Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting: Digital Painting and Expanded Animation

Dan Liu

Alter Egos and Hybrid Bodies

A fractal animation based on the watercolour painting

“I also enjoy doing portraiture paintings using traditional analogue media. Still, when it comes to a self-portrait, I don't want to end my artwork to be just a flat and fixed illustration of my exterior appearance. I instead try to explore for more profound meanings of being one of the countless numbers of nature's living organisms, and try to render a new visual perspective with a storytelling of our modern scientific understanding.Therefore, I’m turning to fractal images, which I am always intrigued by the ideas of mathematical formulas generated by self-similar and infinitely complex visual wonders. The two-dimensional Mandelbrot set was already impressive, but the more recent three-dimensional fractal animations generated by the latest computational powers are just awe-inspiring. From nature, I always see fractals and feel I’m also a fractal structure. As a result, this “Alter Egos and Hybrid Bodies” is a visual experimentation with two acts. Act One is a watercolour painting of spontaneous facial elements that I have combined faithfully with my automatic sensation. Act Two is a Computer-generated fractal animation with repeated self-similar segments sourced from this watercolour painting.”