Baltic Culture; Introduction

this post is mapping characteristics of Baltic culture, including religion and art as well as other considerable and exclusive aspects.

 "The same way that Scandinavians are proud of being descended from the Vikings, the Irish – from the Celts and Germans – from the Germanic peoples, Lithuanians, Latvians and the Old Prussians can be proud of their ancestors – the Balts – and the reflections of their world-views in contemporary culture"  (A. Butrimas; "The Baltic Art" project)

The Balts or Baltic peoples (People who live by the Baltic Sea), defined as speakers of one of the Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family. For thousands of lakes and swamps in this area contributed to the Balts' geographical isolation,  the Baltic languages retain a number of conservative or archaic features.

Over time, the huge area of Baltic habitation shrank, due to assimilation by other groups, and invasions. So the Old Prussians, Yotvingians, Scalvians, Nadruvians, Galindians and Curonians are now extinct and Among the modern Baltic peoples are Lithuanians and  Latvians.

In ancient written sources Baltic countries were described as swampy, mysterious lands, dotted with wooden castles, ever flaming holy fire, strange traditions.

The Old Baltic Religion

Pre-Christian religions and cults.

Its most characteristic feature –cosmicality, exclusion of human nature. The god for Baltic people was evident in all the phenomena of space and nature, on which humans depended, such as , vegetation, wildlife and life force. In Baltic see the world separated in two poles: Men's - Sky and its effects (light, fire, sound), together with the heavenly bodies (sun, moon, stars) and a female - the Earth, its plants, forests, fields, hills, rocks, water. Interaction between these poles stimulated life. This view gave the base for major Baltic religious ritual forms and mythology.

 In the old Baltic religion characters' features, their importance and the degree of individualisation is given the order of 7 mythological levels:

The 1st level has ten most important gods:

Ukapirmas and Thunder,

Patrimpas (god of rivers)

Patrimpas and Autrimpas (sea gods)

Pickles / Patrimpas (underworld god)

Pergubris (spring, vegetation god)

Puskaitis (ground elder personification)

Aušautas (survival, the god of life)

Pilvytis (asset-bearer).

Level-III includes creatures performing abstract functions such as happiness, fate, death - or characters that are known primarily from folklore, these would be Sun , Moon, Venus, Celestial blacksmith, Stars and others and so on.

Level V  characters from tales and spirits – forest, water , fields’ spirits and so on. Such examples would be Lauksargis (protector of home), Gabija (personified fire), 

Level VI often un-anthropomorphasized (not resembling a human) spirits. These would be  pixies, witches, giants, mythological bear, wolf, snake images and others.

Level VII - covers mythological hypostasis (underlying essential foundation) of a man . This level encompasses priests (Vaidilas), various symbols and ritual objects, sacred places and temples.

However, there seems to be no understanding of nothingness pass ones death. They believed that when man died, his soul passes into another body in a form of smell, steam, bird, butterfly, calf, and keeps the individual characteristics of the deceased. Or go to a high mountain and live the same life, or become a tree.


7 core principles of Baltic religion :

1.The world is generally alive. Life is understood in its wider form: trees and sun, water, rocks, are seen to be as a live as a man himself.


2.Principle of Harmony (darna). Balts see harmony (darna) prone to extinction , therefore it is vital to continuously reach for harmony.For this  traditional songs play a vital part as mantras for reaching harmony.

An example of such songs is Kulgrinda's Uztekeja Saulala Raudona ( Red sun has risen)







3.Respect to the order of Gods. As described before, there is a system of gods, some to be more important than other, but all of them to be greatly respected. Man can choose deity's, which a closer to his needs and hart.


4.The World is eternal . According to Baltic mythology, the world is constantly recreated by two opposing gods of light and darkness who create and change the proportion of Darna (harmony)


5.The Golden rule of Darna (harmony). The rule is inviting one to behave and act in a way one himself wish to be treated like from others. The rule is aiming to create space for unselfish love, compassion, refusal of revenge and at the end, darna (harmony).


6.Respect for Ancestors. Lots of rituals is dedicated in the name of remembering and thanking the ancestors.


7.Nature is Sacred.
Nowadays Romuva is the Lithuanian Expression of Baltic Faith.

