TIME:
2 weeks
TEAM:
Me and 1 other
TOOLS:
Blender 3D
Photoshop
Illustrator
DJ Controller - Pioneer XDJ
Rekordbox
Keyshot
CONCEPT:
Attack and Release are music terms where relating to the reaction time of a compressor, the time it takes for the amplitude to rise and fall above and below the threshold.
Playing on the concepts of thresholds and boundaries, Attack Release was meant to embody the feelings of comfort and care, of being pushed outside of those boundaries and taking on a defensive stance. In newly budding relationships, arguments arise and subside, and egos need to be diminished for the greater good. Iliac and Shapes come together in this mix to illustrate the thresholds and conflicts that arise between individuality and love, all while being enveloped in the comforts of ethereal reverbs.
My ex and I decided to create a mix together. Him and I both love music and created playlists for each other in the very early stages of our relationship. Both of us thoroughly enjoy ambient mixes and I'm still learning how to DJ so we settled on that genre. The concept started out as being a mix to encapsulate a very loving moment in our relationship.
INSPIRATION:
We started by creating a collaborative are.na board with inspiration artwork, things we liked visually.
On our own, we both compiled a handful of songs we felt could fit the general vibes of our mix. We came together and listened to a few of them but just jumped into mixing songs together to see what sounded good and to begin to establish and order.
PROCESS:
We found an order that felt just right, created a tracklist and recorded our mix. Once that was finished we wanted to create artwork to go along with it. I wanted an excuse to learn how to use the sculpt tool in Blender 3D and throw it into Keyshot, and he's incredible at type work and photoshop. I started out by sculpting some random organic shapes and he played around with type.
He came up with the initial narrative concept and we dove into it together. We ended up watching a film together that gave us inspiration and made us pivot our graphic direction. I scrapped my initial Blender model and went for something more symmetrical, balanced and derived from biology and anatomy. He took the model made the material in blender, created an iridescent glass material using the nodes in Blender. He rendered and created motion graphics.
I created line work in Illustrator using the pen tool and we went with an ASCII and linework drawing of the 3D model.
He took that artwork, adjusted the colors and photoshopped together the final artwork to look as if it were printed. He worked on the logo and text, along with making logo assets for the poster.
RESULTS:
The mix was a huge success in my book. My ex and I both became so excited about pushing ourselves outside of our comfy design boundaries. We forced ourselves to learn new skills and having the other to bounce ideas off of made the project incredibly exciting. Him and I have a similar eye for design and visuals and our synergy throughout the process made me overjoyed! The whole process of concept building, music curating, mixing and EQing, designing, drawings, sculpting was a blast.
SPRING 2022
PERSONAL PROJECT
