Production For Visual Communicators

From Novice To Expert

From the chart i would rate myself at Competent.

I feel that some of the aspects of this group don't exactly explain me however the majority do.

Knowledge

I feel i should have more background knowledge than what i have at the moment, however i can hopefully pick more up throughout the course, at home and whilst working through projects.

I feel that i have a decent amount of knowledge about the camera, which should keep improving throughout the course as i use it more and more.

Standard of Work

Throughout college i'd create work and at first it would never be as good as what i knew i could create so i'd go through more ideas and get opinions off people in my class to try and improve on my work and i'd always be happy with my finished piece.

I've found that working through my first project at university i went through several ideas, most of which i hated, before i found one that really got me motivated.

Autonomy

I feel that i am able to achieve most tasks using my own judgement, sometimes i feel stuck with an idea so will talk to others and research artists to get inspiration to work through it.

Andreas Gursky - 99cent

Coping With Complexity

Throughout my projects i do brainstorms and research to help me get through situations where i don't know how to progress on the work anymore, i also ask for other people's opinions and how they think i can improve on the work i've created.

Perception of Context

When i think of an idea and feel that maybe it could work i experiment with taking photos and researching about it, however for most of my ideas throughout my 'recession' project i haven't continued using them as i felt i could produce something better.

I feel this helps me a lot when working through projects as i try out a variety of ideas and although most of them never get used, they've helped me to progress onto a better idea.

The Experts

I don't really have one favourite expert as i'm constantly researching new artists throughout projects, however, if i was to choose i would probably say Jenny Saville.

I love the work she creates, although a lot of her pieces are paintings they look so realistic and really inspired me throughout a few of my college projects.

Jenny Saville

I was really inspired by the idea behind her paintings as to what they mean/show.

Her work shows fascination with the reality of people, big fleshy parts of the body painted as if they're being pressed against a piece of glass. I was really inspired by the way she portrays the reality of some women as not everyone who are shown in paintings or magazines are slim and beautiful models.

I think that something / someone that isn't beautiful can still be created into something that is.

Development of Creative Thought & Structure

Overcoming Mindsets

(Relaxing Your Habitual Thinking Patterns)

I find that when i get given a project brief i initially start by brainstorming ideas to then move on to photographing objects/places/people.

I usually tend to always start every project with similar ways of photographing things to get me started on the work as i find it difficult to get motivated otherwise, then progress on those ideas or completely change them in some cases as i work through the project, this is to try and make the work different from other projects. For example, when i was studying at college i focused all my photography on portraiture, we used a lot of image manipulation on the course however my work started to get a bit repetitive.

However, i carried on with portraiture but changed each project by using different materials such as putting tights over someone's head or them pressing their face against materials which weren't completely see through to distort their image.

I then moved onto photographing projections onto the back of someone, then progressed from that to photographing writing onto my back. This work i used for my Final Major which was then exhibited in the Artix Theatre in Bromsgrove.

It seemed to take me a while to come out of my comfort zone and start experimenting with strange but interesting materials, but once i'd produced such different work, which i was proud to say was mine i really enjoyed experimenting.

I think now i need to get back into that habit of trying out different methods of photographing with a variety of materials to carry on creating different types of photographs.

Restating Problems

I always find when i do any project that i come across some sort of problem with the work i'm creating. It is important that we have the confidence to imaginatively and creatively challenge these problems from different angles. Reviewing your approach gives yourself more options on how you could improve on the work and what you could do differently.

Throughout my previous sketchbooks i brainstormed ideas throughout the projects to help me improve on the work i was producing and this helped me a lot to see what i could do differently and why the ideas maybe weren't working.

I found that through most of my work i'd be thinking of the same or a similar idea all the time. To try and improve on my work and maybe create a new idea i would constantly be looking at artists, which would help me come up with different ways of approaching my work. I find that looking at artists work, whether they are contemporary artists or not, you can get great inspiration from some of them. I feel this sometimes helps me create stronger pieces of work.

