Well, after what feels like an age, although was actually only 8 weeks.. we can begin doing some official illustration...
or so i thought, im somewhat at even more of a loss recently by looking at these briefs... there are quite a few to choose from (if I look at some others not recommended by the tutors as well) but I've wanted to make a poster etc for Don't Panic for a while and this seems like the best opportunity but I'm slightly put off and lost at the moment.
From what I first read, the brief was on the theme of Resistance... which to me immediately suggested ideas of politics, rebellion, freedom fighters etc and I really dont follow politics at all.. so this was kind of disappointing to me.. :(
then like every other brief I began thinking of other meanings to the word, coming up with ideas of resistant materials, fire proof, water proof or ways in which things resist... salmon swimming up stream etc. or maybe ways we could resist temptation....
I decided I needed a proper look at the brief as well as researching previous winners of the Don't Panic poster comps...
"Resistance is about going against the grain. Going left when everyone is going right. Resistance is radical for the short term, and revolutionary in the long."
self explanatory....
"We’d like you to capture on paper resistance to the politics of existence from a personal level - interacting with your peers, neighbours and work colleagues - to globally, countries, sexes & religions."
this is the bit that has now thrown me even more... I've re worded the exact brief to make a little more sense and flow easier when reading... but im not a 100% sure what theyre on about..
"Consider sub-aspects of resistance – protection and armour (both physical and mental) aspects of survival, hardiness & determination. Try and think the opposite of your standard practice, work with new methods - push out of your comfort zone."
without a clearer understanding of the middle bit, I dont think i can tackle this aspect just yet... :(
some previous winners...
social:
power:
originality: government:
im all over the place again... i started off just by googling the word resistance just to see what images turned up... and resistance posters. although the majority seem like the stereotypical images youd expect I came across a photo that i liked the look of. Originally spotted here talking about a poster designed for Critical mass (a mass cyclist gathering and ride, quite a site to be seen!)
the inflatable president bush was actually part of a demonstration/protest to arrest Bush or "give him the boot" (if you read the various links you'll get the joke or should i explain it...??? yeah..).... instead of doing a typical demonstration with posters etc etc they had a giant inflatable bush and invited people to thrown shoes at it.. simple.. you can really imagine the crowd gettin behind this and cheering or using it to let out anger etc... but its a fun idea and exciting visually as opposed to jsut a crowd of home made banners and posters... which got me thinking i could again create a character for this project, or maybe even make my own inflatable :D
im kind of hoping the brief isnt as political as i first imagined it to be.. (i feel really stupid that im missing something here! that its a very obvious idea that I cant grasp)... but i dont follow politics at all, definitely not enough to inspire an idea like the above :P
even so, I have briefly looked at sourcing vinyl to make a blow up character but was also reminded of a visiting artist I once saw on my foundation course :) Space Cadets. Using a material called ripstop they create giant inflatable scultpures and installations.
I've wanted work to do and to be getting on with.. but I remembered I actually have a tonne of owed commissions to do.. 2 in particular are birthday presents but I cant complete one without specifc supplies and the other ive just not gotten round to doing yet.. but it was sparked off by more papercraft madness...
long story short.. i want to make my own figures but the supplies and method are a little awkward for me at the moment, so paper models is the perfect solution and so ive been looking at these kinds of places (which has actually inspired me to do ANOTHER commission.. although this one is more of a surprise ;) for a loved one)...
I still check ToysREvil everyday, religiously... but it mainly stands as a tease since I cant afford half of the stuff featured there, nor get chance to visit the many exhibitions it boasts... and it fuels my need to create a 3D figure...
through the above and magazines (PLAYtimes and Clutter) I found http://www.mimoco.com/shop/ who are basically famous for making USB sticks.. but its the fact that theyre not just plain old boring USB sticks but little characters in their own right... they have licenses to print pop-culture icons on them in a cute manga vector styled way but a lot of their mass produced ones are initially created by the community on the site and then voted for before the go into mass production... I've been looking at characters I could design and make to house USB sticks but also an idea a little more computer based... (more on that later when i draw up some sketches)...
it reminds me of PatchTogether who specialises in vinyl figures in the same way.. ive just not had the confidence to post any of my ideas on there just yet... although i have 2 definites (my beloved monster and fwedwick) to post up there..... all i need is a push i think.. but from someone who genuinely believes i could do it and not a friend who just thinks theyre nice designs ive made..
