Cinema 4D Bottle Designs - Expanded

Following the workshop on designing and prototyping bottle labels I decided to come up with another design. I just wanted to experiment a little more with 3D, especially materials, so I took this opportunity to look at different bottle textures as well as applying a new design.

Helvetica Beer

In this tutorial I learnt how to use Cinema 4D as a prototyping tool. I began by importing the outline of the side of the can in preparation to use the lathe tool.I then started to create the material for the can, I set up the reflection first by using the legacy mode and applying a fresnel and other material properties. I then imported the map image onto the material and changed its projection settings to cylindrical, and then set the tag to fit to the can shape. I then added the fill and key light and placed them in the right place to create a soft shadow. I also added a room light to brighten the scene. In the render settings I also tweaked the Anti Aliasing to soften the diagonal lines. At this point I was noticing some streaking where the subdivisions were and no one could figure out what was causing the problem other than a possible fault with the graphics card, so I rendered out what I had and planned to move to another machine later.

The next project was to do something similar but with a bottle shape. So I brought int he line file and added a lathe to the bottle and the liquid layer. I set up the background and added a material. I then imported a preset glass texture and removed the roughness. I also tweaked some of the reflective parameters just to get the material just right. I also duplicated this material and changed the colour to act as my liquid, I applied this to the liquid lathe. To begin placing the elliptical label I first created a cylinder the same radius as the bottle. I created a material alpha channel and imported a beer label .png. Creating the cap would be a little complicated, to create this I used a series of stars and circle splines, I then included them into a loft and moved the circles up to create a crude cap shape. I then added a material like I did with the bottle. I then imported the cap and placed it onto the bottle.

Louise Bourgeois - Insomnia Drawing

During a lecture delivered by Dr. Alison Rowley on Louise Bourgeois' work Insomnia Drawings, Dr. Rowley asked us a question: "What is the digital equivalent of a doodle?" Some people answered with simply doodling the same as they did physically but with a graphics tablet or a computer mouse on some form of graphics software, however I looked into it a little more. Doodling is what someone does absentmindedly when they are bored or just want to occupy themselves during some empty time, so what do people do during this time in this new digital age? They 'google'. I do it myself, I just browse the internet or look into random things that had been on my mind. Googling is the new doodling.

Umberto Echo - Poetics of Open Works

Early in the year I was introduced to Umberto Echo’s thoughts on the Open works and I read a little into his writings on the subject. I loved the whole idea of open works and I have seen similar things been done and with good results. This idea of open works and user interpretation inspired a little of my essay visual appendix. For my visual appendix I created a small program which generated hundreds of A4 frames with a random number and placement of lines, this was to challenge the common problem of facing an empty A4 page. From these frames I placed content in relation to the lines provided. So in short I was interpreting the content given o me and produced work accordingly, the open work was produced by the computer and the final design was interpreted and curated by myself.

Richard Billingham - Ray’s a Laugh

This particular lecture delivered by Dr Alison Rowley which looked into the work of Richard Billingham, stuck with me. He documented the lives of people in its rawest form, looking into their private home and their personal habits. Its this daily documentation that I found interesting, he captured the details of peoples lives which are usually overlooked and most are not interested in. I do a similar type of photography as a hobby, I capture the often overlooked parts of places which seem interesting just to me, things like the form go buildings on comparison to the relating street signs for example. This photography work is typically edited and stored away with no other purpose, however this archive of photography has come in useful for most of my projects, providing visual content whenever I need it to experiment with techniques or new styles.

Richard Billingham, Ray’s A Laugh, Scalo, Zurich , Berlin, New York, 1996 

Thoughts on Theory

I have enjoyed this years theory program for a number of reasons. First, without taking any direct influence from the lectures they have still influenced my work in a more generalised way. They have taught me to self reflect on my work, I pick it apart and analyse every detail, I try and pinpoint where I was influenced, I look into how my work will effect others; in short, the theory program has taught me to think deeper about my work and what I am doing in my education. Learning about certain art movements and impacting work has helped me pinpoint who I am as a designer and where I could fit in and take influence from.

Tutorial Showcase 2015

Tutorial Showcase 2015 from Emma Nicholson on Vimeo.

With my showreel I decided to keep the editing to a minimum, so swipes and roll in effects have not been included. I wanted a quick snappy and straightforward presentation of my work which is a style I have seen with professional showreels. I personally think transitions and text effects bloat out the animation and slow the pace so this is why I left them out. I started by placing my audio in and marking the beat on the timeline which gave me a loose guide to follow. I then chose a typeface and colour for the starting frames which also gave me a template for the title frames during the main content of the animation. I then started placing my second best piece first and cutting the best parts to the music and including the titles, I did this for each of the five pieces until I had a rough and loose edit. I then neatened the cuts so they were exactly to the beat and the best parts of the work was shown, i made sure the flow and variation of clip lengths was solid and not too unstructured. When I was happy I found a good cut off point for the audio and added an end screen similar to the starting one.

Music: http://www.bensound.com