#surrealisation

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I’m super tired and feel sick so if any of this doesn’t make sense, I’m sorry.

This is my final exhibition presentation. I made two separate ones for each idea of mine and joined them together. For the Amanda Apple one, I couldn’t really decide what font to do for the title so I just wrote it out kinda small in the middle which I think looks nice because it’s very minimal. I wanted everything to be on a black background, as I usually do, so the colours would pop out. I put the character design I was working on, on the next page as well as a very brief description in the same handwritten font as the title. I really like how the characters look all lined up like that. Then I put a quick little inspiration page with images I found on google of a simple storybook exhibition, I actually couldn’t find much, or at least ones that weren’t (understandably) super childish/over the top complicated, I just want(ed) it to be simple. On the fourth slide, I used the templates we were given to show how I would set the space up and labeled it. 

The surrealization project (I changed the s to a z for an extra special...uh... uniqueness?) had a much better designed title which I talked about previously. I really like it. I added the illustrations I did on the next slide, as well as a slightly more descriptive annotation because there was a lot of space and I wanted to build up to the next page by explaining the day and night thingy. The next slide had the illustration I did for what I wanted the final exhibition to look like (not the layout, the final piece) I showed what I wanted it to switch between as a kind of night mode/day mode thing. Then I showed my suggested layout design which is very minimalistic and a list of materials I’d need.

This presentation didn’t go very well for me, it was the first time in a long time where I felt super anxious to speak in front of the class (which was my default reaction last year) I didn’t get to properly explain any of the slides because I just wanted it to be over quickly. I can also vividly remember snapping with my fingers in the awkward silence which made me cringe for days afterward. Oh well, hopefully it’ll be better next time. I was asked one question by Jerin which was which of my ideas would I chose if there wasn’t enoguh space for both. I replied that I would probably choose the Surrealization one because I thought it was super cool and also I am constantly worried about not being able to complete the Amanda Apple one in time or to a standard I’d even want anyone to see.

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A progress gif for the title slide in my final exhibition proposal presentation of my surrealization project. I was going to hand write it at first but then found a nice 3D font which I used instead. I switched the Z around to make it slightly out of place which was actually intended to represent what the word means and I feel a little silly about it but I should be confident in my creative decisions as my tutors always say. I added eyelashes in the U to show a closed eye (going to sleep) and made the O into an open eye (dreaming). Finally I made it have a glitchy look by making it pink and blue and adding another white one on top so it would look clear and stand out. This is probably the most I’ve thought about a title/ typography ever lol. I like it a lot. Would be 100 times more impressive if I made the font too of course.

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This was my progress when I drew out what I want my final exhibition to look like. I drew the box and basic outlines first, added grass, the computer, played with the lighting, added vines on top and little fireflies for an extra glow. Of course we can’t have fireflies but I felt the need to add them there. You’ll see in the final presentation that I also added flowers and a “night mode” version, for that I had to go to each layer and change the settings in the colours and make it a blue hue. I really like how this turned out, The final one probably wont be basked in a heavenly glow but anything like this would be okay. I have no idea how I’m going to be able to pull this off with like -£3 in my bank account but maybe I’ll just rampage into my back garden and, to my families dismay, completely destroy it/ steal all the grass and flowers and cart that all into college in a suspicious black bin bag. Of course it would rot before we’d actually hold the exhibition and it’ll all have been worthless, but that does sound kinda fun, plus perhaps the expired foliage would actually better represent the aesthetic of my dreams... hmmm.

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Here is another GIF for my second illustration based on my dreams. This is a reaaally frequent dream scene. Basically, it’s a broken, overgrown fountain at the centre of school/college (which is a mixture of every place of education I have been to since I was a child). It’s surrounded by windows but I think I have seen it without them too. There is usually some light coming from above which I assume is moonlight. It’s way more mossy and overgrown then this and I don’t think there is a checkerboard floor but I gave myself some creative allowances for aesthetic purposes. Like with the last one, I found an image to trace over, did that, and then created the rest of it myself because it’s a very specific scene. It was all blue originally because that’s actually what it looks like in the dream but it didn’t look as nice drawn so I changed it to green. Then I just added the moonlight and plants/moss and that’s pretty much it. I like this one a lot too. It is a pretty good representation of the dream scene but obviously also not like it at the same time. I have no idea where the fountain came from though because none of my schools had one. I did visit Trafalgar square though when I was living in London so maybe that’s it. I haven’t had any of my usual dreams since having this idea for FMP which is kinda really sad and I don’t know what happened. I miss them.

