The mapping project was by far the most difficult project and the one I had the most troubles with. This project consisted of having to map out an area in a unique and graphic way that related to what I wanted to show on the Map. From a recent visit to new york last year I found that it would be interesting to do a map of times square and its buskers and magicians that resided in the area. This also related to my own personal job as a close-up magician therefore I found it would be interesting to see how I could visulaize performance hotspots. Looking at many maps of new York I found that using a playing card would be very interesting as coincidently the middle of the Jack of Diamonds when compared to the cross roads in times square had looked very similar to one another. This would also fit in with the theme of me wanting to map out magicians and where they had resisded or performed in the area.
Reflecting:
Over the course of the week I had found the process very difficult for this project. However once I started looking at ways of relating this to the shape of a playing card I found ideas slowly forumalting and how I could represent this in a very tricky way. Also as magicians were the main citiznes/hotspots of my maps I also played around with the idea of using them in a way that they were represented by optical illusions. This way it would also be as if they didnt want those looking at the map to know where they were, or to make it a challenge to find them which would be a trick in itself.
Contextualising:
When looking for contextual inffluences in my project research I found that MC Escher and Bridget Riley provided a very good idea that also related to my subject of magic. Tesselations work had also made it quite interesting as I had an idea to create the maop or part of the map using tesselations of Top hats which would be very unique. After looking at these artists I was also inspired on how I could make this map more interactive with users by perhaps embedding a lenticular effect that would make it even more of a visual piece.
Sunday, 25 January 2015
Passage of time
Recording:
Over the christmas we were asked to carry out a project communicating the idea of time. When reading the brief I instantly had sevral ideas come to mind on how time could be represented. In a negative tone I came up with the idea of representing time as a very precious thing that should not be wasted, as many people these days waste time for the sake of not wanting to do anything. Because of this I knew that my final outcome would result in being something very emotive and thought provoking especially in the eyes of my peers. Experimenting with photographs of eye was one of my first ideas, in that the eyes see so much over the course of a human life that it could almost be looked at as a memory bank. In addition to this I felt that the use of silhouettes would accompany the photograph of the eye very well as they did not have any detail you had to pay attention to yet still showed clearly what was happening in each image. Using these silhouettes I experimented with the colour of the eye photograph and eventually came to a point where just the colour of the pupil of the eye was visible in blue whilst the rest was black and white. In this instance it reflected how a human eye would have the colour fade after time run out whilst having the main events of that persons lifetime being remembered in silhouette form. (Wedding, birth, death)
Reflecting:
Over the course of the 4 days that I worked on this project I found that this project could have much more done to make it even better. Even though I liked the outcome iof the eye losing its colour due to death and remembering flashbacks I felt it could be taken further. Through this I thought that I could relate the project directly to myself and teenagers in general. This idea being how as children growing up would create bad habits such as drinking or even drugs in some case and how the younger self would view us if they were to see themselves in the future. At this point I found that experimenting with paper to make it look old could also be quite effective along with a mirror which would act as 'the looking glass self' to see your own future version. Experimenting with this I also found that it would make it look like an ol;d relic due to the effect of the paper which could further illustrate the passage of time.
Contextualising:
When looking at contextual research examples for this project unfortunately I had struggled to find anyone that would be very influential in my work. However a current artist known as Inquisitive was very influential in the style that I wanted the illustration to look like. In this case I had therefore decided that this would be my main influnce throughout the project.