This interview with The Little Friends of Printmaking keeps inspiring me to produce more screenprinted works but at the same time I'm one of these people who likes to plan a little before hand or feel like I need a good idea before investing time and materials into a project... Although the interview starts off fairly crap, waffling about their meeting and place of work.. it actually leads into a fairly detailed description of their working method (which seems far too easy to be true) but just looking at the images makes me realise that I can do that too, so why dont i?
There's certain things I do when it comes to making a piece of art, I like to sketch it out first making sure I get proportion correct and I generally get all picky if I cock something up. I then scan it with the intention of making it into a digital piece but I've got hundred of sketches waiting for this to happen and none ever get made... but so many could benefit from me making them into screen prints...
like i mentioned, I get picky on things and my tutor already takes the piss over me being too precious with work, but I've found so far that when I remove my brain from the equation and either jsut sketch/draw blindy or use a technique/process that is prone to imperfection then I'm more pleased with the outcome.. (without quoting Peter Lyle too much..) I like having something created in a more hands on fashion as it does feel genuine and authentic... but what I most admire about screenprinting is the opportunities it creates... usually it limits you to a specific pallet of colours or number of colours at least and purely with the process of laying the screen over the paper.. you start thinking of interesting ways in which to overlay parts of the artwork...
if I dont do more screenprinting this year then i think I'm going to end up being a mac monkey...
I've been waiting just under a month to finally make this post...I wanted the space research out of the way and done before i posted this. Around my birthday (just before christmas) I was lucky enough to get 2 books that i had requested... Made&Sold and Full Vinyl...
like most of the other books i own, I havent gone through them fully yet - waiting for the opportune moment to dig them out for a brief - but I already love them and really excited about having an excuse to reference from them.v
Made&Sold is a collection of personal projects from artists and amateurs who basically went out on their own to make a finished piece without having strict brief guidelines or deadlines to stick to. After going through the 'Paper Tigers' article by Peter Lyle (Varoom 10 summer 2009) I realise that all i really want to do is make things.. i want to create pieces of work and be creative! i want to do exactly what each person has done within this book and make something real and physical that I can show to the world (but also use as portfolio work in order to boost my chances of landing a job)... this is one of the reasons why i made the "this little light of mine" poster a little while back... i think its in my archives here.. (search for personal).. but I've been going out of my head sat here waiting for uni to start again, I want to be creating something and I'm going to use this book as a spring board for my own ideas.. I've already got an order lined up for some new screen print supplies but i still want to make my own vinyl figures... which leads onto the next book i got!
Full Vinyl is like a collection of guilty pleasures... although i am often told off for focusing on "style".. this book features figures from a hold bunch of different artists along with their initial drawings that inspired the figures but also includes some decent bio for a change. Similar to magazines like PlayTimes and Clutter (both very fitting titles for magazines about "toys"), is filled with many bright and colourful characters which every since I was told to look into "character" I have been hung up on creating my own little creatures to bring to life both on page and in 3D... i still have tutorials i want to follow in order to produce some of my own 3d models.. but I rarely find the time to get supplies let alone make them! (i still have one half done at uni!)
but... with all this said.. I'm really looking forward to 2010, I want this to be the year in which I start promoting myself more and getting more paid work! (havent i already said this once?) I also keep hearing the Beatles song "all you need is love" which I have... I'm in love with making and thinking creatively... i cant help it... my mind just runs off on its own little tangents and never looks back.. (which is something i also need to work on.. but we'll save that for later!)....
My research on water in space introduced me to the habitable zone of where life can exist and where H2O can exist as a liquid. Despite the atmosphere of space being empty and freezing, scientists now believe the moons of Saturn and Jupiter are holding water. I started out finding all this information in a couple of books from the library but their information was more general and on areas that didnt relate to water (or in a way that i could spin in my favour). I then turned to various scientific magazines, such as Discover, Popular Science, American Scientist, Science Illustrated, and New Scientist as well as a slew of websites from NASA's own to the Times, the Guardian and many magazines own archives.
Having so many different sources and having to put them onto this blog kind of got the better of me... I hoard reference material and used to print it all out for a folder but now putting on this blog is still taking some getting used to...
but as I've said a few times before, looking at water in space is kind of a dead end at the moment. We're at the point in history where new discoveries are just being made, as new plans for missions to Jupiter won't go ahead until later this year along with the possibility of returning to the moon so I've had to change my direction on water, space and how it affects us. With ideas of mining water from the moon it wouldnt really benefit us here on Earth, the scarcity of water is becoming a threat as the planet warm ups and the population continues grow, so i thought about looking at the developments made in space that would allow us to recycle water etc.
