Chloe Lynch

The Water Dweller 

My project explores the concept of water and a cold-blooded, female character, who is amphibious, existing both on land and under water. I have combined my Special Effects and Photography skills in the creation of my character aiming to bring my sculpture work to life through a digital composite series of images. The sculpture and texture board aim to portray the physical appearance and skin surface of my creature. The photographs place the character into a real-life habitat and are composited together from two separate images. 

The SFX work has been inspired by the movie Shape of Water (2017), and the artist Mark Hill, who created the visual effects in the film. I have researched the photographic work of Annie Leibovitz who created the Disney series of posters, which brought characters from fairytales to life using a variety of digital compositions.  I have explored how I feel a water-dwelling character would both look and exist in their habitat aiming the show the viewer how I envisage my creature to live. 

The sculpture has been created using NSP clay which allows for easier smoothing; the teeth and eyes have been made using Milliput which hardens and keeps shapes accurate after sculpting. The photographs have been taken using a Digital SLR camera and composited together in Photoshop. The model used was transformed and given the appearance of the creature using specialist scar wax and face paints to give her the right look.