Summer Brief 3

Quotes

"Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you’ve never been. Once you’ve visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different."

-Guardian Talk

In the last few years, we’ve moved from an information-scarce economy to one driven by an information glut. According to Eric Schmidt of Google, every two days now the human race creates as much information as we did from the dawn of civilisation until 2003. That’s about five exobytes of data a day, for those of you keeping score. The challenge becomes, not finding that scarce plant growing in the desert, but finding a specific plant growing in a jungle. We are going to need help navigating that information to find the thing we actually need.

-Guardian Talk

“One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless.
The tale is the map that is the territory.
You must remember this.”

-American Gods

“He had gone beyond the world of metaphor & simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.”     

-The Sandman

I want to be alive again," she said. "Not in this half-life. I want to be really alive. I want to feel my heart pumping in my chest again. I want to feel blood moving through me — hot, and salty, and real. It's weird, you don't think you can feel it, the blood, but believe me, when it stops flowing, you'll know."
-American Gods

Motifs

I struggled with this for a while trying to decide what how to define what a motif is, so I started with a dictionary definition and went from there.

"something (such as an important idea or subject) that is repeated throughout a book, story, etc."

-Self imprisonment

-Parents damaging their children

-The necessity of stories

-The cycle of birth, death and rebirth

-Dreams

Characters

-Dream/Morpheus

Dream's appearance often changes depending on who is looking at him at the time. he has appeared in a number of guises throughout the comic, including-

-A huge black cat

-A cat headed god

-A flaming Martian skull

-A Japanese man

-A fox

He usually appears as a tall, thin man with bone white skin, black hair and stars instead of eyes.

He sometimes wears a helm made from the skull and backbone of a beaten foe that resembles a World War 2 gas mask. He often wears a cape that sometimes has a flame motif. Over time his appearance has been based on various people but the original basis of the character was Bauhaus frontman Peter Murphy.

-Delirium

Delirium is the youngest of the 'Endless' and her appearance changes depending on her mood. The only constant is the colour of her eyes, she has on emerald green eye and one blue with silver flecks. her sigil is a shapeless blob of colour. In the comic series Neil Gaiman changes the speech bubbles and text to be unique to each character and Delirium's speech is especially bold. her speech is all in caps, varies through unpredictable orientations and the background is a multi-coloured gradient.

Destiny-

Destiny id the oldest of the 'Endless' and appears as an old blind man dressed in grey or brown robes.

he carries a large book called the 'Cosmic Log' that contains the entire sum of existence, past, present and future. His garden that contains paths that souls walk along as they fulfil their lives.

Mr Wednesday-

Mr Wednesday id Odin, the leader of the old gods, the most dominant god of the Norse Pantheon. He is the god of wisdom. In America he works as a con artist.

he is described as having greyish hair and a stubbly beard. he has a glass eye that doesn't match the other. he is stocky, smaller that Shadow but seems to take up more room. He is described as having a

"craggy square face with pale grey eyes".

Shadow-

Shadow is a seemingly ordinary man from the Midwest. various characters throughout the novel question Shadows race. This ambiguity plays a part in an important twist in the story. Neil Gaiman has revealed that the characters mother was black. he is decribed as being "big enough and looked don't-fuck-with-me enough" to keep out of trouble while in prison. Shadow's eyes are described as grey in color.

Information about the author-

- He has created a varied body of work including prose, poetry, comics, journalism and song lyrics.

- Neil Gaiman delivered a lecture for The Reading Agency at the barbican in London. The Reading Agency started the lecture series in 2012 with the idea being to create a platform for writers to share ideas about reading.  Gaimans lecture was focussed on the importance of libraries and the reading habits of children. this is a good example of his wider influence.

- He clearly draws inspiration from a well researched and wide reaching catalogue of cultural references ranging from Shakespeare to mythology. He has even placed people who have influenced him into his work as characters.

- Neil Gaimans family has Polish-Jewish and other Eastern European-jewish origins, he was brought up surrounded by Jewish beliefs as well as scientology. This unconventional combination of beliefs could explain the ways he finds connections between subjects that most would never discover. It could also be in influence on the way he treat characters from a variety of cultural backgrounds as though they are part of the same overall narrative.

- " His mind is a dark fathomless ocean, and every time I sink into it, this world fades, replaced by one far more terrible and beautiful in which I will happily drown." Benjamin Percy

Locations-

-East Grinstead- Gaiman lived there for many years between 1965-1980 and then from 1984-1987

-Menomonie, Wisconsin, United States- This is where Gaiman currently lives and has done since 1992

-America- Moving to America was the inspiration for Giaman's book 'American Gods' he said that he knew wanted to write about America as soon as he got there

-Libraries- Gaiman has spoken and written on a number of occasions about the importance of libraries and the effect they had on him when he was young.

-The DC Universe. The sandman comic series is one of gaiman's best known works and by far the longest running. the characters he has spent a long time creating  and writing for exist within this fictional universe.

summer brief 2

Before reading any of Neil Gaiman's novels or comics I read a few interviews. The first I read was him talking about the importance of reading. He made some interesting points about how children are introduced to reading by their parents. He talks about the trends in books that are seen as 'good' for children saying that there are no bad books for children, we should allow them to read anything that stimulates and develops their interest. Gaiman believes that reading fiction helps children to develop empathy by inviting them to become the characters in the book and see the world from a different perspective. I would like to explore how this can be applied to my illustrations, to discover how effectively I can put across an idea in such a way that the viewer feels they are involved in it.

