Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist and author. He contributed to many breakthroughs in these fields but perhaps his most impressive quality and work was in communication. He had a skill that not many practitioners in these fields possess, he could communicate ideas and information in an easy understandable way that made colpex scientific information more accessible to the general public. it id this quality that makes him a very interesting subject for this task. he worked on the TV program Cosmos: A personal Voyage. The tv show is the most widely viewed show in the history of American public television. the show was seen by atleast 500 million people in 60 countries. This skill with communication links very well to illustration and his work on extraterrestrial communication used many of the same philosophies as modern illustration.

He assembled the first physical messages sent into space. the messages we designed in a way that could potentially be understood by extraterrestrial life. They were called to pioneer Plaque and Voyager golden Record.

 The image above is of the Pioneer Plaque and below there is an explanation of the information included within the design.

 These next two images are of the Voyager Golden Records that were launched into space in 1977 aboard both of the Voyager Spacecraft. each record contained both images and sounds that were designed to communicate the diversity of life and culture on earth. Voyager 1 will pass withing 1.6 light years of the star Gliese 445, the constellation Camelopardalis but not for around 40,000 years.

Although his work on these messages was very scientific and considered his ideas about to idea itself is more poetic, he said "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this 'bottle' into the cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet."

President Jimmy carter echoed his sentiments saying "This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours."

The effort undertaken for this task shows the dedication and belief in the idea. this was a message that he knew would not receive a reply but felt strongly enough about it to put in the time and effort to make sure it was done properly and would successfully communicate our species and cultures. His work gives a new perspective on what is important and how small we all are in the grand scheme of things.

Timothy Leary

Timothy Leary is famous for experimenting with the psychological effects of psychedelic drugs. He conducted under the Harvard Psilocybin Project while the use of LSD and psilocybin was legal in America. The project resulted in Concord Prison experiment and the Marsh Chapel Experiment. He believed that psychedelic drugs used in a controlled environment could help rehabilitate prisoners. He was fired by Harvard due to the controversy surrounding these drugs although some though his experiments yielded some useful data.

he was arrested many times through the 60's and 70's and was an inmate at 29 different prisons.

he popularized phrases like "turn on, tune in, drop out."

He was jailed for 20 years in 1970 and given a psychological test to assign him to an appropriate work detail. This wasn't a great idea as he had designed some of the tests one of them being called the Leary Interpersonal Behavior Test. He answered in a way that would make him seem like a conforming, conventional person with an interest in forestry and gardening. This meant that he was placed in a lower security prison which he escaped from later that same year. he described his escape as a humorous prank and even left a note for authorities to find after he had gone.

He was smuggled out of the country by the weatherman who were a radical left wing organisation founded on the Ann Arbor campus in the University of Michigan. he sough refuge in countries around the world. At one point he was taken in by an arms dealer in Switzerland called Michel Hauchard. Hauchard claimed that he had an "obligation as a gentleman to protect philosophers".

he really wanted to use Leary to make a film.

 Richard Nixon described Leary as  "the most dangerous man in America".

Leary has had many influences on pop culture appearing in lyrics for many bands and quoted in well known films like 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'. He was friends with John Lennon and and was the inspiration for his song 'Tomorrow never knows'.

Ella Fitzgerald

Researching Ella Fitzgerald has been amazing, she had a tough childhood to say the least. Her first breakthrough in singing was almost by chance when she entered a competition at the Apollo theatre and was planning to dance. She was so intimidated by a dance duo called the Edwards sisters who performed before her that she decided to sing instead. she won first prize of $25 and was supposed to perform at the theatre all week but they did not give her that part of her prize. It is thought that her appearance was too rough as she had been living on the streets.
She was criticised early in her musical career for making pop songs with no real musical merit but soon started to experiment more and work with a variety of other musicians and producers. Although not the first to do it she was one of the best known scat singers and widely thought to be the best to do it.
I would like to experiment with these sounds and look into ways I could make them into images or symbols.

Ella " I just tried to do what I heard the horns in the band doing."

Her scat song 'Flying Home' was described in the New York Times as "One of the most influential vocal jazz records of the decade."

I found a quote from Ella Fitzgerald from just before she died. She had been very ill and had spent time in hospital. It was recommended that she remain in hospital but she chose to spend her final days in sitting in the garden of her Beverly Hills house in the company of her son and granddaughter. She said "I just want to smell the air, listen to the birds and hear Alice laugh"

Although this was a sad time she was still positive and chose to be happy for the time she had left.

