Greetings from... - Initial ideas and roughs

I started this brief by brainstorming some ideas for cities that were linked in some way. I then went on to identify themes which may help me to generate more ideas. 

The first idea I started to explore was famous street art locations around the world. I started to look into street art influences which led me to expression of political views, identifying subcultures in cities, music influences and fashion trends. I wrote down some troubles I may be likely to face if I use this as the theme for my four postcards - I think I would find it interesting to learn more about this topic but I don't want to get caught up in recreating the work of other people rather than creating my own. 

Library Research

Drawing from reference imagery in 'Berlin Street Art'.

I seem to be writing a lot more than I usually do at the start of other projects and I think it is helping me get my ideas and concepts onto paper quickly so I don't forget anything. 

I think it would be interesting to use iconic imagery of the cities to represent the moneymaking tourism industry and overpower this with street-art inspired work which represents the subcultures and people of the city. I want my postcards to actually have a meaning behind them and I think this concept would start to raise questions of what actually defines a city. Also, making a postcard created a contradictory statement where the format of the work supports the tourism industry but the content is against it. 

Initial roughs

The second idea I researched was holy cities around the world and pilgrimage locations. I thought there would be a lot of imagery to work with in this topic such as imagery from religious stories, architecture, religious symbolism, religious figures and the people who actually follow the religion. 

Roughs

I tried to make these roughs more shape based because I need to remember that this artwork is going to be produced on illustrator. Having some easily recognisable imagery to work with will hopefully allow my to simplify my images a lot to make them more abstract yet still understandable. 

My third idea was to look at songs with city names in the titles. I am quite excited about this idea but I know the concept is reliant on whether the viewer is aware of the lyrics of the specific song it is based on. I have tried to pick well known songs with lyrics that provide inspiration for physical things to draw. I understand that the postcard would be more about the song than the city itself but if I am to continue with this idea I would aim for the city to be clearly represented in the image. 

Composition - Line of Sight

• Line of sight is the direction our eye moves around an image. 
• It leads the eye towards a centre of interest. 
• A line of sight can have a sense of movement such as smooth, rhythmic or abrupt. 
• Line of sight links to cropping as this can lead the eye in and out of the frame. 
• To use line of sight to its full advantage, you should analyse the direction of your lines in your roughs. Is it confusing? Does it direct the eye where you want it to?

One thing I disagreed with about the handout was that it says you should never have a line of sight leaning towards a corner. However, this might create an interesting line of sight if you want to show something leaving the page. 

When trying to create line of sight in an image with a figure in it, consider the gaze of the person and the positioning of their arms. 

Things that move can also be simple things to introduce line of sight into, for example, plants, hair and clothing. 

This is the image I sent because of its line of sight. I don’t think its the best example of line of sight but I liked the subtle things that direct the eye towards the people in the basket. I don't think colour has been considered very well in this image because it seems as though the people should be the focus due to the lines of sight but the bright colours of the fish are quite distracting. 

Greetings from… - Artist Research

Olimpia Zagnoli

Olimpia Zagnoli is known for her very simple images made from blocks of solid colour. I have been following her on Instagram for a while now and seeing her new work regularly reminds me that its okay to keep images simple and it can sometimes be really effective to simplify an image right down to a limited number of shapes. This is something I am often afraid to do because I feel comfortable with investing a level of craft into my images and for this to be clear in the final outcomes.  

The curves of the shapes she uses allow the eye to be led around the image with ease while at the same time making an impact with her strong colour choices. I think her choice to avoid straight lines helps capture the femininity of the women in these images and it provides a representation of the human form which is strangely accurate considering the very limited shapes used. When looking at Zagnoli's work, I usually cannot see a way in which it can be simplified any more - this is why I like her work because she limits herself so much with how she makes images that she is forced to make interesting decisions using purely shape and colour to solve the problem.  

Rob Bailey

This image by Rob Bailey really intrigued me at I started to look closer at it. The lines used to make this image of two people hugging actually run into one another so the two figures are sharing the same shape edges. For example, the hairlines are defined by the same line, and the line defining the man's ear and neck extends down the blonde's arm. This sharing of lines emphasises the theme of an embrace because it is almost as if the two bodies are morphing into one being. It captures the intertwining of two figures and makes the eyes work harder to tell the two figures apart clearly. 

Davide Bonazzi

Although this artwork incorporates textures, I think shape is the driving force behind the impact of this image. If this image was broken down into the shapes of the figures and the shadows, I feel the concept would still be understandable. The title of the image is 'Fathers and Sons' and what I gather front this is the relationship between a father and a young son and the prospect of what their relationship will be like later in life when the son is fully grown and the father becomes elderly. 

