The love that exists in all of us (3D scene for my portfolio - completed)

[henrah]

Hey fellow pianists! It's been a long time since I last visited here, so I return with news that I passed my Grade 7 ABRSM with Merit!!! Oh and also this scene I am currently making for my portfolio.

The idea for this scene is neverending love. I am trying to show the love that remains after a heart has been broken. I am going to show this by having a heart jewel broken in two lying next to a pendent of a photo, the photo being of the loved one. I will try to show the love that remains by desaturating the colour of the heart itself (which I will need some help on how far I should go with this) but keeping the caustics and shadow pink and colourful.

So first off I did some material tests:



I think I'll use the caustics and shadow of the first render with the faded colour of the heart of the second render. How faded do you think the heart should be? Should it be completely desaturated to show a more obvious contrast between it and the colourful caustics, or keep a little hint of pink? I think the former, but what are your thoughts on this? Also what should the photo pendent look like: should it be victorian, or fairly modern like the heart?
Henrah

[thalbergmad]

Congrats on the grade 7 old boy. Well done.

Thal

[prometheus]

I thought about your 3D thing. It's an animation, right?

I think that a broken heart should be very red. It is still filled with passion. It is filled with moer passion than before it was broken. Or it should be, I can tell you that.

A broken heart is a lot more sensitive than a normal one. Plus, it is broken.

I think when the love fades the heart should heal. I don't know how old you are and how your experiences with love are. And I don't know how the average person experiences this. But I can tell you that a broken heart heals and that some love always remains. And I am talking about 'first love' and then a broken heart. That's how I experienced it. And they also say that the 'first love'-love always remains while second love, etc do not.

[henrah]

Prometheus, you speak the truth. I am trying to show that the heart is still filled with passion whilst also showing the sadness that one feels when a love is lost. The love and passion is shown through vivid red shadows and caustics (the light that bends and refracts through glass, you can see it appearing in the shadow of the first image), and the sadness is shown through the heart itself being desaturated and cloudy. In essence the heart is sad and broken, but the love still lies within. I usually like to be quite subtle in my ideas, but I feel that this one should be more obvious, and so the contrast between the sadness that surrounds the heart and the love within it that remains will be quite exaggerated. Therefore the colour of the shadow and light that refracts through the heart will be bright and vivid red, much like that of the first image, whereas the actual heart itself will be clouded and desaturated, much like that of the second image.

I feel that if I keep a little bit of colour to the heart then the message will be lost, so it's going to be quite gray and desaturated. Yet I think to exaggerate the love within I'm going to create a little spot of bright burning red in the center of the heart, possibly as an ethereal connection between the two broken halves and also to serve as a reason for the bright red caustics. Yes, that sounds like a good idea, I think I'll go with that

Oh and my 3D portfolio won't be an animation, but I am looking to study Computer Animation at Portsmouth: it has excellent musical facilities yet no musical degree, so there won't be any cliques which is good. I could make my portfolio an animation by having the camera pan slightly across the scene and compile it to a video, but my computer isn't powerful enough to get all that done before friday, which is when I'm going to Portsmouth to talk to the teachers and hand them my portfolio.

Thanks for the congrats Thal
Henrah

[prometheus]

Ok.

You will have to have a clear idea about what message/idea/questions you want to express. The experience of love and a broken heart, love sadness/sickness can be very diverse. Also, there is some 'rhetoric' that has maybe hasn't such strong roots in reality but can be used as a powerful effect in stories.

Then it is easy to figure out how you have to make the picture to show this idea.

I like the idea of a 'little spot bright burning red' and about a grey clouded heart still causing the bright red caustic it used to have.

But what you should do depends on the story you want to tell.
For me, sadness was not so much an issue. I mean, it was incredible painful but in my experience there wasn't any sadness. No one was wronged.

I also think all sadness will dissapear with time. Time may not heal all wounds, but in my experience it does heal broken hearts.

So that depends on the cause of the broken heart.

[henrah]

Well I've been thinking heavily about the back story to this scene, and I've decided that war will be the cause for the broken heart. It's a very simple reason, and one that will probably need rethinking; but for the moment it'll do. The pendant will be in the shape of a dog-tag to give that impression, and it'll be just a flat object with the photo engraved into the metal and a decorative border, probably a twisting pipe like border.

In my limited experience, sadness was also not an issue. I just resorted to saying sadness for it's simplicity in explanation. I guess painful will be a more suiting feeling. But either way, this scene will be a contrast between love and lost love, warm and cold, happiness and sadness etc.

