Connor in 2 Dimensions

[2dconnor-blog]

Scale and proportion in ads

Contemporary ads have begun to take on a new form. No longer are ads bound into representing the product they are trying to sell. Modern ads have begun to stray away from the representational. Ads do not try to sell you the product by showing you how shiny or good it is. Instead they show you how cool it makes you feel or makes you look. Ads sell experience, they do this by distorting reality, trying to show the audience the possibilities of the product no matter how out of reach they are. This  is the case with this Sony PS2 ad. This ad is trying to sell a product that is only mentioned in text on the small upper right corner of the image. The ad is not selling the product it is selling the experience of the product . 

Sony's ad for the "experience of the PS2" creates these representations by messing around with the proportions of the scene. An entire Goldberg-esque factory mimicking the senses has been put inside a persons head. The ad to the eccentric nature of it all the factory is mad of tiny human parts such as a tongue being a conveyor belt or a heart being squeezed to create a furnace. This choice of proportion and creative rearrangement of the human body intrigues the viewer. It is exciting the viewer will then look for more answers in the ad only to find the PS2 logo. It is an effective marketing strategy as it will now cause the viewer to search for more answers, spreading the word that the PS2 is interesting. This effectiveness is only achieved because of the lack of informative text and the amount of neutral space the figure is give.

If the ad incorporated more informative text or even an exciting punchline about the PS2 the ad would be greatly diminished. The audience would be given to much information to be intrigued or would be turned off at a punchline and would know that the ad is trying to sell things to them. This ad needs its passive mysterious quality. It entertains the audience and interests them, it is not shoving its self down the  audiences throat. this problem would also arise if the image was more cluttered. The passive background allow full focus on the scene. It creates great emphasis as it is the only thing other than the PS2 logo to entertain the eye. This focus create a deeper intrigue of the image thus increasing curiosity between the logo and the image. 

The creativity in this ad proves that just by being intriguing and connecting that to your product makes for a successful ad.

[2dconnor-blog]

This piece known as "Wave of the Future" is a homage to Hokusai's "Great Wave off of Kanagawa". The artist has morphed the original wave like texture into a pixelated landscape in to a webform of the original. Thus the artist has gone from the implied original texture, to a pixelation of texture to a smooth webform.

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In order to create texture on a 2d plane one must think about value and color relation. How will colors look if they are made out of a certain material and how will that material be affected by light. Will it be matte, will it reflect, will it shine? How is the light affected by the small patterns of shapes in a texture?

This illustration of a Red Dragon from Dungeons & Dragons serves as a great example for understanding the questions of texture and how it works.

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Perhaps the most historically famous employer of color mixing techniques is George Seurat. In his 1884 piece "Bathers at Asnieres", Seurat uses a multitude of techniques in order to combine the colors on the canvas. One such techniques was balaye a way of using a flat brush to apply paint in a criss cross pattern. If the painting is viewed from closs up on could see the multitude of colors that lie in the part that combine together at a distance to crate this image.

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In order to achieve unique and interesting effects with color many different color mixing techniques have been developed. Roy Lichtenstein is well known for his use of benday dots in fine art. The technique is to use small dots of color over another so that when one steps back from the piece the dots blend into the back color to create a new color. This technique is often used in newspaper comics and was used in order to create mare colors form the originally limited palette.

This is Liechtenstein's Piece "Thinking of Him"

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My color blending project. I had forgotten to upload it.

This project was very interesting and fun. I loved seeing the image evolve from a priceless mess into it’s true likeness. I feel that this project taught me about layering and color experimentation.

Ill edit in a better photo in a bit.

[2dconnor-blog]

Color choice is important in a work. It can be used to show presence or importance. Texas Artist Phil Taylor understands this. Taylor's American Fallen Soldiers Project is a way to memorialize fallen soldier. He capture their likeness in black and white yet leaves their iris colored and they are contrasted against the colored background of the American Flag. this is used to signify that although their bodies are gone their pride and souls are still here. Taylor's work is a great example of deciding whether to use color or not and what significance it could have.

