Child's Imagination
Artist Research
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Zahir BatinZahir Batin combined his skills with paper art, miniature toys and photography to create this project on star wars characters placed in situations where they look realistic, whilst still obviously looking like miniature toys. He takes the photos close-up of the toys, as he has in other projects like close-ups of insects and other toy figures.
In these photos, I like the way the props and background make the figure look real as if they had emotions, even though they just are plastic toys. For example, in the photo with the two figures next to the grave, it seems as if they are grieving by the way they are positioned hugging. I like this idea as it makes them look even more realistic, and is something I will try to incooperate into my pieces, and take a lot of consideration positioning the toy figures. |
Photoshoots
Objective: Photos of a child, reading a book and sitting in a way that I could edit him to look like he is sitting on a gorilla.This is the photoshoot that I will use in all three of the pieces. I tried to get the model to pretend he was reading, which he eventually did and will be useful pictures in the pieces. I also took some random shots of him, just incase my idea changed slightly or I thought another photo would work better than him reading. I tried to get the lighting to look as natural as possible as I knew all of the final pieces would be outside, without any artificial lighting, so I wanted it too look natural. It was quite sunny so this worked well, and is why I had to take the photos in a place with a lot of sunlight, however if I were to do it again I would clear the background to make the editing process easier but I had to take the photos before he moved and wasn't holding the book anymore, but overall the pictures came out quite well.
Objective: Photos of toy soldiers in positions as if they were fighting, then edit them to look real and old fashioned.This photoshoot I also done in natural lighting, on the wooden bench. I wanted to make the final piece look as if there was lots of chaos going on, and everyone was panicking and rushing around, like in a real war. So I positioned the toy soldiers in lots of different positions, and because I planned on layering them over each other to make it look like more soldiers, all different distances from the camera. In some of the shots I tried going over the soldiers backs lying down, to get an more interesting view point. I also tried lots of different angles just incase the idea changed later. I tried to have them all looking in one place, so that they looked like they are on the same side, and gives me the opportunity to photoshop something interesting in for them to be looking at, like soldiers approaching them or an explosion.
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Objective: Toy dinosaurs with a rock behind them, to later edit them to look more realistic, like real dinosaurs.For this photoshoot, I took the plastic dinosaurs and positioned them on the bench outside, also with a rock to make it look more like a dinosaurs environment. I had planned on having the image through the t-rex's legs to make the photo more interesting, with a different perspective, and so in a few of the photos the focus is the dinosaurs back legs as I had planned on editing them and layering them over the photo, so that we look through his legs. In this photoshoot there was also natural lighting, which again would make the editing easier to make it look natural. I tried to position the dinosaurs differently to get a different perspective, because after trying to go through the t-rex's legs, which was difficult as I could not get the shot without the tale covering where you would be looking through, I tried having another dinosaurs head close-up so that we'd be looking over their should which worked better.
Objective: Photos of toy monkeys, in positions they might be scattered in in a jungle, then later edit the child onto the gorillas back.For the monkey photoshoots, I done on indoors under artificial lighting, and one on the bench outside with only natural lighting. First, I done the artificial lighting one. I found this difficult to light the plastic animals in a way that lit them enough for me to get clear photos, but also with the glare reflecting on the plastic, which was difficult to avoid. I also tried using a macro lens to get the animals clearer as they are quite small, and will take up the majority of the monkey final piece and so they have to be in focus. But the macro lens didn't really work any better than the normal lens. Then I re-done this photoshoot outside as I preferred the photoshoots of the soldiers and dinosaurs because of the lighting. So with natural lighting on the animals, it still reflecting a bit of the plastic, but in a more natural way that would suit the final piece, not as strong as the artificial light. Again, I positioned all of the monkeys in different positions as I wanted multiple copies of each monkey around the final piece so that it looked like a jungle, and that every monkey was different.
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Monkeys
For this piece, I took the photos of the plastic monkeys separately, and photoshopped them together. So I made some in focus, and some not to give the photo more perspective. Then after editing in all of the monkeys in, I added grass and the sky, which I tried to make as realistic as possible, to make the obviously toy monkeys look more real, like in Toy Story. In the sense that its obvious they aren't real monkeys, but they are real to the child.Then I added the photo of the child, and tried to make it look as if he were clinging to the gorillas back. For this I just placed the child on his back, then added some shading under his feet to make it look more real. I had originally planned on adding trees that the monkey would hang from, but after putting the photo together, I decided not to do this as it takes from the child, who is supposed to be the focus of the image.
Soldiers
For this piece I took inspiration from the final pieces in the toy unit, that were of plastic soldiers trying to replicate old war time photos. Since I thought these turned out quite well, for this photo I decided to have the child between the chaos. So I took the photos of the soldiers, then edited them to look like they're all in the same place. Then I made the sky and added an explosion, for all of the soldiers to be looking at. Then I added the child into the photo. I had originally planned to have the child reading a book to show their imagination playing out the story he would be reading, but after trying this I didn't think it looked right with him reading a book, and wanted him to be more involved in the action. So in this piece I tried to make it look like he was wondering what that loud noise had been, or just worried about what is going on around him.
Dinosaurs
For this dinosaur piece, I started off by taking dinosaur photos separately then photoshopping them together. Then after doing this I though it might look more realistic if I just took the actual photo with all of the dinosaurs in the same photo, which would save work and make them look more like they are actually in the same place. So then I tried this and it worked a lot better. The table I took the photos on is actually a wooden bench, so I added a big rock behind one of the dinosaurs and tried to make the rock colour the same as the bench, that way the table would look more like rock, which seems more fitting for dinosaurs than wood.