I also find that visiting galleries helps influence my work, visiting these sort of spaces helps me to interact with what's out there and how it could maybe be shown as a similar approach in my work.

Some examples of photography work i created at college using materials.

(Film Camera) 

Production and Outcomes

Interpretation

Alice in Wonderland

Sir John Tenniel - 1865

"Several of Tenniel's political cartoons expressed strong hostility to Irish Nationalism, with Fenians and Land leagues depicted as monstrous, ape-like brutes, while "Hibernia" - the personification of Ireland - was depicted as a beautiful, helpless young girl threatened by these monsters and turning for protection to "her elder sister", the powerful armoured Britannia."

Creatives use their ideas and spirit of their time to create their artworks, in this case from what is explained above.

Tenniels illustrations are very characature and the characters look quite evil, it seems like quite a dark story.

Tim Burton - 2010

Tim Burtons version of Alice in Wonderland is much more surreal and it is obvious that he has used a lot of digital manipulation on his characters, such as the Queen of Hearts and how small her body is compared to the size of her head.

This film is about Alice returning to "Underland" for the second time.

"She is told that she is the only one who can slay the Jabberwocky, a dragon-like creature controlled by the Red Queen who terrorizes Underland's inhabitants. The film uses a combination of live action and 3D animation in a story that can neither be described as a sequel nor as a re-imagining. Burton developed the story because he never felt an emotional connection to the original book, with its series of events about a girl wandering from one weird character to another."

Lewis Carrolls version of Alice in Wonderland seems quite a dark story, where as Tim Burtons version seems a bit more imaginative and colourful. He seems to use a wide range of bright colours which i feel is more likely to attract a wider audience. Although he uses such colour and medias i felt when i watched the film that parts of it were quite dark and eery. 

Testing Your Work (getting to your audience)

Craig Atkinson

"By accident, I changed the way I worked from painting to drawing. As soon as I did that and put some work online, people started to contact me for commissions. I still class what I do as Fine Art though, as pretentious as that might sound."

I feel it is important to get a variety of opinions on pieces of work we create, even if it just off a friend or someone in the class. 

It helps us to progress our ideas further when others can spot certain aspects of the work such as something that may not work with what the message is that we're trying to portray through out work.

I think that posting our work onto websites or our own blogs would be a lot more helpful as we could get comments from people all over the world about what they think of it. 

What works?

What doesn't work?

What's attractive to the audience?

Bibliography

Sir John Tenniel's political cartoons - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tenniel

Tim Burtons Alice - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_Wonderland_(2010_film)

Craig Atkinson - http://www.monarkh.com/interviews/craig-atkinson/

Craig Atkinson Umbrella - http://www.craigatkinson.co.uk/category/umbrellas

Development of Ideas & Structure (Moving Image)

Pre-production: Character Design

There are four aspects of a character:

1. Protagonist

2. Antagonist

3. Dialogue

4. Stereotype

Scrubs

"The show follows the lives of several employees of the fictional Sacred Heart, a teaching hospital. It features fast-paced screenplay, slapstick (a type of comedy) and surreal vignettes presented mostly as the daydreams of the main character, Dr. John 'J.D' Dorian."

Appearance:

J.D appears nerdish yet masculine and he has carefully styled hair.

He tends to daydream a lot, when he does this he tilts his head to one side and looks up.

Action:

He is a doctor of internal medicine.

Throughout the series he is also the narrator, he is shown to be a very skilled doctor although he acts quite childish at times.

"He is described as having compassion for his patients, 'very good instincts' and a lot of determination and enthusiasm for his job."

Interaction:

J.D relates with all the other doctors/surgeons in Scrubs. He relates especially to his 'best friend and surrogate brother' Turk. It is suggested that J.D has a "codependent relationship with Turk, regularly going through some stages of depression whenever he can't be with him".