Over the christmas we were asked to carry out a project communicating the idea of time. When reading the brief I instantly had sevral ideas come to mind on how time could be represented. In a negative tone I came up with the idea of representing time as a very precious thing that should not be wasted, as many people these days waste time for the sake of not wanting to do anything. Because of this I knew that my final outcome would result in being something very emotive and thought provoking especially in the eyes of my peers. Experimenting with photographs of eye was one of my first ideas, in that the eyes see so much over the course of a human life that it could almost be looked at as a memory bank. In addition to this I felt that the use of silhouettes would accompany the photograph of the eye very well as they did not have any detail you had to pay attention to yet still showed clearly what was happening in each image. Using these silhouettes I experimented with the colour of the eye photograph and eventually came to a point where just the colour of the pupil of the eye was visible in blue whilst the rest was black and white. In this instance it reflected how a human eye would have the colour fade after time run out whilst having the main events of that persons lifetime being remembered in silhouette form. (Wedding, birth, death)
Reflecting:
Over the course of the 4 days that I worked on this project I found that this project could have much more done to make it even better. Even though I liked the outcome iof the eye losing its colour due to death and remembering flashbacks I felt it could be taken further. Through this I thought that I could relate the project directly to myself and teenagers in general. This idea being how as children growing up would create bad habits such as drinking or even drugs in some case and how the younger self would view us if they were to see themselves in the future. At this point I found that experimenting with paper to make it look old could also be quite effective along with a mirror which would act as 'the looking glass self' to see your own future version. Experimenting with this I also found that it would make it look like an ol;d relic due to the effect of the paper which could further illustrate the passage of time.
Contextualising:
When looking at contextual research examples for this project unfortunately I had struggled to find anyone that would be very influential in my work. However a current artist known as Inquisitive was very influential in the style that I wanted the illustration to look like. In this case I had therefore decided that this would be my main influnce throughout the project.
Transgression
Recording:
When this project began I had no idea on what I would make the transgressive subject about. However coming from a sociology background in my A-levels I had found thay Capitalism would be the perfect issue on transgressing. Looking through my old textbooks and such I found much influential topics that could be talked about and at the same time could be very controversial if looked at by others who didnt know about sociologist views. Coming from a marxist view I found that it would be perfect to illustrate how capitalism was a very bad thing for society, and yet it occured everyday under peoples noses through taxes and big corporations. Throughout the project visits to galleries had given me inspirations on using very strong colours such as reds and blacks which would connote various feelings such as hatred to the audience. When starting the project with my transgression class we were involved in a group conversation where we went very in depth into sensitive topics relating to the world and how human behaviour was changed when exploring these. In addition to this we found it very interesting on how many taboo topics had come up and as a result of this it had left some students feeling very uncomfortable with the discussion. However through this discussion many ideas had been risen on what I could potentially start to talk about when completing my final outcome which i wanted to be an illustration.
Reflecting:
Throughout the project I had found that ideas were sadly not being taken very nicely by one of the tutors. At first the idea consisted of a group effort consisting of trangressing a guy fawkes mask with various issues we had researched such as poverty and crime. As we were creating this idea and seeing the various ways it could have possibly worked out including campaigns that would have been carried out to see bystanders reactions (small scale). Through the second week 4 of us had each tackled a different issue and therefore tried progressing onto seeing what would play out the best as a final piece that we could each use. However due to us having minimal sketches and descriptions to show our idea unfortunately we were told our idea wasn't very good and that we were getting carried away with the idea therefore sadly coming apart due to others opinions. Because of this the group had disbanded and halfway through the second week we each came up with a new issue to tackle. Me sticking to capitalism as I had before the group had come together had resulted in a very bad group critique which resulted in me doing the project again. Only having one day or so to come up with an outcome my final piece for the project final day was extremely rushed and did not really have a very professional feel to it, looking more like a typical poster that street protestors would have put up. The third time I had done this project I was much happier with the outcome as it was illustration based which changed it up from my usual graphic style artwork, which embedded with a type and transgressive guy fawkes mask had created. However looking at my final illustration now i feel that my type message on the sides of the page could be white to make it stick out even more. This was due to the black looking too dark as it had showed up on the computer well however on print seemed like it was intended to be hard to see, which of course was something I couldn't have anticipated.
Contextualising:
At the start of the project a visit to the Saachi Gallery had given a very influential inspiration on how we could trangress different things. One particular artwork that consisted of blood red patterns was the main influence behind the background of my illustration. The visit provided us with many weird things to view, including a room where the floor was made entirely of oil even though we had thought it was mirrored.In addition to transgressive works at the Saachi gallery I had found that my previous visit to Gilbert and George's scapegoating pictures greatly helped me when expressing my issue. As I was looking into a very controversial topic, I found that they were very influential in helping me to come up with ways on how I could express my illustration without worrying about what judgements it would come under by others.
