Offlife #11 Narrative

Over the past few days I've been working on a narrative for Offlife Magazine. It is a relatively open brief, but must consist of a narrative from 1-4 pages. It can be about absolutely anything, which was what initially appealed to me. I developed a short tale about a girl jumping on a ledge into a lake to find complete silence. It was conceived as a piece that would rely on imagery more than text.

After sketching and inking my four page narrative I scanned the work in a coloured it digitally; I also tried including texture, playing with levels drastically and removing colour altogether. Ultimately I chose to stick with just the colour as this worked the best in my opinion. I also chose to remove the second page of the story as I felt it slowed the flow down and was easily the weakest of the four pages. It was also important to remember that just because I could use four pages didn't mean I had to.

Printed Pictures: Kristyna Baczynski

When I think about ordered illustration I think about Kristyna Baczinski's work. She has an extraordinary ability to create fantastic illustrations using straight lines. This possible comes from her background as a graphic designer.

I'm quite aware of my own abilities at this point and know I could never produce such lifework freehand, so I'm going to use Adobe Illustrator to help me illustrate a more ordered world.

Propercorn: Presentation Board Peer Review 1

Today we reviewed each others presentation boards. I was quite taken aback by how varied the boards were, with some being outstanding and others being... not so. I felt that my boards floated somewhere in the middle. I believe that I showed good research, and initial ideas within my boards, but my work needs to be developed further before the boards can be effective. I was also told that I need to narrow my focus of work. I'm trying to design a whole campaign when all I really need to do is redesign the packaging of Propercorn and consider the PoS side of things rather than invest too much time in them as I had suggested within the boards.



Delving deeper into the boards themselves I noticed during my presentation that there were certain issues concerning the layout and more importantly text; specifically - spelling mistakes, odd placing and varying font sizes. This is something to make note of in the future; I think that I should perhaps write out the text in a word processing document before transferring to Photoshop to prevent issues such as spelling and grammar mistakes from occurring.

Moving Pictures: Rough Animation

Here is a rough of the animation I have produced so far. There are many elements I haven't included yet, but the purpose of the piece was to gain a better understanding of the time frame within the advertisement.



I think perhaps the shot of the brick wall should linger more as I plan to have several impoverished characters there and I want allow the audience time to focus on them. The time allowed there will be supplemented from the amount of time Huxley's image is on screen as I feel this is somewhat longer than necessary.

Printed Pictures: Screen Print Investigation

In my attempt to create a screen print that takes advantage of colour I have produced this. I began by looking back at my SB1: Visual Journal work where I used collage of urban areas to an effective degree. Using textures that I have created using Quink and graphite, I worked in Photoshop to produce these positives.

Using these positives I headed to the screen print workshop where I spent time learning how to print effectively and experimented with different coloured paper stock.


As you can see my first attempt is quite offset compared to a later print where my skill had improved somewhat. The black and yellow paper stock also produced interesting outcomes in that the colours seem to suggest a different time of day. This may prove useful going forward.

My biggest complaint with the pieces is that they look so untidy. When I think about Brave New World, I think about how ordered and controlled that world is. I need to find a way for this to be represented within my work.

Printed Pictures: Ben Newman

I saw Ben Newman's screen print for NoBrow's Autumn/Winter 2014 book recently. I'm impressed with this print as he has only used two colours, yet manages to make effective use of them thus creating the illusion of more being used. Its inspired me to spend a day in Screen Print to investigate how I can produce a more effective image.

I realise that the Man in Suit piece that I made is definitely inadequate when it comes to colour overlay so I definitely need to produce something else to highlight this technique.

Illustration 1: Module Evaluation - Thus Far...

1. What skills have I developed through this brief thus far?

I have learnt the basics in Dragon Frame and After Effects to the point where I feel okay with my knowledge; however, due to my lack of work with Moving Pictures at this point I can’t state that I am fully confident with either.

2.  What approaches to methods of image making have you developed and how have they informed your development process?

Collage has played a large role in my Visual Journal, despite this, and my planning to bring this across to Printed/Moving pictures, this has yet to happen, thus hindered the quality/connectivity of my work. I need to revise this.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?

My experimentation/investigation of media early on was particularly strong and although it has waned somewhat it continues to be an effective factor of my work thus far. This experimentation needs to inform my final pieces more though, as has been stated in my peer review, there appears to be a gap between my sketchbook work and my prints.

 Collage continues to be a strong of visual apsect as stated above. I need to refer back to this to push my work forward.

4.  What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?

The past few weeks have been tough due to personal issues, which has been reflected in the quality of my work and attitude towards the module. As I am learning to deal with these issues I must remind myself not to let them interfere with my practice.

I need to stop dwelling on my work. If an image doesn’t work, move on. Every piece of work that I make doesn’t have to be universally revered. I’m still early into my career and can’t expect myself to be producing truly amazing work at this point.

