Appendix

Appendix

Anon, Creative Art Resumes., 2009.  http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/05/30-artistic-and-creative-resumes/

Carlin, Laura., Illustration from The Iron Man. http://www.heartagency.com/artist/LauraCarlin/gallery/4

Gaviria, Duvan., 2011. Image of the evolution of man, illustrator unknown, found on http://natureanditstransformation.blogspot.co.uk/

 Hannah, Jonny., - A Bed Of Sea & Dead Men's Suits - http://www.heartagency.com/artist/JonnyHannah/gallery/1

Ingman, Bruce., 2008, The Pencil

Lippman, Peter., Paradise Parking collection. http://www.peterlippmann.com/lippmann3/menu.html  

 Rosen, Jonathan., Time Magazine, Jan 2008; An army of Chinese hackers target American military and infrastructure

 Rosen, Jonathan., NOV. ISSUE, INC. MAGAZINE, 2009; Pages and Spreads from YOUR BODY INC. /

 Rosen, Jonathan., NY Times OP/ED 10/11/11; Prostrate screening

 Rosen, Jonathan.,The Buddhist Review. 2010; Pages for article on Trans-humanism for Tricycle Magazine | 

Shushkov,  Andrey., 2010. Invention of Love - Animated Short Film -    http://a-shushkof.livejournal.com/

Siegel, Steven., Big, With Rift 2009 DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum Lincoln, MA paper http://www.stevensiegel.net/portfolio.html

Tsukamoto, Shin'ya., 1989; Testuo the Iron Man Movie

 Wichmann, Siegfried., 1999. Japonisme : the Japanese influence on Western art since 1858. London; Thames and Hudson .pg 140

Other used Blog Links

http://www.natureisawesome.net/nature-consumes-radioactive-chernobyl/

http://www.damninteresting.com/the-smoldering-ruins-of-centralia/

Title Font by BigYellowBiohazard

Textures by changeweaver

Current CV

Conclusion

I find it difficult to write a conclusion on this project when The deadline for the Presentation document is before the Degree Show. However, I will list my current thoughts and status.

Having had a tutorial form Ceri on Monday that left me incredibly stressed I am at a stage where my book is still in production. The majority of the images need to be altered in some way, so I am not at a point to say how I think my final piece has turned out.

The place I am at at the moment, I feel, is promising. I think with the adjustments Ceri Mentioned my narrative should reflect the perfect atmosphere I was trying to achieve, and I feel the images, once fully completed will be successful. As I said before though, I don't wish to speculate too much as they could be a complete disaster.

My thoughts on the writing of this blog are mixed. as previously mentioned, at first, I found it incredibly useful to organise my thoughts and look into my research. however, as the project moved on, I found I was spending more and more time trying to keep on top of uploading images and writing my thoughts and analysis of them. I feel that at only 20% of the final grade, the work load outweighs the outcome. I feel like I have spent as much time working on this presentation document as I have my Final Major Project. it is very difficult at time to articulate exactly what you were thinking at the time of producing something, and I feel a lot of my posts have been nothing but a stream of conciseness. Where as some of the posts may be insightful and informative, others are just confusing.

As a whole, we have had a lot of time to complete this project, but there have been so many other outside distractions, including the presentation document, that have left me stressed, confused and generally frustrated. I feel the amount of lectures and seminars we had to attend during this period was a little too much, and would probably have been better if they had been evenly distributed throughout the year.

The same goes for getting a portfolio together, I think it is something that should have been mentioned at the end of the second year and something that was created gradually, then, when we get to this point, all we have to do is drop in some of our latest and greatest images.

The self Promotion was a great exercise, but, as I mentioned before, I spent far too much time working on it and I feel that the early development of my final major project may have suffered for it. I think that if the self Promotion had been a part of the options project, it would have taken some of the load off for this one.

Lastly I would like to comment on how we have been fund raising for the London Show. I feel that the London show is very important, but there have been instances where organising, attending and coming up with ideas have taken over work on the project. I know that some other students who were very active at the begining of the term in fund raising felt that their projects suffered for it. At the end of the day, that was our choice to have a London show, so I can't really complain.

All in all, I have felt very stressed throughout the whole term. I appreciate that it is a stressful time for everyone, but I also feel that the work load has been incredibly large, with so many things to think about it has left me incredibly stressed to the point I am breaking out in eczema, something I haven't had since I was 10.

My conclusion at the moment seems like a lot of anger and negative points. It is not necessarily the case, but it is reflecting how I currently feel.