When this project began I had no idea on what I would make the transgressive subject about. However coming from a sociology background in my A-levels I had found thay Capitalism would be the perfect issue on transgressing. Looking through my old textbooks and such I found much influential topics that could be talked about and at the same time could be very controversial if looked at by others who didnt know about sociologist views. Coming from a marxist view I found that it would be perfect to illustrate how capitalism was a very bad thing for society, and yet it occured everyday under peoples noses through taxes and big corporations. Throughout the project visits to galleries had given me inspirations on using very strong colours such as reds and blacks which would connote various feelings such as hatred to the audience. When starting the project with my transgression class we were involved in a group conversation where we went very in depth into sensitive topics relating to the world and how human behaviour was changed when exploring these. In addition to this we found it very interesting on how many taboo topics had come up and as a result of this it had left some students feeling very uncomfortable with the discussion. However through this discussion many ideas had been risen on what I could potentially start to talk about when completing my final outcome which i wanted to be an illustration.
Reflecting:
Throughout the project I had found that ideas were sadly not being taken very nicely by one of the tutors. At first the idea consisted of a group effort consisting of trangressing a guy fawkes mask with various issues we had researched such as poverty and crime. As we were creating this idea and seeing the various ways it could have possibly worked out including campaigns that would have been carried out to see bystanders reactions (small scale). Through the second week 4 of us had each tackled a different issue and therefore tried progressing onto seeing what would play out the best as a final piece that we could each use. However due to us having minimal sketches and descriptions to show our idea unfortunately we were told our idea wasn't very good and that we were getting carried away with the idea therefore sadly coming apart due to others opinions. Because of this the group had disbanded and halfway through the second week we each came up with a new issue to tackle. Me sticking to capitalism as I had before the group had come together had resulted in a very bad group critique which resulted in me doing the project again. Only having one day or so to come up with an outcome my final piece for the project final day was extremely rushed and did not really have a very professional feel to it, looking more like a typical poster that street protestors would have put up. The third time I had done this project I was much happier with the outcome as it was illustration based which changed it up from my usual graphic style artwork, which embedded with a type and transgressive guy fawkes mask had created. However looking at my final illustration now i feel that my type message on the sides of the page could be white to make it stick out even more. This was due to the black looking too dark as it had showed up on the computer well however on print seemed like it was intended to be hard to see, which of course was something I couldn't have anticipated.
Contextualising:
At the start of the project a visit to the Saachi Gallery had given a very influential inspiration on how we could trangress different things. One particular artwork that consisted of blood red patterns was the main influence behind the background of my illustration. The visit provided us with many weird things to view, including a room where the floor was made entirely of oil even though we had thought it was mirrored.In addition to transgressive works at the Saachi gallery I had found that my previous visit to Gilbert and George's scapegoating pictures greatly helped me when expressing my issue. As I was looking into a very controversial topic, I found that they were very influential in helping me to come up with ways on how I could express my illustration without worrying about what judgements it would come under by others.
Skella Skateboarding Branding Project
Recording:
Over the course of the 2 weeks we were asked to create a unique brand that communicated something new and non existant in our own graphical way. At first I was going to make this a company related to selling magic tricks however later changed my mind as I thought it would be much better to communicate an old interest of mine: Skateboarding. From a young age skateboarding was a very favourite sport of mine so I thought it would be interested to see what I could come up with as I haven't touched a skateboard in many years now. When researching into various skateboard brands that had already existed I found that most had used bright colours and images to communicate the youngster who would be riding it accross. This was a strong point for me being interested in very visual and funky graphics, therefore the skateboarding brand would be a perfect place to start my own brand. After talking to many skaters as well I had found that they would be interested in seeing how I could design a brand and how they would react to it if it were a real product or Brand.
