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Eleanor Davis

American illustrator and cartoonist who creates work for both adults and children. The pages below are from her book ‘How to Be Happy’. Davis’s style varies greatly in ‘How to Be Happy’, which is comprised of lots of short stories, one of which is ‘In Our Eden’. What drew me to this, was how Davis can create detailed emotive illustrations, using simple of colour as her medium. Her work is expressive, although uncomplicated.

http://www.tcj.com/reviews/how-to-be-happy/ - A Helpful article

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Interaction Design - Week 5 (study trip to the V&A)

5. I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way

An example of a game that fully immerses and makes full use of its aesthetic and design to engage the player is ‘Limbo’, an indie puzzle 2D platform released in 2011 to great reception. It has an extremely flat, black and white ‘paper cut’ aesthetic, with murky backgrounds that emphasis the horror aspects of the game. The game takes place in ‘limbo’ so having the objects and characters appear as shadows behind a murky screen was a great creative decision.

Since this is a one directional side-scrolling platformer where you play as a single character, the simple flat design adds visual clarity and ‘readability’ towards objects and environment that the player must interact with, as well as adding to the unsettling environment. A more colourful and ‘3D’ design would only have distracted from the great level design and tone of the game.

The overall combination of the visuals, great sound design and engaging gameplay make this game one of my favourites.

- Olivia Wu

‘Monument Valley’ is a key example of a game that has an experience heavily influenced by its aesthetics. The purpose of the game is to solve visual puzzles and illusions in order for the central character to progress through the stages. The graphics of the game draw inspiration from architecture across the world, utilising these perhaps familiar shapes to create often abstract structures for the player to explore. This aesthetic was unlike anything seen before in application based gaming, thus drawing people into the world. The game also has accompanying ambient music, further drawing the viewer into the calming world of the game. The game is extremely beautiful, each level offers new, breathtaking designs which, on their own, are enough to encourage people to lose themselves in the game and want to solve the puzzles.

The colour palette of the game has been carefully considered in order to provide the player with the most relaxing experience possible, thus communicating throughout the experience which it aims to offer. The audience it is able to reach is broad, the central character remains almost abstract, she is dressed solely in white and has no defined features. This allows the game to be approached without any preconceived conceptions of who it might be targeted towards. The game was promoted using the same colour scheme and character as featured within the game itself.

- Charlotte Wood

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Interaction of Text and Image

Overexposed - David Fullarton

I chose this collage because I really like how the text gives the image a completely new narrative than the image would have on its own. Adding humour to a photo of rocks is tricky but has been done very successfully here. By alluding to multiple characters, the artist is able to tell a complex story with very few words whilst also hinting at their character through actions. The viewer also gets a sense of the narrator's story through the strong emotions in the text & their relationships to other characters.

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My artist is Eliza Jäppinen. She describes herself as “artist and entrepreneur”, and works mainly in collaboration with the band Studio Killers.

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CHS 11. march

Children's media - play and participation

I found the illustrations for Umberto Ecos “The atom and the general” stunning, very bold and energetic, but to contrast between the subdued use of text and expressive imagery gives it an incredible poetic quality. Also very interested in how this book speaks of brutality and war in a way children can digest and understand, and how to approach subjects that are labeled “adult” with children, further examples are people who make children books about sexual abuse. It is difficult because children are so suggestible and have no way of protecting themselves against information that is too much for them, and with this trend, how do we preserve and protect the innocence of children but also condition them for the very explicit society we live now, with media where you have brutal news, sex etc. so accessible and involuntarily in your face. Are we then moving towards the medieval worlds view on childhood where they were ignorant of it (as was discussed in class). But our age now is very much has an intellectual focus, as in the renaissance where they moved from a God-centric to a man-centric worldview and started, so interesting to learn how childhood was viewed in these periods and reflect on how these may relate to us now.

Also love the medieval depictions of Jesus as tiny full grown man, the embodiment of God on earth is above the conditions of man. Then in the renaissance you see him slowly becoming more childlike in the Mother and Child motives, reflecting how the views of humanity developed. From God to man.

Found this lecture very interesting, and love when we have more proper art history.

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Term 2 CHS - Reportage Illustrations

Straight after the Christmas break, albeit me missing the first session, we were supposedly tasked to create some Reportage Illustrations of Kingston. There was an encouragement to have an accompaniment of sound in order to capture the atmosphere of the place; but due to my lack of social interaction, going out and recording pieces seemed alien to me. Instead, I decided just to do location drawings and used colour to try and evoke the atmosphere at the certain time, by avoiding colours often used in literal interpretation such as a ‘blue sky’ and ‘green grass’. I’m pretty sure I’m much edgier than that, so, ‘red sky’ and ‘black grass’ seemed more appealing at the time, still does in my opinion, but clarity and intent became an issue. Silhouettes of the background and the people had to be distinct, so perhaps greys would play in much better, lighting could still be interpreted differently and much easily if I just stuck to using the more commonly related colour for light such as yellow.

When examples of works were shown, there seemed to be an interest in recording the snippets of conversations from passer-by and this intrigued me due to the ambiguous nature of such topics, reminding much of something like collage, random pieces of information extrapolated from creating an image or work from other pieces. I was definitely surprised by the results, but I was not too keen on this type of project unless it was for more of a literal interpretation or study of sort.

These were some of the pieces I made for the reportage.

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After researching Eleanor Davis comic 'In Our Eden' I was asked to redraw a page from someones else’s chosen comic using Davis' style (as shown above). I was given a page from Brecht Evens comic 'Patherman' (as shown below). I found this a challenge, especially because Evens ignores comic conventions. He doesn't use panels, or guttering, to separate his drawing, instead all his drawing exist in the same frame. They format their comics very different to tell their story.

Brecht Evens ‘Patherman’

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Week 10: 11th March. Play & Participation: Children's Media

This week we focused on a specific target audience of animation and illustration, by analysing work aim at children. We looked at arrange of different media, but in particular how illustrators and animators engage children.

For me an important part of children’s media is character. They shouldn't be to complicated but complicated enough so that a child can feel a connection to them, whether this connection is formed through the child identifying with another child in illustrated books like Snoopy and Charlie Brown or come to adore a dog from Paw Patrol, or dream to be a princess like Cinderella. The most successful illustrations and animations aim at children are ones that make use of children's imagination, making use of play and creativity.

Alice Through the Ages

Alice is a good example, in my opinion, of how media aimed at children has changed through the ages. The characters and narratives are the same in essence, but the medium and style in which these are depicted has changed dramatically. The original illustrated book has been adapted into an animation by Disney and then into a film in 2010, during this time colour has been added, forms simplified and the narrative twisted to suit a modern audience.