Evaluation.

OUIL504 EVALUATION 

In this module I think I’ve learnt the most skills and transferable skills than I had in any previous module. Screen-printing was very tricky to get around and at first seemed like something I really wasn’t into however when it goes right, it really goes right. It’s a very addictive form or creating images. I was engulfed in it and It is now something I will involve a lot more in my practice. This however only being the starting point I believed I could of used it more effectively, now I’m aware of what I can actually accomplish with it I’m very excited to see what I will be able to do with even more investment into this craft, In short I think I could of used screen print more effectively and more to my style if I had been aware of its capabilities but it’s now a new starting point for me. Animation was something that I have only touched on, I really didn’t like it. It felt very alien and very unnatural for me. It was more a burden and the more I tried to use it and get into it the more I really didn’t like it. Too me it felt very cold and not a process I am keen to repeat much. I’ve learnt some basic animation techniques and have a very basic knowledge of after effects. I believe it’s mainly on my part. I personally wouldn’t say I used animation effectively in this module at all, I’m not proud of any of it. I really struggled with the concept and the whole approach and I think this is very evident in my work this module.

It was strange when I first started with screen-print never doing it before, I was very in the dark. So much so I just presumed that my usual style of working wouldn’t work with screen-print so I neatened my whole practice up, went a lot more digital and really turned around my way of working. Of course knowing what I know now, I could of stuck with how I usually work and it would of all most likely worked out, even for the better. That been said I now and have another weapon in my arsenal in that this way of working I’ve developed has forced my practice to evolve and grow and it is very different from resolved projects from previous years. Animation was more of a battle too see what I could actually do, what I felt was more me. Whenever I did anything I just didn’t feel right. Like I was just going through the motions and not having any resonance with what I was creating, I think this was another reason It quickly became laborious for me and pushed to the back of my creative pile as it were

Some strengths have some of this module but I feel all the strength is in the development and not the resolved pieces. For me the final images are a means to and end, they’re nice and they’ll do but for me the main strengths come it all the play and moulding of my practice. Character development has taken huge steps forward for this thanks to this module and I feel that’s where I shone the most.

On the flip side to that a lot of weakness in my work I believe fall mainly into how I manage my time and more so where I lay my allegiances to. For example if I’d have spent as much time trailing with animation and on After effects my final products might not been a complete insult to animation but because I was seduced by screen-print and found it gave much more back, animation was pushed away and only worked on here and there. I know this will heavily effect my final mark.

Now if I were to do this all again, or things to take away for next time and quite obvious In this one. Manage my time better but it’s more than that. I still got the work done, it’s work more a case of where I’m putting my time. I need to remember that there’s a reason we’re hear and it’s too learn. If anything I I’ve learnt I need to out more focus on things I find difficult to so I can excel at them or at least get them up to a point that I’m happy with and will at the very least feel comfortable to do again

OUIL504 SB1/SB2 Proposals

Project Proposal Printed Picture

I Intend to produce:

• A serious of prints conceptually based on my response to Murakami's book 1Q84
• 6 Prints depicting anarchy and a dystopian city/society
• Using colours that create and juxtaposition with the audience

The content will focus on (Identify specific themes; texts; concepts)

• Anarchy and dystoia
• Fear 
• Cartoon violence

I will be aiming to communicate  (Identify specific ideas; texts; moods)

• My personal feeling to Murakamis work mainly book 1Q84
• A mood of fear; anarchy
• An idea of society being uglier than we think

To an audience of

• Those familiar with comic violence
• Those into Murakami's work
• Fans of screen print

Project Proposal Moving Pictures
I Intend to produce

• 4/5 30 second stings with my personal responce to Murakami's works
• Using simple animation techniques
• An abstract interpretation of his works

The content will focus on (Identify specific themes; texts; concepts)

• Murakamis work
• My personal responce to it
• The main lines in his works I feel are the most powerful or resonate the most with me

I will be aiming to communicate  (Identify specific ideas; texts; moods)

• Murakami's work in animated form
• Based from all of his texts not focusing on one
• Almost a depressing; mood altering phrases or abstract works

To an audience of

• Fans of his work
• People fond of animation
• People who are fans of abstract work

OUIL504 SB3 FINAL RESPONCE

OUIL504 SB2 FINAL RESPONCE.

Visual Journal

I haven't blogged about my visual journal really, or even at all. It's not really been related to any of my practices and I've kind of just stopped seeing it as work. I've been drawing it for myself as opposed for these projects. Now some drawings are relevant to one project or another but it's was mainly a place for to me to keep my drawings for me, as something that I just enjoyed.

New animation stills.

These are the final looking images of my stop motion animations, I created the whole image by drawing them bit by bit then taking a photo each time I drew a little then put them all together to create the effect of movement. 

As you can see there were two options for which 'back drop' I wanted to use, I chose the darken more murky one in the end because I believe it reflected the feelings and purpose of my animation more than the brighter colours.

How was it done.
I made a very D.I.Y rostrum, It got the job done.

Writing.

Nothing big or fancy here. just giving an myself an idea of how hand drawn step by step text looks.

RE-VAMP

Ok ok ok, I've revamped again. I've been stressing and pulling my hair out and none of these ideas are working. None. So i've gone back to basics. Back to where it started. My first ever look at Murakami were just certain quotes picked form books. That's what interested me. Interpretation of certain quotes. Everything after that is nonsense. So my new plan, just draw out and animate those quotes. An then whatever comes to my head from them. I know it's basic and overdone but this is where I'm at. Too me it makes sense and it's manageable..