Reflecting:
Having to look like a professional brand I knew that this would have to be a computer rendered logo and not a hand drawn one. However as I was becoming very comfortable with photoshop in recent weeks using computer rendering for this task would be no problem at all. When drawing up the initial ideas on how the logo would look I felt that using existing logos as a guide would be perfect for this. Not just skateboarding brands but restaurants, gaming and many other brands were very influential in how I could have possibly allowed my own design to turn out. I also found that by looking at other brands it was possible to see how I could use them and if there were any patterns of layout when it communicated a particular theme for example foods and gaming. While working thrrough the project the name Skella was a very clever one as it had related to me very directly therefore sounding very sleek (inspired by skeletor). My gripe was creating a typeface or using a typeface that would be suitable as I had no previous experience of typography at all within graphic deisgn. However when I played around with a few texts and ideas that I had in mind, I was very pleased to have created my own typography font for the brand, with it clearly looking like something Hip and Young which is exactly what a skateboarder would like on thier clothing or skateboard deck. After various experimentations with how large it would be and how my logo would be layed out I was extremely pleased to have created a fully rendered computer logo for the first time.
Contextualising:
When looking into this branding project at the research stages I found it quite difficult to get any contextual inspirations on how I could relate my artwork to this. However as skateboarding is a very modern sport I felt that post modern pop art would be perfectly suited to help me. Through using this it gave me a very strong outcome as my logo had also looked like a very funky and modern piece of artwork. However, I was able to look into various skateboard movies by some old graffiti artists for influences, as I could not find any contextual inspiration on street art or branding yet it was much better to have a contemporary example of research and analysis of my choice involved with this project
Over the course of the 2 weeks we were asked to create a unique brand that communicated something new and non existant in our own graphical way. At first I was going to make this a company related to selling magic tricks however later changed my mind as I thought it would be much better to communicate an old interest of mine: Skateboarding. From a young age skateboarding was a very favourite sport of mine so I thought it would be interested to see what I could come up with as I haven't touched a skateboard in many years now. When researching into various skateboard brands that had already existed I found that most had used bright colours and images to communicate the youngster who would be riding it accross. This was a strong point for me being interested in very visual and funky graphics, therefore the skateboarding brand would be a perfect place to start my own brand. After talking to many skaters as well I had found that they would be interested in seeing how I could design a brand and how they would react to it if it were a real product or Brand.
Reflecting:
Having to look like a professional brand I knew that this would have to be a computer rendered logo and not a hand drawn one. However as I was becoming very comfortable with photoshop in recent weeks using computer rendering for this task would be no problem at all. When drawing up the initial ideas on how the logo would look I felt that using existing logos as a guide would be perfect for this. Not just skateboarding brands but restaurants, gaming and many other brands were very influential in how I could have possibly allowed my own design to turn out. I also found that by looking at other brands it was possible to see how I could use them and if there were any patterns of layout when it communicated a particular theme for example foods and gaming. While working thrrough the project the name Skella was a very clever one as it had related to me very directly therefore sounding very sleek (inspired by skeletor). My gripe was creating a typeface or using a typeface that would be suitable as I had no previous experience of typography at all within graphic deisgn. However when I played around with a few texts and ideas that I had in mind, I was very pleased to have created my own typography font for the brand, with it clearly looking like something Hip and Young which is exactly what a skateboarder would like on thier clothing or skateboard deck. After various experimentations with how large it would be and how my logo would be layed out I was extremely pleased to have created a fully rendered computer logo for the first time.
Contextualising:
When looking into this branding project at the research stages I found it quite difficult to get any contextual inspirations on how I could relate my artwork to this. However as skateboarding is a very modern sport I felt that post modern pop art would be perfectly suited to help me. Through using this it gave me a very strong outcome as my logo had also looked like a very funky and modern piece of artwork. However, I was able to look into various skateboard movies by some old graffiti artists for influences, as I could not find any contextual inspiration on street art or branding yet it was much better to have a contemporary example of research and analysis of my choice involved with this project
Sunday, 16 November 2014
Week 2 - Calligraphy
Reflecting:
With calligraphy, I got on with the task very well after learning the 3/4 different ways to use the brush and ink to create the particular letter forms and arrangements. I feel that at the end of the day I achieved a lot in terms of experimentation and playing around with what I wrote down with the brush. Peer feedback was also very positive in the sense that when our text was placed upon the boards I overheard many comments about mine saying that the letters had almost looked printed on a computer or made on photoshop, which made me feel a sense of accomplishment that I grasped the style of writing fairly quickly and easily. From the overall tasks I learn that a paintbrush and paint or ink can be used in a very neat way to created stylized writing, and not in a messy way as I had always presumed.