I See Faces - Final Evaluation

At the beginning of this brief, I found it very difficult to get motivated because I knew character design is something I would struggle with. I found that a lot of my initial character ideas were based around humans and I wanted to move away from this because I felt it was very generic and uninteresting. Once I had a few ideas to work with, my motivation picked up during the development stage, I got stuck in to progressing with these characters and seeing how they could be animated. Drawing the same thing over and over again really helped me with my characters, especially the dog as I got used to a way of drawing it which helped me keep the figure similar in each of the frames. Storyboarding was so valuable during this brief because it helped me to figure out in my head how the character was going to move and how I could make these short animations loop and repeat. I think this was most beneficial in the pepper gif as this was the one which was most challenging to think of a way to make the start and end frame the same. 

I really enjoyed the mono printing workshop and I am pleased I managed to incorporate a print into one of my final gifs. I think its a really quick way of building up a body of interesting images and although I don't feel I used the time to my full advantage this time, it is something I would definitely like to experiment with again in the future. 

My photoshop skills have developed again - I had never used photoshop for animating before so learning about creating frames, repeating the sequence, etc, was all new to me. It took quite a bit of getting used to because the use of layers is quite confusing but I realised I needed to put as many components on separate layers as possible because although this looks more complex on screen, it makes life a lot easier later on. 

One thing that I think I could have improved on was my photography of the pepper. The photos are not great quality which isn't too much of an issue due to the compressed size of the gif file. However, it was the colouring of the photos which I think could be better; I didn't consider lighting very well because I took these photos during the evening using a lamp for my main source of lighting when I probably should have waited until the daytime to photograph it in natural light. Another alteration I would make to my final gifs is the movement of the mouth in the bad hair day gif. I have no issues with the animation of the mouth but I think I could have studied facial expressions in more depth and found a more relevant mouth movement to fit the emotions of the character. 

I See Faces - Bad hair day gif

Original roughs

Storyboarding

There is not much difference between each of the frames but this storyboard has helped me to figure out the difference facial expressions needed and the movement of the arms.

I started the making process by drawing out the mirror and bathroom scene using pencil crayons. I wanted the animation to be a bit shaky so I was going to draw multiple scenes so that it would change slightly between frames, but I then realised that placing each frame a fraction out of line would achieve a similar effect. 

I cut out all the components I needed after also drawing these out in pencil crayon. I used the lightbox to line up the features of the faces so that there wouldn't bee too much of a dramatic difference between each of the frames. 

I wanted to keep this animation very simple in the way I produced each of the frames. I didn't want a smooth animation so I was quite rough with how I was placing each of the components on the page ready for scanning. I initially planned to scan all of my components in separately and arrange them on Photoshop but I didn't want to become too reliant on Photoshop for all of my gifs for this brief. I attached my pieces together using small pieces of masking tape and placed them into the scanner along with the cotton which I had purposely tangled around the hands to make the hair look knotted. 

Below is my gif at this stage. You can see some marks towards the left of the light and on the pink perfume bottle which I will try to get rid of subtly using the patch tool.  

I wanted the bottles and containers in the foreground to stand out more than they were originally to show that they are closer, at the moment they look quite pale. To solve this I selected the bottles on the shelf and copied this onto a new layer which would remain the same on each of the frames. I altered the saturation and levels to make them stand forward more and compete against the rest of the scene.

At this stage, I wasn't sure that it was clear she was looking through a mirror so I wanted to make this clearer. I selected the frame of the mirror and added a transparent fill as if the mirror was a bit steamed up or dirty and I then used a low opacity white brush to make shine lines across it. I think this is effective in making this area look like a reflective surface. Because of this change, I had to up the colour saturation of the character so that she didn't look drained of colour.

This also lead to another problem of the shine lines extending off the actual mirror which was a fault of my own for selecting the outline of the mirror as well as the actual shape. You can see that the black line below the light in intercepted by the shine lines which is not how this would actually look. To solve this, I copied and pasted the yellow light onto a new layer for each frame and placed it to fit over the original to block out this imperfection. 

This also solved the problem I had on some frames where the hair had moved without me realising while I was placing everything into the scanner and the cotton had overlapped the light. This needed to be cropped off so that the reflection of the character was only contained within the four sides of the mirror. 

Final Gif

I am happy with how this last gif has turned out. This was the gif I was most worried about because I wasn't sure there was enough to it for it to be interesting but I actually think that out of the three of my gifs, this action is the most appropriate to the format as there is no clear beginning or end to the animation which is exactly what gifs are about. To improve this I would consider the shape of the mouth more because it looks a but like she is chewing as it is moving so fast. It might have been better for just one side of the mouth to open and then just close again. 

At first, I found the slight movement of the light a bit irritating but I think it adds to the frustration of the image. It could also being implying that the light is flickering as the paler yellow glow around the light is moving slightly as well. 

I See Faces - Pepper Continued

After removing the background in the previous stage, I replaced it with a rectangle of brown which will stay in the same position throughout the whole gif. Adding a texture to it made the contrast between the photograph and the flat block of colour less obvious. 

Adding shadow - I didn't want to be too precious when addend shadow because the frame would only be shown for a fraction of a second and I just wanted it to be clear that the pepper was not floating in mid air. I am getting used to using layers now on each frame, it is becoming clearer to me how to keep certain things the same and how to adapt certain aspects on new layers. I am finally getting used to using Photoshop to make gifs and this is evident in the increase in speed which I seem to be working at now. 