Baltic Art:

To get acquainted with Baltic Art, here is material from  relevant books, websites and museums  presented  :

IV-VII was the centuries of emerging  Baltic applied art: decorative horn mouth, openwork belt switchboard or other details, horse bridles, pins and quotes.

Metal plastics is rich with zoomorphic decorations. Galloping moose, flying or sitting birds, twisting snakes, horses, and sometimes decorated with images of fantasy animals.

Complex ornamental compositions of Animal and human images in Baltic Metal plastics were probably created for magical ritual use.

Daily peasants, both men and women's footwear was bass Wysz 's pint. It is also popular with the birch, alder or similar solid, but lightweight wood-carved clogs. Leather shoes (čeverykos) was considered as a holiday footwear.


Amber

Probably the most distinct feature is the appreciation of 'Sun Stone' - Amber. In 98 AD Tacitus in 'Germania' describes  Baltic tribes living near the Baltic Sea as amber gatherers.Baltic people saw Amber as a magical stone which was connected with their rituals.

When Burnt, Amber is spreading a pleasant fragrance and when taken to hands is always warm. They have created legends around Amber . He was believed to have magical healing powers and to be a protector from evil. It was widely shaped into ornaments, amulets, ritual articles, related to the solar cult.

Traditional Clothing of 19th century

(selection of Lithuanian tribes)

The old Baltic culture has polytheistic religion with a  rich system of gods and deities, where people are invited to show great respect to them and choose gods closer to their needs. Their belief is reflected in their art works with zoomorphic and anthropomorphic ornamenting, ritual-dedicated tools and so on. Amber is particularly appreciated and taking a special place  for  it's spiritual, artistic and economical value . Also, mantra-like songs, such as 'Leliumoj'  are valued  as meditation practices.

Next Posts will be looking closer to Baltic Pixie and analyse some sources to understand the context of this character.

Sources:

The Baltic Art (EN)

Romuva - an Introduction to Baltic Faith (EN)

Amber Park Museum , Palanga (EN)

The History Museum of Lithuania Minor (EN)

Aistians and Germans (LT)

Zoomorphic Iron Age Art (LT)

Spritual Baltic Culture ( LT)

Major Project Idea and Aims

For major Project I’m focusing on a character. The aim is to go through design, modelling, rigging and animating pipeline for an animal-human hybrid. I chose Baltic Pixie for my character.


Pixies are intriguing and ambiguous characters and Baltic Pixie is also referring to my own cultural origins of Baltic nation, which are Lithuanians and Latvians. Following posts will be exploring both Baltic culture and Baltic pixie in greater detail.

After roughly 15 weeks I’m aiming to have an animated short with a Baltic pixie, explaining who she and her kind actually is. A minimal environment of only referred objects will be accompanying pixie’s performance.

So to start with, I took the advantage of reading week and flew to Lithuania for a better research opportunity of the project’s context.

I have talked to country’s best ethnographer Libertas Klimka and will discuss it in later posts.

I’ve visited Palanga Amber Museum, The History Museum of Lithuania Minor,  Klaipeda Art Exhibition hall

I have also spoken to few Balts history students and acquired the necessary books and other resources. All of the material was invaluable source of inspiration and I can barely wait for following weeks to come.

The Wolves Within Completed Animated Short

The Wolves Within Production Video

Final touches to our project. From Concept to completed shots, this video covers steps our group was taking to develop The Wolves Within animation

Online Professional Presence and Promotional port-folio

 Over the time of self initiated project I was developing an online professional presence, promotional port-folio and Other things like updating showreel and idents, cards etc.

To start from, this project gave a lot of new material to update the showreel with:



For online presence I have revisited every single site I was already registered and created a personal template. Flavicons, automated signatures with links to port-folio, consistent background sheet or a banner was added .

I was already  signed up with such sites like  Youtube, Deviantart, Vimeo and Blogger and created new professional accounts on  Twitter and  CGSociety,

 

I have chosen to assemble a blog post showcasing my promotional port-folio for its capacity to be updated easily  . Promotional Port-folio required some thought when putting some work together , which I believe to be my best. It is showcasing my 2d designs, some study sketches, Best 3D renders, Animated shorts, Production videos, Work placement and commission work together with employers' references.

