I want to do something different!

With art work, I like originality or things which are used less often than others so people don't just look at it and be like "That looks good...but I've seen something like that before".
I want a different reaction like they haven't seen it before.
Not just the final outcome of the piece of art but the process I went through to get to it.

As you can see I have a mod-rock mask on my face. This was rather than me being sat there getting all claustrophobic as my friend mod-rocked my face for her project.
I created a blind painting which I loved.
I'm thinking about using other materials to paint on and even using other media, other than paint...fabrics maybe. I thought about fabrics because blind people use touch as a way of seeing so fabrics with different textures would be brilliant!

Playing around with the idea of using the blind-painting technique

I've been playing with the idea of using blind-painting.
I've been thinking about what I could possibly do with the blind paintings afterwards
and Photoshop seemed like a good idea. I've also taken a picture of the piece of wood I used to put the paint on in the first place. I used this as a background for my painting, just distorted it a bit which made it look a lot more interesting.
I just used X Men as the writing on the poster because I've looked a lot at them and this seems to be a large group of people.
I like how colourful this is. Reminds me of David Batchelor and his use of vivid colours which I have looked into a lot before. This is only a mock up of what a final piece could look like until my work progresses further.
I would obviously do this a lot neater if it was for my actual final piece.

Looking at ways of presenting my work

I visited the cinema and took loads of photos of different ways posters for films are displayed.
I took photos from both outside, on the walls and the windows and inside. Inside the lobby area, the place where you pay and the corridors towards the screens.

I like this one best because its very simple but can be used to create a journey/progress and can be just spread across a wall.

Blind Painting

I couldn't just sit there and do nothing whilst Anna mod-rocked my face.
So I decided to do some blind painting!
I intended for it to look like a photo of a group, like a group gathered for a film poster.
Posing and all.
I liked the concept because as the media like the idea of ticking boxes rather than creativity. This throws 'ticking boxes' out the window because you can't see exactly what you're doing.
I couldn't be a perfectionist.
I liked the final outcome of this.
The energy shown in it is great and draws people in.

I think I could use this idea within my final piece because I could design what a poster should look like without the stereotypes, then blindfold myself and try and paint it. Dont even have to use paint. Could use fabrics and things like that. Maybe after trying to paint or make the poster blind folded many times. I could scan the outcomes into Photoshop and make a poster out of it!

The idea of ticking boxes and stereotypes will be totally thrown out the window and will just be a piece of art which will draw in the attention of the people because it looks good not because it ticks boxes.
As for the stereotypes I've been looking at in my work; with gender, you can't see whether the figures are male or female. With sexuality, you can't see what sexuality they are or how attractive they are because they are just lines. And finally with race, you can't see what colour the people are because they are multicoloured and silhouetted so theres no racism.
I want to continue with this idea of getting rid of all these stereotypes and making the poster into a piece of art work.

Race and what is perceived as an 'ordinary family'

 Whenever the media mentions an ordinary family or shows a film or tv series about an ordinary family, they are almost always white.
For example in the fantasy genre, the two programs I looked at both had all white american families classed as 'ordinary'.
What if the families were Black or of a different race to causasian?
What effect would it have on the viewers?
I did some little tests on this by changing the race of the families in No Ordinary Family and The Incredibles.
I got mixed reactions.
Better reactions from the incredibles poster because its of better quality.
Some people were shocked, some smiled and some people questioned as to why they were black

Lil photography session

Jon said go home and relax and get my head in gear for tomorrow.
So I went to Rother Valley.
I randomly took photos and came up with these.
They relate to how I was looking at silhouettes and how I wanted to give them more life!
Simply taking photos with the sun in the background made my mate in the foreground look very shadowed. I like this effect very much!





However according to the weather man, the weather wont continue to be this nice so I will have to look into artificial lighting instead! Damn!

I like how the figure isn't fully silhouetted out. This gives me chance to still have some of the human qualities that are stereotyped like gender, race and sexuality.
I can still show these but they wont be the main focus as they can't be seen as well. The main focus will be the figure itself and what its doing.

Thinking back to Dada...

Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of World War I. This international movement was begun by a group of artists and poets associated with the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition. The name 'Dada' was reputedly arrived at during a meeting of the group when a paper knife stuck into a French-German dictionary happened to point to 'dada', a French word for 'hobbyhorse.

An example of Dada art work is L.H.O.O.Q. to the right. It shows a famous piece of art work (Mona Lisa) defaced/vandalised.

This made me think of defacing/vandalising an image of someone as another way of taking the mess out of stereotypes. I don't have to just stick to caricatures, though this is something I'm interested in.

