Nina Denning

Curation

Posted on 5 July, 2016  in CIU110

My creative interests can be quite diverse but if I had to nail it down to a few categories id say it consists mainly of short animations, traditional and digital art, based loosely around fantasy and sci-fi realms, oh and speaking of fantasy, Lord of the Rings is my greatest cinematic interest, but since I’m doing animation, ill stick with the first three. Short animations for me are a great deal of inspiration; I enjoy watching them, reading about the hidden meanings and true intent of them then evaluating my opinion. Short films are something I will definitely want to be good at once I learn more about the technological process as its what stimulated my interest in animation as a whole. Short animations serve as a tool for me to see the different levels of quality along with differing styles, lengths, problems and solutions, so I can compare them and discover what I like and dislike. This helps me come to terms with my own capabilities and allows me to begin constructing my ideas. I hope to create some of the short animations I have planned one day, maybe even participate in a film festival.

 

Night Light – Animated Short Film by Qinni. 

 (Nights Light, n.d.)

 

As for traditional art, I started drawing since I was very young, but lost interest somewhere in-between, I’ve only picked it up again within the last year or so with the knowledge of practice means perfect. As I regained my drawing habits, I realised I really enjoy creating characters, from their facial expressions to their clothing and hair. Once I began watching Asian-animations “anime”, I discovered a whole new beautiful art style I didn’t know existed, I feel that has had a major impact on what and how I draw and the themes I try to capture. Anime could actually be its own category as its been a huge creative interest of mine – lets link them together. Unlike adult cartoons or children’s animation, anime has created its own genre so it can be themed for adults in all seriousness, but created so you forget it’s actually an animation, which is an extremely useful technique. Its not only inspired my art, but my story writing as well, anime has a tendency to have an extremely complex or basic storyline, with many plot twists and the ability to successfully portray action, drama, thriller, comedy, romance, sci-fi etc. Its also successful at creating diverse, interesting characters, something I like doing. Drawing helps you get better at character design, something I’m really interested in animation wise, It would be very exciting to see a character of my own design come to life in any sort of media.

Fullmetal alchemist: Brotherhood poster i have. 

Everyone sees game covers, posters, book covers and other digital material, but not always do they think “someone made this” but someone had to, right? All you have to do is look at the splash art for League of Legends to appreciate the capabilities of digital art. A lot of people see digital art as ‘cheating’ at art, but a lot of the same skills apply along with many, many others, just learning Photoshop is a mission in itself. I’ve come to appreciate digital art and I’m determined to improve at it, maybe even get good enough to commission one day. I not only enjoy painting characters in digital art, but I’m very interested in the environmental side of things such as background art and story world concepts, the environment the characters are in can sometimes tell more of a story than the character itself. I would love to make contributions to background design in sci-fi games such as Ratchet and Clank.

(Inner Power, 2012) – Sakimichan

 (Calbraith, n.d.)

One of my favourite digital artist commissions for book covers, heres one she made for a book I’ve recently started reading.

 

Heres a link to my pinterest board showing my creative interests. https://au.pinterest.com/shanina_denning/creative-interests/

References:

1. Qinni –  Nights Light.
2. Calbraith, J. The shadow of black wings.
3. Inner Power. (2012). – Sakimichan