M2 | pinstripecodec2019

M2-Flatness vs projection

What is an axonometric painting?

My initial access to axonometric painting took place back in Module 1, which is the time I did the axonometric painting of the croissant cut sections. The axonometric painting back to that time was to construct back a relationship from three different cut sections into a croissant as a whole. When drawing the axonometric painting, I place the bottom section with a 45 degree in order to create a "space" from a "plane", then sketch sections in their positions upon the bottom "plane", into space upon created from the bottom place through doing the axonometric painting.

Axonometric paintings (drawings), brings the audience a view that is totally different from perspective paintings. Axonometric painting, according to Week 4 readings, offers a general and precise view of an object in space. Measurement can be done in axonometric painting as it is to scale, and locations of different objects in space are easier, more accurately observed compared to perspective painting. Axonometric painting does not have a vanishing point as construction lines in it are all parallel, unlike perspective paintings, which only generally gives the audience an idea of space through a single and only viewpoint.

Stage 01: Look at given elevations, Drafting ideas, and initial sketches

At this stage, two original given Mario world game screenshots are considered as two initial elevations placed at front and back of the axonometric "world", which is basically a box formed by 200mm in both width, length and height. What I've done in this stage is to imagine and design the world formed by initial elevations, as well as the hidden space in between the existing blocks & landscapes from the two original elevations.

A rough idea axonometric drawing done by 2H pencil, a more precise modified axonometric drawing done by 0.3 fine line pen, and a photoshopped fine line pen axonometric drawing scan are contained within this stage.

World 5-1 8 Front elevation

World 5-1 11 Back elevation

The first impact of the elevations to me is the "openness", there are only very few blocks at the bottom, merely two lines of blocks, as well as in the sky. Majority of the space is taken by the sky, water and clouds at the background. Thus it's inappropriate for me to do the approach of focusing on the design of hidden space in between the elevations. Instead, I have to use the limited sources, applying block shifts on forwarding or backward paths according to their initial positions on given elevations, to achieve a view substantial in content when transforming the "flatness" elevation into a projected three-dimensional axonometric world. This actually echoes with the title, the art of turning "flatness" into a possible "projection".

My final idea of the projection focuses on the concept of "openness" and "water" as well. The Mario world projection is settled as a likely floating island in the sky, with huge pipes hidden in the ground, large cuboid columns, water leaking from higher blocks and fragmentary blocks laying at the very bottom layer of the projection.

Drawing grids and position of initial blocks on two elevation

The 200mm*200mm grids at the bottom, to ensure the position accuracy of blocks draws on top

I placed the A3 tracing paper in 45 degrees by using set squares and T-square, with two based original elevations attached at front and back by using masking tape. I didn't paint the draft of the world at first, instead, I paint a layer of grids of 200mm on width and length, formed by parallel construction lines. Thus the length and width of each intersected square equal to the width of each block in original elevation at the same scale, and the accuracy was ensured at the very beginning of the painting.

Initial ideal world projection drew by 2H pencils

Another tracing upon the pencil sketched payer by using 0.3 fine line pen on front & back elevation and 0.1 on other parts

Six major elements I chose for the projection

At the very beginning, I have to certain the six major elements I gonna use in the projection. I chose three different types of block, huge tubes, cuboid block, and the huge cactus. What I designed in my world is a likely combination of the visual illusion in the movie "Inception" and game "Monument Valley", but also I want to keep the projection world simple to look but complex in structure, with the joy of assembling blocks in together like play "Minecraft".

Some examples of visual illusion created within the painting

The pencil sketches draft and fine line pen tracing draft only labelled the basic lineament of the projection. I shifted nearly every block on two elevations along their paths into different positions in the middle to fill up the blank. In a certain situation like the elevation suggests a rise of a certain block, I did not simply place a block upon but construct a Penrose stair structure behind the block, create a visual illusion to make the view more interesting. This is because of the viewpoint of this axonometric painting is at a 45 degree, thus it allows more possibilities to happen in this view.

After tracing the original layer with a 0.3 (on front and back elevations) and a 0.1 (in middle zone) fine line pen, the tracing paper is sent for scanning for Stage 02 work.

The scanned fine line pen tracing

The scanned fine line pen tracing after photoshopped

The photoshopped process of the scanned tracing

The photoshopped process mainly contains using background eraser to clean the background, hight the black colour, I also applied certain Curve changes and Brightness changes on the image.

Stage 02: Making changes on the original draft of sketches, creating each block for assembly

The original draft of scanning

The modified draft painted in Illustrator CC 2019

The second draft is then modified in Illustrator CC 2019, with a much more detailed graphing. Moreover, more blocks are added into the second draft. Feedback from the tutor suggested me to change the structure of the block, to achieve an even more interesting view when looking at the image.