Next set colour ways

I had quite a few set of these (8 each) so it was easy to see where some had worked and some hadn't. Again with ti being smaller the paint was a lot smoother and took a lot easier which made the whole process much less stressful and more enjoyable. The only concern is that the prints on good stock aren't as clean as I could have hoped and annoyingly on the cheap newsprint the prints and so much cleaner so I needed to find a better paint balance I think.

Next set

Next go round was creating my other 5 prints from characters I had made already. This print was a lot easier in that I could do one screen and have 5 separate prints from when it was all cut down. I also was a smaller screen which for me meant the pull was much smoother and cleaner and made the paint take much easier and cleaner to the paper. Absolutely no problems with this one. Hopefully will be just as easier in next colour process.

Colour matching

Seen as my black pulls weren't working as well I washed my screen to attempt it again. This time trying to line it up with my previous colour attempts. I was most worried about not being able line them up properly but honestly, that was the easiest part. It was still the black not pulling through properly so much so was the trouble it never got fully resolved, It hugely affected my final prints for this image and really bummed me out.

There were many attempts, alas..

Screen tests 2

This session didn't go half as well as the first. In fact it just went awful. The pulls weren't coming through right. My screen kept getting blocked towards the bottom. I mixed it with more medium but still no looking, It skipped the bottom of my screen every time. I kept trying but to no avail. Bad day.

Turns out it could be due to the fact it was suck a large smooth area of black and that my screen was a bit old damaged and partly blocked since it was a repeat occurrence even after re-exposing my screen.

Screen tests

 Today was my first real day back in screen printing for a while, After taking ages to get my final image ready I finally exposed it and did the first colour-way today. It went a lot better than expected, I'm always really worried about screenprinting until I start doing it them I remember I'm actually not bad at it. After a few pulls and messing with amounts of paint I got a good few yellow colour ways down,

WHY YELLOW?!

 I'm aware I had all the black red and white vibe going and backed with research however yellow just felt right. It's less intense to look at from a far and I think adds the juxtaposition that I wanted from my image in the first place.

Test 2

 

Since I scrapped my old idea I decided to story board some more ideas and then try it out on my phone again. The concept seems to work as a basic idea and I much prefer the look of a cut-out and stop-frame as opposed to the drawn in stop-frame.

Test

I've got a an app on my phone that allows you to make stop motion animation and I've found it really usual to use when I have an idea that I'm not sure about. It allows me to test out ideas quickly too see if they work so i'm not wasting time on bigger projects where the end result falls flat.

Above are examples of a concept I had I wasn't sure about so I story bored it then used my phone to do a quick take to see how it could work.

I'm not saying these are good, even passable animations but for me its a more advanced version of thumb nailing that helps me get me ideas together.

This idea was unsuccessful, pacing aside I just don't like how it looks with ink, So I might go back to cutout models.

Animation spot light:

My house mate showed me this. It's really really cool. Awesome animation and mood building and it's just really up my street. Above and beyond anything I can do but I'm sure it'll help somewhere down the line. I much prefer watching animations than actually creating them.

Practice

Animations been my biggest worry and hardest task to get around too date and it's for that reason I've not really tried my hardest or come to grips with it yet. So this is where I need to get a lot of work done in a short amount of time.

Animation of today:

Does this count? I mean it is stop frame. It's not something I think will really effect my progress of work but I just thought it was a really neat way of using stop motion. That's about it really.

Reasoning

I may have spent too long on focusing on the digital side of this and now realizing i'm rapidly running out of time to actually get this printed, guess we'll see how this all works out. I won't lie I'm not all too fond of this especially how long it taken me to get all this 'right' At first I was going to choose bright neon colours to screen-print with but I went for Red/Black/White because It works and it's a staple of horror movie posters which is always a good thing.

 

 

Also as an added note, the author I was looking at Murakami a lot of his book covers have a very similiar colour scheme. Including 1Q84 which was the main influence of my conceptual design or my work.

Colour process.

Again making this digital has made my life so much easier when it came to putting everything together and colouring it. Now my annoyance in myself before I really understood screen-printing I changed my style of working to what I thought would work better with screen-printing however I now know that I could of kept my usual way of working and i imagined I would of enjoyed it a lot more but we're here and I guess I'll know for next time.

Town revisited

After having a quick peer review with some people and asking what they thought so far and general thoughts was that the town I had originally was quite cluttered and adding the characters was making it more cluttered. Now even though I'm going for a somewhat crazy; anarchic esc looking cluttered isn't exactly what I was going for.

After some thinking and planning I remembered we had Drew Millward in to speak to us not long ago so i thought i'd look at some of this work, see if it helped at all.

Now i'll admit at first glance it looks like there's no way this will help me make things less cluttered and crazy but then I found this piece by Drew for a band called Phish.

Again at first glace it looks like busy but when I really looked and stripped it right back and was able to see a composition that would really help me so In end taking what I'd already learnt and this piece by Drew I've got my final composition for the town.

Cityscape

 

After going through a few sketches and designs this is the design I've settled on, I've started adding characters into it by scanning them in, making them into vectors on Illustrator making it much easier for scaling and colour them when placing them into the city-scape.

Screen printing attempt.

After many many attempts at the first colour-way I came to the conclusion that the far left of my screen was either blocked of not exposed properly since no matter what I did (30+ attempts) the far left design was always a partial exposure and faint. Back to the drawing board.