Wednesday 25 November 2009

the last 4 weeks....

have culminated in this... :D


CPP Aardvark DoorStormers from pie face on Vimeo.

water initial stuff

Accidentally posted this on the illustration blog and was meant to be put on here.. but I'm thinking of tryin to do a piece of work based on facts about water etc...








a couple of years ago I did some work for AfSL and their fashion show 'SUST' which was to showcase sustainable clothes and make up products and that they arent drab tye dye hippy hemp threads. AfSL are a charity who hope to raise awareness on simple ways for us to start making a change and prolong our natural resources...

http://www.afsl.org.uk/water


rather than aim to create a flat 2D piece like the isotypes of AWH, I'd LOVE to make something 3D that draws more attention or an installation that would involve some sort of participation from the viewer ...

I've already been looking at 'Tactile' again and I'll get my hands on 'Data Flow' which is knocking about round the studios

;)

Monday 23 November 2009

The new brief....

Hmm... a lot of people arent too sure how to take the new brief.. but from what I understand it is to get us all to imagine we have been given a REAL brief to produce a piece of work that would raise awareness to social and political issues surrounding water and the human races consumption, dependence, fear and understanding of water...

This project is to be more research based than most others, purely so we can produce a piece of work that is informed by facts and information specific to the theme but also to provoke us to delve deeper into ideas and research before we actually produce a final piece of work...

Going off some of the information presented to us today in the briefing lecture I remembered a few artists who have done something similar...

Modern Dog: After purchasing their 20 years of posters book for a previous project, I already knew they had created posters that were sold in order to raise money for the victims of hurricane Katrina, in New Orleans via http://www.thehurricaneposterproject.com/index.php?page=poster

Michael Strassburger and Robynne Raye both produced satirical images that were also so bold and straight to the point, that Robynne's 'Fuck Bush' design was removed from the original exhibition but then later re-instated. They dont shy away from saying what they are thinking or putting thier views out there, as seen in each posters design, but rather than mocking the aim of the Hurricane poster project they are trying to draw attention to the lack of involvement and aid from President Bush...

R.Raye:


M.Strassburger:


In Strassburger's piece, I like how the lack of detail and colour means you focus purely on reading the text on the t-shirt. Although you read the outlines as a figure, giving the slogan a context as it appears on a survivors t-shirt, you dont immediately think of this one person.. you think of the thousands of people effected by it...

Always with Honour: ( http://www.alwayswithhonor.com/ )One particular idea suggested during the briefing was the use of Isotypes and I was immediately reminded of Always With Honour's 'Largest Bankruptcies' piece. The comical imagery of bankruptcy shown as sinking boats and ships draws the audiences attention more so than a standard graph or chart. Although the piece is easy to read, you immediately see and wonder what it is about... upon reading you understand the idea behind it... I personally feel oversaturated and desensitised to certain imagery and issues, for example, there are so many advertisments for Charities that you are often left wondering which one would/should you donate to and why are there so many that seem to be doing the same thing? If I am able to create a piece of work within this project that firstly draws the audience closer and then offers them information for their curiosity then i will be happy.



Isotypes seem to be a speciality of AWH and I think they are highly successful, even if I am purely attracted to them by their visual appeal at first... at least they have attracted me and theres a good chance I will read further into them... however I wonder if the lack of personal details in both Modern Dog and AWH's work means the audience dont connect fully to the issues expressed and merely dismiss it as " it's not happening to me"... ?








(originally found via http://grainedit.com/2009/07/08/always-with-honor-design-illustration-part-2/ )

November...

Right... i have been busy doing lots of stuff this month and finally I think I'm about to crack... things have gone well and others not so well.. and its the not so well things that have more riding on them! :/

anyway.. I've have been knee deep into our last brief, the cross pathway project, in which I have been working as part of a group towards producing a piece of work based on a single theme... that was AMAZING! :) really had fun, but 4 weeks seems to be about the full limit of time people like to spend on one project...

so... my point is... I've been over at http://cppaardvark.blogspot.com/

the place where we decided to collate all our work from sketches to research... but I thought I might as well add some photos here :) and eventually the video... (when its uploaded!)

the idea/theme was...
"What would you imagine to be behind a closed door?"

we each interpreted the theme in our own styles whilst trying to show something about our own personalities and interests.... :)

these were my initial sketches on what I'd like to be behind the door....

a monster:
Designing characters ha now become a passion of mine :)

a room or sweets:
I bloody love sweets... oops just realised the image is upside down... :/


and... BoooooBS!:
Sophie Howard is quite beautiful, but it also gave me a chance to do more contour drawing :D


However, there were fears that I was being too literal, so I change this idea in favour of the slang joke featured on this scrap piece below...




Here are a few shots of me during the process... other photos can be seen via the blog address back up top...











the final video footage was projected onto the inside of this door and frame... we couldnt really decide on what to put on the door for the exhibition ... so.. we just drew it like a door! ;)

Sunday 1 November 2009

Cross Pathway Project

At the moment all four art and design courses in the 2nd year are working together in groups of 4, in most cases it works out at one person from each area of Graphic Design, Surface Design, Moving Image and the wonderful Illustration....

(all except ours... our 4th has apparently disappeared off the face of the earth... so we are the only Trio group).

We did something similar in the 1st year under the title of Chindogu, in which we were to design our own useless invention and shoot a commercial for them, but nearly everyone I know hated it... so a lot of people weren't looking forward to this CPP. However, I am happy to announce that almost everyone is enjoying it and is pleasantly surprised at how well the groups are working!

Within our own group, the only troubles we've had so far have been...

- narrowing down our thousands of ideas,
- we are all taking the managerial role, theres no one true leader as we are a group,
and..
- technical trouble! resulting in our first bit of footage not being saved.. but not to worry :)

this is the bare bones of our work so far.. by the end of tonight all our ideas should be up and we can start narrowing down and producing our stuff this week :D

http://cppaardvark.blogspot.com/