People and Places

[bcuannaward]

Post-modernism

Today's lecture was one of the  final in the series by paul practor,  I found it extremely interesting yet slghtly confusing. Today the subject matter was based around the concept of post modernism, during my foundation course The concept of post modernism had already been briefly described to me therefore this helped me get a grip on it more easily. Based on Paul Practor's opinion it is thought that modernism was set between the 1870-1970 yet postmodernism is  all about interpretation

Key Factors of Modernism:

·         Technological optimism

·         Rationality

·         Universal Truth

·         Absolute Knowledge

·         Definition and boundaries

·         Colonial belief

 During the modernism period people had a more positive outlook on technology and it was believed  to be the way forward, and thought  overcome all conflicts. Postmodernism was overall more doom and gloom; there is no single truth, there are only truths and a truth is myths created by man.

I can link my project to this as my narrative is based around the issue of deforestation, during this era it is thought that our sources and lifestyle is unsustainable.

A bee movie “Attack of the 50ft woman, 1958″ was shown as an example; This featured a very tall woman called Nancy attacking people and causing a threat, This clip was very doom and gloom and didn't really have any logic as it was very dramatic and confusing.  

[bcuannaward]

Here are my dry point etching prints, I experimented in a couple of different ways when printing them for example; adding atmosphere, which I think turned out really well along side mono printing. I think my print was successful are it enables me to create more interesting lines and forces me to draw in a different way to normal.

[bcuannaward]

Here are a couple of photos from my wire drawing, I don't think this model turned out as well as wasn't able to successful capture the texture of the bark, I found this very hard as I was working in 3D. I think this may have been improved if I focuses on just creating the lines instead of over complicating it by trying to make a model.

[bcuannaward]

Final product

When it came to printing out our final product we were really struggling to get the printer to work up at the uni. When we finally did get it to printed out, the quality was really poor. This could have been avoided if we had better time management,as we didn’t really have time to get it printed professional. I decide to take the work home with me and print it out on my printer at home, so overall the quality of the produce isn’t exactly wonderful frankly it a little rubbish. When it came to stabling all the pages together I also came across the a design flaw. I should have ensure that the pages were printed smaller the deeper you got into the book, as the pages began to overlap outside the front cover making the product look rather unprofessional. I had to print the book out on cartridge paper as my printer doesn’t perform well on glossy paper, overall this made our product look rather poorly made and I’m not not very happy with the end product.

[bcuannaward]

Contextual Studies lecture-Protest  2/11/15

Our fifth and final lecture was based around the topic of ‘’Protest’’ Protests are normally extremely direct and straight to the point, the words Empowerment, participation, revolution and activism were highlighted in the lecture as they all relate to the idea of Protesting.

 One of the The first important protests that was mentioned in the lecture was the Teenage rebellion. This started out in the USA; teenagers where given a ‘specific identity’ this identity was best described in films during the 1950’s.  One of the most successful films which portray this concept was ‘Rebel without a cause.' Staring James dean, directed by Nicholas Ray 1955. This film is a great example regarding teenagers forging their own individual identities. One of the scenes in which this concept is partially clear is the one titled  ‘You’re tearing me apart’. This portrayed the idea that the character is being suffocated by his parents and he feels like he is torn between his wants and his parents expectations. However, this scene is then followed by tragedy when a consequence concerning a dare turns into disaster. Towards the end of the film (Race Scene) this shows the consequence of rebellion. p>

 Ai Wei Wei Dropping a Han-Dyansty Urn, 1955 This photograph caused a lot of uproar as it was of a famous Protagonist Ai Wei Wie Droping and smashing an urn that was worth millions of pounds. This was considered an extreme act of vandalism which he got into a lot of trouble for.

 Graffiti was also brought up in our lecture as it can be used as a form of protest as it is considered vandalism. Banksy is a very well know graffiti artist, lots of his pieces are influenced by political and social events. Banksy uses his graffiti and art work to deliver important messages to the public much like a protest.

