Most people know the scary aspects of the short story "The Sandman". It was originally written by E.T.A. Hoffmann and found its way into a number of modern day adaptations. I love the concept of the Automaton Hoffmann added to the story. In this case the life like mechanical figure Olympia. In the early days of modern science, there was also an element of alchemy and magic involved to create this figure that seems so hard to distinguish from a real person.
My piece "Prepare for Takeoff" was inspired by said Olympia and with eyes playing an essential role in the story, I wanted those to have a strong presence in my artwork.
I started with the scan of a drawing I had made on glass some time ago and put the parts I wanted to keep, on their own layers.
The face needed some changes, to give it the porcelain like appearance I was looking for at first.
A quick sketch of the hair added, gave a first impression of the main composition.
At this point, the artwork seemed to develop a life of its own and I decided to follow the dialog, to where it might take me. Over the course of several days, I kept changing and adding things.
I completely redrew the body of the figure and kept adjusting the figure to her final look.
At first, I kept the moth in place only for its symbolism of a creature of the night and the dark aspects of the Sandman story.
When I work on a piece like that, unrestricted by a fixed theme, my thoughts wander. I hear something or an element in the artwork sparks another idea. So, all of a sudden it occurred to me, that the moth also represents "flight". Right away, the phrase "prepare for takeoff" popped up in my mind and I saw scenes from the movie "The Fifth Element" in front of my inner eye. I know, it wasn't equally well-received by everyone. But I love it for its crazy visual language and absurd ideas. In the case of my artwork, it inspired me to add that touch of Pop SciFi with the pink elements.
A lot of new options opened up, and for me being the typical Libra in the zodiac, it became more and more difficult to decide, which one I wanted to pursue.
In the end I wanted to give "Prepare for Takeoff" a more technical look and decided to keep all the different looks of Olympia to explore further in a piece on AsyncArt, where I plan to make all the variations available with their programmable art.
In Photoshop, I designed a background and a sort of frame, both with a more metallic appearance.
For the background, I combined a used steel material with a brushed metal effect and added the holes for the turbine like elements and the caution sign. These were to become visible with the sliding doors opening. Of course, I had to add some of my screws.
Next I created the turbines based on another drawing with machine parts I had.
The caution sign was designed in illustrator and then aged a bit in photoshop
With the photoshop file as a background, I designed the shape of the frame and the line art in Illustrator. There I also added my signature at the bottom left.
At this point I found the colors a bit too cold, and so I adjusted hue and blending options for a warmer feeling.
In a final step in photoshop, I put all the elements to be animated on their individual layers and then imported the file into aftereffects.
In Premiere I added the sounds and put it all together for the final video.
Finally, it was tokenized for my Makersplace store at https://makersplace.com/reinhardschmid/prepare-for-takeoff-1-of-1-63205/
The video "Prepare for Takeoff" can be seen
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