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Color in image can be used to great effect to generate mood. Pablo Picasso's 1930 "The Old Guitarist" generates a mood of depression and sadness. It does this through its use of cool blues and grays in order to sedate the viewer.

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Emphasis in a Burger King Ad

The main point of an advertisement is to sell a product to the consumer. The easiest way to do this is to create an advertisement that focuses on the product that you wish to sell. This 1976 Burger King ad has done just that.It subliminally makes the viewer focus on the food and logo.

The primary way of doing this was to create a frame to focus the viewer's eyes on the image. a blue frame is put around the central image in order to contrast and amplify the central images main color scheme of a warmer orange. Next sight lines are established by the subjects eyes and hands that point directly to the food. Also apparent in the image are many smaller burger king logos. One above the subjects heads, one on the cub and two on the wrappers which are obscured by white text. Thus an entire image has been created that zeroes in on the burger and the expression of joy on the faces of the two subjects in an attempt to make the association that Burger King burgers taste good. Now the image continues through text to the second focal point, the logo.

The Burger King logo is also a focus point because of how it is presented in the lower half of the image. The logo is put half way through a sentence, interrupting it and causing the viewer to associate "Have it Your Way" with the logo.  It also helps that the orange logo is contrasted on the blue back round.

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Zhang Huan's ash painting "Free Tiger Returns to Mountains" is an example of howe value is used correctly in a black and white image. By using value correctly the subject is rendered with brighter highlights of parts that are hit with light and with black shadows indicating an absences of light. By using this technique ones figures will not lose the 3 dimensionality of their form when transferred to a 2d surface.

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Edward Hopper's 1942 masterpiece "Nighthawks" is a master example of using color value in painting. Hopper's intelligent use of value throughout the piece opens the painting up giving it a 3rd dimension. Figures and rooms are given space and depth. they do not blend into each other and instead are their own separate entities. 

[2dconnor-blog]

Tom Whalen has created a 4 piece tribute to the Beatles "Yellow Submarine". His tribute uses rhythm to move the viewers eye from panel to panel. the piece alternates using light and dark elements, yet it does not strictly adhere to this pattern. This allows many vibrant colors to still be expressed within the construct of the rhythm.

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Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction movie poster uses text to not only inform but to generate a nostalgic sense. Though the movie was releases in 1994 this poster uses a retro 70's color and font to generate the feeling of the mid twentieth century. The retro color and style of font also create an almost dirty feeling adding to the nostalgic sense of the film.

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Text can be used to as more than just a signifier for a word. It can also be used to show emotion from its design. The weapons manufacturer logos from Borderlands are great examples of this. Each manufacturer's logo has a unique feel to it that is attained through the manipulation of its text. For example the manufacturer Jakobs capture an old-timey western feel through the use of serifs and wide vertical stresses. 

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Joseph Aaron Segal's , the Pretty Snake designer, oversized rainbow cat sweater is an interesting example of the use of rhythm in fashion. The sweater uses two forms of rhythm to move the eye throughout the main design. The first form of rhythm is the alternating bands of color found throughout the sweater which move the eye both vertically ,as it tries to figure out the rhythm, and horizontally across the bands. The second form of rhythm shown is progressive. The black pattern of the cat is repeated and shrunken as it moves up the sweater. The image of the cat uses negative space to allow the bands of color from the sweater to show through. This along with the sequential rhythm of the shrinking design moves the eye up and throughout the design.

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Ever since seeing space on the syllabus as a design element I immediately thought of the cover art for both Shadow of the Colossus and Ico. Both covers use scale to develope space in their respective scenes. SotC has a smaller character a little bit in front of a large dark giant figure, which in turn is in front of an even larger castle.

Ico does the same thing with buildings and shadow. the repetition of the light and shadow across the arches opens up the space, instead of it being solid the pattern is then connected/ continued with the building in the back, while the focal characters are put in the middle of the space to be focused on. 

P.S. The Ico eu/jp cover art is a homage to Nostalgia of the Infinite by Giorgio de Chirico 

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"Human Shapes"

A series representing shape.

Digital collage pasted on bristol paper with colored marker.