5. Identify 5 things that you will do differently from this point and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

-       - I need to bring collage back into my work, this has continually been noted as a strong area of my work thus far and will help improve the quality of it.

-       - I need to bring more research into my work, I still have plenty of time to research things to help me round off this module and help me produce a better quality of work.

-       - I can’t let my personal issues interfere with my work. Everyone has problems and I need to get on with it. I can’t let my work be victim to external issues.

-       - I need to stop dwelling on my work. I need to stop being afraid of doing work just in case it looks wrong. If something doesn’t look right try to identify what is wrong with it and move on.

-       - I need to understand my limitations. I have an grand idea of what I want my work to look like, but I feel I’m setting the bar too high and overstretching myself rather than focusing on making higher quality work.

Printed Pictures: Soma Narrative Prints

My first attempt at screen printing the Soma concertina failed miserably. There are several reasons for this:

- I don't feel I made the most of the screen printing process. I haven't experimented with mixing the colours up enough in the positives.

- I didn't give much thought to the actual process of printing. I hadn't thought about the actual size of my print/screen which can be evidenced by the failure in printing well.

- Finally, my lack experience with the process. I need to work more with the screen printing process and develop my skills in this area, I could make fantastic positive work, but if I don't know how to print properly then the visual outcome will suffer for it.

To solve these problems I'm going to make another set of positives that will take advantage of the screen printing process. This in turn will allow me to experiment more and learn more about the process.

Moving Pictures: Animation Roll

After playing around in my sketchbook using stock images from the internet, I went about making a mock back ground image (or Animation Roll as I'll be calling it) using collage. After this I produced a digital version as seen below.

I plan on using After Effects to drag the image up, creating an effect similar to The Simpsons clip I have referenced. Once the image reaches the bottom the screen will turn to black and Huxley's face will appear with the title of the sting. I plan for the visual quality of the image to be smooth early on and gradually deteriorate as the animation gets lower.

Printed Pictures: Man in Suit

Here is the process I went through to create the Man is Suit imagery that'll stand opposite my Mind work. I've incorporated elements from Cornella, Cohen and Muradov to create a narrative displaying the effects of Soma.

Printed Pictures: Drew Millward Lecture

The illustrator Drew Millward gave a lecture today and discussed his history of what is largely screen printed poster design. It was good to have him come in at a time when I am quite unsure about my skill of screen printing. He told us that screen printing can be an arduous process but the key is to just keep going with it. It seems like an easy thing to do but can take years to become good at. 

This has given me a renewed hope in screen printing and I feel ready to go down to print (which I have been putting off) and actually get some work produced!

Propercorn: Research and Initial Ideas

Recently I've set about researching the Propercorn brand to get a greater understanding of what to produce for this brief, to do this I used the excellent image collection site Pintrest.

Follow Tommy 'Zoom''s board Propercorn on Pinterest.

I noticed several things during this investigation:
Colour is a big thing with Propercorn.
Most images were interestingly thought out, or set in a professional workspace.
There is feeling of isolation that accompanies these Propercorn images.

The last aspect felt very important to me. If the brand wants to expand itself, it'll need to suggest there is a more social aspect to eating Propercorn. My initial concept designs played around with different ideas such as reworking the ingredients ideology on the bags that currently exists. But after taking into account what I had discovered from my research, I decided to push forward with the idea of  socialisation as the point of focus in my designs. I mocked up a design and applied it to the different coloured bags to get an idea of the effect. My final designs will ultimately have a different image on each flavour.

Printed Pictures: Simple Features

Having created my 'Mind' pieces of work, I feel that perhaps I need a counterbalance to these, to create a stronger narrative within my zine/concertina. So I've decided that each opposite page will contain a separate narrative of a man ingestive the relaxant drug 'Soma'.

I've been struggling with the aesthetic quality of this imagery, however. Part of me wants to conform to a rough detailed form similar to what I have produced thus far, yet I feel that a simplified style would suit this piece more.

So I decided to take a step back and look at what some might deem "basic illustrative styles" from Ella Cohen and Joan Cornella.








Both artists show great strength in making imagery with reserved line work. This is something I hope to bring into my work to help me close out the designs for this piece.

Printed Pictures: Mind

Continuing my quest to make intangible illustration I began to think about how the mind could be visualised during stressful moments. I initially thought of how Valerie Pirson portrayed the mind in her Pistache animation as seen here. I wanted to create something similar to this so set about illustrating a brain with intangible bursts that would hopefully convey stress.

More needs to be done to the image but I finally feel that I've found an intangible motif that I want to progress further with. Also, when animated in a .gif sequence the separate images look pretty neat.

I feel that perhaps having just a mind doesn't create enough of a narrative and am toying with the idea of having a separate sequence of images on the opposing pages to help resolve this issue.