Introduction to AD5004

The idea behind this module is to help us find out what we should be doing for our final major project in year 3. it will cover a range of subject matters and give us tasks in the same vein as a research project so we can be better prepared for our experimentation and research for the following year.

I look forward to the modal and I hope I can achieve a good understanding of what I want to do and what work is expected of me though this.

semiotics

For this task we where looking at semiotics and the way a picture can be interpreted by the viewer.

For the first part of the task we where given a sheet in group and hold to figure out the titles of each work. 

 

while some of the answers from our group were right, the ones that are wrong show that the audience can interpret a picture a in a very different way than the artist may of intended. Many of the other groups had more abstract answers to the titles and we can see that these pictures can invoke many different emotional responses from people.

for the second task we ourselves had to express a feeling or a phase though visual media. 

Line 

for like I picked Serene, Gentle, proud, anxious, dynamic, honest, unstable and savage. 

  

 i used both ideas of body language and texture within my experiments, such as prouds curved line becoming akin to a puffed out chest. savage and gentle are both bent over into a "n" shape however the eratic nature and sharp points of makes it easer to see to see that it is wilder and more unstable than the smaller smoother line of gentle.

Colour

 

"the ice cold sea" I interpreted this as a calm atmosphere and had minimal movement in the lines although it is inherently natural and i wanted to ad some movement in it to imply the waves coming towards the viewer, a gradient effect used with the three colours of blue as it goes upward into a cold white sky. 

"a car journey in summer" was a personal choice as i drew upon some of the long drives in visiting my family using red and blue to signify the setting sun and yellow clusters as the street lamps were beginning to turn on reflected on the car window.

"A Calm motion" is filled with light and bright colours but i didn't want it to become overbearing so i created a confetti like effect with the pen, the white space paired with the fresh colours brings a calming effect to it.

"a long day" This peice uses uniform lines much the same as "the ice cold sea" however this time it is all uniform and only uses grey. i drew the liness lightly tilted to give the feeling of something being off giving more expression to monotony.

Composition
for composition we where given stickers and cards for this I chose static, balanced, lonely and claustrophobic.

static used what i would consider a natural colour, green and placed it along a horizontal line, this may give of a feeling of a field or a hill. A patch of land that has never moved.
balanced made use of most of coloured stickers using it in a gradated effect as a simplification of a colour swatch that is all very uniform and balanced. This may also be interpreted as a chakra chart if viewed another way around and that in itself is a spiritual sense of balance.
Lonely is one that i wished to tackle in a different way, while others may have just used a single sticker to exemplify a being being alone i wished to communicate it though the crowd of lighter and brighter colours and in the middle being a single blue dot that cannot quite fit in between the crowd. this change in colour can give way into interpretations of it's feelings and how it may feel alone and out of place.

 Claustrophobic i used a cluster of blue dots packing a yellow dot into a corner. i see the blue as a passive colour while yellow is more high energy and may sometimes mean panic or distress in some interpretations. the white space as well gives more meaning to claustrophobia as the yellow dot lacks space in comparison to the rest of the page.

Setting a Scene
for the final task we where told to edit a work of edward hopper and change the mood of it, i chose the piece "morning sun"

The Edward Hopper piece edited to fit the theme "1980's"
I am familiar with 80's fashion and advertising already so i knew i would have to make it look overall sleeker and brighter, darkening the girls hair giving her more make up, brightening up her clothes to a more manufactured look and making her sheets more pristine white in comparison to the darkened walls. I put a pattern overlay on the wall as it was popular to incorporate pattern into everything. Darkening the window and buildings outside to give it more of a city feeling as she looks more like she it being illuminated by the street lamps now than the morning sun.

Bibliography:
Hopper,E. 1952. Morning sun. [Oil on canvas]. At: USA:Columbus Museum of Art. 

Nighthawks and visual language and interpretation

Nighthawks is a 1942 painting by Edward Hopper that i have looked at for Visual language Analysis and interpretation.

what we can gather from immediately looking at the peace is that it is set in an American bar, there is a couple, a man sitting by himself, and a bartender. it is night-time and there is no one outside, everything seems quiet.
The composition is in the rule of thirds, the action is comprised mostly in the last third in the bottom right. The structure is very angular and boxy, there are very little curves. however it feels natural, and gives repetition to the piece. the piece is set at eye level to feel as though the person is looking into the window giving it a voyeuristic feeling.
there is a contrast between the yellow of inside the bar and the blue outside, it gives a lonely and mysterious feel with a overall sense of peace.
The use of sharply suited men, advertising of cheap cigars and root beer tanks gives the viewer the signs that it takes place in the 40's, showing what now is 40's iconography retroactively creating feelings of nostalgia.

bibliography:

Hopper.E. 1942. Nighthawks. [Oil on canvas]. At: USA: Art Institute of Chicago Building.

