(this blog is relevant to the 6 week creativity task)
Social Conditioning...

This is something I've been thinking about allot recently. In the 'creativity seminar' we had on Thursday I managed to contradict myself quite a few times to do with this subject.

One thing that stood out to me in the Ken Robinson talk was 'If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original'. During my education, I feel as if it has been conditioned into me that being 'wrong' is the worst thing you can possibly do. Which in a way, has also caused me to have very strict opinions about what is good and bad, which you shouldn't really have when you are creative field of work.

During the seminar I said that Creativity can't just be a mish-mash of whatever! there has to be a purpose, and a thought process behind what you are doing. But, actually I think this way of thinking has been imposed upon me, and I can't just accept things for what they are. This links in with the lecture we had on Wednesday. Whoever that guy was, mentioned the word Epiphany(the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something) and he related it to Monkey Island. Why not do something for the sake of trying it, just to see what will happen. As Ken Robinson said 'kids will take a chance and aren't frightened of being wrong'.

Yesterday night I went out for a skate. I got to the car park, and sat down, while Tom li and Jesus skated about. There were cars driving past, people walking past, people sitting in cars in the car park and security cameras. I didn't get up and skate because of the fear of doing something wrong. There were people watching, they might see me messing up... then I realized how stupid this was, after about half an hour of sitting there, I eventually got up and started doing stuff, and i did pretty good.

I'm going to have to condition myself out of those kind of feelings, there shouldn't be fear involved in being wrong.

Mesh Complete!!!...


So, I finished my self-portrait mesh! and it sucked, so I did it again... and here it is!

I managed to get it finished fairly quickly second time round, and it has ended up allot better. I'm feeling a bit behind with the project now, but I'm glad i took the time to re-do the mesh.

I managed to get a copy of Ken Robinson's book 'out of our minds' I don't know when i will get round to reading it though... hopefully before the Creativity blogs are done!

Another downer... my monitor died today! and it didn't happen till 5.30 and its Sunday, luckily Carter is lending me one till I can go buy one tomorrow morning *grumble*... and I've run out of contact lenses.........

It's Game City in a few days, I'm trying to get up to speed before we go, but I'm thinking I might have to take my sketchbook with me...

I also spent a bit of time working on the character project, not nearly enough though. Here's one of my sketches...

(this blog is relevant to the 6 week creativity task)

Creativity, a bit of history and some studies...
(this blog only contains research, my personal opinions will come a bit later)

It was once thought that Inspiration and ideas came from a higher power. During the Romantic era it began to be seen as originating from the Human being. At this point creative genius was highly valued, i believe it is still valued today, but for some reason it is not encouraged.

This image shows the fibre tracts of the corpus callosum which is the link between the two halves of the brain. higher interaction between the two halves is thought to be evident in creative people. Some people have a thicker corpus callosum than others.


One of the first studies of Creativity was undertaken by Galton in 1869, his main focus was 'Genius'. In the 1920's the main study of psychological research was 'intelligence' but no major studies into Creativity occurred until the 1950's. Though most theories were a result of philosophical speculation than real investigation.

In the 1950's the limitations of intelligence tests was recognized. Attempts were made to measure creativity by defining creative characteristics. This led to study into personality, cognition and simulating creativity.

Research into creative personality's created a list of characteristics accurate for describing the creative person.

• Strong motivation
• Endurance
• intellectual curiosity
• deep commitment
• independence in thought and action
• strong desire for self-realization
• strong sense of self
• strong self-confidence
• openness to impressions from within and without
• attracted to complexity and obscurity
• high sensitivity
  
• high capacity for emotional involvement in their investigations

This list was summarized by Brolin in1992. There are obviously criticisms to this research. The studies were narrow, conducted mainly on productive people. The list contains contradictory characteristics. The criteria for defining what creativity is may vary.

In 2000 Dacey and Lennon comprised a list of distinct characteristics that are apparent in consistent creativity of a high standard.

• self-control
• sustained hard work
• determination
• perseverance

In 1996 Stoycheva studied exceptional students at high schools in Bulgaria. She noticed that creative pupils have 'self-perceptions, values and motivations that differ from those of other pupils, which can create problems for them in seeking peer acceptance.' She also found that 'teachers tended to devalue independence of judgement and also the involvement of emotion' which are characteristics shown by research to be key aspects of creative persons.

More recently links have been made between Creativity and certain disorders such as ADHD and Bi-polar. Consistent features of Creativity and Bi-polar disorder have become apparent through research. They are both genetic and influenced by our environment. Looking back to the list of Creative attributes, these are similar to those found in people suffering from Bi-polar. This link has been apparent for centuries, no research has to be undertaken to notice the evidence in geniuses we know have existed, and who currently exist.

An analysis of research and literature on creativity in education by Anna Craft

Creativity and Bi-polar Disorder

Relationship between mental disorders and Creativity

Almost Satisfied...

I finally have a mesh that I'm fairly happy with, its 2268 tris so far, I've still got to add hair, and more detail to the clothing, but I will delete poly's on the head when i make the hair, and maybe get rid of an ear or both depending on the hair style.

It's taken a long time for me to get the edge loops right on the face, but i think the part I'm most pleased with is the hands, they look really nice and are really low poly.

I also have to add some more edge loops to the joints!

I'm gonna have to do some drawing one of these days, but I can't keep away from the model........

Work so far...

I've got two different heads on the go at once. To the left is the one i was originally working on, with a bit more detail added, and the other is below attached to the body model. I'm not entirely convinced by either of them, so i might start again, but they are ok attempts.

The problem with the body is, I am not in a relaxed pose in the reference photo, which has distorted my shape a bit. I'm going to take more photos at some point and adjust it accordingly.

I have spent most of my time modeling this week, and so I'm going to spend the rest of the day working on my art character project.

I think my original idea wasn't quite what I wanted, so i have changed my theme to 'Time and Age'.

Back...

This is a render of the windmill I started making at the end of summer, i doubt i will get round to finishing it, I'm too into the new projects now.

My initial ideas for the new 2D project are quite in depth, I'm really not sure where I'm gonna go with it. I'm going to have a think about it tonight, and hopefully do some sketches...

I started work on my head for the 3D self portrait today. I've almost finished a basic low-poly version at 388 triangles so far...

I strongly recommend taking a look at the Ben Mathis tutorials for this one, the 'blocking-out' is a great method to start with, and there is two other tutorials to help with building up the face.