Another response to artists

I quickly threw this together using the general shape that Maciej Mizer uses in a lot of his work.
Of course this could use a lot of work but its just me playing around with it and trying to come up with a final idea for my piece of artwork.

After looking at the the graphic artists...

 I created this this piece of work.
Alex Cherry, Nick Ainley and Chuck Anderson played the biggest part in my inspiration.
Alex Cherry's silhouetted figures in his work, Nick Ainley's show of movement through either specks or lines and Chuck Anderson's large range of colour!

I like the idea of using a silhouette because it takes away what race the person is, their attractiveness and sometimes even gender. It just shows you what the person's role is or what they can do which I believe is most important.

I went on to play around with many things including the shadows, highlights and mid-tones and also saturation and hue.
After "the lightning looking like branches" comment, I decided to invert the image so the figure and lightning was white rather than black. This made the lightning actually look like lightning haha
I like the end of product of me playing around with ideas after looking at these graphic artists.
I will go on to look at typography for this.
I'm thinking about using these as a pair! Mirrored image maybe?

Using the information I have used in this piece of work, I will come up with more ideas of what my final piece of art work will look like.
Lots of worksheets coming up!

Alex Cherry

http://ofsoundandvision.com/#oceania

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/21/creativity-spark-from-masters-of-graphic-design/

For a later date, http://www.davidairey.com/top-50-graphic-design-blogs/

Nicholas Ainley

Nik Ainley is a digital illustrator based in the UK. He has been producing personal and commissioned illustrations for a wide array of clients for over ten years.

Self-taught, he first found his love for digital art while studying physics at university. He quickly found his interest in producing graphics on computer outgrowing that of his studies. After completing his degree he moved full time into design and illustration and has been there every since.

Nik is constantly trying to expand his range of abilities and is happiest when learning new software or techniques. He works in both 2D and 3D software to produce his images and especially enjoys the results combining the two can achieve.

http://shinybinary.com/info.html

Chuck Anderson

Since 2003, a year after graduating high school, Chuck has been collaborating with clients such as Microsoft, Nike, Warner Bros., Reebok, Burton, and Target, and more. In addition to this work, Chuck also produces much of his own personal art, design, & photography as well as collaborations with non-profits such as Invisible Children, charity:water, and WordMadeFlesh, among others. Chuck has also spoken and presented at dozens of universities, design conferences, and been a judge at the annual Art Director's Club Awards in NYC. In November 2010, Chuck was named a "Design Icon" by Computer Arts Magazine.

http://www.nopattern.com/

Emeric Trahand

Emeric Trahand also known as Takeshi is a New York based art director and artist from Saint Etienne, France. Emeric's illustrative work is renowned for its surreal feel, the quality of its photomontages as well as the light treatments and colourful compositions.


http://www.depthcore.com/artist/emeric-trahand/

Alberto Seveso

Born in Milan the 30 May 1976.
Works as a freelance in his hometown, Portoscuso, Sardinia-Italy for small, medium and big agencies.
http://burdu976.com/

Smashing Magazine - Maciej Mizer

Maciej is a graphic designer from Poland. He is into 2d, 3d, photography, web design and photo manipulation. He is majorly into graffiti as well and his arts can be seen all over Poland streets. His work has been featured in major publications such as HIRO Magazine, Computer Arts Magazine, Web Design Index 8 and loads more.
http://onlycreative.com.au/maciej-mizer-mosk/http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/21/creativity-spark-from-masters-of-graphic-design/

Smashing Magazine - Radim Malinic

Radim Malinic is an award winning freelance illustrator & graphic designer based in Southampton, the UK.


Radim Malinic is one of the most sought after, internationally renowned illustrators / designers working today, with an extensive high end clientele.


He prides himself on his artistic sensibility, passion for details, innovative resutls, pushing the boundaries. His work has been described as imaginative, sophisticated, sensual and sexy. While his goal is to fulfill the needs of his client, he creates contemporary visions that are a complex montage of layered photographic, colorful elements, hand drawn renders.
Shown are some of his pieces of work.

http://www.designyourway.net/blog/inspiration/featured-artist-radim-malinic/

Photography is something I will probably need to use within my work.

Graphic Styles - Tycho Music

I love the colours used in these two pieces. The contrast of the colours against the sun-like form. This shape must be associated with the band as it seems to appear in quite a few posters.
This is something to consider. Rather than using the stereotypes for people to make the association, what about using something else? A symbol?

The posters for Tycho music are more like a piece of art than a piece of promotional material however it still has the same effect, if not more of an effect on the viewer.
It is more interesting than just showing the band stood there posing with their instruments.
For CD covers and posters, they are called album art and sometimes they are actual pieces of art.
This technique is something I wish to use with my film poster. However it will be more difficult because there's more codes and conventions for what a film poster needs to have and what it should do to the viewer.