Future Film: Digital Storytelling

A lot of TV series or films use multiple platforms or extended forms to engage more with the audience.

An example of a TV series that uses multi platforms / extended forms could be Hollyoaks.

Hollyoaks is shown every night Monday - Friday and occasionally they show what's called 

'Hollyoaks later', which is described as 'Sexy, Action packed and Late Night'. I feel that the Hollyoaks Later show does make the audience engage with the show more as they show clips of it on adverts, I think by doing this helps to engage more with the audience as they want to know what's going to happen.

For those who watch the Hollyoaks half 6 show i believe that they would definitely be engaged by the extended part of the series as it does relate to the ongoing week night shows. I think that if the people who watch Hollyoaks religiously, they would definitely engage with the 'later' show so they know exactly what's going on, if they missed the later shows they would then watch one the next day and something would have changed, for example maybe someone got killed on the later show yet the audience who didn't watch it wouldn't know how or why.

an example of the effect of multi-platform:

"Of the movie releases tracked by IMMI in 2007, five employed

significantly large multi-platform advertising with enough

exposure to quantify the effects of campaigns. In almost every

case the conversion for multi-platform was higher than

conversion for a single platform…in some cases much higher." 

Bibliography

IMMI - http://www.immi.com/whitepapers/pdfs/IMMI-ImpactOfMultiPlatformAdvertising.pdf

Scrubs - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrubs_(TV_series)

Scrubs (about J.D) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.D._(Scrubs)

Hollyoaks - http://www.e4.com/hollyoaks/index.html

Hollyoaks Later - http://www.e4.com/hollyoaks/later/2010/

Reflective Visual Journal

Iteration

Thomas Edison is a good example of an artist who uses iteration. This image is one of his thousands of drawing designs when he was inventing the light bulb. It took him 10,000 goes inventing the lightbulb until it finally worked.

I believe that a better/stronger piece of work is created when so many designs of the same or similar thing are drawn over and over again to progress the idea each time it has been re designed.

A question that should be asked when designing something new is 'can it work better?' or/and 'can it look better?'

Another example of this is James Dyson and his invention for the bagless vacuum, which he made 200 prototypes of before he got to his final creation.

I think it is important that if we create an idea which doesn't seem to work, we shouldn't give up on it straight away. Like Thomas Edison and James Dyson, we should keep trying out the same idea until it works, maybe change it slightly but we shouldn't give up.

"If you can't find the right answer, look for the right question".

Reflection

Throughout sketchbooks i find it helps to progress my ideas further by constantly reflecting on what i've created each time making sure i engage with the work, questioning and evaluating it constantly to get a better idea of how i need to improve it and also compare it to other artists work that i've researched who gave me inspiration to create the idea.

An example of work from my sketchbook to the left shows that i use brief notes to record reflection of my progress throughout projects, showing how certain aspects of an idea may work really well, when other aspects may not work at all, therefore i find that writing more ideas of what may work better or what i know i should change helps me to improve the idea so much better.

The majority of brief notes used in sketchbooks are usually critical, this helps me to notice how i can improve on what i've started to create and maybe notice what's wrong with it.

                      Another example of my ideas in progression.

Annotating throughout my sketchbook as shown here helps me to think of a similar idea but maybe shown visually in a different way, however keeping the same meaning behind the work.

Working through previous projects i've found that once i've changed the idea visually, the meaning behind the work may also change slightly but i don't think this is a bad thing as long as the meaning still works with the visual idea shown through the work.

From constantly annotating sketchbook work and ideas helps lead to the final outcome, or closer ideas to what the final outcome will turn out to be.

Bibliography

Thomas Edison Light Bulb - http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bledison.htm

James Dyson Vacuum - http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/04/0409_unsung_innovators/7.htm

The Design Process

Practice

I admire Andy Warhol's style of work, i love the variety of use of bright eye catching colours. One of my favourite pieces by Andy Warhol is his painting of Marilyn Monroe. 

