Write Up Final

I've never been a music guy. I can probably count on one hand the number of albums I've actually bought in my life. I read books as a kid, comics and otherwise. I guess you could say that in some ways I'm very literally minded. So I didn't really like the assignment at first. I'm not into analyzing music so I wasn't sure what I'd come up when I found song to go with.

I started out looking for a blues song done with some interesting instrumentals. Some thing with a nice rhythm and some depth. I've always liked Jethro Tull it's one of the few groups I've really listened a lot to in my life. They had a few good blues songs but most of them had some lyrics in them. So I switched gears and just started looking for a general Tull instrumental piece. Youtube led me to their version of Greensleeves and I knew I had my song.

My first thought when I Jethro Tull's Greensleeves was, Wow I really like Greensleeves better then I remember. This was a light and airy take on the traditional folk tune. It had just enough rock and roll to feel modern but Ian Anderson's flute work also kept it close to it's roots. Checking out some other versions of the song I realized that my attraction to the piece was almost entirely in this groups version. I was reminded the song has words but chose to ignore that fact for two reasons. First I didn't really remember them and I didn't want to have them on inform my work at all. Second, with lyrics and performed in the traditional manner Greensleeves can be one of the most boring songs in the world.

Choosing to focus primarily on how Tull's version of Greensleeves differs from other versions of the song was a boon for me however. There is a light airy playfulness to their version of the song. The performers repeat the melody over and over again with instruments dancing within the piece in solos duets and ensemble. These would be the elements of the song I would riff on for my piece.

I guess I had decided to do something like a graphic novel even before I knew the assignment. Music has such a strong dimension of time in it that sequential art seemed like a natural fit so I started trying to form a story from the elements of the song. Greensleeves as a song has a lot of themes tied to it already. It's fairly old as songs go and has a lot of tradition to it. The music in all it's versions always seems to have a pastoral feel to it. With the lighter qualities of this rendition I saw flowers. Combined with the tradition this tune brings with it I felt and classic English flower garden would be the perfect setting for my story. A traditional natural feeling but not quite natural place.

My ideas starting to gel I focused on the theme of my two works. I wanted to highlight the playfulness I felt in the song as well as the “variation on a theme” I felt the musicians put in the song. For the playfulness I imagined fairies dancing and playing amongst the garden. Starting out as individuals and eventually dancing together and combining. That would be the majority of the work done in black and white panels I estimated about 4-5 pages.

For my color piece I was going to do the cover in color. Focusing on the garden in general. I planed to take the garden in general create an outline drawing of it, divide it up into radial sections and color each section with a different color scheme. Using the color variations to hearken to the variation on theme expressed in the song.

My drawing skills aren't that great so my plane was to find a well photographed garden on-line. Use GIMP and the photographs to generate cutouts and line drawings of the images in the garden. Then trace my backgrounds onto my work. The characters would be cartoon sketched. This seemed to be working in the conception stage. But as I started to work on my character sketches I realized I had to rethink my BW composition.

Back to the drawing board. My new thoughts where simplify simplify simplify. I reliably draw the same image twice to my satisfaction then I'll go with very basic shapes. I would turn the fairies into just two shapes moving through my BW piece. The garden no longer fit so I would go with a very simple background that represented the music it's self. I would go abstract with the story.

I decided rather then drawing my black and white piece I'd do it collage style. Four individually framed panels implying times and motion. Cut the shapes I wanted from bristol board and use paint, ink, and magic marker to provide the shades I need. It will be all lines and solid shape. Furthermore I'll really be able to focuses on the layout that way.

My color piece will still be along the same lines as I had thought. I'm sticking with the garden theme. Hopefully Butchart Gardens in British Colombia. I'm going to be using colored art markers for my piece. Playing with the line weight and color combo.

All together I've been trying to focus on the process as much as the out come. Really trying to focus on the design elements I've learned from class. As well as some of the techniques Scott  Mccloud highlighted in the text. Pulling what I want into the piece as much with specific elements as well as the gestalt.

Cover Design

This is a cover I designed for my writing classes poetry anthology.

Greensleeves Jethro Tull

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nihsKqoC5yE

Ian Anderson rock'n out with the flute.

My Ads For EO

This is my full color Ethereal Oceanic ad. Jesse's mock company is a cryogenic firm that provides it's customers the opportunity of immortality. I see this add showing up in a high end travel, technology, or financial magazine. I kept the ad simple and a little cryptic. I used art provided by the company.

