3D Post-Apocalypse: Garbage

Version 2 of my Post-Apocalyptic world

Shawna

3D Apocalypse Assignment

Photoshop, ChromaDepth glasses

October 9, 2012

Technical

To make this edit, I used a lot of brushes, some pictures from the internet, filters, gradients, and blending. I changed the colours of all of the pictures I used with the hue-saturation sliders and also with the “colour variations” tool. I used a feathered eraser to “cut out” the garbage piles from a photo on the internet. I used a variety of brushes for the background and to distress the buildings and garbage piles slightly. I used even more brushes to add on the bugs to the garbage piles and the pollution coming from the bulldozer. Sometimes I used gradients to make things gradually stand out, such as on the pollution and the ground the bulldozer is on.

Idea of Concept

I decided to go with a sort of Wall-E themed world where garbage was everywhere and it was accumulating all over the world in massive piles. I wanted to show the massive amounts of pollution and toxic gas that was released because of it and the lack of vegetation because of all the contamination.

Originally I had an idea that perhaps the world would end up being some sort of floating island because our pollution would become so dense, but eventually I scrapped that idea and started new with the garbage one. I changed it because the pictures were not turning out how I wanted them to and were generally not suitable for a 3D picture.

Influences

Wall-E partially inspired me with this project. I watched that movie a few years ago and found it fascinating how they imagined the earth could end up. In Wall-E, they show that there is garbage everywhere and that it completely took over the world. The humans had to go out to outer space because there was no longer any room for them on earth with the garbage and they created robots to package up the garbage to reduce the space it took up. All of the plants had died because of the pollution, and when a plant was finally found, it was treasured and took as a sign that they could come back to earth. This inspired my art because I, too, wanted to show the ultimate effect of pollution and how scarce plants could be if we continued to contaminate Earth.

Composition

I went more asymmetrically for this edit. The buildings are concentrated more so on the left and the garbage is largest on the right.

I made the bulldozer and the garbage it is pushing the focus of this piece. You can see the pollution that is in the air and effect it has on the plants because there is a significant lack of greenery. The plant in the garbage on the left is small and not very noticeable. This is because I wanted it to be hard to see since I wanted to emphasize that most plants had died from the pollution.

I wanted the garbage to be present on every level so that it appeared to be everywhere. To do this I have one pile of garbage in dark blue at the back, another one closer up in turquoise, and one at the front in red.

Motivation

I wanted this picture to show people the effect that people can have on the earth if we don’t change our ways. I wanted to bring to their attention the amounts of garbage we put out into landfills and how it can accumulate if we continue to do that. I hope that this picture encourages people to recycle and to reduce their waste.

Critical Assessment

I feel that the bulldozer turned out the most successful because the pollution coming from it turned out nice with the gradient that I used. It is clearly behind the red garbage pile but in front of the other two piles and the buildings. The filters I added to it turned out better than I expected. I also think that the garbage piles turned out well because you can see the different levels within them and the different levels when you compare each pile to each other.

I was surprised at how much better things looked when you added filters and textures to them. They popped from the page more and became more 3D.

I would have liked to find something to put in front of the second building (the one closer to the middle) because I still find that area somewhat blank. Preferably I’d be able to put garbage falling from the windows or something similar if I had more time. This would fill up the space a bit more and you would be able to see the extent that the waste and garbage had gotten to.