Collage and Body Language!

I've been looking at ways to experiment with images and tried stitching the sewing machines. I used photographs I'd taken which focus on people's facial expressions, so I thought stitch would be a really interesting way to explore those shapes. I blew the photographs up to A3 on the photocopier, then layered a variety of grounds on the back to give it a more interesting look. I stitched over the lines on the photograph so that the white thread would create the shape on the other side. I did this intentionally to the black paper image, however when I did it to the brown paper image, I meant to use black thread, but the light thread actually looked quite interesting, as more focus was put on the puncture holes from the needle, which created a new shape in itself.

Once completed I cut out some type then added it to the first image, I'm quite happy with how it turned out as it seemed to compliment the image quite nicely, the composition was very well balanced as well. I used "you what?!" for the type as it seemed to voice the emotions evident on the character's face. 

Image Experimentation

I've been struggling with ideas on my current focus of "Body language" again, It feels quite hard to make an immediate appropriate response! So to stop being in such a rut I decided to play around with some images based on the more literal sense of a message. I did some first hand drawings of and old telephone with stick and ink, as well as pencil, wax crayon and graphite, the idea being that a phone is another way of interpreting a message, albeit more physical than interactive.

I really enjoyed experimenting with the media, the stick and ink gave a really nice loose feeling to an otherwise accurate drawing, as well as the combination of green and black making the image stand out more.   The composition was quite interesting as I based the phone right in the middle of the page, but it looked too empty on the paper so I wrote on certain bits of type from the phone itself, e.g. "ABC" "123" (dialing digits), this gave it a more graphically focused composition; I'm really interested in the use of type and image.

I added this because I thought braile would be quite interesting to look at, the use of symbols as words / letters.

Primary Research: Photographs

I decided to look at body language as another way of communicating messages, I like because it's less literal than something like text messages, it leaves a lot to be understood on the reader's part. So in response to this I decided to collect some first hand photographs of people in different stances, I find the face the most interesting area to look at as there are a lot of expressive features such as the eyebrows, eyes and mouth.

The body posture in this photo is quite suggestive to feelings of boredom and frustration.

Research

Sorry for late updates, things have been a bit mad lately!
I've been struggling to get a good beginning on the project so far, when I'm trying to produce images it just feels as if I've got massive mind block!  In order to get some more inspiration for possible ideas I've been doing some research into designers that I find relevant to my theme.


In a crit at college it was suggested that I try re-working photos, perhaps with vulgar slogans or suggestive phrases, so that seemingly innocent photos now have a sense of dark humour to them! I had a look around and found Barbara Kruger, her images fit perfectly to the idea of misjudged context, the brash type changes the whole context of the photo!

Barbara Kruger:

I like how her work is quite challenging to mainstream ideals, it makes you double take as you expect the photo to be quite positive at first, but the phrases really add a darker meaning to the images.

I tried something similar with a photograph that I'd taken of a girl laughing hysterically, then with red vinyl tape I outlined her figure and wrote the word "UNHAPPY" across the image (I would have uploaded a photo but my scanner's broke again!) it was a quick experiment and I'm not too happy with the aesthetics of it but I do like the idea behind it.

Final Major Project

So at college we've started our "Final Major Project", it's a 10 week project as part of our confirmatory stage, in this we choose our own theme for the project and must carry out research, that should lead to a thought out final response. 


I had trouble picking a theme for mine as I didn't want to seem too cliché, in the sense that people could instantly guess what it was, I wanted there to be some guesswork to it. At first I looked at stuff like "Street Art", I really like the rebellious of it, that it challenged the mainstream, however it didn't feel like I could really take this as my own without copying someone else. Then I moved onto "shock tactics", the idea being that I could really communicate something to a view, something that would really catch their attention, maybe not always in a good way either... Again it just seemed as if it had already been done a million times before.


Eventually I came up with the theme of "Messages", I really like this idea and got quite excited about it, it's broad enough so that I can look at literal means i.e. phones, email; but I'm more interested in the less obvious things, the way we get messages across, how do we interpret those messages? I think it ties nicely into my previous ideas as it takes the "interpret" aspect from both street art and shock tactics, it's more about HOW we look at things than actually looking AT them.

Gary Oldman, Pretty in Ink

Here's another one of my final ideas for the Little White lies Brief that we've recently finished, I'm really happy with how this turned out, the contrast of  the black and white works really nicely. Compared to some of my other ideas the form of this image is much less structured, because I drew the original image from 2ft away with a stick in ink, the portrait has a loose/flowing feel. I used courier (Again) but this time I drew it freehand in ink onto cardboard then scanned it in, I wanted the text to retain some of it's hand drawn feel, as the shapes aren't all perfect but I still cleaned a lot of the bleed up on photoshop; I think it's worked rather nicely.

The main idea for this image was to make it all a bit of a jumble, because the film's about secrecy I wanted the text to appear coded/embedded, as if it's emerging from the image of Oldman.

Little White Lies D&AD Brief

So here's a couple of finished designs that I've been working on as part of the Little White Lies brief we were given at college; The brief was part of the D&AD student competition, the target, to create an illustration of selected film's main characters. The choices were Super 8, Drive, Tree of Life, Black Swan & Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy... I chose to do Tinker, Tailor.. because I'd seen the film beforehand and thought it was a brilliant film, both in cinematics and the plot, there was a lot of moodiness in the film and the main character Gary Oldman was quite interesting as the character 'Smiley'. Because the chosen brief was illustration focused, with the final design needing to be a portrait of the main character and our class were specialized in graphics we were allowed to deviate from the original format and change the focus onto key objects / scenes in the movie; rather than a facial shot.

I wanted to keep the colour pallet quite dark as this tends to be the overall mood throughout the film, so I've mainly used monochrome within my designs, however I may redevelop some ideas to include colour. A key aspect I wanted to include was the use of 'Courier' typeface, with courier being a more computer friendly version of original typewriter, I thought this would work nicely in my ideas, as well as being able to play around on the actual typewriter! The font is a key part of the design because typewriters are often associated with formal documents in the era that the film was set. Overall I've really enjoyed this current project as it's steered more towards the structural / editorial style of graphics that I prefer.