Final Piece vs Original concept.

Here is the final contraption in the gallery. I would say that it matches how I had envisioned it in the concept very well. 

There are a few things I didn't quite foresee when creating the concept though, like the fact that something spinning right in front of your face can make you a bit dizzy. I think it helped when people were able to step back a bit and look through the viewfinder. 

Building the Contraption.

For the Base, I ended up getting an umbrella base like this:

I bought a wooden dowel that fit into the base, and drilled a 3/8 inch hole into the top of the dowel. Black tape was wrapped around the dowel for greater aesthetic appeal.

I stuck and metal rod though a wheel similar (but not the same) to the one below, and drilled four holes around the circumference so skinny metal rods could stick into the wheel and be able to now spin.

Tent poles were stuck together to form a ring which was then places atop the metal rods. This formed a circular structure to which the printed paper was formed around. Once all 51 of the images were finished, they were compiled within a .PSD file and printed on one long piece of paper.The paper was then attached to the tent poles with tape and the contraption was nearly complete.

Hwaryoung suggested I make a device that restricted vision to all but one frame at a time. After I mapped out the dimensions, she was able to get two pieces of plastic laser cut for the viewing device. 

The Digital Painting

Here was the sketch I started with. It's obviously very loose, as I knew I would be changing it lots as I started to add value in and I didn't want to spend too much time on details that would be erased anyway.

Here I've started to add color and value in. As you can see, I was largely focused with making it clear that there is one bright house that sort of "spreads" the life and color of the painting.

Here is the final image. The composition changed drastically, I felt like it was lacking depth and could get a lot more interesting. I think the foreground element helped a little with it, and it also allowed me to throw in a bit of atmosphere. 

Collecting reference for my art

Inspired by photos of slums from around the world, I decided to create a concept of color and plants radiating out of one house within a drab slum. I started by looking for good reference of the kinds of densely packed living situations I would try and show.

Here are some of the ones I used: