Some two month ago, Dannie from makersplace invited me to create a signature piece for their new "drop" program. I see that as a big privilege and an exceptional token of appreciation and confidence in me. Therefore I wanted to create something really special.
Life in Europe was still very different from now at the time. Strangely enough, the artworks I chose to be the base of my piece, were all somewhat "apocalyptic". Little did I know, how quickly covid-19 was going to threaten mankind all over the world.
I wanted my signature piece to be animated, but it quickly turned out, that a gif would not work. It would have been way to big in file size at a decent resolution. Video was the best choice and so I decided to create my first crypto art video about a figure from the Book of Revelation: Babylon the Great
In a previous post, I already talked about the original glass painting I used here now.
It was a project for an exhibition where the artists were supposed to paint something from the "Apocalypse of John". For those who know me, it won't come as a big surprise, that I was looking for a way to get some high heels into the painting and thus my theme was clear pretty quick. Plus I liked the idea of painting that monster with all the heads and horns she was sitting on...
I wanted the video to actually resemble a book with some kind of story to it. For the "cover", I used the pattern of a painting I made for my very first solo show, back in 1987. Graphite pencil on reverse side of glass and 24 carat gold leaf. I will never forget, how I worked on it every day for 6 weeks.
Mirrored vertical and digitally adjusted:
For the start of the video I placed a matching monochrome version of the main figure and the title on top of it.
Before I could even begin to put it all together for the video, I had to prepare the individual parts. A lot of work went into masking and getting my Babylon "cut out" of the original painting.
For my story, I wanted to illustrate some thoughts from my original painting (text quotes from my post about it) .
I still tried to add all the elements described in the book, but I also added my own thoughts. Babylon's hair is braided into two horns, illustrating her connection with the devil. Just like her inside is fire, as one can see in her eyes and mouth.
In Tarot the card "XV - the Devil" is related to the Hebrew letter Ayin and I used it as the symbol for the devil behind the figure. If you look closely though, you will also see a cross painted over it, showing the triumph of the "lamb" over the evil forces
Once Babylon riding the "animal" appears on screen, the part with the devil starts to develop in the back ground. Towards the end, a binary text is running from his mouth:
"riding the ultimate beast, the mushroom cloud of a nuclear blast, here comes Babylon, the great whore from the book of revelations"
01110010011010010110010001101001011011100110011100100000011101000110100001100101001000000111010101101100011101000110100101101101011000010111010001100101001000000110001001100101011000010111001101110100001011000010000001110100011010000110010100100000011011010111010101110011011010000111001001101111011011110110110100100000011000110110110001101111011101010110010000100000011011110110011000100000011000010010000001101110011101010110001101101100011001010110000101110010001000000110001001101100011000010111001101110100001011000010000001101000011001010111001001100101001000000110001101101111011011010110010101110011001000000100001001100001011000100111100101101100011011110110111000101100001000000111010001101000011001010010000001100111011100100110010101100001011101000010000001110111011010000110111101110010011001010010000001100110011100100110111101101101001000000111010001101000011001010010000001100010011011110110111101101011001000000110111101100110001000000111001001100101011101100110010101101100011000010111010001101001011011110110111001110011
Eventually, following the christian iconography, the horizontal and vertical bars of a cross, literally cross out the devil, symbolizing the triumph of the lamb and the faith in Christ.
"Book of Revelation" is my most elaborate digital work so far.
After I had used Adobe Animate for most of my animated pieces, I put this video together almost entirely in Adobe After Effects. Only the audio was added in Premiere. As always with using a new application, lots to learn first... A big thank you, to all those providing the necessary tutorials ;-)
To give Babylon riding the monster a silhouette animation like movement, I split it into 3 parts and gave each one its own "track".
Most of the elements were done in separate sub compositions and then put together
So far, all my animated pieces were gif loops. I wanted the video also playable as a loop and so I ended it in a way, that it could seamlessly start over.
A big advantage of making a video file instead of a gif is file size. I could make a piece with much higher resolution (2018x2732) at 25fps and a length of 47 seconds at under 65mb.
Plus, one can add audio!
The extraordinary @vachemorte had given me permission to use his music in the past and so I asked him, if he would let me use his "Runway" for my new piece. He agreed, without even seeing the video first!
Listen to his music on Spotify
Fog horn sound purchased at www.freesoundeffects.com
My artwork "Book of Revelation" actually refers to " Revelation 17 from the Apocalypse of John, which is part of the Christian Bible. I see it as part of the cultural heritage of mankind. Although I find it interesting, that one could see a connection to current events, I am not trying to send out a religious message. Any parallel is without a conscious intention.
So why did I choose to create this?
I don't know. Like all my ideas, it just came to me.
Enjoy the video at https://makersplace.com/reinhardschmid/book-of-revelation-1-of-1-23385/
I enjoy reading your comments!
❤
If you like my work, of course I appreciate your upvotes and resteems
See more of my work on BeScouted
My tokenized collectible art at
MakersPlace and Superrare
Cross posted to my cent account
Wow both the original art and the final painting are amazing! So happy to see you still posting :) I hope you've been doing well during this whole crazy quarantine thing!
Just an FYI, when you post to communities on your personal blog it goes in the all posts tab, you need to click the three little dots and click add to blog for it to appear on the main page
Thank you, glad you like it. Hope you both approve, how I connected @vachemorte's music.
Things are still manageable here in Germany, particularly in our quiet little corner of the country. But of course, on top of the health concerns, we don't know, how it will go on with our gallery and my wife's café...
Thanks for the info. I'll try that :-)
Well done really nice piece!!! Stay safe healthy and don't buy the lies. Much love
It came to life with your music, many thanks for that again. Trying to stay on the right side and am looking forward to better times. All the best for you!
amazing work, and love the whole process, good stuff!
Thanks a lot. I like to give a bit of a background info, as I think it gives a better understanding of the piece.
Really great piece, really great video/makerplace thing. Happy to return here and see that you are still going strong.
Thank you. Not nearly posting as much as I used to. Looking at this as a blog site to give some background info mostly on my crypto art. Hope you are well!
I haven't been active for while either. The old Steem was terrible, but right now a lot of the old quarrelling is gone and I also have time. @shortcut, who have translated a lot of my comic, also have made crypto unika work on https://async.art . My project was really to try and see if industrial art could be given away for free and that people could support you as mini-Maecenases, but I have to give in I guess. Art and desire is closely related, and people simply love to own things. I haven't gone into the crypto-unika scene yet, but as I plan to start selling things anyway to succumb to this art desire I might try to do like you and @shortcut. Until then I just post here as I used to. A tax case that has been going on for two years now (due to bewilderment and bureaucratic cowardice has made me rather indifferent to the monetary aspect of this place, but I have still made many interesting connections here, you not least, and I like that about Hive/Steem.
I made a Kickstarter for my comic a month ago and made a film also! You can see it here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/katharsisdrill/phill-from-gchq
The endless quarrelling is part of what got me tired of posting, so lets see, how things will unfold here.
Haha.. yes, people like to own things I guess. But its weird in some things and particularly with digital assets it seems they like to own, but obtain for free. Even if you don't really own a file you just downloaded, but maybe its the "you have"... so you own?
Was heading over to your kickstarter to show a little support, but from all I can see, its closed.
I've been trying to get into tokenized art for a while now. I think I'm a bit too old school sometimes and traditional is still where I make my living. Shortcut is quite successful in that space!
If you want to get into makersplace, you can message me on twitter or discord and I'll send you an invite code.
Wow this is so intense! Congrats on learning new skills for the video as well. Such an interesting way to breathe new life into old art. @tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 21/28)
Thank you so very much. You liking it means a lot to me! I'm always trying to learn and improve, so getting some video editing skills was just a question of time...
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I'm here again after a long break. and I am very lucky to see your excellent works again. You are an extraordinary artist in my eyes. congratulations..
Thank you so much for your kind words. Looks like many of us are coming back after a break. Often with an adjusted approach. Hope you are well!
Manually curated by @minnowvotes
Thank you :-)
Work looks magnificent!
Thank you, glad you like it :-)
very strange
Good or bad strange?
Very Good
Cool, thanks :-)
That is amazing work! Thank you so much for sharing it!
Tank you for your interest in it :-)
I knew who she was the moment I saw her ... all of the project is amazing!
Cool! Thank you for liking and your kind words :-)
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