Time is a great healer, so I propose that the love was lost recently to the scene. I just had a scene play out in my head where one person just found out that their loved one died to war and they threw their necklace onto the ground in frustration/anger, the necklace being both the heart and photo on one chain. Better yet, they were holding onto the necklace whilst thinking of their loved one, and the shock of the situation made them lose their grip on the necklace and drop it, the heart breaking in two when it hit the ground. It's like I've got a movie scene playing through my head, I'm visualising it right now really vividly. Therefore I will create a necklace chain connecting the heart and the photo, and give the ground a wooden texture. I could also add the shadow of a persons legs and possibly add a wall or something vertical to give a sense of height and that it was dropped by the person casting the shadow.

When reading your sentence, "Time may not heal all wounds, but in my experience it does heal broken hearts", I had the idea of making an additional scene where the heart has healed, and place the necklace in a scene with other photos of the same person like it's in a little rememberance area. I could place a clock or calendar in the scene and make it different to give the impression that time has changed between the two scenes.

...but maybe I'm getting a bit ahead of myself lol! I should just do this scene first, and maybe make the other scene after I've handed in my portfolio as I don't think I have enough time to do both before friday.

Thanks for the great advice Prometheus! Anything else you have to say I'm willing to listen, like ideas on how to portray the scene better or different situations or scenarios as to how the heart could've been broken and how or what the love was lost to.

Almost forgot about the update! I'm not quite happy with how I've broken the heart in two. My first attempt was too complex and resulted in odd refractions, so for this attempt I kept it simple, but simple lacks detail so I'll have to touch it up for a later update. Also I'm still in the process of deciding how to decorate the border of the photo pendant.

Henrah

[prometheus]

Ok, I didn't have the time to read your whole post yet but I did scan it.


The way I think about art is that I have to think about everything. I want to know where I start from, what I am going to do and where I am going. Then I can start to actually work out the idea.

I can do it without knowing what to do, but I often end up redoing something.

You have to realise here that you are using symbolism. A real actual heart doesn't have anything to do with love. It is all in the brain. Of course. So you want to úse the language of symbolism. I would prefer consistensy meaning that I would like everything that is in the picture to have a function in the picture made of symbolism.

For example, in your picture you have a crystal heart that works as a kind of lense for a light source.
Maybe then the idea is that the rays of light are life and the heart symbolises not only love but also how you refract that what life 'throws' at you.

To me a pendant with an image won't make that much sense I mean, the idea is that the person remembers without the need for a image, right? Of course you can do what you want so you can just as well throw in a pendant as a blunt straightworward hint. But it will never become a scene of what a person has laying on his night closet. You don't take out your crystal heart when you are going to sleep.


About breaking the heart. Understanding symbolism you know that you need to avoid symmetry. You need to break the heart in the most asymmetric way possible. Not only this avoids the perfection of symmetry, you also break the heart through a strong spot instead of through its weakest spot.

Also, a broken crystal can never heal. Crystal has the property that when it breaks it won't just go back together when you push the two broken pieces together. In terms of phyisics this is kind of interesting and it would be counter-intuitive if it were not part of everyday life.
So if you want something that can heal you can consider an actual heart. But then it can't be ripped out of the chest. Then you need to display it inside the body, but that has problems too.
Or if you want to have fire that burns inside the heart, it can always rekindle.

In both you lose the idea of the rays of light of life being refracted.

And the idea of the broken heart is kind of problematic. The point is that it never heals, right? But we 'know' it does. So when it does heal was it actually 'broken'?

So it's not easy to do. And that's actually the point. To do something that is not easy.

Also, if you are going to do a broken heart you may want to change the angle of view. Your heart is laying down and you cannot see it that well.

And that is also a new thing to think about. In the last picture the heart is laying down. In the others it is suspended in mid-air by a magical force. Why? What does it mean? I mean, you did this on purpose even if you don't know why you did it, right?

[henrah]

For example, in your picture you have a crystal heart that works as a kind of lense for a light source.
Maybe then the idea is that the rays of light are life and the heart symbolises not only love but also how you refract that what life 'throws' at you.

Art is what you make it Prometheus; and though I didn't think of that myself, it is a very good idea.

And you're right, I did this on a whim without completely thinking through the idea. What you've said has really enlightened me, and I thank you for that. Nothing you have said can I retort with (in Little Britain style) "Yeah, but..." or "No, but..." You speak the goshdarned truth.

In light of what you have explained to me, I shall go back to the very beginning and stick with the idea of love still lying deep in a seemingly (on the surface) cold and spiritless heart. As before, the love that burns within will be shown through the vivid colour of the caustics. I would like to also create a small but bright burning spot in the center of the heart, but I feel that will destroy the idea that the love is cold and dead on the surface as the viewer will be able to see a clear colour inside the heart, whereas the colour is supposed to come from inside the heart but not be visible inside it, which is where the caustics come in. They allow me to show the love that lies invisible within.