I want to break the boundaries of what people think a poster should look like

I want my poster to look more like a piece of art rather than an image than ticks boxes:

• Look into Graphic Styles/Artists
• Need to draw up some ideas after looking at some Graphic Styles/Artists

Use other shapes rather than rectangles to have the poster on:

• Irregular shapes
• regular shapes such as triangles and octagon

Use the research into stereotypes which I have done to create a poster/piece of art which tones down the use of stereotypes. The stereotypes being:

• Race
• Gender
• Sexuality - attractiveness and bi/homosexuality

Using Photoshop - caricatures

Will add more later but first of all, here's two quick caricature of Storm.
A barbie girl representation of the real character. With all the make up, huge boobs, tiny waist, wide hips and long legs.
Then the second shows her cowering behind the 'dominant masculine' figure wolverine.

Seen as I was looking at actual typical families...

For fun purposes and to give people the chance to have a different body or be part of a scene, head cut out boards are great.
A superhero head cut out board gives typical normal people to be part of the superhero scene and look like one...well ish haha
I could take this further by putting people's faces behind the face holes, grinning happily.

But for now, I replaced the hero's heads with the heads of my own family. Looks extremely weird, especially with me having a big muscly body and one of my sisters being beast but it shows a true typical normal family!

Exploring Typography

I've been briefly exploring typography.
Both 2D and 3D typography.
This is just one model taken from different angles to create the letters A and K (my initials!)
People ask me how I did it and well it was by accident. I intended to create the A shape but only by accident did I discovered it made a K shape too. This was when I was taking a picture of my work from different angles.

Off Facebook again

This is an example of what I mean by flipping a stereotype of a poster. This being in a humorous way.

So Jon and Dave can see

My Manifesto Final Pieces

The first one is just an image representing what I'm trying to say. That life isn't as easy as Disney makes it out to be. Life doesn't always go to how you plan but its okay because we're still alive and well.
In the real world, Ariel would have been caught by now and history would've been made by some fisherman...just because she kept coming to the shore etc.

It could probably do with some more work but I've just said in an evaluation what I could have done to make it better if given enough time.
But I like the roughness of the piece because its a good effect in my opinion and symbolises how rough life can be and how life isn't like a fairy tale.
Particularly Disney Fairy tales where the lines and colouring is perfect!

Second piece is that book cover we were supposed to do. Seen as Fourth Plinth and Manifesto related to each other, I decided to combine them together using images of my work to create this. I think it needs work like the other piece but still works well. Instead of wasting time editing it, I have just done an evaluation of it.

Caricatures

car·i·ca·ture

noun /ˈkarikəCHər/  /-ˌCHo͝or/ 
caricatures, plural

1. A picture, description, or imitation of a person or thing in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect
2. The art or style of such exaggerated representation
   • - there are elements of caricature in the portrayal of the hero
3. A ludicrous or grotesque version of someone or something
   • - he looked like a caricature of his normal self

I have found this caricatures of Wolverine which relates to my work at the moment. I can use this technique to take the mess out of existing film posters.

Banter

ban·ter

noun /ˈbantər/  The playful and friendly exchange of teasing remarks - there was much singing and good-natured banter verb /ˈbantər/  bantered, past participle; bantered, past tense; bantering, present participle; banters, 3rd person singular present Talk or exchange remarks in a good-humored teasing way - the men bantered with the waitresses - a bantering tone

https://www.google.co.uk/search?um=1&hl=en&q=Banter&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1440&bih=748&wrapid=tlif133700310565811&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=iw&ei=XgyxT5OcJora8AOX2cBZ#hl=en&sa=N&q=banter&tbs=dfn:1&tbo=u&ei=YQyxT-_UBMWs8gPr4didCQ&ved=0CH8QkQ4&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=efc54dbc371a732b&biw=1440&bih=748

Need to look at the use of words
Typography

Pansy Project

Artist Paul Harfleet plants pansies at the site of homophobic abuse. Each location is photographed and named after the abuse received. The Pansy Project has many incarnations; small scale unmarked individual plantings, free pansy 'Hand Outs' where the artist speaks to passersby about the project, installations of thousands of plants at the site of homophobia and exhibitions of the photographs the artist has made over the last seven years. The Pansy Project has featured in festivals and exhibitions around the world and won a Gold Medal at the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show 2010.

http://thepansyproject.com/
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/12/07/homotopia-and-the-pansy-project-go-to-turkey/