Final Development 4

Rounding up my work now with some puzzles that I developed earlier in the blog, now more refined to the style of the outcomes, allowing the user to see the original face, and morph it into different personalities. This puzzle design is interesting as it allows the user to go half way and match the top of one face with the bottom of another.

The image shows the journey of the puzzle and how to use them. This one is based solely on Mikey. There are two more based on Nick and myself and a final two that are mixtures.

Final Development 3

Reverting back to the style I developed earlier in the project, I decided to have a play with the photocopies and digitally create some zombie art over the top. The difference being that the underlying photocopied images are now so distorted that they provide an interesting and original canvas on which to draw, and the shadows help the characters to appear more real.

These images represent a round trip in the theory of the project. From the detachment of the real to the freakish mask that is layered over the top could represent the facade that people can create to hide their true self. The amount of processes to create these images could represent the layers or processes people take to build up their image to fit in. These images are heavily stylised to suit a certain genre, people style themselves to fit into certain groups.

Over and above all, I really like all of the images created so far, personally - and this is a surprise - I like the manual work better than the digital. The layered acetate designs work really well and add a touch of comedy to the whole affair, which is what I set out to do. I did mention in my learning agreement that I could possibly approach the NHS or counseling bodies associated with Munchausens syndrome with artwork to promote the condition - however, depending on their sense of humour they may not appreciate the tone of the images - even though they do represent split personalities and alter-egos. I would probably have more luck with an editorial with magazines such as Vice or ID.

Having said that the style of adverts and awareness campaigns nowadays are centred about comedy and light-hearted messages, as these are more likely to attract attention and remain in the memory.

Overall I feel that this project has taken me on a journey, both mentally and work wise. I have matured and have had to deal with the pressures of reaching the end of the course. Going to Colophon was a great experience - one which consolidated my belief that I am in the right pathway in which for me to move. The passion shared amongst the top brass in the magazine industry was palpable and I share their passion for imagery and wish to make a career out of doing so.

Another, more important thing about this project is/was that it showed me that I can work outside of my comfort zone and flourish with the challenges that it entailed.

Final Development 2

A continuation of these disturbing yet hilarious images. It reminds me of a mix between either the old pictures of Navy Admirals or the Iraqi disguise they give Gary Johnston on Team America. Whereas the lower image contains some serious facial hair and a rather un-nerving double eye socket.

Final Development

The bonus of not producing a book, and creating this blog is that I can document my work right up to the deadline. These images are what I created using the scraps of my existing work, and threw them together to create these horrific, disturbing yet funny images. Using transparencies and photocopies the faces are mirrored and overlaid in ways that accentuate, mask and/or even highlight certain parts of the face.

The funny thing about these pictures are that they were pretty much an after thought yet turned out to be some of my favourites of the project. I love the subtleties like the rapist/possessed left eye that I have developed on the bottom right image that is framed by some hair and the eyes and nose lining up less than a centimetre above the mouth on the image above. Again on the bottom image if you were to turn it CCW then I have a mouth in-between my eyebrows, and the horizontal hairline makes a dodgy beard. 

These images document how much I have enjoyed mixing processes in the project, from the Photoshop manipulation, then the photocopying degrading to the simple acetate distortion which adds a gloss to the image and a touch of class to the final appearance. The series of these images are documented into a concertina booklet as I felt it necessary to see the set as one or individually.

Actionscript Development

These images show up close the intricate work of the generative artwork and the relationship with the photocopied face beneath. The added texture is really interesting, with the dust and scratches appearing, and the dotted half-tone taking the edge off the digital vectors. 

I think they work well side by side, and I plan to continue working with this style after this project to see how far I can push this style. The photographic and photocopier processes have definately added to the aesthetics of the coded artwork, and the development is clear to see from the last project to this.

As I mentioned earlier I ran out of time to fully develop a finalised outcome in this style although they link in well to the theory of clashing personalities and masks - because of the difference of techniques (digital/photocopied) blended into one image of a face - this could mirror the idea of creating a social mask to hide the true self, make-up, clothing etc.

Actionscript

Having spent much of my time this year practicing Actionscript and Flash generative artwork, I would have loved to have continued in this vein for this project, but having come across this photographic idea late on there was no real time to include substantial Actionscript artwork. Instead I have sidelined the development for now, instead concentrating on the photographic approach. Having said that I still achieved some decent results by mixing the photocopied artwork together with the generative masks. I feel the patterns work well with the photographs producing really beautiful imagery - I will definitely pursue it after the project ends as I feel there is a real opportunity to create some original imagery that is different to anything out there at the moment.