I would like to find a way to illustrate the sounds of that time she spent in the garden, the bird song and laughter. I could possibly draw the scene from her point of view so that she is not involved in it, showing how she had gone from the performer to lone audience member. I want to use the bird song and laughter as a connection to her scat song performances.

I found some illustrations by James Chapman that show animal noises and how they are interpreted in different languages. These different sounds could be useful when I make my images. I could maybe make the birds themselves out of the sounds they create.

Ella Fitzgerald's music was a symbol of the multi cultural communities that made up America at the time. If I can find bird song representations in different languages I could build up an image that reflects the communities that made up New York and America.

She was described by New York times columnist Frank Rich, he said Ella Fitzgerald "performed a cultural transaction as extraordinary as Elvis' contemporaneous integration of White and African American soul. Here was a Black woman popularising urban songs often written by immigrant Jews to a national audience of predominantly White Christians."

I want to try and create a beautiful and serene environment. I want to look at the work of Makoto Shinkai who created films such as '5 centimetres Per second' which features some amazingly detailed breath-taking scenery.

Evaluation

Value

for the colour value task I created a palette from 2 outfits I wore this weekend but I am not the most colour coordinated at the best of times especially while cycling around looking very scruffy. The process made me see the colours that made up what I was wearing in a different way and could be a very useful process when working on colour palettes for my illustrations.

I remember years ago talking to a well known graffiti artist a few years ago that told me when he was fading tones of the same colour in his work he uses a combination of similar tones and one that is completely different to offset the balance of the object he was painting. It is a consideration I keep in mind when blending colours. The handout explaining how to layer values with light, dark and mid values is very helpful, it seems like an obvious way to create depth in an image and I have used it before but have never experimented with different variations throughout a series of roughs to find the best combination. The layering of tones and colour values could be very useful in a complex composition and would require a lot of though and planning to work out a combination that works throughout. I have experimented with this theory in my visual language sketch pad.

I wanted to apply colour palette breakdowns to items of clothing that have carefully planned colour combinations. I wanted to look at the palette of some trainers that have colour combinations that I like.

It seems that colour combinations on these trainers often consist of a few similar tones of colours with small details added in contrasting bold colours as points of interest in the design. The quality and lighting if my phots has effected the colour palette as the colour dropper is not able to capture the true colour of the fabric. I will try these again with better lighting.

Greetings From ... Honlulu shoe

I have addressed the ideas discussed in the crit and tried to make this design more balanced and both through colour and structure.

the Mynah bird has been changed quite drastically to make it fit the shape of a heal and cuff of a trainer. The back of the bird is shaped to look like a pair of Nike yeezy trainers and I have decided to remove one of the legs from the design to fit in with the solid form of the show and not create a clash of perspectives. I was not happy with the sole of this shoe, I tried to base it on the vulcanised rubber sole that is typical of vans trainers but the solid shape felt as it it was separated from the rest of the shoe. I tried to remedy this problem in a few different ways. first I added some shape to the top of the sole to try and make it interact with the other objects and added another tone of blue to break up the the solid shape that was overpowering the rest of the shoe. I removed some of the waves from the sole and added some new white detail to create more dynamic shapes within the sole. I tried to do this without over complicating the design, I think the similar colours help to prevent this. I added the grip to the bottom of the shoe as it has helped with my previous designs, it makes a huge difference to recognizing the forms as a shoe. the balance of the image still felt wrong so I changed the height of the sole and think it has helped the overall shape of the shoe.

 Finally I changed the shape of the front of the shoe, the nose of the shark face didn't fit the silhouette of the trainer. I want the shark to represent the front of a fighter plane and the fishing industry in Honolulu.

Finished screen print

I picked up my screen prints from the print room. Although the process was difficult and I had some troubles it was still enjoyable and I like the results. I tried to add some texture to the work digitally while designing it in Adobe Illustrator but the best textures came out during the print process. I would like to learn how to get a degree of control over these instead of them being random outcomes. the blue is strong and I think manages to stop the design looking top heavy, the blue did not look that strong until I added the layer of black, it is important to know how your colours will interact with each other as I wasn't expecting the effect to change that much. Unfortunately some of the emulsion washed out of the screen in the bottom left blurring the print of Ray Charles. this effect could be good if it was controlled and only applied to areas I chose. screen printing always throws up challenges, I have worked with screens before for books and mostly clothing with a friend that runs a screen print business and from what I have seen and what he has told me there are always adjustments to be made and obstacles to be overcome. as we were working 3 to a screen the process was a little fraught and meant that if one person had a problem it affected us all. I would definitely like to try this again with a bit more freedom in terms of time and space.