Promotional Portf-folio

Other created  materials would be the animated signature and business card:

Cover Designs

Book Covers:

DVD Cover :

CD Print design:

CAPC stands for Commercial Application of Photography for Creatives

It is a course run by Tonic at UCA and is an opportunity to have 15 lectures over 3 months. It is teaching the basics of photography for commercial application: product promotion, glamour portraits, fashion shoot .
More importantly, it is teaching  camera settings, use of lighting equipment, shooting indoors and outdoors etc.
One of this program's requirements is to keep notes and research for later evidence, which is nothing new for the CG course student. Therefore I'll be using this blog for storing the notes on lectures and progress. 

I'm  very much looking forward to these couple of hours a week, for the program is suiting my major project's brief: animated presentation of human character , which will benefit from getting some knowledge of  body presentation , studio lighting setups and so on.

Lecture 1/15: Introduction to Pre-history and Early Years of Photography:
 Interesting history of man's fascination watching image of reality instead of the reality itself and the attempt to create such system to capture the present.

One of the more interesting points was camera obscura - a light phenomenon to recreate the full image of the world if it is passing through a tiny hole. For example if all the windows were to be covered and only one small dot allows the light through, you would get the full view of outside two times bigger and upside down:

Or the daguerreotype photography, an early method for taking pictures at 1838. They would use a silver plate, which is reflecting as a mirror and  with special chemicals on, to expose to light and have someone sit in front of it for good 18 minutes for the image to 'bake in' and stay there. Every time the silver plate is exposed to light, it is at the same time reflecting and exposing the photographed image. The quality if it is somewhat very special, and the person feels almost alive in the picture.

More of such images can be seen at museum of the moving image

Other interesting topic was cameras.

Impressive SLR  camera Zenit, being an old pre-second world war creation still better than most of the digital cameras we have today.

And introduction to Haselblad camera phenomena. Swedish Haselblad cameras being so phenomenally good, that they are the only ones taken for NASA's flight to the Moon. Very surprisingly UCA too, has such cameras

Classes in the future should have some more hands-on experience.

Character Lighting Progress 1

Placing characters for each shot required setting up unique lighting systems disregarding already existing lighting for the environment. . Each character is modeled by ‘Rembrandt short’, illumination, reflective and rim lights. Other effects, such as overall glow for eyes or entire body was also carefully controlled. Aiming for beautiful results even f the scenes yet had no dynamics or other postproduction effects is assuring for impactful frames at the end. 

 

December's Sketchbook

Pretty thin, I can say, but it’s  cause I’m knee deep in 3d production, which is nowhere close to 2d stuff.

So this month had some life drawing of middle aged female and an older man.  Other things include random doodling and some  thoughts on my next character project – Baltic pixie. 

 

WW Video Compilation and Soundtrack Update

This video shows the update of both, the soundtrack done by Dave Keefe and of animated scenes I have worked on lately. Hopefully we’ll be able to discuss if all of them are working and what should be changed, when we meet on Monday.

The Showcase

*The Wolves Within*

Amerindian Wolves - Virtue and Vice

A Character Presentation

The Makinf of Character Design for the Wolves Within

*Ivan The Bird*


Animated Short

Ivan The Bird Character Presentation

Production Video

Colour Keys for Ivan The Bird

Dream Island; Concept Art for Ivan The Bird

The Workshop: Concept for Ivan the Bird animation

  

Ivan for Ivan the Bird 

Ivan explores the outside world; Render Still from Ivan the Bird

Ivan is about to wake up; Render Still from Ivan the Bird

Ivan Watches The Dream Island; Render Still from Ivan the Bird

The Making of Animated Short IVAN the BIRD

Evil Wolf's 3D Concept

the same routine follows again: I bring  3d render of evil wolf and a maquet environment to photoshop and play with things there to make some nice visual representation. Hopefully the "infinite" space is clearly drawn where  his "steam" goes.

 The Progress :

 I have developed the environment  in relatively good detail, but then had to take it back to bring up some theatrical lighting. Possibly these concepts can serve for our animation lighting ideas.

And that would be it from my side :] Time for some proper Christmas holidays :] Family finaly comes at my totaly empty student halls :D
Wish you merry Christmas! :]