Here are some developing imagery that I came up with. The major bonus of this project is that I worked out how to drop the Flash video file (SWF) into Illustrator after creation - allowing me to edit the image as a vector and resize it to any size I wish - which is a relief as before I was relying on screenshots and matching it all up in Photoshop like a giant puzzle - which was very time consuming! These images show different generative shapes overlaying the below bitmaps RGB. It is the same as I produced for the last project, but with differing shapes, and the introduction of the real photograph behind the coding adds an interesting depth to the image.

 

Slideshow...A Possible basis for display?

Having acquired a filing cabinet recently I was pleasantly surprised to come across a collection on slides from a relative who didn't need them any longer and gave them to me. They are a great nostalgic objects that feel great to play with. They also fit in with the 70s/80s theme of my images, and would further add to the degradation. 

The degradation idea relates to the idea of pretence; I am trying to link the theory through people copying certain aspects of other people and creating a monster of themselves in the process rather than being true to themselves, but I'm doing it in a light hearted manner.

So could slides work as a presentation tool for my work, I think so, even placing images into the slide casing looks interesting enough. Here are some images that I have prepared for the idea, the B/W faces stand out with much greater contrast than that of the coloured portraits. Due to time restraints I am going to cheat somewhat and print directly onto transparencies and skip the slide film.

Facial Amalgamation: Photocopies 2

A couple more photocopies to complete the set. I have scanned these in at 900 dpi and plan to print a few off at A1 size. The impact of the large scaled should be interesting, as well as the continued process of degrading the image.

Facial Amalgamation: Photocopies

Does what it says in the title - here are some of my portrait designs are photocopied. I really like the degradation of the image quality through the photocopier with the dotted half-tone print pattern taking the edge off the images and allows them to look more realistic, if not aged, than before. The added texture also begins to add a theme to the imagery - gifting a mugshot style seen in the 70/80s police face identity kits.

Paper Play: Puzzles

I am determined to get an interactive and organic side into this project and I feel this can be achieved in how the work is presented. Having looked at the Rubick's website and been inspired by my keychain Rubick's cube I was convinced that I could create a puzzle that the end user could decipher and unfold to display artwork. My dream is that the puzzle would unravel the layers of multiple personalities that the pictured person had created to reveal their true self. 

This initial design process was intended to create an interactive cube, that displayed a complete picture across each complete side, and allow the user to mix these pictures up to create a unique and new face design with each flip of a cube. 

Although fun and challenging, this is extremely hard to complete, with industry standard cutting needed and revolutionary pivoting designs on the corners of the cubes to achieve what I really wanted. As you can see in the images the cubes that I created came pretty close to achieving my initial dream puzzle, but all signs were that this was too complicated, and so I moved onto a new 2D puzzle design. 

I had recently seen a flyer design that blew my mind, it was an endless fold design that had 4 separate images that folded around each other with seemingly impossible folds. So I set about trying to re-create this image in my head and produce a net design that would allow me to do this. Here is what I came up with, this is an advanced prototype believe it or not, with the first outcomes being made out of separate parts, this is made out of one piece of A4.

Using the images that I created for an initial project exploring alter-egos I printed out the design onto one piece of A4 And created the below puzzle, which working from left to right in both rows shows the journey through 4 separate images that fold endlessly into each other. I really think this is a unique idea and tool to use to display my work and intrigue the user into play with my work.

Facial Amalgamation

Carrying on from my initial play with the portrait photographs I rather stumbled across this style of merging my friends faces together by playing with their faces. By capturing their faces in numerous expressions and from a number of directions I'm able to artistically merge the faces together and create this hilarious yet disturbing imagery. The whole project now revolves around four people, including myself, and the faces made on that one day. 

The four images on the far left are the original faces (Mike top, then Eric, then Nick and then Myself), and the proceeding images to their right are either their own faces mixed over each other or mixed with another face. For example the top left photograph (Mikey) and the image directly to the right is a face made up of Mikey mixed with Nick, yet a more disturbing and realistic image is the next one along, created only using Mikey.

I really like this style of working, it is different to what I usually produce and it makes me laugh and cringe quite a bit - and if you can't enjoy your work then why bother doing it? Art is a reaction and I am quite excited by the reactions this work should hopefully command.