I looked at some work by Jay Ryan who is a screen printer whose work I have loved for a few years.

His work often features hand drawn type and built up lines to form bold characters. His use of colour is amazing given the limitations the process. he must have a lot of experience with how colour combinations work and how to mix the colours he wants. His use of negative space is really interesting in both of these images. the bear in the bottom picture and the trails from the jetpack in the top image are both left the colour of the stock. I think working with this media for a long time has influenced the way he makes images. He often makes use of the rule of thirds and positions points of interest at the cross section of 2 thirds.

Collage and Ephemera

I forgot to blog this work from an earlier task. I feel I rushed this task at the time and really did not make the most of the experience. I enjoyed using cut paper and collage and it has influenced my work on subsequent tasks. I like being able to overlap shapes and work in layers to explore how objects are placed within the composition. I wanted to make use of found images to improve my work but have not achieved this to a good level. I need to spend more time in the planning process to work like this so that I know what images and textures I will use in what order during the layering process. I found that I made up the bulk of the image too quickly and limited my options. I should have spent more time finding a larger variety of lettering to use to make up the text of the work (different sizes and fonts) although the image is made up of solid layers I need to work harder to make it appear is on finished piece. the lettering is entirely separate to the rest of the piece. I also need to experiment with mark making and drawing/painting onto the layers to add texture.

During the presentation we looked at work from a number of artists but I was drawn to the work of Joe Cruz. His work is a great example of using combinations of media to improve perfectly compliment each other. The compositions in terms of layering are not complicated but the positioning and colour of the marks added to photos highlight key parts of the image. Although the bright colours are clearly applied in a separate layer that stands out in front of the photo their placement creates harmonious a relationship between the two.

Greetings From ... Berlin Shoe

I have one shoe left to design and wanted to spend some time looking at the possibilities so that I could choose a city that contrasts with the ones I had already chosen. I drew up a list of the most famous in the world that threw up group of cities with a range of geographical and cultural differences.

I decided to research Sneakerstuff in Stockholm as it is very different from the other cities I have researched.

Through my research I found some very interesting possibilities but some of them were too similar to the other cities. lots of the historical information I researched was quite dark and in a lot of cases vague and treated more as legend than historical fact. I was struggling to find anything I wanted to used to make up they shoe and lost enthusiasm. I decided to move on to another city.

Berlin appealed to me instantly as a city with an incredibly diverse and interesting history. I wanted to illustrate cultural and historical elements of the city concentrating on the positive but without avoiding important historical events. I thought I could include the Berlin wall using famous artwork that was painted on it. the bear on the coat of arms was appealing to me and provided a character for me to try and fit into the design. Einstein became well known while working in berlin and I though I could use an image of him to show Berlin's standing at the forefront of technology and science.

I also wanted to find a way to include some of the architecture from the city.

I sketched a few ideas down and thought I could combine certain elements like Thierry Noir's characters from the Berlin wall and a portrait of Albert Einstein. While looking at architecture in berlin I came across the house of the World's Culture that is a curved building I thought would make a good cuff for the shoe. I wanted to find a way to add an old film camera or projector to represent the Berlinale film festival.

Composition

I have managed to lose my roughs for this task but will continue to search for them. I am going to try the same process again with a different subject matter to try and explore composition further. This process was very interesting to me, I have always played with composition but without really knowing what I was doing and without researching the principles involved in it. I used to rearrange objects in a composition until I found a combination of scale and place that I liked. the ideas discussed in this presentation will make me work in a very different way. I want to start projects with a series of very quick roughs that use the principles in the handout to test out ideas. I am not saying that I will always abide by all these rules but they are something I will consider in my work from now on.





These are redrawn ruffs.

I didn't want to add the black to this piece but the copics markers I was using ran out. I think the composition works using the line of sight to initially draw attention to the character then create a link with the lighthouse. I tried to use the detail in the see to exaggerate the distance between the two points of interest. I think the extra colours in the sky distract from the composition.