And yes, love does lie in the mind and the heart is just a symbol for love, and a very obvious one at that. I could exchange the heart symbol for something which has more value to me, but then I wouldn't be able to portray the idea to others as the object would only hold value to myself. I would love to be able to choose a symbol which would mean something to everyone, or at least to the majority of those that view it, but I can't think of anything better and broader than a heart.

As I said before, art is what you make it, and so I hope that others may find links to their own experiences and feelings as I have done so.

And about the floating of the heart: I wanted it in that position because otherwise you would not see the caustics falling onto the ground. And even if you could, they wouldn't lie inside the shadow of the heart, which would not be the same shape as the heart as the angle would be different if it were flat. So I made a simple box to lean the heart against, but that also disrupted the shadow and caustics so I deleted it, and left the heart as it was. A reason isn't needed for the heart's gravity defying capabilities don't you think? After all, this isn't supposed to reflect reality: it's a symbolic piece of art.

So, in light of all this all I need to do now is possibly decorate the border around the heart, or at least improve the material. And I might also go in and refine the shape of the heart as it's quite bumpy, but then again from this view you cannot see that and so I think it's fine as it is.


Thankyou so much Prometheus, you have been a great help. You've really enlightened me, and I hope you enjoy the final image I produce, which I'll render overnight tonight so you'll get to see it tomorrow.
Henrah

[prometheus]

Ok, I read your previous message that I only scanned and your last one.


So you though about doing a scene of actual objects that tell a story. That won't be very symbolic-heavy as the things I talked about.

So then, if you have a cystal piece of jewelry shaped like a heart break because it falls on the hard floor then maybe breaking it in a realistic way is better. And that is probably the way you broke it in your last picture. Well, I can't do tests but my intuition says the surface you broke it on is the weakest spot. If you want to create asymmetry then you need to break it along a strong surface.
And that would suggest a supernatural cause of the heart breaking.

As for it floating in mid-air. Yes, of course it is practically nessesary for the light and the caustics. But if I were to do art I would want every little detail to have as much meaning as possible. As I said, this is hard and you have to think long about these things to find a solution and to find a way to tell a story or idea so it all fits together.

Also you mentioned war. War is a topic which you can say many things about. If I am to handle war in art I my initial idea would be to make it something important, not just a cause of something. War brings up so many questions and problems that I wouldn't easily leave untouched.
Same with death.

War-> politics
Death-> religion

They all have a huge influence on the way your pictucture should be worked out.

But this is all my views on the subject. If you were to do it how I would do it it would be my art, not yours. And the point of art is that it is something you made. Something that is a creative product of the unique personality that is you. That is the point of art, the fact that everyone can make worthwhile art, even if it's not famous or well-respected, because we have all unique minds and intellects.

[henrah]

You have said your word, and I have said mine. I have listened to your word, and you have listened to mine. All there is left to do is show the artwork, of which I completed moments ago, but I feel there is still some tweaking to do. The so many things you have mentioned will stay in my mind for a long, long time, and I will most likely find this particular scene staying with me throughout life and maturing with me, much like a piece one plays. The longer you know it for, the more you get to know it and the deeper you can delve.



I think that the blackness of the heart will denote evil of some sort, and I don't want that. I also think that I should make it more cloudy and white, which will emphasise life's ability to penetrate through cold and spiritless exteriors (human body and personality) to find the love that exists in everyone. In light of that, I think a title change might be in order. But, like this picture, it will take some deliberating to come to finalise, and will probably never fully. I feel that with this scene I can tweak it endlessly and still never come to a satisfactory result.

In any case, some tweaking is needed until it is satisfactory enough to be put into my portfolio for friday.
Henrah

[henrah]

I have tweaked it and come to realise what this image symbolises to me. It symbolises the love that exists in everyone, even those that have, personally and physically, very cold and spiritless exteriors. It also symbolies that love can penetrate even those kind of people to the very depths of their being, and from within their souls can vividly shine out.

Here is the new image:


Henrah

[prometheus]

Ok, it looks interesting enough.

I don't know a lot of graphic art but it does express something that isn't an everyday cliche. So that's good.

But I have to add something else. I always hear graphic artists talk about lines and ratio's. I kind of have the feeling the heart isn't positioned optimally, too much to the left. Of course I understand why you did it this way. But you may want to ask someone who handles this subject a lot. Maybe it is unbalanced.

[henrah]

Positioned too much to the left? Do you mean that there's more unused space on the right than there is on the left? If so then I understand what you mean, and that can be fixed quite easily by just chopping off a certain amount from the right side.

Is that what you meant?