This is a personal project for which I took watercolor illustration to a whole new level and created stereoscopic animations using traditionally painted imagery. Layers and layers of watercolor, compositions that were designed digitally and de-constructed to be painted on paper only to come back to the digital world through a scanner and get re-assembled as layered animation files.
A little bit about the physics behind this: stereoscopy is a technique for creating the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. Stereogram is an image that employs such a concept, and my project title is a playful cross between a Spanish world for a bouquet (of endless objects and limbs, in my case) and '-os' ending that is typical to the worlds of plural female form in Lithuanian language.
A little bit about the physics behind this: stereoscopy is a technique for creating the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. Stereogram is an image that employs such a concept, and my project title is a playful cross between a Spanish world for a bouquet (of endless objects and limbs, in my case) and '-os' ending that is typical to the worlds of plural female form in Lithuanian language.
Makes your eyes go a little dizzy yet?
Let me show you a couple of process shots.
It was important for me to paint all of the layers traditionally as my goal wasn't just to build stereograms but to build them out of watercolor paintings and therefore take something that's usually 2D and very still, and bring it to life through simple animation.
Let me show you a couple of process shots.
It was important for me to paint all of the layers traditionally as my goal wasn't just to build stereograms but to build them out of watercolor paintings and therefore take something that's usually 2D and very still, and bring it to life through simple animation.
The backgrounds got illustrated separately in order to fit each foreground stylistically.
Say hello to three of my Stereogramos - the fun, chaotic and glitchy portraits forever stuck in a time loop.
Here's the crown jewel - the master sheet where all of the watercolor assets I created for this project are combined. Only after putting it together I finally realised that, indeed, a shit load of work had been done.
Oh yes, after wrapping up my main portraits of three stereogram ladies I felt like something was still missing. So I decided to stick to this project a little more to produce this final scene where all of the characters were combined.
The background was painted separately once again, and after all of the scanning and rendering I combined the assets into one composition, creating this bizarre little loop where stereoscopic elements were blending with simple linear animation and static scenery objects, too.
I liked it because it made my brain question the physics of the entire scene. :)
I liked it because it made my brain question the physics of the entire scene. :)
For those of you who enjoy process videos, here's a short one with some commentary:
After the digital housekeeping was done I was left with my material - lots and lots of watercolor assets. And as I hate seeing anything go to waste I decided to honour the efforts of my past self, and give these dismembered illustrations a new life - as traditionally recreated collages.
That required a lot of careful cutting and painting the thin paper edges with watercolor to make the shapes seem smooth and complete.
I found nice and simple pastel-coloured wood frames for my main pieces.
I deliberately left the parts of the collage loosely glued to the surface as I wanted to preserve that doll-like 3D feel that especially gets emphasised when all the shadows are cast in the sunshine (the photo below is a good example of that).
And that is all! Thanks to all of you who scrolled this far down, and I hope you enjoyed this journey of creating the world's first layered watercolor stereograms. You can purchase a print or an original collage through my shop.
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Also, trying out something different this time so these illustrations have joined cyber art space to live as crypto art. For those of you interested in that stuff here's the link to the NFTs.
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Also, trying out something different this time so these illustrations have joined cyber art space to live as crypto art. For those of you interested in that stuff here's the link to the NFTs.
