Printed Pictures: Attempting the Intangible

I feel that I am close to making a breakthrough as I try to make my work more intangible and less rigid. I just need to keep steering my work away from what I feel to be 'safe'.

I began by using Quink, a tool I've only briefly used before. Along side that I also used a dip pen, a tool I've never used before. Although the results below aren't as abstract as I intended (and are bordering more on Steadman than Gormley), I'm happy that I've finally begun to pull away from my comfort zone. Quink creates some beautiful textures that when flicked with a brush pen can help visually reflect the shattering effect of long term drug exposure.

Printed Pictures: Anthony Gormley Ink Drawings

To give myself a better idea of how to convey intangibility I've been looking at Anthony Gormley's ink drawings. His work can seem quite surreal but for the theme of drug use I feel it could work quite well. How can I incorporate this into my own work?



I'm feeling quite stressed out at the moment, I feel that perhaps three outcomes is overstretching myself. I believe I've made an error by attempting three when I should instead be focusing my energy on creating one high quality piece of work.

Printed Pictures: Progress Surgery

Today I had a progress surgery where I discussed some of the personal issues that are affecting my work, and also problems that I am encountering with the current module. We spoke about the main themes that I'm tackling and how best to resolve them.

One possibility is that I'm thinking too literally about my work and perhaps could consider the intangible more. By creating work that allows the audience to think about it and piece it together themselves isn't a bad thing. The audience don't always need to be spoon fed.

However planning on doing something and actually doing it are two separate things. I planned on generating a few intangible ideas but found myself again relying on obvious imagery to visually feed the audience as seen below with my drugs and copulation themes:





I need to be more relaxed and less uptight in my process. I can always come back to a more, less say, rigid process later, but for now I want to work more freely.

Propercorn: Proposal

Problems I aim to resolve are:
Expand the brand's audience
Create a campaign involving redesigned packaging and PoS items
Invoke a sense of social acceptance through the brand

In order to solve these problems I will:
Create a new Propercorn bag for their popcorn
Create a new packaging design for their boxes
Create an array of PoS designs

I will be aiming to communicate:
That the social acceptance comes with eating Propercorn
That Propercorn is the perfect snack for the professional on the go
That Propercorn is modern, cutting edge food brand

My audience will be:
Students
Young professionals
Young parents (below 35)

Printed Pictures: Character Design Development

Moving on from the character designs I made recently, I've developed a female character further, playing around with the texture using halftone and varying colours within Photoshop.

I've done this for two reasons; firstly, I wanted to incorporate halftone into my work following on from seeing Roman's work. Secondly, I wanted to get an idea of how my screen prints will look. Now this could be seen as a bit forward thinking thinking considering that I haven't much solid developmental work yet, but with the end result being Screen Printing, it's important I keep this in mind and try to understand any potential issues or limitations that might arise beforehand.

Printed Pictures: Theme Development

I have decided on three themes that I plan to focus on; Copulation, Drugs and Society. Specifically I've concentrated on the themes of copulation and drugs today.

For the theme of copulation I began by designing several characters. My idea was for the pages to show each character singularly before embracing (which would then lead to coitus). I found I had to work a bit more on the male character's design before I was happy with it.

After this I explored ways of presenting Soma (a relaxant drug within the book), firstly by drawing out small scamp like ideas. I felt this wasn't very economical with my time, Adam later agreed with this belief and pointed out that I could have made this in Photoshop in much less time. These ideas were then developed into a larger scale before being experimented with digitally.

I need to produce ideas at a quicker rate and spend more time developing them in the short amount of time that I have.

Moving Pictures: Stock Images for Animation

Here is a selection of stock images I found on the internet I plan to use these to make my animation, however I may change some dependant on issues such as size and spacing etc.

Hopefully these images, when brought together, will help convey the inequality within places such as Hollywood that Huxley was aware of.

Moving Pictures: The Simpsons

With my 48-60 frame piece complete and my understanding of processes growing, I've began to give more thought to my final animation. 