[bcuannaward]

Contextual studies lecture- Production   26/10/15

In today’s lecture the theme was based around Technical machinery and the idea of production. When Printing was first established around the 19th century, it was very limited. Only text printing was possible and even then, that had limitations concerning typesetting. This resulted in hardly any variation when it came to different type faces. This is when the wooden Letter press was introduced, this aloud there to be a wider variation of fronts and layouts, this became really popular with the entertainment industries as they could print cheap, eye-catching poster to inform people of their events.

 Mass production technologies started to develop and new mechanical processes were introduced. The art scene was also influenced by these changes as the need for commercial art was greater. Photographers started to replace illustrators. As they were able to ‘sells’ products through the creative media of photography.

 However popular mass Production and commercial art started to make people question what the concept of ‘Art actual was. Marcel Duchamp decide to challenge the theory by creating a rather radical piece of art called ‘The Fountain’ which was simply just a mass produced urinal. Even nowadays this piece is still extremely significance when questioning what art actually is.

 With the popularity of mass produced items rising, issues surrounding worker and their equality and human rights were raised, as it was thought that people were being treated poorly; being made to work long hour and being poorly paid, some of the tasks that they were made to complete would become extremely mundane, and repetitive. It was thought that people were being treated like machinery. These issues are still present today in such companies like ‘Amazon’. Staff have monitors that measure their efficiency a little like machines.    

[bcuannaward]

Internet Addict- Fredrick the frog 

Illustrated by James Tustin 

[bcuannaward]

Sex and Love addict- Bertie Bunny 

Illustrationed by Anna Ward

[bcuannaward]

Shopping Addict- Caroline Crow 

Illustrated by Hope Williams 

[bcuannaward]

Finished front cover:

After discussion with my group member, Hope we came to the conclusion that my previous cover design was a little to dark and bright, and you couldn’t actually see our names correctly, so we decided to lighten the background colour slightly. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to get in-touch with our graphic designer so we decided to add a the blurb to this design and use this as the front cover. 

[bcuannaward]

To create the back cover of my book I just simply duplicated the image, as I didn’t really have the time scale to create a completely different back cover; I just deleted the text font and the rabbit silhouette. 

I’m a little worried that my front cover is a little to modern, to try and create texture on my front cover design I decided to duplicate the images and add a textured effect to the images. 

I then adjusted the the transparency of the images, so that they just sat over the top of the duplicates images underneath. This made the front cover look like it had more texture, making the cover look less glossy and contemporary.  

Although this design isn’t brilliant, I suppose it would be okay as a back up just encase our graphic designer doesn’t have time to finish his front cover design and book layout. 

[bcuannaward]

Front cover design: 

Due to group confusion I decided to make a standby cover for our satirical children’s book. As a group we decided we wanted something quite traditional looking and this would be extremely ironic considering the inappropriate content of our book. We were all strongly influenced by the front cover of ‘The Beedle and the Bard’ by J.K Rowling as I love the intricate design of all the plants ,vines, and debris. I also really like the colour scheme and I think the unsaturated tones make the detailed front cover look rather sensitively.

I liked the idea of having vines and plant debris and intricate pattern in an oval, framing the main illustration on the front. To fit our previous color scheme I decided to use gold ink, to draw my own vines for the front cover of my book.  

However down to my bad time management and our break down in group communication I didn’t except to be the one designing the front cover so I didn’t leave myself much time to actually design it. This means I didn't have the time to come up with a intricate hand drawn design. so I just produced a quick ink drawing, a little similar to the front cover above. I then scanned and uploaded it to Photoshop.

I don’t really have very good Photoshop skills, so just about knowing the basics I wasn’t really expecting a brilliant front cover design, but hopeful it will only be a back up and it wont actually be used for the front cover. 

 First of all I used the stamping effect on my ink drawing this aloud me to pick two colours, Keeping the leaves gold, I thought that purple would compliment them and make the intricate vines stand out from the background. 

