Assignment 4: Urban Fantasy

The starting of this assignment was the hardest. Because I had several very different ideas of what could be an urban fantasy.

First, I thought of doing something along the lines of "Mechanization of Nature". I wanted to show that even the sprouting of road side plants could be mechanized, could it be the urban life's fantasy that they aim to achieve? For that idea, I experimented with a few photographs.






The first flower was taken at the Changi Airport and the second picture was a crack on the ledge near my house. I combined them with Photoshop to create an illusional surreal picture of a mechanised flower breaking through a stone wall. It conveys the idea of how mechanised the world is turning into and perhaps in the future, even a simple wild flower blooming could be mechanised.




My second idea was to recreate a phenomenal scene that has occurred in the past, but this time, using ONLY urban structures. I went to take pictures of various inanimate objects at the Changi Airport and around my housing estate.









I extracted the 'railings' and flipped it to create a converging effect. Then I filled up the center to give it a narrowing perspective. Then, I blurred and smudged the tips of the railing to give the opening waves a softer feeling.

Then, I added a road. Because the original road is not as long, I extended and stretched it and then later transforming it to form a road going into the distance. After which, I added a red car to represent Moses. I chose red because it captures the viewer's attention and stands out, like how Moses, in the scene of the separating the Red Seas, is the main subject of the picture.

Then, I edited the car license plate, for 2 reasons. Firstly to not to let the viewers know which car I took a picture of ( it is afterall ethical to protect the rights of the subject ) and to let the viewers have a better idea of what I was trying to recreate with this twisted arrangement of urban structures. Thus, I added the text 'M05E5', a new license plate number for the car.

After which, I added motion blur to the car and added the background, which was the cloudy sky to emphasize on the idea of 'phenomenon'. I colorized the sky to purple to give it the last mystic touch and my first draft of urban fantasy was born!



I planned to bring both these pictures to class to get their opinions and only develop one for my final work.