I plan for my advertisement to run similar to this scene from the popular television series 'The Simpsons', however it will be of a more serious nature than this example. I like the idea of one continuous shot moving down from the heights of Hollywood to the slums below, thus highlighting the inequality prevalent at the time (and still is). If I make one huge collage image in Photoshop rather than Dragon Frame and use After Effects to move it, this will be both time efficient and effective.

Moving Picture: Ford Car (After Effects)

Hazaah! After getting rather fed up with After Effects, I solved the problem file transfer when I remembered some notes I'd made in the After Effects workshop.

I immediately began by playing around by adding a background. I noticed that the aged effect brought about by the cheap paper had been retained! This made me happy.



I then realised I needed to shorten the length of the footage as the video continues despite nothing happening.



After this I felt like I was getting the hang of After Effects again so returned to Photoshop to make some alterations to the background. I added a sepia tone to further enforce the aged appearance.



I felt that maybe having the transparent outline alone wasn't right so added shading via a fresh layer that would move in conjunction to the outlines. However, this looked terrible and remembering what Fred said in my tutorial decided that the transparent outline wasn't such a bad thing. It made the piece seem more intangible. So the shading was removed.

Printed Pictures: Silk Screen Prints

I've been looking at screen prints recently to get a better idea of what can be achieved with this process. I'm excited to get on and print something, however I'm quite aware my skills in screen printing are going to be a broad step back from the images seen below. It's interesting to see the wide range of outcomes concerning screen printing and I feel quite lost in what I'm seeing. I have no strong ideas of where I want to go with my work at the moment which is worrisome. I need to spend some time thinking about my themes.

Printed Pictures: Roman Muradov

I saw this piece by Roman Muradov today. I thought it was an interesting use of halftone which may come in useful when it comes to my screen printing. Specifically I like how he has included halftone over coloured washes as it adds aesthetic quality similar to screen printing. This technique is something worth exploring as I develop my work for this brief.

Printed Pictures: Poster Research

Keeping in mind that my idea for SB2 Moving Pictures is to create an animation with an air of classical film to it, my natural response it to create a concertina book with a similar tone. To do this I have looked at posters and pamphlets from the same time frame for ideas.

Whilst these posters have given me some ideas, I'm not sure yet what to take forward from these pieces.

Printed Pictures: Concertina

After giving it some thought I've decided to produced four concertina books (consisting of four pages with an additional front and back) rather than one larger concertina. This will allow me to focus on a specific theme within each book rather than losing focus by havin them all together.

Moving Pictures: Ford Car

Yesterday after my tutorial I took a step back and thought about what I want to produce, how I can make it happen and what I will need to do in order to complete this brief. 

Firstly I felt like I needed some inspiration, and found it from the animated television series 'The Legend of Korra'. Each episode begins with a 'previously' segment which is animated to create the allusion of 1940's film footage. I like this effect and would like to incorporate it into my work.

After this I decided to make a 48-60 frame animation focusing on one of the early Ford cars:

I'm having trouble transferring these frames from Photoshop to After Effects. I need to discuss this issue with Eleanor or Mike soon as it is holding my work progress up.

Another point to make - I purposefully used cheap rough paper so the quality looks rough and somewhat similar to old film footage. I'm hoping this will transfer well when I introduce a background to the footage at some point.

Progress Tutorial: Illustration 1

During my first tutorial for OUIL504 I came to the realisation that I need to be more concise with my blogging of this module. I'm not hitting upon the points that I should be.

Concerning Studio Brief 2:
I should look back at the work I have produced so far with Studio Brief 1 as inspiration. My collage work there is possibly my strongest. How can I bring that forward into this brief? Furthermore, how can I convey the themes of technology, industrialisation and capitalism both tangibly and intangibly to an effect that works well?

Concerning Studio Brief 3:
Again I need to look back at Studio Brief 1 for inspiration. My screen prints don't have to be just drawn imagery. I need to start laying down definite proposal ideas to push my work forward. For example: I've decided to produce a concertina, but is this going to be a concertina of mixed themes or will there be a concertina for each?

