Language

Just found "Language" by Mathew Rogers. As always, could listen to Stephen Fry talk for hours.

CS5 New Features

Ok, here are a couple of vids I saw last year that show some of Photo shops more amazing new features. Just going to practice with a few of them right now that I am not to familiar with.

Tales of Mere Existence

OK, Lev Yilmaz is a writing genius, some really funny short films, mostly still images and recordings of him drawing, however it is the content and the writing that makes them great.
See bellow for an example:

Paul Bennet

OK found the blog of a sculptor who has some mad skills, seems to be doing these sculpts primarily as a professional for commercial purposes. He be Paul Bennet and bellow is an example of his work.

Creative Arts Lecture Series 01

OK went along to an Arts and Design lecture at Uni yesterday,

The Guest speaker was Fraser Muggeridge. Here is his studios website. He was introduced as a graphic designer who's clients include the Tate and Serpentine galleries and the London transport agency, particularly London underground.

He started his talk with a definition of what he does stating:

"I translate my clients needs into an artifact for their audience"
He did put it a little more clearly than that, but hey I'm only human.

His work was predominantly created using found materials and he seems to lean away from overtly photo shop heavy techniques, preferring for example to blow an image up and shrink it down over and over again using photocopiers to degrade a font rather than simply using photo shop. He also seems to be someone who can appreciate imperfections and minor inconsistencies in his work, highlighting cases where they chose to leave some in.

He will use tactile techniques to create more unique work. At the end he stated that most of his more original ideas were created through things he saw and was influenced by out in the world, by stepping away from the computer

In a series of posters for the London Underground (for which they are responsible for printing artwork) they allowed mold to for on the paper before scanning it (however they had to alter the image slightly, moving specs of mold away from the London Underground logo in the bottom right, as they didn't want to be associated with mold).

In another series of artworks for the London Underground, they had to create an advertisement for a platform (underground train platform that is) based exhibition, Life is a Laugh. He stated, in some cases, using this one as an example that:

"the thing you are designing for often doesn't exist"

In this case the art work in the exhibition hadn't been completed yet and Fraser and his team had a limited understanding of what they were designing for. For this reason he visited the artist in order to talk about and see more of his work.

Whilst showing us a large number of sample images for a page lay out, experiment after experiment he stated that he would often "Do what I don't think will work" in order to step away from what he is familiar with and create something more original.

Also, don't give everything away with the poster, force them to ask questions, this was achieved with the exhibition poster. Leave people asking questions, make them want more.

He also showed us an image of a test poster, using A4 images to make up small parts of a much larger 6ft poster. Much cheaper than printing the actual thing and allows you to test weather or not it works in the space that it was intended for.

I believe he was also involved in creating a book or books for Goshka Macuga.

He also suggested that we take leaps of faith and step into the unknown, talking about another artist whose work he became interested in, he simply knocked on the artists door unannounced. This resulted in a collaboration between them where he created a booklet showcasing the artists work.

Another example of how he variates his Images and designs was to visit the local market and look for old photographs and random pieces of paraphernalia and to then try to use them in unexpected ways to create unique graphics.

Also, something he said about budgets, creating lots of examples and possible concepts for something on a small budget, many of these were created cheaply and the limited budget produces interesting creative problems.

Client - "we've only got enough budget to print in 2 colours"

Fraser - "Great, Lets use one"

Fraser - "It doesn't need to be over expensive"

One of his greatest tools is an archive of Old type faces. One example was a popular type face that he blew up to a huge scale, that allowed people to appreciate some of its little eccentricities such as the diamond shaped full stop and the "claw" shaped comma.

I really liked this last image of a one book book shelf. :)

Viewity

Related to the software used in the last post for the matrix style flip book animation. Here is a little video showing some of the reference material.

Matrix Animation

A flip book animation Ian showed me in response to my little animation test.

Tutorials

Ok here are some links to some useful tutorials I used today, some just to look at, others were more specifically to help me with my little stop motion experiment.