Analysing:
I think what was successful about my work on the day was how I managed to experiment with brand names such as Bacardi and Jack Daniels, making them look very old and gritty as if they had been around since the 1800's. I was not happy however about the way I was writing the letters down as I could not fit whole words on one part of the page, as they always got cut off due to my size of writing. In future calligraphy experimentation I will reduce the size of my writing to make it much more easier to work with and at the same time allow for full words and sentences to fit on one page. I found it difficult using the brush for the first time as I had never experimented with bigger brushes, only smaller ones used for water colours and minor paintings.
Time management:
With the calligraphy workshop I had no problem with time on the day as everything was very evenly paced, and enough time was given to us to experiment with many different things to write down, which allowed for me to thin about even more brands which would look good if they were branded in a very ancient style of writing. However my main concern with time was that I had hoped to have more time in researching various brands that could be created in a calligraphy style ink drawing.
With calligraphy, I got on with the task very well after learning the 3/4 different ways to use the brush and ink to create the particular letter forms and arrangements. I feel that at the end of the day I achieved a lot in terms of experimentation and playing around with what I wrote down with the brush. Peer feedback was also very positive in the sense that when our text was placed upon the boards I overheard many comments about mine saying that the letters had almost looked printed on a computer or made on photoshop, which made me feel a sense of accomplishment that I grasped the style of writing fairly quickly and easily. From the overall tasks I learn that a paintbrush and paint or ink can be used in a very neat way to created stylized writing, and not in a messy way as I had always presumed.
Analysing:
I think what was successful about my work on the day was how I managed to experiment with brand names such as Bacardi and Jack Daniels, making them look very old and gritty as if they had been around since the 1800's. I was not happy however about the way I was writing the letters down as I could not fit whole words on one part of the page, as they always got cut off due to my size of writing. In future calligraphy experimentation I will reduce the size of my writing to make it much more easier to work with and at the same time allow for full words and sentences to fit on one page. I found it difficult using the brush for the first time as I had never experimented with bigger brushes, only smaller ones used for water colours and minor paintings.
Time management:
With the calligraphy workshop I had no problem with time on the day as everything was very evenly paced, and enough time was given to us to experiment with many different things to write down, which allowed for me to thin about even more brands which would look good if they were branded in a very ancient style of writing. However my main concern with time was that I had hoped to have more time in researching various brands that could be created in a calligraphy style ink drawing.
Week 2 - Prototyping
For the second day of the second week of workshops my group had been asked to experiment with various materials and such in the prototyping lab on level 9. I found this a fairly easy worshop as I had come from a graphic product design background in A-level months ago, meaning that it was extremely easy to cut my images or engrave them into the materials I had. The only complaint I had however was the use of using illustrator to cut or engrave into objects which was very difficult. At my sixth-form we had been using the 2D design software which was extremely easier to use and also made it extremely easier to position how far the laser cutter would go. Especially in the case of manipulating images I found that 2D design could create the outline of an image with the click of a mouse where as illustrator was extremely troublesome to get an outline on the image I wanted to cut and the engraving sections inside of it. Other than That If could use the 2D design software to create my images I think it would be a much faster and efficient process for when using the laser cutter, in which the extra time could have gone into the planning of the material or pattern that would be cut out.