Some later modification based on original blocks

The figure above is a typical example of how I turned an original block into a re-structured block. By observing from an original perspective of front and back, the separated part actually cannot be observed from that front and back perspective but can be seen from an axonometric perspective. In this way, the world looks even better than the original.

In the creation of the "lucky" block

Then I started to colour the blocks, thus they can be placed in their positions on the based scanned image. It is worth mentioning that I did not choose the exact same colour pattern from the originally given elevation. The screenshot of Mario world game tend to have excessive saturation, also the grey scale is too high, which makes the image looking too dull. Thus I made my own colour scheme, with the colour chosen more appropriate and fresh. I applied several complementary and analogous colours when creating these blocks. In several sections of the block, the gradually changing colour is applied as well.

The colouring of blocks completed

Adobe Illustrator works in a different module in contrast with Photoshop. Shapes in Illustrator, as a vector, are formed by different shapes in a group. Instead, Photoshop only uses paint tools to draw pixels. Illustrator also has a different layer system. In Photoshop it is impossible to drag stuff from a layer that has not been selected. However, in Illustrator layer will automatically change once stuff in that layer is been selected, even the layer hasn't been selected.

Stage 03: Assembly block components into the based scanned image & Doing further changes

Apart from the approach suggested in the survival guide, I actually changed another approach. In the survival guide, the suggested approach is to create shapes directly upon the photoshopped, scanned projection draft, then colouring each section of them. However, to my point of view, that approach is not necessary only if the projection design has several unique terrains in it. My design of the projected world does not have those unique terrains, thus what I did in another approach to finish the painting is to firstly create every block that gonna be used in the painting, then assemble them into the projection according to the original scanned image. This approach was also been suggested by another previous year student who did a short presentation on his module 2 in Week 4's lecture. In this way blocks are more organized in the final work, also accuracy can be ensured as every block has exactly the same size. I could also focus more on how details can be better presented.

Therefore the later-on procedure is shown as below:

Drag blocks into their positions, once done, group them in order to arrange them as a whole. Layers are also been heavily relied on this stage as the order of superposition of blocks relies on the order of the layers.

The first draft of the projected world

The first draft of the projected world has several modification elements, such as the original cloud floating in the sky, or the little waterfall from higher blocks or some cracks in some blocks. Also, shadows are made to the blocks, this makes blocks have a better relationship in their position. It clearly indicates the position of the light source as well.

This draft was done at the end of week 4, thus I get another feedback at week 5. The first draft indeed docus a lot how to create a visual illusion, but still has spaces to improve. For instance, the position of silver coins did not change much. Besides, some breaking down on a single block were also been recommended. Objects down below the ground and water were not properly filled up, which makes the projection a little empty. Thus second Illustrator draft was made to fix these defects.

The second / final draft of the projected world

After completing the final draft, the Illustrator projection file (AI) is transformed into Indesign for fitting in the Pin-up paper, then export with a crop mark and ready for printing. Overall I think the final work achieve my original idea of "water" and "openness", A general light blue tone, presentation of waterfalls and plain white background indeed create such feelings to the audience.

Accuracy Check after the final draft

To ensure the accuracy of 200mm on width, length and height, I use T-square and a regular long ruler to measure the actual length and width of my projected world. The reason I didn't measure the height is because the height of my original elevation did not reach 200 mm originally. The highest existing block in both given elevation only takes a maximum 80% of the total height, thus it is not necessary to measure the height. Below is the recording of measurement.

There is an uncertainty of 3-4mm in total after measurement. The uncertainty mainly took place when I import the AI file into Indesign template. Manually line up may lead to a possible uncertainty.

A general reflection: Flatness vs. Projection

I would say Module 2 gives me a greater opportunity to learn how to transform axonometric drawing from a pencil sketch level into a digital graphing level. This allows the drawing to have higher accuracy than before, with the correct angle and digital displayed length & width. Module 2 introduces me to the new Adobe software the "Illustrator CC", which is excellent on producing vector graphs. The software also makes the projection painting more measurable, which is one important feature of axonometric painting.

But what I think is more important that I learnt in this Module, is how to construct the design in a proper way, in detailed to the full filled but balanced composition of the image or the selection of the right colour in projection. Or it can be stated as how to creatively, accurately but also aesthetically turn a two-dimensional "flatness" into a three-dimensional "projection". The creation of depth lay out the relationship between different objects' position in space, and axonometric drawing presents them properly in projection space.

I personally consider the exploration of Module 2 a challenging but joyful process. When I settle down in front of my computer and just focus on the drawing, there wasn't that much burden laid on me. Forming and re-forming the projection world also didn't irritate me at all, it felt like an examination on myself, that I kept asking myself that what is the perfect arrangement that you want and what can be improved further on the basis of current progress. I started to gradually become patient when spending hours, days of time on modifying a simple and small detail, with the consistency of focusing on accuracy. Especially when I finished the final draft, and looked back at the initial elevations, that sense of fulfilment and achievement generated in moments is un-describe and unbelievable.