I know for a fact that I have learnt a lot from this project, and I am pleased with the developments I have made as an Illustrator.

The self Promotion section really made me think about how to represent myself, and also how to present my images to perspective art directors. The feedback we received on the critique was incredibly useful, and it is something I will consider more carefully in the future. It was also useful to research into art directors and decide what exactly we wanted to illustrate.

I was pleased that we had the experience with the exhibition in the Bargate Gallery. It was great to go into an empty room and make it our own. I learnt some valuable lessons on how to hang and present my work, and hopefully this will show in the Degree Show.

As for my project as a whole, despite the stress, I have had some real fun creating images. I was surprised at the direction I took in the end, it was very different form my original statement of intent, and my time plan pretty much fell to pieces within a few weeks! Perhaps I should have kept revising my plan to eliminate the stress, but I felt that setting myself certain targets was more realistic, as you never know where your sketching may take you that day!

I will continue to update this blog after the hand in date, as I would like to see the presentation document as a whole, finished piece in itself. I think it would also be a good idea to add an afterword to this conclusion once my final book is put together!

Week 13 Summary

I have worked long and hard on the images I was intending for my final piece, however I am at a point now where they require a significant amount of editing. I am unhappy at this stage as I had thought I would finish by today, but this is not the case. At least I am in a place that is only editing and production.

Tutorial Ceri

Today we discussed a lot about my project. In short, there were a few points raised that need to be changed;


Remove back ground paintings
Use only collage
Make the scenes darker
Use more of my painted textures
Change the mechanical parts in the figures
Crop more into the figures
Change how I have proposed to set the text
Find a real typewrite instead of using a font
Shorten the story and text.

Right now I am pretty stressed. I know it's not the case, but it feels like I have to change everything I have worked on. I am sure the points raised will improve the overall look of the book, and on some I completely agree. But it is hard to take it all in, I hope I get it right this time round.

Some of the Pages created for the final book

Page 1

I have been steadily creating pages for the final book with all of the components I have made throughout the project. I have been layering images in Photoshop, like a collage, to try and achieve a collage effect. 

I feel page 1, however is far too busy, it's like I have all of these pieces to collage with and I have used them all in one go! I will edit this later and make a more simple version!

Page 2

I feel Page 2 is more successful, I have attempted to keep the figure quite abstract for the moment as a silhouette, I hope as the viewer turns the page they will realise that the figure is the mechanical man. It is possible that it is too un-recognisable, perhaps if I refined the silhouette with one of my paper cuts as opposed to the stencil I have used, it may work better.

Page 3 is the introduction of the mechanical man. I have layered some of my photographs of machine parts on top of him, using him as a container. I am please with how the overall image looks, though perhaps it is not dark enough?

Week 12 Summary

This week I worked on the images in Photoshop. They required a fair amount of adjusting, rotating and re-sizing. Some more examples of completed pages will follow shortly!

Photoshop collage

I also completed some more collages in order to give my book a more diverse range of buildings.

Collage to use for buildings

Page 9

Image 1

Image 2

Page 9 was completed in the same way as Page 8, however, I think the images are more successful. Image 3 shows the figure filled with wires and other components, all of a sudden he looks more like a robot. I think i will change the rest of the figures to look like this one.

Image 1 I have layered the back of a speaker cone over the figure. It makes the image more abstract, but also, I feel, adds to the industrial feel all the more. I will consider dropping in more of these types of images throughout the book from now on.

Image 3

Page 8

This is the initial image for the concertina pull out page. I am really pleased with how it turned out so far, though I think there needs to be more black at the bottom of the image.

So far it looks pretty close to what I had intended. I will however, go into more detail on my second post about Page 9.

Work in Progress with Derek

Today was a short work in progress, we briefly discussed the direction my project was going in, everything seemed positive.

More Collage

I felt that my previous collages had been successful so i set about creating some more. This time I didn't paint into them, I wanted to keep the pieces seperate so I could potentially use different sections and different techniques viw photoshop. As mentioned before I have created a set of tones to help contrast images, it will be interesting to see how they come out!

Fourth Mock up book / plan

Another story board. I edited some of the pages and re-worked my text. This is my fourth mock up book now, I hope that it will be one of the last until I finish this project!

Week 11 Summary

This week I created a lot of textures. Pete made me aware in my tutorial that it was time to really start putting everything together. I have to say though i am happy that all components are complete and finished ready to drop into the final book!

Tutorial with Pete

Pete gave me an artist too look at, and helped me make the final decision to use collage for my book. Though I had enjoyed some of the other production methods I had used througout the project, we felt that using my photographs was the best way forward.