I added eyebrows to the pepper to emphasise his expression. I intended for him to look angry so I wanted to emphasise this by adding some bold shapes to add drama to the closeup frames.

What makes him look the most angry?

 I thought red might be appropriate because it is associated with anger but it blended in too much with the colour of the pepper. In the end I settled on black as it provides a strong contrast against the red and the to colours work well together to suggest rage. I think these shapes also imply that the pepper is shouting something.

The first time I saved the gif, I wasn't happy with the quality of the image so I saved it again as a larger file. The number of photographs I used meant that the size of the gif file is quite large so I still had to compromise on some of the quality to get the file down to a reasonable size. 

I See Faces - Pepper

I decided to experiment with lens for this gif. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to achieve with this so I went ahead and set up my camera and set up each of the frames to match up to my storyboard drawings. This proved more challenging than I expected it would be as I had to deal with lighting issues, the pepper losing its balance and not staying in position for long enough for the photo to be taken. I tried using blue tack and Sellotape to keep the pepper in place in some frames.

These are a few of the photos I took - I am not really happy with the look of them at this stage but I will see what I can do with them on Photoshop. The issue was that by the time I realised the lighting and settings on my camera probably need to be changed, I had already cut into the pepper so I was unable to start again. 

I had tried to keep the pepper and my camera in steady positions whilst doing my photographs but the pepper kept falling over and the camera got nudged a couple of times which meant that the pepper wasn't in the same place in the photograph in all of my images. It was a challenge getting them to line up so it didn't look like it had moved drastically between frames so I used a brush on Photoshop to make this rough outline which I could then use as a guide for positioning the pepper in each frame. 

I played around with the timings on each frame and speeded up some of the closeup shots to make it look more agitated and dramatic. I like the imperfect transitions between frames because I think it puts the viewer more on edge and adds to the humour of the situation. I don't like how the line between the wall and the work surface changes so much - I am going to remove the background from each of the frames and see how I feel about the animation then. 

After removing the background, I think the gif instantly looks more refreshing and clean. I need to adjust the levels and colours of the images because I haven't altered them at all yet and the flesh inside the pepper looks to orange when it should be white. I think I could have taken better photos if I had thought more about lighting in the early stages. The photographs were taken in the evening so there was no natural light and I was using a desk lamp as my main light source. In hindsight, I probably should have taken the photos in natural daylight so the colours in the image would have been more accurate. 

Working from reference in my initial ideas sketches, the faces in the peppers look scared/shocked. However, I think my photographs at this stage make the character inside the pepper look angry rather than scared, I think this is because of the shape of the mouth. Next, I am going to use Photoshop to alter the eyes to make him seem even more angry. 

I See Faces - Dog Catching Paper Gif

After drawing out my dog figures in fine liner from my roughs on newsprint, I scanned them in to clean them up on Photoshop and also cut them out so they were ready to put onto each of the frames. 

I used one of my rough gifs as a template so I just had to place the new image of the dog over the old rough and then delete the old ones. It was confusing trying to remember what each of the layers was for and I had some complications in figuring out which ones I needed to keep and which ones were roughs that I needed to get rid of. Once I got my head around this I got into a rhythm with it and the gif came together quite smoothly. 

This is one of my rough gifs with the new drawings of the dog in the right places. Doing it this way saved me having to measure out where each piece needed to go all over again. After deleting the roughs from the gif, I had no background so this is where I imported one of my edited mono prints as the background layer and I kept this exactly the same in every frame so that it was stationery. 

Final Gif

I See Faces - Monoprinting Continued

During the mono printing workshop, I also printed some potential backgrounds for one of my gifs. 

We had limited colours to work with so I printed some of these with the intention of altering the colours on Photoshop afterwards. I think the bright pink and purple is too overwhelming for my gif. 

These prints didn't turn out very clearly, probably because they were second or third prints so there was not much ink left on the plate. I do like the more subtle colours and textures but the outlines are not clear enough for this to be recognisable as a bin. Drawing over some of my prints with fine liner made this clearer but I am concerned that adding too much detail in the form of black outlines will distract the eye away from the movement of the dog. 

I scanned both sides of my stencil (above) because I think these are viable options to use in my final gif. I think they are clearer than my actual prints. I placed the stencil back on top of some of my prints and realised that this achieved a combination of texture and crisp white outlines which I liked. 

Using Photoshop, I altered the levels and contrast and brightness values to see how this could change the image. The bin was becoming more and more faint along with the background so I deselected the bin and floor line so that I was only altering the wall and floor colour and the bin remained clear.

I then played around with the hue setting to see what the image looked like in different colours. I think the first one looks too much like it is outdoors but I like the yellow and purple together or maybe the purple and orange because I want to make sure the white dog stands out agains the background and I am unsure the yellow is strong enough to do this.