oil-based clay as it’s what I’m comfortable working with. I also made a video to show my progress with the project, as after all, the finished piece would appear to be just a head sculpt.