Greetings From ... Crit

Today we had a feedback session showing the work we had done so far on our postcards. This was really useful as I wanted some feedback on how effective my designs were. The designs I was most happy with got the best feedback from the group. The Aberdeen sneaker and the Tokyo sneaker received the most positive feedback although There were still some suggestions for improvement. Following the feedback I am going to create a more stripped down version of the Tokyo sneaker experimenting by simplifying various elements like the bowl of ramen. The feedback also suggested that colour palette was very important so I would like to try and balance the images with a more considered colour composition. The Tokyo sneakers colour divided opinion in the group as it is bold with a lot of colours which could be simplified further but it was thought by some members of the group that the bold variety of colours represented the city well. I will make another version of the shoe with a simple colour scheme to see if it maintains the the same representation of Tokyo. For the final sneaker design I am going to push the form of the shoe further to see how far it is possible to go without making the overall structure too confusing. The cherry blossom tree on the Tokyo sneaker received good feedback and is one of the most 'out there' elements of any of my designs so far.

I have made some changes to the Honolulu sneaker.

This is my original design. It is the design I felt was least effective before the crit and the feedback helped me to identify the areas that needed to be altered or replaced. The sole is too solid and does not interact with the rest of the shoe stopping it from linking elements together to make a solid form.

The colours need to be changed as they seem to be in very distinct sections like the fighter plane front of the shoe, brown woven leaf middle and black mynah bird at the back of the shoe. The birds head seems to be separated from the rest of the shoe and the perspective of the birds legs confuses the composition. I think the bird needs to be shaped more carefully moving away from perfect geometric shapes. I have changed to colours of the woven leaves to green which is the colour they would traditional be and links the side of the shoe with the leaf used as the laces without the two elements becoming blurred together. I have changed the nose of the plane to yellow to balance with colouring of the bird on the heal and changed the colour of the berrys to red to match the planes mouth.

I reshaped the sole and added another blue tone to make it more fluid and interact with the rest of the shoe.

I think the shape of the fighter plane nose needs to be worked on more and I need to find a way to link it to the middle of the shoe in a way that brings the two sections together. At the moment the sharp line between the two seems to be preventing the shape of the shoe from functioning as a solid form. I have added a fishing hook to the fighter planes mouth to represent the significance of fishing to Honolulu. I like the way the fishing line weaves through the leaves but think the twists need to be less aggressive and the line needs to have more variation and not be a perfect thickness all the way along. the feathers on the bird resemble the shape of the back of a nike Yeezy trainer. I am much gappier with the colour of the berrys and shape of the back of the shoe with the curved beak forming the shoes cuff. more work to do but I feel like I'm making progress with this design.

Greetings from... Tokyo Sneaker

i drew up some roughs for the Tokyo shoe  for the Atmos shop that seems to use camouflage patterns in a lot of its designs. Bape is another well known Japanese brand which also uses camouflage extensively throughout its product catalog. There seems to be a trend in Tokyo or even throughout Japan of using camo in design. i have researched Tokyo for this trainer design and struggled to come up with ideas that didn't seem to incorporate very obvious stereotypical signifiers of Japan.

I tried to mix the some of the more well known images associated with Tokyo with some lesser known ideas. I wanted to include a top down picture of a bowl of Ramen as i thought it would suit a crisp vectored illustration with bold colour and shape. I was searching for a way to communicate the cutting edge technology that Japan is famous for bu struggled to find anything that I thought would generate an interesting until i cam across some pictures of the Bullet train. the shape of the train makes a perfect sole for the shoe and showcases Japanese ingenuity. In this sketch the centre of the shoe is made from samurai armour and an image of Godzilla. I liked the image but the individual components weren't suitable for this project and would not have achieved the celebration of Tokyo.

I kept the cherry blossom tree and the water at the back of the shoe that is meant to pay homage to Japanese wood block prints.

I substituted the armour and after some more research decided use the Olympic logo as Tokyo is hosting the games in 2020. I added a camouflage pattern to the rings to resemble the use of camo in Japanese street fashion. i like this design, I think the different elements combine well and i have tried to make sure they keep their identity as separate objects. I will need to leave space around the shoe designs on the final postcards so that the form of the shoe is clear. when I originally exported this design there was not enough space around it and the design was confused and did not work as well.