His choice of colours for the paitings refer to the popular culture of that time, this also helped him to experiment with different techniques such as silkscreen printing, which is a popular technique for mass production.

The Marilyn canvases were early examples of Warhol's use of silkscreen printing, this was a method that he experimented with.

"In August 62 I started doing silkscreens. I wanted something stronger that gave more of an assembly line effect. With silkscreening you pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink across it so the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That way you get the same image, slightly different each time. It was all so simple quick and chancy. I was thrilled with it. When Marilyn Monroe happened to die that month, I got the idea to make screens of her beautiful face the first Marilyns."

Matteo Bertolio

“I love photography that is graphically clean and that sends an essential message. I think elegance and an esthetic eye are the dominating elements in my work."

Matteo Bertolio created this piece of work from inspiration off Andy Warhol's - Marilyn Monroe.

He used this image for a magazine front cover 'Tank'.

The intention of the use of bright colours is to appeal to the reader more, to stand out and be eye catching. 

Although this is almost a clone of Warhol's piece it still inspires me because of the use of colour as it is so bright and eye catching. 

Legibility

I think this 'ok' magazine cover is a good example of a legible cover. The main news of this magazine is obviously about Britney and as soon as i looked at this, straight away i was drawn to the bold yellow writing with a picture of her face above. I think the text underneath which is in white would be more legible if it had a darker background maybe, however it can still quite easily be read.

The bright colours on the magazine make it more appealing to the reader and more eye catching, where as the example of another magazine below 'Harmonie' is quite dull and plain. 

I believe it depends on what type of audience your trying to communicate with wether you have a bright page or a more 'chilled out' page. Before i even read 'rockprogressif' i figured this style of magazine, for example the background, colour, typeface, image of the men, one who has long hair was to be aimed at an audience who liked rock music. For both of these magazines i think the typeface and typesize that has been chosen fits perfect for each targeted audience.

Bibliography

Andy Warhol's Marilyn - http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/marilyns.html

Matteo Bertolio Marilyn - http://www.matteobertolio.com/createbook/user/listimg.php?id_story=80&id_gallery=2

OK and Harmonie magazine - www.google.co.uk/images (magazine front covers)

Research and Development

Research is a very important thing when designing, or progressing ideas towards a final design.

I think it is essential that secondary research is done to find out what is already out there and how we can maybe progress it further to create something contemporary and original. I also believe that primary research is equally important as we can collect fresh, original data of our own by either making questionnaires to hand out, interview random people on the street, photograph buildings or objects that inspire us and document this in a sketchbook, this way we can produce a new design out of ideas that we have researched from visually communicating with what is around us.

I feel we can contribute to deeper understanding of the subject in matter by collecting information and photographs about it.

Jill Calder is a great example for someone who collects a variety of interesting, inspiring observations, making sketches of everyday life that inspires her.

"I love drawing. I'd quite happily draw on anything (and quite often do) but some hot pressed Fabriano paper or a Moleskin notebook are my surfaces of choice."

Paul Davis (illustrator)

"I fill notebook after notebook after notebook because I feel sick when I forget potentially good ideas, I take photographs, I draw, I scan, I Photoshop.”

I think it is really important to collect photographs, drawings, notes and maybe even listening to peoples conversations e.g on a train or bus journey and record all this information in a sketchbook to help progress our ideas and visually create something out of it.

Visual practice is also very important, everyday we are visually communicating for example, talking to our friends, walking observing what is around us, reading books. By understanding various practices we can progress and advance our own.

I believe that every piece of work produced is a progression of something the artist has been inspired by, whether it be a small image or idea from a magazine, it doesn't matter.

As long as we are open minded, hard working and we take risks, anything is possible.

Bibliography

Jill Calder - http://www.jillcalder.com/

Paul Davis - http://www.pauldavisandpartners.com/#/practice/office/design_approach