The next step is to degrade the imagery, and play with the textures to tie in the previous work. I initially think that they represent mugshot style photographs with a low-fi approach that fits contemporary artwork and mirrors a type of screen print work seen by Warhol etc. Working in black and white may alter the contrasts and give the images a new dimension (see below) - perhaps photocopying and degrading them through the half tone could be interesting. 

A New Beginning

This Post-it shows how I began to organise my life after returning home from Colophon, having seen the standard of work and having exhibited myself there, I noticed the amount of photography that exists in the magazine world and the power that it has in imagery. It seems that there was a stereotype for illustration still existing as being merely decorative - yet my work never tries to primarily be decorative yet explain an idea that interests me in a aesthetically pleasing manner. My work on the whole is rounded but not diluted and seems to have its strengths in the digital genres, but by resisting the urge to pigeon hole myself into one particular style of illustration my work has been able to draw different inspirations up to now and aided my own style to develop. The trip made me a lot more determined to make something out of myself as a professional creative, and revealed that the ride isn't going to be easy.

It gave me confidence to hear professionals and public alike being into my approaches and I decided that my work needed to continue its professional conversion and to achieve this I thought that the introduction of my own portrait photography could provide me with a new library of imagery to work with. I want to challenge myself and having never really worked with portrait photography before I thought that this could add a new depth to my portfolio and help me to possibly collaborate with photographers further down the line.

The idea is to mix the obvious traits of false personalities in a manner that displays both faces at once. The idea is to just play digitally, organically and reverting back to the very first ideas of the project. The top image shows this done very simply by mixing two expressions very crudely into one - yet the results are still interesting with the left image actually reflecting a realistic portrait. 

The image to the left shows my very own pair of eyes with numerous expressions - this was a quick experiment to see how my expressions look to others. Relating back to the articles that I read about judging peoples appearances and personalities - the face and eyes in particular are obvious symbols of someone's intentions or personality and I wondered whether or not it was easy to mis-read peoples true intentions and/or feelings through this physiognomy.

Catching up with some experiments part 2.

Continuing this archiving of experiments here is some interesting outcomes that I achieved when playing with an OHP. This all happened the day before Colophon and Luxembourg and so was a bit rushed but the OHP gives off an amazing texture into the projections, with an aesthetically beautiful border and colour palette that is hard to re-create digitally. These images show me simply placing object from around my room onto the mirror and playing with the focus to achieve these abstract results. Can you guess what the objects are? Well the bottom right object is a teddy bear - yet it creates an almost biological outline complete with sharp and fuzzy outlines. I personally love these abstract outcomes, things such as a glass can be distorted to create a totally new object, and its this idea of distortion (pretence) that I want my imagery to illustrate.

I like the idea of placing an object onto the projector and getting a totally new reflection on the wall, it relates back to the light box experiment where I talked about how the reflection is not always what you would think - is this because of the false identity that people build up socially - can this haunt you? Haunt you like a shadow? 

Playing with paint; A fine art approach

These images are a direct response to the work of Michael Burges, whose work I saw on show in a gallery - during the Karen magazine exhibition in Luxembourg. I have always liked the work of Robert Rauschenberg and the use of texture so I decided the start playing with paint layered on the top of glass. The piece of Burges' work that I saw in Luxembourg was similiar to this and layered over a source of light and as a result had a slight 3D effect, I know that I wouldn't achieve this degree of professional finish but it was the process that I hoped to exploit more than anything with the hope that I could layer the paint over the top of my illustration. 

I really like the abstract approach to the idea of distorting an image and the use of light and layering, even if not specific to paint on glass is somewhere to exploit in my imagery. These results look real nice placed over a light source - the light bringing out the contrast and flowing lines of the paint. A fun side project this may be, but an abstract fine-art approach is a refreshing option for my illustration to stand out from the present stereotypes for illustration. The paint could represent the distortion of a portrait, slowly masking over the features and hiding the true identity.

Catching up with some experiments...

Before I move on with the next chapter of this project there is some interesting work that needs documenting.  The photographs are just playing but are relative to my hypothesis of pretence. These photographs show initial play with form and light - the first set showing simple silhouettes created by taking pictures in front of the giant light-box in the library. The idea here is playing with shadows to create something that is not the truth. 

With Nick distorting his outline by using his hands to add features to his face a number of illustrative opportunities open up. Obvious imagery could be associated with shadows, where the reflection is not what the object truly is thus highlighting the idea of pretence.