I like this interview especially the section where they talk about the criteria that certain stories have to have to truly fit within their genre. For example westerns always have a shootout at a saloon and a scene where the villains/villains ride into town on horseback. Following on form this is the idea that the overall theme, context or location of a movie does not necessarily decide its genre. you can have a story about cowboys that isn't a 'cowboy story' because it doesn't meat its set criteria. Kazuo Ishiguro suggests that the genres were never the blueprints for stories in the first place but they come into existence when a large enough number of stories with similar characteristics exist. The problem I think with this is that once a writer has been placed into one of these genres and labelled as that specific kind of author they can feel as though they have to abide by the rules of the genre whether it is pressure from fans directly or from publishers. These constraints cannot be good for creativity and innovation. I often think the best authors find ways to ways to cross between genres and ignore them all together, a practice which must take lots of confidence and may only be possible once an author has reached become well known enough to develop a strong fan base. I don't think it means that all authors that stick to fairly rigid set of rules are not creative, in fact it is almost more impressive when an author or film maker manages to use a formula that has been repeated many, many times over and create something that stands out from the rest.

I looked at some of Neil Gaiman's characters starting with the main character in his comic series 'Sandman'. In terms of appearance Dream is a character that opens up a a wide range of possibilities as his appearance alters throughout the comic series both over time and based on who is looking at him. He can even be seen in two different guises at the same time when being viewed by two characters. There are however some constants in his appearance that continue throughout the story lines. This is a good way to maintain a recognisable character while drastically altering the majority of their appearance. This method is also used for other members of the 'Endless', Delirium is the youngest of the endless and her appearance changes based on her mood, this enables Neil Gaimen to depict emotions through  her entire appearance rather than just facial expressions and posture. The only constant is the colour of her eyes which would not normally stand out enough to identify a character, in this case she has one green eye and one blue, a characteristic unique enough to identify her. After looking through some of the artwork from the comics I would like experiment with characters and see if I can find interesting ways to maintain identity while altering commonly used identifying features.

Neil Gaiman's books and interviews are full of quotes that I would like to explore, many of them would make funny and thought provoking posters if combined with a well thought out illustration. I spent years drawing with no real message or narrative simply to try and make something that looked 'good'. Over the last year I have really enjoyed (and struggled) trying to make images that are both informative and intriguing. Reading interviews with Neil Gaiman has helped inspire me even more to try new ways of getting my message across. I think it is important to try and find new ways to communicate your message whether it is subtle or obvious to make sure it maintains a unique identity and does not become generic or boring. Even a fairly simple point can be made accessible and thought provoking if you can appeal to the viewer in a way that connects with them. I want to be able to suggest ideas to people in such a way that they can apply them to their own life or ideas and then they become part of the process themselves.

Summer brief

I did some background research on 3 of the authors.

Reading about Angela Carter was very interesting. She has been described as the literary godmother of Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell and JK Rowling among others. Carters best known work and the one that interests me the most is 'The Bloody Chamber'. The book contains alternative versions of well known fairy tales giving them a "exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition." Her versions are "subversively dark and sensual". I enjoy creating alternate versions of existing stories changing the fell or message from the original, I find it interesting to see how small changes can completely alter the focus of a concept. Carter did not see the stories in 'The Bloody Chamber' as different versions of the original fairy tales, she was aiming to decipher the already existing latent content within them. This idea is important to illustration when trying to find the important information in a project, it is often easy to try depict all the information in a subject without capturing the message behind it.

Neil Gaiman's work often combines contemporary fiction, historical drama and legend. I have been reading and listening to gaiman's interviews both by himself and with other authors, they are thought provoking and demonstrate how much thought and research he puts into his work and how he views the world around him. Though his work varies greatly there are recurring themes and motifs throughout. His work whether it be a novel or a comic series often contain ideas self imprisonment, the necessity of stories, men inflicting harm on women, parents damaging their children, the cycle of birth,death and rebirth and dreams. His comic series 'Sandman' contains bold characters whose appearance can change quite dramatically but he uses a few constants to maintain their identity. I would like to experiment with these characters and see how much they can be changed and still be recognisable.

Ursula Le Guin was described by the New York Times as "America's greatest living science fiction writer". I like the way she uses imaginary worlds to explore ideas such as religion, gender and politics, ideas that are clearly very important to her. In several of Le Guin's works she addresses "the present dominant socio-political American system as problematic and destructive to the health and life of the natural world, humanity, and their interrelations." I am a huge fan of Studio Ghibli so was very interested to read that in the early 1908's Hayao Miyazaki asked permission to create an animated adaptation of Earthsea but was turned down by Le Guin who had not heard of his work at the time. The film was eventually directed by Miyazaki's son but Le Guin was not happy about changes made to the moral sense of the story. She said "Evil has been comfortably externalized in a villain", Le Guin writes, "the wizard Kumo/Cob, who can simply be killed, thus solving all problems. In modern fantasy (literary or governmental), killing people is the usual solution to the so-called war between good and evil. My books are not conceived in terms of such a war, and offer no simple answers to simplistic questions."