Thought Bubble: My Failed Youth Zine

Here is the zine I made for Thought Bubble Festival in a few weeks. I'm happy that I completed my first zine, but I have to say - it looks and feels rushed. Perhaps this is something I can come back to in the future...

Thought Bubble: Power Rangers Digital Prints

With several designs ready for print the final thing to consider before doing so was to decide which stock they should be printed on. Initially I tried the quality and cheap paper from the draws in the Studio which yielded some surprising results. The quality paper shockingly failed to print well and came out somewhat offset whilst the cheap paper actually worked better albeit somewhat desaturated. I then used stock brought from the library and gloss stock from digital print to judge the difference between the two.

Quality Stock

 

 Library Stock

Gloss Stock

Ultimately I felt that the gloss stock looked the best whilst cheap paper added a old and worn aesthetic quality to the prints but the library stock looked the best for the cost of production.

The cheap paper cost 25p to produce, the library stock 55p and the gloss 75p. If I am to consider cost of production vs. quality the library stock would probably win out. It is not the most expensive yet is of a more than acceptable quality.

Responsive: Understanding the Brief

To give us a better understanding of a brief we delved into the wording and reasoning of our respective briefs. We were tasked with identifying multiple characteristics of our products to help give us direction and a foundation to work from.

What are the 5 most important words in the brief?
Properly
Snack
Delicious
Vibrant
Tasty

What are the 5 most important considerations?
Faithful to the brand
Packaging
20-35
Places and spaces
Build awareness

5 related products
Crisps
Other popcorn brands
Chocolate
Fizzy Drinks
Nachos

5 related places
Office
Home
Cinema
Public Transport
Shops

After this we gave our briefs to someone else to breakdown (in my case Sophie Wright). it was interesting to see how differently she saw the brief. With this understanding its easy to understand how wide a range of responses the people at Propercorn will receive. Here are her responses:

What are the 5 most important words in the brief?
Fresh
Health conscious
Dynamic
Urban
Passionate

What are the 5 most important considerations?
Refer to Instagram
Faithful to the brand
Build awareness of the brand
Appeal to core customer
Emphasis on the "Done Properly" mantra

5 related products
Food & snacks
Health conscious products
Independent food
Fast food
Cafe snacks

5 related places
Cafes
Supermarkets
Cinemas
Offices
Premium food shops

Some of what Sophie took away sounded very interesting to me and I hope I can take some of her viewpoint forward as well as my own to create a well rounded response to this brief.

Printed Pictures: Proposal

Having spent some time creating screen prints for Thought Bubble I feel that I want to continue learning this process to better my understanding. Taking this into consideration, during today's session I made a proposal for printed pictures:

I intend to produce a series of concertina books or zines focusing on the main themes of Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’. I plan for these pages to be used as different cover designs for the book, but hopefully they could form a loose narrative when collected together.

The content will focus on the main themes from within the book (eg: drug use, capitalism, human conditioning or urbanisation). The purpose of these books/zines will be to help create a sense of the themes from within the book whilst avoiding what has been done before.

My audiences will be; literature/Huxley enthusiasts, fans of hand made items (screen printing, book making), and fans of illustration.

Moving Pictures: Proposal

In this session I created my proposed outcome for this brief:

I intend to produce a 30-60 second clip that visually displays the life and works of Aldous Huxley the author I began researching in my Summer Brief, focusing on his time spent in Hollywood, USA. However this will be a short advertisement for a documentary on his life as a whole.

The content will focus on three main themes, those being: the capitalism/rise of industry Huxley witnessed, his work relevant to the context of the moving picture, and finally his discomfort with the surroundings he lived in.

I will be aiming to communicate what his life was like within a short time frame, what perhaps inspired him to write books such as Brave New World, and finally his concern for the world from which he wrote his essays upon.

The audiences I plan to aimed this advertisement towards are; people that enjoy documentaries, fans of reading but more specifically those who enjoy Huxley’s work.