This was my three color ad. Short and sweet I had a heck of a time with the lighting effects, but like most things once I figured out how to do it, it took three minutes.

10ish questions.

What is your clientèle?
     Cryogenics for the wealthy.

What image do you want to project?
     Clean enduring classy.

What makes you different from your competitors?
     Dream therapy guarantee lifetime warranty.

What themes do you want to highlight?
     Immortality untouched by time.

Why should people choose your company?
     Our strong science and tech background and our dream therapy.

What is the purpose of these ads?
     Raise client base, and product awarness.

 Who should these ads target?
     Wealthy resourful people potential customers and investors.

Where will these ads apear?
      High end magazines possibly the Internet.

Do you want your logo used, if so how?
      Yes but not as the central theme. Subtle but noticeable.

What is the main goal of this ad? What is it's main purpose?
     Attention grabber.

Some Cool Design Related Sites

MONEY&DESIGN

SHAPEWAYS

Awesome site where you can design personlized products that the companty can fabricate for you or people who want to buy your designs.
  

KICKSTARTER

Started as a way for artist to get funding. Kickstarter allow people with an idea be it product, design, performance or art project. It's a cool model check it out.

Etsy
 This is a great site along the same lines as ebay but specifically for craft products. Lots of people making cool stuff and getting paid for it.

Spicy Mustard

 

I decided upon spicy mustard as my project. I created the above words using photo shop and translated them to my paper using graphite rubbing.

I mixed my colors going for hues just slightly away from base colors. I took the lemon yellow and added just a little dot of brilliant red. This created a pretty vivid orange. I then used the orange to mix back into the base colors. Leaving a dot of each hue I stopped when the new mixed colors where distinct from the originals. I'm not sure if the red was a big enough change from the original though.

 My plan was to make the spicy have a flame like appearance which was hard using one color. Mustard was more successful I actually wrote out the word using ketchup on some wax paper and tried to make the paint glop on like the ketchup did.

You said no cofee cups.

This is a glass coffee/slash tea cup with a glass basin and plastic holder. I don't know how old they are but we've had some at my camp for years. I love the design and when saw some at good will I grabbed a couple to have.

I used a photoshop for realism. I played around with multiple photos of the subject in the same position to add detail to the picture. Some of the shots had milk in the glass others where empty and I tried to merge those to increase detail.

I used my window as light table to tracing to compensate for my lack of drawing skills.

This is my texture drawing. It needs to be rotated. I liked creating texture with different media.

I used graph paper for my rectilinear. I was going to trace for transfer to drawing paper but found I like the graph background. I found I really liked the hexagonal pattern that emerged at the top.

The shape was already fairly biomorphic so I tried to just accentuate those feature that where.In this one the base seemed more important then the glass like it was trying to show me something.

The for the negative exploration I created the background and drew the glass with the eraser.

I instead of abstracting just biomorphic or retilinier I took features that struck me about both and also went back to look at the original object. The cup it's self actually seems to have alot of height in real life. A characteristic lost in all my other pieces even the photo so I tried to accentuate slimness in this piece.

Bang Pop Popular Culture in Maine

http://bangpop.mbouchard.com/

BangPop is a Comic Book and Pop Culture convention in Bangor Maine. Check out their website the BangPop organization host many different Pop culture events in the Bangor Maine.

An Exploration of Value, Field and Event

I started this assignment full of ideas and ambition. I ran into both trouble and success.

Here are my results.

First "Darkness and Light"

 Next "Off set."

Here is the Method

The trouble started as I practiced my Book Cannon. I don't know whether I'm a perfectionist or just can't get things to line up but it took me several tries. Finally with the aid of a compass I succeeded.

Now I just had to trace the boxes onto another page. The I could use a compass and straight edge to find the golden points within the box. But surprise surprise the Cannon points are not the same as the golden points within the boxes. Hmm will get back to that later.

Now I could get down to planning my pages. I had a couple of ideas first I wanted to do two pages where the field and events where related. That is create recognizable field that the event would normally exist on. Then I wanted to do another where the fields and events had less to do with each other. I also wanted to do a complex set and a simple set technique wise.

For the related events I hit on the idea of bricks as the fields with windows and doors as the events. Bricks I thought made a good field technically because I could draw and print it.  Playing around with some rough sketches I decided on one window and one door. To make the window interesting I would draw a single hanging light bulb in the golden point of the window. Experimenting with door I found that door knobs or handles where hard to line up with the golden points. However I decided to use a peep hole in the center of the door to convey it's "doorness."


