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

Organic research

for my organic research i was given the word space

while my initial results were general about outer space or the concept of space as a physical thing i found a song from the prodigy called "out of space" created in 1992

The Prodigy are an alternate electronic dance group that was formed in 1990, who had started the big beat genere and fathered modern idm music.
the music video largely makes use of quick cuts, stock footage and and playing with exposure to flim. there is a hand made quality to the music video as the band are using a hand held camera changing the exposure to make the film overly yellow then inverting it to make it purple. this is interspersed with stock footage of ostritches and space landings. The video over it's entirety has numerous overlays and screen distortions. The music video also does not have a narritive, all of these elements together with the music that other makes use of sampling, going from a slow reggae beat to dance music gives it a over all unclear or "spacey"feeling. If we where to compare it to The Prodigy's most well known hit "Firestarter":

We can see that although it makes use of many fast cuts and edits, the band has evolved using more of a stylistic approach with it's black and white, using keith Flints new punk look to front and voice the vocals creating more of a narrative. Perhaps it was Firestarters stark, confrontational violence that led it to success as it was a number one in the uk as out of space peaked at only 5 in the charts.

However the chaotic visual language of the "out of space" is visually interesting and it gives it a unique edge against the polish of firestarter, it's low-fi hand held camera brings together the alternative independent feeling of a band that was just starting to get popular.

In my delve into organic research I have found that it has taken me into a interesting place and I can see that sometimes looking into broader search terms can open up different ideas and visual languages.

bibliography:

The Prodigy. 2008. The prodigy - out of space (official video).  [march 1st] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4eav7dFvc8
The Prodigy. 2008. The prodigy - Firestarter (official video).  [march 1st] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmin5WkOuPw
Wikipedia. 2016. The prodigy [online]. [March 1st] available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prodigy

Rachel Reid reaserch and referancing task.

Rachel Reid hosted a talk about research in the library, she talked about how we as students can use the library to our advantage within our research. but how to more easily break down the steps of research and how to obtain valid information.

Search engines like Google may contain many obstructions like the validity of the information and some websites it may lead you to may have a pay wall. The library search engine has no obstructions or pay walls and is viewed as academically sound. The library search engine also covers all of the campuses so there is a wide range of subjects available to the students and some parts of the library may not be available to the public as the library has many historical and out of print texts.

Books and encyclopaedias are a good starting point as they may give varied viewpoints and background information however journals are needed for more in depth investigation into your chosen topic. Journals are more current pieces of writing that can range for magazines to academic journals. Websites not only like OPAC but Oxford art on-line and Lexis library can help into finding what you need for your research.

When researching with a Librarys search engine it is best to start large overveiwing your topic with it's most basic of elements and then narrowing it down the the inclusion more keywords and the help of the search bar functions. 

Looking at your found content brings evaluation of it's own, you must ask yourself what authority does this writer have in their feild and what bias may this writer have. We must also consider how up to date this writing is and if there has been any further developments into the field.

Next we were given a talk on how to properly reference these texts and the importance of referencing the work.

Referancing your research shows that you are understanding of what is outside of your own opinion and demonstrates that by giving credit to the original artist you are not plagiarizing work and allows the reader to verify your work and take up their own research.

Overall I found this talk informative and I hope to use the library to strengthen my research when I am doing both primary and secondary research into my fmp.

Visual research task

these are some of the exercise that I did from "how to be and explorer of the world" by Keri smith

the first exercise was using a small finder window and draw objects that are not easily definable in the finder.

 

i found the task hard at first trying to find things that are not exactly easily identifiable but also visually interesting. and I had an appreciation for the small textures that make up and around my workspace.

the second exercise was to take paint chips and over a week fill the colours out with anything that the colour may have reminded you of. I had trouble finding paint chips and I used a full colour card, however I had fun with this project. Some of the colours where of actual existing items, some of them I had saw and the word had come to mind some of the colours where based off feelings and thoughts.
i've always had a great appreciation for colour so it was lovely to engage with it in a different context and think about how we can interpret colour so abstractly.

fmp planning

this is my fmp planning

Research project proposal

My research project will be focused on how artists use and break conventions of artwork to create and subvert visual language within a work of art. By Investigating and exploring their techniques by creating a number of experiments, I wish to inform myself and others and make use of this information when creating my FMP. 

For my first experiment I will be looking at Charles Burns first book of the “x’ed out” trilogy, “X’ed out” that follows a dream like narrative of a man called Doug and his exploration of his memories and relationship with his girlfriend.