DMN Forum

Instructibles: Stop Motion

Video CoPilot

The Truth about Green

An interesting commentary/ borderline poem on Paul Cezanne by Ali Smith. Guardian.com

The Story of Stuff

I just found a page developed to support an animation (one I believe I saw on YouTube yesterday). The site is called "The Story of Stuff" and supports and promotes sustainable solutions and living. Their is an interesting video posted up there that I need to watch again.

Evolution for Begginers

I looked up ant consumerism and animation and found this page looking at the work of South African Artist "Du Toit" who creates sculptures out of what could best be described as junk. These are then taken by her partners in grime "Diek Grobler and Charles Badnehorst"
Bellow is an example of there work.



I also read that the artist in her exhibition "Self Image" projected her memories and dreams onto the dolls/ sculptures. This sounds similar to projecting the back stories of my personal objects on to them, or animating around them.

Meeting with Rowan

Ok I will talk about what I can remember from my meeting with Rowan last Friday.
We started by talking about my main project, a hand drawn, character based animation.
It seemed to Rowan that I was describing a way of living, or a set of principals to live by. The key ones were Traveling and Aspirations such as those I associate with UP! and with living out all of your various dreams and fantasies, in a positive way of course.
She also noted two films that seem to share the themes that I am interested in, Click - about a remote control that allows the individual god like control of his life, however he inadvertently wishes away all of the best parts of his life. The key message being live in the now and live for what and who you have got, make the best of what you have instead of always looking towards the future.
Next was UP which covers many themes, Ideas and even locations that I personally have an interest in such as Venezuela, aspirations, never being to late to change, living for those in your life, travel, adventure and anti materialism. These again were examples of guidance on ways of living.
The main theme that developed however was anti materialism, brought about through my interest in Michel Landry's work. She stated that this is about the commodity and possibly the school of thought that leans away and is possibly repulsed by the commodity. Or those that embrace it or are trapped int he spell of the commodity. Marx and his spell of commodity.
My narrative Ideas so far deal with Emotional attachment to personal belongings/ Items. This is also apart of the context, either my own developing ideas or looking at adaptions of novels and books as a process of work. Or possibly looking at books and Novels that also deal with these themes.

My two possibilities so far seem to be to develop a narrative story or a sequence of images or events based on a theme, I asked If I could do both? Rowan gurned a bit at this like I was asking an impossible question, although in my opinion it is this way that genius lies, lots of hard work no doubt, but real solid work.

So she created a small chart asking me to look at characters in books and films and possibly art and animation. I will look at anti material characters and Materialistic characters.

It looks like my Primary Research will be in the form of Interviews - Rowan pointed me in the direction of this text, Gray & Mullins (2004) Visualizing Research : Research Methods in Art and Design.


We then went on to look more specifically at Anti Materialism, placing it at the centre of a spider diagram. Around this she came up with themes of Commodity Culture, Capitalism, Mass Consumption, What is it, What is it a response to?, a way of living?

So for the dissertation I can compare and contrast Materialist and Anti Materialist Characters. I imagine I may have to look at characters in advertising, or who have been borrowed for advertising. 3 sections or possible chapters were Film/Animation, Fiction/Books and Art/ Advertising. I do believe these were possible chapters.

Bellow this, maybe as a possible conclusion is Anti Materialism - a new trend in Culture? how and why. For this I can look at human habits and instincts towards gathering and holding onto possessions, possibly our inexplicable attachment to places and objects etc, our desire for what is familiar and our fear of what is strange and new.

That was the whole meeting.

Hexagonal

I'm not sure if this is an individual or a small studio, but never the less what they do is quite interesting. Hexagonal. The work that attracted me to this page has a lot in common with Olly Moss's work in both its Principal and its execution, although I find the links with the movie posters on this page even more vague.

Matisse

I will now admit to my poor memory. Earlier this year I saw a BBC documentary on the life and work of Matisse, but since then I keep forgetting his name every time his work comes to mind. A predominant focal point of the program was Matisse's interest in the use of colour and how that has trickled down and now shapes how we perceive and use colour in art and design. For instance his work "Icare" (Icarus) 1943 stuck in my mined as it was shown as a starting point for what we now see in the earlier apple Ipod adverts.



















In addition, this work also reminds me of what I have seen from Saul Bass and in turn his influence on the work of Olly Moss.