I then started looking into what the astronauts do on board and how they live... which I decided to focus my attention on and although it took me approx 3 and a half weeks out fo the 4 weeks allocated for this brief.. i eventually came up with the working title of... "Should we be living as astronauts?"
as soon as I had this idea in my head, pieces of information and facts that i could illustrate immediately came to mind... although i did feel that this wasnt truly fitting to the brief (as if i expected it to be harder and that i should create a piece of work that will change peoples minds etc). I think I was getting too hung up on certain details (as usual) rather than focusing my attention down to a particular idea/theme... http://www.nasa.gov/missions/science/f_water.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/behindscenes/waterrecycler.html although the ISS had this water recycler on board for a while, they werent officially allowed to use it's water until safety tests were carried out but now... this piece of equipment will produce 6,000 lbs of drinkable water for its crew, saving on ferrying water to the ISS and waste.
what i should probably explain is that aboard the ISS, every piece of water is recycled to the best of their ability, that means sweat from the crew and moisture inside the ISS is condensed to be used as well as urine. Even the animals aboard the ISS contribute to the water recycling.. and i found out a fact about 72 rats producing the same amount as one crew member.. however it didnt say if this was water that was recycled from them or that they could produce.. so... i left that out of my final work. (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast02nov_1.htm)
but i started looking at how they get water to space (same way the astronauts get there!) as its transported in large duffel bags and how astronauts go about their daily routine such as cleaning their teeth, having a wash and using the toilet. It's at this point that I discovered certain facts about water consumption aboard the ISS and decided to compare and contrast it to what the average family uses on Earth, for example they cant flush the toilet! they use a dry powder shampoo and what seems common knowledge now... their food is freeze dried but features instructions on the packaging on how much water to add to the food and how long to leave it hydrating for...
(god knows why they put Tight Fit's Lion sleeps tonight!) but this is clips from the IMAX Space Station movie, that shows the beginning of the space station during its assembly and its start up with the first crew aboard it to general living and activities of the crew.
I had already decided from the beginning that i wanted to make posters (and preferably screen print them).. but my idea changed slightly... i had originally thought about doing propaganda style posters mimicking the old space race posters and giving them a retro futurist style based on the ficitional idea that the first ones to plant a flag on water would control it for their people... (i mean the russians have planted flags underneath the ice so... why not? ;) but being an initial idea, it wasnt thought out too well. In the end with all the facts I found out I wanted to produce a sort of government information leaflet, since there are a tonne of organisations and websites giving us tips on how to save water - which all basically say.. turn off the tap whilst brushing your teeth or flushing the toilet less - but i didnt want to produce a large wordy pamphlet. I even thought of making an animation again.. but considering I get a little carried away when it comes to things like that I decided i'd best not... so.. i again came to posters as a quick and striking method to deliver information. We were meant to exhibit the work once we finished, so I figured the easiest way for someone to get my idea would be to make a bright striking image that you could glance at and understand but with very little text as I know peoples attention spans arent what they used to be.. ;)
I ended up coming up with these visual delights.. it gave me an opportunity to use Illustrator again (although i really dont know why i like that program so much!)... again sticking with the being able to glance at them idea, i went with designing simple to understand icons (or what i thought were easy to understand) and i hope that they could be universally understood no matter the language... and i cant help but try to include some humour in my work... (check out the 4 humans on the my water recycler illustration).
I'm happy with what I ended up producing, albeit a little rushed, I wasted many weeks researching and pondering over where to go next, and the problem with printers on deadline day (but thankfully i was able to print them in colour! and cheaper!)... but it wasnt until sticking them up that i noticed 2 stupid grammatical errors.. (theres no point changing them here as the tutors will have already marked it and seen the posters)... so.. on the pink one (recycler poster) in the last sentence i typed 'forceand' instead of 'force and' ... then on the orange (shower poster) I started the the last two lines with the same word ' Whereas' which just doesnt make for proper grammar nor reading! :( let this stand as evidence to ALWAYS proof read final pieces and not to rush it all on the last day :P ahahhahahah yeah right!
I still have a LOAD of website links that hold other bits of information and as a result I now avidly keep checking Discover magazine's site for updates as well as having rekindled my interest in getting my own telescope or joining ManAstro.co.uk .