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I really wanted to illustrate a piece based on my dreams (which was my original final piece thought for this idea) so,,, I just did. In one of my dreams, I was in my room and the lighting was purple from my LED light bulb, but there was a yellow glow coming from somewhere. That colour combination has always made me feel very nostalgic and happy for some reason, so I thought I’d draw it. I didn’t want to use a picture of my actual room because it is pitifully cramped and not aesthetically pleasing in the slightest (I share a room with my two younger sisters, it barely fits two bunk beds, yup I’m almost 21 and I sleep on a bunk bed, nuthin wrong with that... top bunk if you were wondering lol). I found this nice bedroom with a desk in front of the window which is where mine is (under the bunk bed ahaha) and just outlined it quickly, removing a lot of the extra stuff because I wanted it to be minimal. I have done a lot of room studies so understanding perspective and furniture has gotten a lot easier for me so this didn't take too long. The I originally made the room pink just because the colour tool was set to red already and I wanted to get the base colours down. I changed them to purple and lowered the brightness so the window light would appear to glow, added the light in the window and a shadow for the chair which was surprisingly the hardest part. After that, a quick couple plants and the clouds + the stars and moon were sprinkled on there. Oh yeah also this style was inspired by the artist we looked at last year who I have forgotten the name of again,,, uhhhh George Greeves yeahhh! One of my favourite artists. Anyway, I really like how this came out, I think its pretty and also does remind me of my dream.

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On this terribly pictured sketchbook page, I quickly jotted down some of my most reoccurring dreams.

I’m just going to briefly type out what I’ve written above and explain things.

Places I often visit in my dreams:

1- Mixture of all my schools with a fountain in the middle. This is the one I visited the most in my dreams, and it has progressed as I grew and went to different schools. Right now, the layout is like my primary school on the outside, my secondary school on the inside and the people that are there are usually from college although old classmates will randomly pop in there sometimes. In the middle there is an overgrown old fountain that doesn’t work surrounded by big windows that you can walk through. It’s pretty cool and I wish I could just take the image out of my head and paste it here.

2- Road to primary school with a hole in front of it. A very vague description there, me. On the way to my primary school, in London, there was a church we’d have to go past to get there. Just outside of it, there was a little area where we walked to get through and it was not closed off completely but just had walls around it to show it was the outside of the church. For some reason that scene has stayed the exact same in my head, except! The is a big hole sowing the pavement crumbled and the earth underneath just in front of it. I think that’s really random but super cool.

3- Mall with 10000 escalators. Mostly it is a mall but it has been an airport a few times, however there are always loads of zigzagging, overlapping escalators and I can literally never get to where I want to go. Some of them are dangerously fast and others will just not let me off of them and I keep going up and up on to the next one. It’s so weird.

4- Hospital with 10,000 elevator floors, behind a clothes shop. This one is interesting. Most elevators in my dreams have a ridiculous amount of floors to choose from but whats funny about this particular hospital is that you have to go through a clothing shop to get to it. I’ve drove through there in a car which is weird and funny. Seriously what does all of this stuff mean.

5- Park behind a line of trees on the far end of a field. Sometimes I can just see the trees because I’m further down the field and sometimes I’m walking down a path to get to the park. I’ve hung there a few times, sometimes with my sisters.

6- Funfair. (daytime and nighttime) (horror house) This one is crazy are you ready for this. This has been a reoccurring dream since i was a child. Sometimes I’d see it in the distance from my window all lit up on the horizon, sometimes I’d be walking through the actual funfair (been there in the night with the lights on and on a separate occasion in the day time with the lights off). But there used to be a place in there which was a kind of horror house thing that I’d dream of when I was really small, it would scare the crap out of me and I didn’t dream about it for a good few years until more recently I went there again and it was closed off with cobwebs and stuff like it had been abandoned for a really long time, and didn’t look so scary anymore! Mad.

&- Road with a roller coaster at the end of it. This is the only one that I have gotten from living in Birmingham I’m pretty sure. There was a road we’d go down, when I visited here from London, as a kid that would pass Star City. That turned into a road with a scary glowing roller coaster at the end of it that I would just have to deal with going through every time. It would tickle and I didn’t like it.

Thinking about all of these things is actually kinda insane. How did my mind do that? I’ve mentioned this before I think but I’ll say it again just briefly. I unfortunately have not had any dreams like this for a really long time, a couple months. I don’t know why or what happened but I really miss them. I’m just grateful that at least I have my memories of them if I never visit them again. Most days now, I wake up and can’t remember what I dreamed about at all. And if I do, they’re not as cool or nostalgic as these. Sad...

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pt 2 :)

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Then here are some surrealist artists I’ve looked into for my dreams exploration project. Also in no particular order. Also to make it easier to discern the two projects, I’m going to be annotating anything about my “dream” project with a black background because it’s like the night mode version of the other one... yea