You will recall dear reader(s) that you left me mulling over a few ideas for Open Casket. At some point between then and now, I had the good idea to try mocking them up in Blender...
I say 'good' - it proved to be a GREAT idea. I wonder if part of my struggle was working at 'scale'? My planned piece isn't huge, and will definitely not look it in the exhibition, but it is a lot bigger than anything I've done before. I think maybe that was a sticking point? It's fairly easy to make a rough prototype for something you can hold in your hand.
I made my mock-ups in Blender, and deliberately made them 'lo-fi' tests, not glorious works of photo-realism. I made sure to get proportions vaguely right, and to get some half-decent lighting, but I made sure not to sweat the details too much...
I started with the 'cut-out' profiles idea:
Clearly the shapes are not really visible as a coherent whole - the wood is either too far apart to really form a 'shape' or it's too close together to see the holes. I tried a few variations, but I was very underwhelmed by the idea once I had a sense of what it might look-like.
Mocking up the idea of nails hammer into wood in the profile of a body was immediately instructive too:
It's very clear that the effect is more 'outline' than 'profile' - the nails (which would be quite buff in real life) are not long-enough to give any meaningful shape. It as also interesting to get an idea of just how many nails might be involved (admittedly the 3d model of myself I used is in a 'T' pose, but still). I tried a few other variations (convex profile, white background), but I wasn't getting excited... I love the ability to really see and reflect on the idea and whether it's working.
I turned back to the original idea of making a 'body' by casting plaster-soaked cloth over myself, and it immediately felt more exciting and promising:
I didn't take this one too far, but I'll probably come back to it - a few things to come out of it - 1) cloth simulations in Blender are SO MUCH FUN and 2) a single sheet works much better than lots of 'swags' of fabric, since the fabric shape struggles to give the sense of a body when it's broken up.
Part of the reason I didn't get too far is because I got excited about an alternative version, when instead of casting the body, I cast the impression of the body in the fabric - like the depression left in a mattress when a body has been lying on it:
I like this because it feels more subtle, and removing the face also opens up the possibility of adding back the participatory element (surprise!) by allowing people to write on the 'sheet'. I tried mocking this up:
It's interesting that even with a 'lo-fi' mock-up, it's clear that the shape of the body is largely drowned out by the writing... So I'm now experimenting with ways to make the body shape clearer - in this mock-up, I filled it with 'water':
Which is (probably) utterly impractical since I'm sworn off the epoxy, but is cool as it does two things at once - it outlines the shape, but also prevents people writing on it (too hard to show in the 'lo-fi' mock-up). However, some alternative way of 'filling' the depression might work (e.g. sand, or dust, or lining it with something like pages from 'Time Management').
So I think the wonderful thing is actually that I am EXCITED again by the project! I'm currently braining away on some ways to do this technically - lots of interesting problems like how to cast the depression, how to make it light-enough to transport etc For now I think Plan A is the 'depression' and Plan B is the 'body under a sheet'. I feel confident enough now to start some large scale experiments!
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