"Curiosity (from Latin curiosus "careful, diligent, curious," akin to cura "care") is an emotion related to natural inquisitive behavior such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in human and many animal species" This is all well and good, I wanted to convey the sense of journey out of one's comfort zone because of curiosity - perhaps even hint at a dash of jealousy as well. But the ultimate curiosity is if something inhuman wants to become human. An impossible thought, maybe, but the quest of finding out what (literately) drives the said inhuman object is one a theoretical thinker would find as appetising as his supper. Because I ate his supper. The true irony, however - is if they felt the curiosity to find out what a human life would be like, they have already felt a human emotion themselves. They've completed the journey without beginning it. I wanted to try and convey how materialism plays a part in the image and I may work on this idea for my final:
My other idea was to show curiosity from both parties. When something new shows up in life, the over-whelming urge to know everything about it is unbearable. The distance between the subjects being the gap between their values and ways of life. Trying to convey this came across as a bit too hazy in my sketch, but if I choose it as the final then I'll make it more clear, but still remaining it's subtlety. (we can hope)
EDIT: It's sideyways. I honestly don't know how to fix this.
I also began looking towards the human side of curiosity, what man can achieve just by wanting to find out more. That's the idea, "more.". Immediately I began to look towards space travel and science as these sketches show:
I always thought of the space missions as man's great accomplishment to venture in to the unknown. Instead of a war, we would have a Space Race - like children running to get their hands on the new toy first. Countries would heckle and shout, but never wage war over such a thing - as in the end, we do all benefit. "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.". In my opinion, the perfect human curiosity.
To me, the space shuttle was the emblem for the curiosity of man. It's a timeless design, and I wanted to play with it's simplistic lines and curvature.
I liked the idea of an observatory as it allows man to look beyond, not touch or take samples - but only to observe. I love this idea of detachment from the main subject (subject being the stars)
But the thing about the human curiosity angle is that I assume that a lot of people will already be doing something related to this - although it was a good idea to explore to gather more ideas, I wanted to stick to something different
Having decided to go with the non-human curiosity, I started developing ideas for little robots I could use for the final. I decided to draw them in a cute style, so the viewer may form a sympathetic relationship with the robot. I also purposely concentrated on humanoid robots for this reason, as well to reflect on the curiosity of human behaviour.
(To image above) After I drew a pixel art version of one of the robot characters I was working on, I got an image of a human filled scene - as my idea is for the robot to try and live in a scene with humans, but by being there he will corrupt it. First of all, to integrate him in to the scene I used the polygon lasso tool to cut out the part of his arm covering up the girl with the shoulder bag - to give the impression that he is in the scene.
I always thought of the space missions as man's great accomplishment to venture in to the unknown. Instead of a war, we would have a Space Race - like children running to get their hands on the new toy first. Countries would heckle and shout, but never wage war over such a thing - as in the end, we do all benefit. "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.". In my opinion, the perfect human curiosity.
But the thing about the human curiosity angle is that I assume that a lot of people will already be doing something related to this - although it was a good idea to explore to gather more ideas, I wanted to stick to something different
These are some different ideas, working on proportions and different styles (steam punk, new age sci fi etc) to see what works with what shape ideas. I found that a simple character design would work best with my idea of doing the robot as pixel art. I chose to work with pixel art as it further solidifies the notion that the character of the robot is man made, or made by a machine, made by a machine. Uniqueness is something not given to these robots.
As the main theme of this picture is the robot corrupting the aspect of human life that he so wishes, I thought how I could accomplish that. I decided if I give a visual aid to something we don't usually give a visual aid to - but the robot sees it like this as he's ill experienced to such things. (Sensing things objectively rather than subjectively) So I decided to pixelize a musical note coming from the club, getting more distorted the closer they get to our robotic friend.
I used the pixelate mosiac on the musical notes to achieve the corrupt feel.
He's better off being a machine, but then again, aren't we all.