week 2 - book cover
reflecting:
With this task I got on fairly well, and felt that I could take my photoshop skills to the next level by having a friend who is an expert at it give me follow through tutorials before I did the task. I feel that I achieved a high amount and standard of work, whilst at the same time gaining many new skills on how to manipulate the text and image on photoshop. Also I found it easier to use photoshop rather than InDesign to play with the type, as it simplified the process and made it much more easier without having to have many other soft-wares open that I would have to keep switching to. As of yet I have not recieved any feedback on this particular work. Overall from creating this image I learned several more ways to use photoshop to create very professional looking illustrations and especially in the case of the book cover which was about illustration. In addition to learning photoshop I was also able to grasp basic techniques of design on illustrator, which when used in combination with photoshop helped me to create much more powerful pieces of art, and giving a much more professional feel to a book rather than my preffered old drawing method of creating artwork. In addition to the use of photoshop and illustrator, I found it very useful to scan an object into the software and then computerise it so that I could compare my initial draft drawing to the final professional piece.
Analysing:
I think the most successful part about my work was how I managed to embed several different types of illustration within the book cover, and also how I managed to show how powerful illustration could be in influencing people's lives as can be seen within the work. With this work there was not anything that I was not happy with as I had further developed my photoshopping skills and at the same time created a very professional looking book cover. If there was anything I was uinhappy with it would be how I did not make it an A3 sized print as I though we were restricted to the dimensions of the cover that we had received on the brief. I found it challenging creating the triangular multiple image on the front of the book cover as I did not know how to cut images on photoshop or crop them. However after several tutorials I found this quite easy and learned a multitude of ways that this could be achieved. In addition to the sizing however I found that once I saved my work i could not change the size of it at all or make any changes as I did not know how to save photoshop files as editable at first. This meant that I was not able to
Time management:
looking at my time management and planning of this project, I found no problem in creating the image within the space of a few hours. However my only problem was placing this and saving it as a PDF document, which was problematic due to one of my computers not having the adobe PDF reader. This resulted in the piece becoming a late submission however the work was completed the a very high standard, and the computer that did not have the PDF saving format was due to my own human error.
With this task I got on fairly well, and felt that I could take my photoshop skills to the next level by having a friend who is an expert at it give me follow through tutorials before I did the task. I feel that I achieved a high amount and standard of work, whilst at the same time gaining many new skills on how to manipulate the text and image on photoshop. Also I found it easier to use photoshop rather than InDesign to play with the type, as it simplified the process and made it much more easier without having to have many other soft-wares open that I would have to keep switching to. As of yet I have not recieved any feedback on this particular work. Overall from creating this image I learned several more ways to use photoshop to create very professional looking illustrations and especially in the case of the book cover which was about illustration. In addition to learning photoshop I was also able to grasp basic techniques of design on illustrator, which when used in combination with photoshop helped me to create much more powerful pieces of art, and giving a much more professional feel to a book rather than my preffered old drawing method of creating artwork. In addition to the use of photoshop and illustrator, I found it very useful to scan an object into the software and then computerise it so that I could compare my initial draft drawing to the final professional piece.
Analysing:
I think the most successful part about my work was how I managed to embed several different types of illustration within the book cover, and also how I managed to show how powerful illustration could be in influencing people's lives as can be seen within the work. With this work there was not anything that I was not happy with as I had further developed my photoshopping skills and at the same time created a very professional looking book cover. If there was anything I was uinhappy with it would be how I did not make it an A3 sized print as I though we were restricted to the dimensions of the cover that we had received on the brief. I found it challenging creating the triangular multiple image on the front of the book cover as I did not know how to cut images on photoshop or crop them. However after several tutorials I found this quite easy and learned a multitude of ways that this could be achieved. In addition to the sizing however I found that once I saved my work i could not change the size of it at all or make any changes as I did not know how to save photoshop files as editable at first. This meant that I was not able to
Time management:
looking at my time management and planning of this project, I found no problem in creating the image within the space of a few hours. However my only problem was placing this and saving it as a PDF document, which was problematic due to one of my computers not having the adobe PDF reader. This resulted in the piece becoming a late submission however the work was completed the a very high standard, and the computer that did not have the PDF saving format was due to my own human error.
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