As a continued commitment to finding new sources of inspiration and exploring new concepts in visual media, a few students recently participated in a short portrait project to combine digital (imagery) and analog (paper-craft) mediums.
This short portrait project was designed to compliment the "Film to Photoshop" workshop in which students worked with 35mm film and converted analog film to digital files for editing and processing. In the workshop students were asked to once again mix mediums to obtain a unique aesthetic. For this project, paper masks were created that have a distinctive (lowpoly) polygonal style (emulating a 16-bit style graphic) and then photographed as part of a portrait series that mixed some of the traditional portrait workflow with the creative paper masks.
The results were rather fun, with a range of portraits that evoke a variety of “personalities” portrayed by the actor under the mask. The students that were photographed with their masks were asked to "play" a character using some props from their personal items.
The images where shot using a standard two light clam-shell portrait setup on white canvas. The images were then post-processed in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. To gain an additional aesthetic to mimic older film portraits, several film grain and tin-type effects were added.
A big thanks is due to the artist behind the polygonal paper masks Steve Wintercroft from www.wintercroft.com for his creativity and commitment to detail and design. The masks took about two hours each to assemble from start to finish.
This project also served as a great concept design for a future project that is in development at the moment with students using a mask of their choosing to be the subject for a visual narrative project.
If you are interested in more information or would like to work on your own mask please visit http://wintercroft.com/ for instructions on how you can create your own mask and unleash your creativity.