Viewpoint, Depth and Line of Sight

For my fan art poster i chose to use The Blues Brothers to base my design on. It is a film from my childhood that I have always enjoyed. I wanted to include a number of the actors and musicians from the film in my design but make the blues brothers themselves the main focus of the poster. This presented a problem for me as it is difficult to fit in all the characters I want to without overcrowding the composition. I decided to sue vectors to make my poster in Adobe Illustrator as we have been working with it in other modules. I wanted to create cartoon versions of the characters from the film and decided to base them all on a template I created. I made alterations for each character to certain parts of the character like eyes and nose then added new components like hair and clothing almost like a construction line for characters. I selected 9 characters and decided to lay them out in a grid and try to use compositional techniques to focus attention on the main characters. 

 I used line of sight from all the other characters to try and draw attention to Jake and Elwood. with there being two main characters I wanted to highlight them both as equally as possible and even try to make them appear as a pair when not directly next to each other. I was helped out by the fact the characters wear very distinctive all black outfits that allowed me to make them stand out from the rest of the cast. I left both of the brother staring straight forward to interact more directly with the viewer than the other characters. I positioned the nun at the bottom centre of the image to combine with the two brothers to create an arrow pointing at the title of the film. I also think this makes the balances the composition in terms of colour. 

I added some texture to the piece using the opacity mask in Illustrator as the design to break up the solid vector shapes. I knew it was likely that in the process of screen printing I would come across some imperfections and texture but wanted to make sure there was a predetermined texture to the design. i thought about adding some black to the title of the poster but wanted to see how it would look with the lettering silhouetted. i didn't have time to make more screen so decided to stick with this design and make sure I mixed a dark enough blue that would to stop the print looking top heavy.

This is the screen set up for the first colour of the print. I had a few troubles drying printing with the ink drying in the screen preventing it from printing properly and towards the end of the process I managed to break the screen, luckily all three of us had a number of good prints by that point. it was difficult working in such close proximity with two other people and meant that if one of us had a problem we all had to stop which led to knock on effects for everyone.unfortunately on my second layer part of the design washed out and meant that the ray Charles character did not print clearly at all. I did like the distressed look but would like to have controlled it myself. I don't think it ruins the print overall.

Frame and Arrangement ... Final

I made some small rough sketches to experiment with frame and arrangement.

I like these roughs as experiments with shape and form. I enjoyed simplifying the elephant into almost geometric shapes and think the eyes add character to it. these designs would work well with vectors or collage but I have been working with these a lot recently and would like to try something else.

I used loose lines to show the wrinkles of the elephant and wanted to create depth to the piece so decided to have my character reflected in the elephants eye. It is a strange composition as it is suggesting a character that exists out side the image itself in a similar position to the person viewing it. I want to avoid making a symmetrical composition. If the image was framed to that the elephants face was in the centre the composition would be flat and struggle to draw the eye towards key areas. The eye with the reflection needs to me made more important in the image than the other eye. I will try and achieve this by using lines on the elephants face and the butterfly to point towards it and frame it.

This is my final piece for the frame and arrangement task. I tried to make an interesting composition that plays with the scale of the three characters and draws attention to certain parts of the image, particularly the eye of the elephant containing the reflection of me. I wanted the image of me to be subtle but still noticeable and the butterfly to be the first thing the eye is drawn to. The butterfly is in the foreground of the frame and overlaps with the elephant showing where it is and explaining the difference in scale. If I placed the butterfly at that scale behind the elephant it must either be a very big butterfly or very small elephant. the antenna of the butterfly point towards the reflection in the eye as do the some of the features of the elephants face like the left hand side of the trunk and detail on the ear. I tried to use the rule of thirds to place important parts of the composition off centre such as the butterfly and reflection. the positioning of the characters suggests a link between the elephant and butterfly that are opposed to my character although the elephant and my character are linked by eye contact suggested by the reflection. I think the composition creates a somber and moody piece that feels like there is something going on in the surroundings that are out of view.

The composition is unbalanced with the darker right had side contrasting with the area of lighter space of the elepants ear on the left that may be creating an uneasy feeling. I think this adds to the dialogue between the elephant and the character in the reflection. I think I could have added more of a feeling of movement to the butterfly with the angle of the wings that would also draw the eye more towards the reflection in the eye.