Forground paintings

As disscussed earlier, I created paintings to layer in photoshop as background and forground images. I had hoped that they would give me enough stock images to create some diverse and interesting landscapes. Once again, the issueI have is that i am concerned that they are not straight enough, however I will address this at a later date.

Pale Background paintings

during a previous tutorial I was told to try and create more depth with my city-scapes. I felt the best way to do this was to paint the backgrounds and foregrounds seperately, as with other images when painted together I always seemed to make a mistake, of the ink would bleed. Although the ink bleed looked interesting, it was not exactly what i was looking for.
I felt that by painting each individual layer separately, I would be able to scan them into photoshop and layer them via the computer. This would give me more room for mistakes and also i can play with darker and lighter contrasts.

Sky Textures

Today i was creating lots of textures to use as backgrounds. I managed to create a large amoount and variety to enable me to choose the best ones to use in my book. The were created with ink and water, like earlier examples of smok I had painted. I feel they are successful in creating a brooding and dark atmosphere.

Lights and Explosions

I painted some potential 'lights' for my light house flare. I used inks because I like the translucent effect the have. The red came out as a really vibrant magenta, and, to be honest, I think I prefer this colour to a brilliant red. it is slightly different to what you would expect from light, or and explosion, so I think I will stick with it!

The explosion images were, like the other textures I have created, made with water and ink. I love that they have an organic feel to them, yet also a raw energy, as the mark making is out of my control once the ink touches the water. I think this will work well with my idea of an 'organic' looking explosion!

Textures

I created a lot of textures using ink and water. The idea was to create a moody looking skyline to give my narrative the right atmosphere. I had previously used the same method to create smoke clouds from factories and so felt that it was a good idea to produce a lot of images so I could pick and choose the best looking ones. The majority I created will be useful in someway, I hope that when combined with my collage it will help achieve the atmosphere I intended.

Week 10 Summary

I created some interesting experiments this week, working on the background scenery, textures and depth.

I feel like my weekly summaries have become redundant now. I will keep them short, as the information needed is within all the posts before. I don't want to be just repeating what I have previously said. However I will still link to each week for easy of navigation.

Collage

Image 1 - Photo collage and ink

Image 2 - Photo collage and ink

Image 3 - Photo collage and ink

Having collected a body of photographs from my research I decided to create my own buildings out of pieces from the photographs. Here are some of the results. I feel they have an incredibly science fiction feel about them, even though all of the parts used would be considered old technology. I think they have the perfect look about them to be buildings within Melpomenia. I painted some buildings around the collages to give them a better grounding within their intended surroundings. I Think that in itself this technique works as it gives depth to the images. I will now draw from these collages and see how that works as I am not sure that the photography will fit in with the rest of my intended designs. However, i will not disregard the possibility that the project could evolve further.

Ink, collage and stencil

Image 1, ink and paper cut

Image 2, Ink and paper cut

Image 3, Stencil

 Image 1 is further experiment from one of my earlier sketches. (See earlier post) I decided to cut the buildings out of black paper and collage them onto the ink painting of the smoke. I had previously thought it would give the image a more graphic edge in order to break up the painting within the narrative. I think it works well, the buildings have a definite man made edge to them in contrast to the organic freedom of the smoke.

Image 5 , stencil

 Image 2 I decided to take the off-cut of the previous buildings and collage them over a quick painting. This was to attempt to create some white space with a similar clean edge. Again I think this is effective (though the bottom could be cropped a little more). I feel with these two techniques I will be able to create dynamic looking images, keeping the narrative visually interesting.

Image 4, stencil and ink

  With images 3-5 I experimented with stencils. The idea was to create depth by blurring the buildings that are further in the distance. The stencils created a straight edge, but with some bleeding from the paint they became a little more blurred. The stencils also, I feel, created an industrial feel with their broken edges. They are very messy and only a quick experiment, but I feel it was worth doing as they definitely have the right atmosphere about them.

Text and Explosion

Printer ink on acetate

When trying to create my text on a circle on acetate, I realised my printer wasn't capable of printing on it! This led to the ink running everywhere. I thought I would leave it to dry and when I cam back it looked like this! It was almost like a cabbage leaf print! I thought it would perhaps work well as an organic looking explosion, so I printed the ink onto a piece of paper. I later scanned it in and layered it over the top of one of my building paintings. I thought it looked quite impressive, but when printed out the red had lost it's vibrancy and was difficult to see. On discussion with Ceri she said she didn't read it as an explosion at all. I will now try to create some organic looking explosions using inks I think.