Executing my brick plan became interesting. First I tried to do some math to figure out a brick field that would fit evenly into the panel created by the Book cannon.To do this I created a brick template using my drawing program. With it I was also able to firm up the measurements for the panel and make it a perfect golden rectangle. It looked like this.

For the stamped field my original idea was to carve brick stamps out of some linoleum.  Then line them up to lines carried from the template.

 The stamps came out nice.

But I couldn't control the value very well.

So I switched to a stencil method. Using a foam noddle as my printing tool.

More control better results.

For the drawn bricks the test worked better but was time consuming. The final product made heavy use of my template.

With the field done I moved onto my events. I chose to print the event onto the draw field and draw the event onto the printed field. I thought the weight of the heavy black door on the draw field would contrast nicely with the mostly white window on the printed field. I really wanted a kinda darkness and light theme.

I used another mask/stencil to create the doors shape with a piece of masking tape to create the peep whole and used the shiny part of the noodle to create a very dark door.

My simple designs proved harder to realize. For the event I choose to create a golden rectangle with one corner on the book cannon interest point and one corner on the golden point for the panel. For each panel the event would mirror the other.

For the fields I wanted to create a dark panel of closely space thick mechanical lines and a field of even gray.

I found it impossible to control the sharpies well enough to get thick even lines. And the even printed field never quite came out even thanks in part to imperfevtions in the paper and my working surface. Though I did find quickly and repeatedly tapping down ink laden paper towel is a great stress reliever.

True Colors Shining Through?

Here's an article about these colors.

Katrina Review

      Page 17 of Peter Precourt's Katrina Chronicles Volume 1 drew my attention immediately. The work a mixed media on paper approximatly 30 by 22 inches fits into Precourt's graphic novel style instillation. The entire Katrina instillation deals with the artists familial, professional and personal development and the effect the 2005 huricanhad on them. Page 17 is primarily focused on the various professions Precourt dabbled in before the narrative starts.

       Done in the graphic novel style this piece starts with a road sign themed panel and progresses through 7 or eight other panels of rouphly the same size representing different professions the artist held in the past. Of particular interest to me was the artist's choice to use arrows to guide the viewers progression through the panels.

       In themselves each panel varies significantly from the others in level of detail. Both the text and the graphics vary in this way. In only one panel does he describe the job directly by title “I was a waiter in a bad restaurant.” and provide a picture from a moment in the job (a hazy line drawing of two customers). In others he only mentions a specific duty “...the sorry guy who cleaned the bandsaw...” along with a picture of the bandsaw. A DJ job is hinted to only in a picture of audio equipment while a stint counting cards in black jack is expounded upon in a detailed illustrated description of his counting method. It's as though the author/artist adopts different voices in each. Like his narrative style changes from panel to panel.

       While each panel is meant to convey a similar piece of information, a different way the artist made money in the past, the varying style highlights what he feels and remembers about each part of his life.

      I questioned at first the choice to use guidance arrows between panels I found they added to my experience of viewing that panel. Usually in graphic novels such blatant guidance is avoided as it is seen as interference in the reading process. The author will either use subtle narrative, visual, or written cues to steer the readers eye without apparent effort. Or authors might choose to leave readers completely to their own devices expecting them read panels in any order they choose. Since Precourt chose neither tact the viewer must consider the arrows a deliberate part of the art work.

       When taken as a whole these elements add depth to the work. The iconic stop and detour sign introduce the page pulling the reader out of the rest of the installations narrative. The guidance arrows pull the reader along a serpentine path of disparate panels. Each one a specific memory window into the authors past. Jobs and experiences that have no relationship with each other are forced into a sequential narrative only because that is the way the author remembers it. To me this page effectively conveys the aimlessness of a mans early adulthood.

MT

In this piece I tried to highlight nothing. By Creating a complex frame to a nonexistent picture I wanted the the viewer to feel like the should be looking at the center of the piece but get hung up on the surrounding border. I used emphasis repetition and symmetry. I used a combination of white circles, black circles, and black rings placed in a symmetrical pattern to create the effect.

Falling In

In this composition I tried to pull the viewer's eye into the center of the work. My method involved positioning alternating black and white circles on top of each other. I reduced each successive circle in size by a 1/4 of an inch and placed them in a repeating offset pattern. This created a slightly irregular spiral image. The elements I tried to use were emphasis, scale, unity, and repetition.