Category: Unit 13 Research

The coronavirus has seemingly worsened with the country going into lockdown it has made the whole process of going out and taking pictures for my project increasingly more difficult. However, instead of giving up I decided to somewhat use it to my advantage as it is a virus going around I decided that perhaps what I can do is continue with my project as planned but with a twist.

I began doing research on post apocalyptic scenarios to incorporate that theme into my project. A post apocalyptic wasteland where animals have began to mutate and the world around them also changes.

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Then I thought of movies that I have seen or heard of involving mutated animals in a post apocalyptic scene such as ‘Annihilation’ which has various different mutated animals which I always found incredibly fascinating – especially how different creators portray the whole apocalypse concept.

After a bit of digging I also remembered a few video games that involves the same concept, which also then branches out my research so it isn’t just information from websites.

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After looking at some of the concept art I could find or scenes for different movies, I began to look at the similarities and differences in each of them.

To be fair, there are a lot of similarities as most post apocalyptic landscape images involve the same sort of factors; overgrown grass and plants climbing up the side of buildings and windowless, rusting cars. However what varies in each is the wildlife – some have a tendency to keep it as normal, or your typical wildlife; dogs and cats roaming around as well as some exotic animals loose from zoos, etc. But there are some who go the extra mile if it involves a virus as it effects the wildlife as well as humans therefore mutating them.

Luisa Azevedo is a Portuguese photographer best known for her creative use of merging images. She has created many beautiful pieces that easily caught my attention.

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As I have chosen to do giant animals as my theme, finding her pieces such as the ones above has definitely helped give me a few ideas for more experimentations.

I love her creative use of merging things such as buildings on bears and can absolutely see myself trying to do a few experimentations with it to see how they turn out and to see what I can possibly add to it.

This is another piece I think would work quite well as a fish tends to be quite a small creature, so to turn that into such a creative concept really intrigued me.

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These two images are absolutely breathtaking. Luisa’s use of lighting only adds to the beauty, however I really like the concept of adding flowers or some sort of plant to animals, I think they are truly extraordinary.

This is another great piece that fave me some inspiration, in fact there are several pieces of her work that I intend to try and use as some experimentations as I am determined to do as many as I possibly can in order to truly progress with this unit.

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These are also two brilliant concepts that I wish to try and incorporate it into my work in the next few experimentations that I do. I’m hoping to try and add them to my ideas as I truly love her work and think they are absolutely brilliant for this unit and it would be an interesting road to take.

Eben McCrimmon is another photographer who is known for his creative manipulation of images. He, like Mani, does animals at a larger scale in order to create this magnificent pieces.

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However, this is yet another artist who doesn’t have much information about them revealed therefore there isn’t too much I can say about Eben – but I can definitely say that his work is extremely creative.

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In every image the animal at hand is looking directly where Eben intended to create said pieces – sometimes the animal is looking down/towards the subject and sometimes the animal is looking off in the distance which also works extremely well as Eben’s use of lighting adds the realism I keep talking about.

This is a perfect example as the bull is looking down at the subject adding that little bit of character and a bit more of a story to the image. The bull is looking somewhat aggressively down at the person, or possibly curiously.

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These two images are also brilliant examples of Eben’s use of lighting as the bear being engulfed by what appears to be clouds adds so much depth and perspective to it. Whereas the squirrel also showcases once again that his use of lighting is great – as well as the squirrel looking directly at the camera too, once again adds personality and character to it.

Whilst doing research on Mani, I came across another artist; Monokubo – a Japanese illustrator, commonly known for his illustrations of giant animals which immediately peaked my interest.

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Although I couldn’t find much information about Monokubo, I did however find several images of his that I really like.

A lot of his work involves real animals such as racoons, dogs, cats, etc. However some of his pieces are based around Chinese mythology which I thought was quite interesting.

For example, Inoshishi is a boar from Chinese culture and mythology. It is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac symbols, it’s previous name being Yamakujira which meant “whale of the mountains” which appears a lot in Chinese folklore as Inosasao – the boar with the back covered in bamboo leaves.

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One thing I really like about Monokubo’s work is his colour palettes – they are always soft colours and well co-ordinated with the animal in the image. For example, the image with the Shiba dogs works well because of the soft greens and browns, with the occasional splash of white and blue which add a bit more colour to it.

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With these two images the colours typically whites, blacks and greys with the occasional splashes of colour such as greens, reds and browns which really completes the images. However there are a few more colours in the panda illustration with the hat and banners but it helps add to the adorable nature of it.

It’s a shame that I can’t find much information about Monobuko however I am still glad I came across his works as they are incredibly well done and quite interesting to hear about the mythology behind some of them.

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When I started my research Mani was the first artist to appear. He is known for his breathtaking images. This kind of photoshop work can be extremely intricate as it can become very obvious just how fake it is when the subject isn’t blended correctly, however Mani always manages to pull it off.

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As I had previously stated, lighting was one thing I struggled with majorly when creating my experimentations. However it seems that no matter the environment or animal, Mani gets the lighting and perspective perfect.

The main reason I decided to do black and white experimentations was because I couldn’t quite get the colourisation correct, which easily became extremely frustrating as the image just didn’t look right the black and white theme helped with that as it is no longer a hassle.

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These two images once again prove Mani’s incredible use of lighting – in the image with the lions he blurred the lion at the back slightly which gave the image that depth and realism that I aim to achieve.

The image with the cat is also yet another brilliant example. I have started to try and improve my images’ lighting and I have also tried to use the blur tool in order to add more detail to my images.

This piece, to me, is absolutely brilliant. I love his art style in general and I love every piece he’s created, however this is piece is similar to something I wished to do – and still do, however didn’t quite know how to achieve it. Therefore I plan to possibly experiment a little bit further in oder to hopefully achieve that level of detail and realism in my pieces.

After doing some research I came across an artist called Jason McGroarty who immediately peaked my interest with the image above. I didn’t quite know how to start research on this topic – in fact, I was still attempting to come up with ideas as to what exactly I wanted to do.

This series of images applied to me as I want to do animals in a “different” location or animals in a larger scale – so, his work easily caught my attention.

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He is known for his surreal pieces, this series “Totem” being one of the most infamous one. Where he photographed these different locations and added various animals to create these obscure image – only because they are photographed in places they would not usually be found in.

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I aim to produce a few pieces – even as experimentations that resemble his work as I am extremely interested in his line of work and this series, so I hope it will help me with my final pieces in the long run.