 I would like to analyse how he used iconography and Pop culture references in the book and how that reflected character psyche.  Charles burns used visual language from Tintin as an avatar for the main character in his dream state, using that existing visual language and using it to subvert the themes it’s usually presented with, I want to see if I can take that same kind of language and experiment with the subversion and implication on character psyche.

For my second experiment I would like to give analysis on Pink Floyds 1982 film “The Wall” that follows the life and emotional struggles of the fictional character “Pink Floyd” I will be focusing on the animated pieces within the film overseen by Gerald Scarfe.
 

 I will be looking at the use of symbols used within the film and how it is used to not only reflect the main characters emotional states but states of society. As the film has very little spoken word, it’s mainly conveyed through song and strong visuals. I would like to better understand the techniques used in this film and employ them into my own work though this to give practice into more subtly to the world of the book in creation. 

For my third experiment I would like to look at Scot Mcclouds “understanding comics: the invisible art”

 I feel going over and relearning general visual language on comic book art would be good for the creation of my graphic novel but I would like to focus on Mcclouds theory of how comic books are understood and interpreted to an audience and how this the language of the events can be played with and disrupted. 

My fourth and fifth experiment will be looking at Shaun Tan and his children’s picture book the “The red tree”, which follows a day of a nameless girl having a bad day.

I will be studying tans subtle use of colour and composition within the book and the emotional effect it has on the viewer to better empathise with the main character. With this strong use of colour in this book I would also like to study the motif of red within the book as my fifth experiment, to further this I experiment I would like to study how as an anthropomorphization of hope and how the colour red is used in relation to the worlds composition and relationship with the main character. 

My sixth experiment will be looking at “Fish + chocolate” a book by Kate Brown that is an anthology series on the subject of the relationship of relationships between mother and child.

I would like to analyse how Brown use of panelling and how it shows time moving in the story. For this I would like to focus on the last story of the anthology “Matryoshka” with this analysis I hope I can take the same techniques she has used to inform how to display the concept of time and how to manipulate it.

Bibliography:
Brown. K. 2011. Fish + chocolate. UK: SelfMadeHero
Burns.C. 2010. X'ed out. UK: Jonathan Cape
Tan. S. 2010. The red tree. Australia: Lothian Books
The Wall. 1982. [Film]. Alan Parker: Dir. UK: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Mccloud.S. 2001. Understanding comics: the invisible art. USA: William Morrow Paperbacks

FMP Proposal

My main driving force is behind my illustrative practice is books. My main interest around teen and adult graphic novels, often incorporating adult and surrealist elements into my work, I realised within Sequential illustration that I liked to display conflict on a basis that it is not always solvable or happy. Although I still see myself as a flexible artist I feel as though my artwork is largely gravitated towards more adult audiences. I wish to create a one book that is meant to entertain but also intrigue, my current Synopsis is that the central figure of the story is living her life from the ages of 12 to 24 before her body falls apart and she then returns in the same place she was with her memories of her past life. This book will contain horror and surrealist elements.

For this project I feel it would be most work efficient to work on a digital program however over the course of my research program I want to experiment with materials and style and how this can affect my work. I usually make use of a limited colour pallet within my work, though it may be that I use several colour pallets depending on tone mood or print. 

I will be looking into self-publishing as creating the book myself gives me greater control over the quality of the pages and the sizing of the book, I would like the book to be sized around, 7.5 inches by 5 inches and printed full colour on a matte paper printed at full bleed bar an inch and a half of room for on the inner side of the page where guttering may occur. I will be looking into binding techniques however as it is a book that I wish to publish my by self I foresee it being glue bound.

The module runs for around 27 to 28 weeks and in this time I plan to use the first 4 weeks to gather materials and draft out a general script and flat plan, 2 weeks to make necessary edits to the script and flat plan. I will then spend the next few weeks experimenting with materials and style and colour pallet so that I have a firm understanding of what the overall aesthetic of the book will be. Then in the remaining time I will generate the work. With 2 weeks left over to check over the files and make any changes needed so I can be prepared for promotion and marketing.

For my Research I will be looking into a range of artist’s that can inform the visual language I use in the book and how I can subvert the expectations of that visual language. In my studies I hope to re-introduce myself into the theories behind how an audience perceives sequential art with artists like Kate brown and Scott Mc Cloud. Not only this but familiarizing myself with the ideas of a strong metaphorical and subversive elements within writing with artists such as Gerald Scarfe, Charles burns and Shaun tan. These are the artists that are making the bulk of my research project and to inform my writing, however I will be looking at a multitude of other graphic novel artists to see how they work as well. I hope that the Research project will let me better understand the audience and how they react. In comparison to secondary artists research I will also be looking at primary resources of observational drawing and technique experimentation to strengthen my drawing abilities.