Some other interesting bits of information I found out during my hunt for facts were...
due to zero gravity conditions, all bodily fluids start rising to the highest points in the body it can, so this is why the astronauts have to keep exercising in order to keep their muscles in their legs healthy... but as a side effect their taste buds become dulled thus why they prefer spicy foods! (the astronauts menu isnt as bland as popular thoery would have you believe!)
Recently I read a post by a UK artist who spoke about his own downfall in being too excited/eager to work... I have exactly the same problem in that I get all enthused about an idea and I go at it full steam, my mind is working at a mile a minute, and then something else pops into my head.. either to do with the same piece of work or something completely different and I then get all excited about that idea until something else comes and distracts me... my tutor last year called me fickle, which nearly made me cry, purely because I have bad connotations linked to that word but it don' half mess you up...
Basically, I am currently out of uni until the 18th and upon our return we are to begin our new brief... however.. I'm still quite invested in the previous one... we had 4 weeks to produce a piece of work linking the theme of water to how it affects society, individuals or systems. I have technically finished this brief but I havent updated all the research onto this here blog, which is a bit pointless since i am now WELL past the deadline date for that project... but I'm trying not to go and throw myself at the new project yet.... not until I've at least gotten some more research on here to back up my final piece. the problem im having now is trying to remember the running order that I did my research in! I know i loosely looked at space in general and then focused it down... but I want to get it ALL down on here.. i've never realised jsut how much i love space... im on the brink of gettin a telescope... but cant help but feel as if it would be wasted money.. like my usb drum kit.
I have a load of links/articles/videos/magazines to put up here, hopefully before my tutorial on the 14th, but i've really shot myself in teh foot.. im playing catch up now instead of being up to date and on top of it all.. this has in turn affected any sort of personal work on the side i was doing.. plus other bits of research. I have a freelance job which i also need to get tied up and out of the way.. but in the mean time i also have a part time job.. i cant help but feel that im stretched a little too thin.. ive enjoyed the 1st year because i had no other commitments to get in the way. I feel like complaining but i only have myself to whinge at, since im the one who's letting my time management get out of control... i think i may seriously need to have a chat with someone jsut to try and get things sorted. its not that I dont really have the time for it.. its more i dont have the motivation as Im looking at a whole list of things that need doing rather than small pieces of different things...
i also want 2010 to be the year were i start self promoting more and gettin freelance PAID jobs and not getting screwed over when jobs which were meant to give me cash, decide to sever contact... or they decide that after ive done the work, they'll get someone else to do it for them.. cheaper. Im caring a little less about style... as in im not stressing to find my own style.. im currently comfortable knowing that i can recreate any existing style but im still trying to find excuses to do contour drawing and screen printing... as well as papercraft and vectors... see... its all over the place. to help with the self promotion thing, i requested Made&Sold ( a book ) as a present for my birthday in hopes that it would inspire me to sell my own work... it has.. but again these ideas need to wait for the time being... Im actually stressing more over what the hell i am going to do with my life... work wise.. i want to do so many different things but cant help but feel that the areas i want to go into are just fads and will die out by the time i graduate.
Ive actually considered setting up my own lil' business where I just do all the simple, mind numbingly easy design/art/graphic jobs that the average person doesnt know how to do. During an interview/informal chat with a graphics team, I was introduced to the term 'Mac Monkey', which basically means doing the boring jobs that involve very little creative thinking but require knowledge about programs like Photoshop or Illustrator...( i was going to go work for a photographic studio, doing retouching on the photographs.. but considering how much i genuinely hate that now.. i best not!). I currently feel like a job like this would be my best option though as I prefer working to set briefs rather than being given a random key word and told to go and produce any number of different pieces of work that could stem from a million and one ideas to do with it. I prefer the solid structure and boundaries to set my ideas in motion.. and then being able to let them loose... (hence why I like experimenting in 3D) but yet once more... I AM GETTIN AHEAD OF MYSELF!...
It probably seems a little childish, me cryin like this, wanting everything to work out fine now, or even a little like im hoping someone will come over, pat me on the back and say im doing fine but hopefully i can start clearing my head.. i have a list of things i need to get done... in a semi kind of order.. i really need to get all my research down on here to do with water before i start gettin back to normal... i jsut wish i could pause the internet so nothing new and exciting appears online before i get all this work done.. i keep getting distracted!