As I didn’t really have time to draw another picture for my front cover I took one from the book and turned it into a silhouette outline. I thought the hanging rabbit would be one of the best pictures for the front cover as when it’s turned into a silhouette you can still make out what the outline is. I used black as this stand out from the white background making the image look really bold.  

I added the ‘Curious’ in separate text boxes as this gave me the freedom to stagger the text aswell as altering each individual size of each letter to give me more stylized text font. I left the writing in gold so it looks a little like it is growing out of the vines which are framing the hanging rabbit.

To try and make my book look more traditional and old fashioned, I added a white layer on top of my image and changed the transparency so it made the front cover look slightly foggy. I then deleted section of this  with the select tool. I think this is really effective as it makes the front cover look slight dusty aging the book. 

Finally I added all our names to our front cover. I decide black would be the most appropriate colour to use as I didn’t want our names to distract from the gold tittle.   

[bcuannaward]

Experimenting with typography and text dynamics-

Instead of using my acrylic prints I decide just use my inky bunnies that I produced earlier in the project. to make the page look less blank and bring the separate illustrations  together I thought it would be interesting to experiment with the layout of my typography.  Using staggered text to create  dynamic to my story.

Reflection-

I think this works really well as the part in the story that my bunnies were illustrating is when Bertie bunny starts to loose control over his newly formed addiction. I think the dynamic of the text mimics this idea as the size and format of the text all starts to change as the story starts to take a dark turn for the worse.  

[bcuannaward]

Page layout design: As a group we decided that we wanted our book to be quite traditional, with a gold and purple theme. To separate the double page spreed I decide to section the page into two boxes with a gold ink border. I added tea stains to try and age the page along with ink blotches to makes the page look like an aged journal.  

inspired by the Beatrix Potters page layouts, I liked the idea of having the text and illustrations separate as I think it makes the children’s book look more traditional.

To range the dynamics of the text I thought it would be interesting to add an ink written introduction to the stories, as all the stories started with ‘Once upon a time...’ This hand written text suggested that it an old fashioned tale. a little like fairy tales that have been past down through decades. 

experimenting with typography:

I found experimenting with typography hard as I unfortunately have really mess hand writing, Exploring, experimenting, and creating font really isn’t one of my strong skills,however I guess it will have to do. 

Reflection: overall I guess my page design is okay, I know completely nothing about graphics  so having ago at this page design has been given me a little bit of an insight. I think it would have been improved if I had explored more into layouts of books. However, I was really running out of time if I had a realistic time scale it would have been nice to create a more intricate typography a little like traditional fairy tale font.   

[bcuannaward]

Communication Break down

Due to some confusion in the group along with bad communication, our graphic designer appeared to lack enthusiasm concerning our project, I’m not sure whether this is because we misinformed him on his role or if we didn’t give him a realistic time scale due to changing our project over half way through the deadline. With the deadline approaching I was compelled to create a standby vision of the book just encase our final produce wasn’t finished. 

[bcuannaward]

Final design: To overcome this flaw in my illustrated narrative I decided to quickly put to gather a 4th illustration of to rabbits ‘humping’ overall i’m really not very happy with the way this turned out as I think it look really plain and boring. I think this would have been improved if I had put human clothes on them as I think it would have made it more satirical. I think one of the main flaws to this illustration is the print, I think the eyes were smudge to much  making them big and cartoon like, which I think makes my work look extremely childish and unprofessional.  I also forgot to mix my inks again because I was in a rush because of bad time management, meaning the illustration has very clumsy solid black lines, making my work look rather rubbish. The black lines drew away from the colored print underneath. Personal I think my previous humping rabbits with more successful when I produced them in ink, as they were technically better drawn. 

[bcuannaward]

Group Discussion

After discussing with my group I realized there was a giant plot hole in my illustrations, I didn’t illustrate Bertie Having sex with any other rabbits. this is one of the main events in my little tale. So to overcome this I think I might have to quickly make another illustration to insure that the story telling through my pictures makes sense.