Meeting with the third years

The third year showed us their own research and final major projects so that we as second years had time to think about the scope of what we can do with our project.
I am still apprehensive about my research project however being displayed a wide scope of what is possible put me more at ease.
Aimee and Ben especially showed me that the Research project can be as specific as you would like, and that getting out of your comfort zone and finding artists that inspire you and fully understanding their content and being able to clearly evaluate their work is the most important thing to do in the research project.
Leah and Kerry also gave me a lot of insight into what FMP can be, with children's toys and wall painting and it gave me confidence how I can approach and develop my fmp, and I want to take Leahs advice of thinking about the ideal version of your FMP and then working down and finding what you can do.

Overall I found that I'm still unconfident about my FMP however there was good advice shared talking with the 3rd years and I felt that it was a overall good experience

Expression task

In this task we where given a short presentation on the simplification of characters emotions in order to create empathy with the viewer

We where tasked with writing our thoughts and emotions throughout a daily occurrence.

my personal writing was a break down of events within a line at a supermarket.

1. please move quickly
2. nope
3. don't want to reach over someones stuff to much 
4. hello, yes please notice me and how far the dividers are away from my arms
5. there are people moving behind me I really need to get a divider
6. [INTERNAL SCREAMING]
7. oh thank christ
8. did the guy behind me really just sigh obnoxiously loud
9. oh god my bag is heavy
10. bear it
11. and the till just broke.

with this break down we can see that there is a range of emotions within this sequence

1. hoping but not expecting
2. realisation
3. annoyance
4. wordless bargaining 
5. aprehension 
6. panic
7. thankfulness
8. annoyance
9. Self realisation 
10. concentration
11. dissapointment

looking at the artist Kate Beaton, i was first introduced to her works through her website "Hark, a vagrant" She using a pen brush style she is mostly known for her comics about history.

In this example we can see a range of varied expressions. Beaton has a certain levels of simplification where she will add or omit features like wrinkles only the emphasize the character emotions, they are not a constant facial feature. some of the most simplistic expressions she creates omit eyes just for dots. with this in mind I used my creative writing piece to illustrate the narrative with a series of head shots.

This was my final result and I feel as thought I have better experience with character simplification and subtlety within expression. I have learnt that slight changes can drastically change how an audience can interpret an expression.

bibliography:

Beaton.K. 2016. Young Goodman Brown.[online] [4th april 2016] Available from: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=388

Anthropomorphism

For the anthropomorphism task we were given the poem spangled pandemonium we were to either approach it for a child or a Adult audience.

I wanted to approach it for an Adult Audience.

in my research into the spangled Pandemonium I took my main inspiration from Joohee Yoon's "Beastly verse"

I liked the overlaying block colours, and although the book was intended for children i felt that there is some imagery that could made use of in a horror context. 

Unlike other depictions of the spangled pandemonium I felt that it that this drew upon more animalistic features and didn't shy away from making it creepy, especially with it's unusual eyes.

this is my finished product:

Taking the illustrative style of beastly verse I shifted it into a POV shot as to better put yourself into the picture, letting the spangled pandemonium be at an eye level with the viewer as to intimidate the viewer.

Bibliography:

Yoon, J. 2015. Beastly verse. USA. ENCHANTED LION BOOKS

Suspence

in this task we where given a clip from a film, and we had to analyse how the director created suspense in the shot.
in this task I was given the Kubrick film The Shining, the clip our group was given was the clip titled "all work and no play"

These are my notes on the scene:

 

this is the break down of all the camera angles i did:

This was my comic in reflection to my analysis of Kubricks directing

In my deeper research into Kubrick's directing, I found that he had many styles in his editing, the shining was famed more for it's "crawling" low to the ground shots where the camera shows much of the body. i wanted to use this more with upward angle shots and many panels that show the characters back. the shining also had a overall very cold colour pallet and I wanted to use a contrasting colour pallet with yellow being the highlight to emphasise the darkness of it.

bibliography 
The shining. 1980. [Film] Stanley Kubrick. dir. USA: The Producer Circle Company