The second set of photographs came about from me just having a laugh in the kitchen with a roll of black reflective paper. Attaching the tube to the lens of my camera provided some really interesting images - some where the face is reflected and distorted over and around the original. Again I thought this could be useful to the theory of pretence, with the true individual in the centre and the false identity built up around the edges. 

I really like this image, with the face distorted in really flowing yet unnatural lines providing an interesting composition to work in - circles and reflections and could provide a basis for my illustrations. This little exercise does highlight the fun involved with experimenting with cameras and simple crafts to distort the imagery manually. The idea of framing and masking certain parts of an image could relate to hiding certain aspects of your image, yet the reflections showing and distorting the pretence.

Masking a turning point.

Here are some masks I drew after returning back from Colophon. Just started drawing simple line drawings, at this time I was struggling with too many ideas and a return to drawing was therapeutic, and eased my worries. The initial idea behind them was to continue this idea of pretence. The idea that people create masks for themselves, stories even being made from these masks - made famous by Batman, Star Wars, and I would draw these masks - perhaps colouring them in Photoshop. People use masks to hide their true identity, particularly in gang culture, and I thought this could be an interesting if not a little off direction.

They are nothing special but mark a turning point in my project as a whole, before this I had this idea of creating many small projects to create a body of work - but I found this to be underwhelming and restrictive. I normally involve myself into projects for a while and work into a final process that has meaning, and the short projects did not allow me to do this. They did, however, allow me to play with many techniques and give me ideas to carry on with. 

With the shackles released from the short projects I moved on and kept these experiments strictly as development rather than outcomes.

SpongeBob Squarepants

So...I needed some time out after the excursions of Luxembourg and Colophon. I decided to do what any like minded creative individual would do and take in some cultural expanding television in the overly saturated form of SpongeBob Square Pants!

The relevance comes in the form of the DVD and its intuitive packaging design. The user friendly design allows the user to choose from a number of facial expressions for Bob, and if you want to, undress him.

The design is simple enough with a triple fold-out design - one end cover is cut in half and double printed to allow the top/bottom to fold around to reveal/mask the other side. The square semi-naked SpongeBob then sits into his clothes - a separate box - to complete the look.

After my very first initial projects playing with paper designs I discovered a passion for creating all things paper and I feel similiar designs and deviations with paper puzzles could be used for displaying my final imagery. A physical platform to display and interpret the levels and differences in multiple personality disorders could relate beautifully. If I can design a puzzle that allows the user to peel back the skin of the onion to reveal a picture or play around with the composition of the face - then that could fit all my aspirations in perfectly. These are ideas that I am going to try out for the next chapter of the project.

Colophon: I miss Luxembourg!

Well Luxembourg has come and gone, and now its time to get back to business. However, it doesn't mean I cant be nostalgic...and look back at the good times including strutting my work next to Alex One!

Colophon: The experience

As you can see, this was the schedule and it was packed, no holiday included, this was a business trip. I managed to ween my way into the illustration portfolio market where I was given a table to strut my stuff for one hour on the Friday. This made all of the promotion worthwhile as you can see in the hastily taken photographs I managed to take up most of the table, and people lapped it up. The best thing about the whole weekend, and my presentation was to see the lack of pretence amongst the curators and editors at the top of their game. Everyone was just passionate and genuinely interested in their business and that of others. 

Having the table was a big boost as it allowed me to talk face to face with people and get them interested in my work. I haven't yet had the chance to contact most of the people back as yet, but there was genuine interest in my Actionscript work - from KM Studios based in Mexico - which was a bonus seeing as I spent a lot of the past year training myself to this discipline. There has already been interest with a mention on the french blog Culture-Buzz to whom I spoke to and a professional photographer snapping up my guerilla advertising!

One main thing about the trip was to enlighten me to the ability to collaborate with other individuals outside of the main companies and agencies, namely freelance photographers who were very interested in working with illustrators such as myself. As all of the magazines were freelance it was interesting to see how the business side of things are changing, with a lot of the conferences held at Colophon focusing on the changes from print to digital and the use of advertising. Although it is seen as the devil, advertising is crucial to the survival and funding - and therefore distribution of art and artistic magazines. 

The trip left me with much to ponder in terms of career choice, and the use of media. It seems that there is a stereotype for illustrators at the moment to be character based, and I feel the new generations of illustrators are much more balanced with the ability to mix media with photography and print techniques included. If I can try to mix photography into my work the outcomes can become more professional when mixed with my existing digital styles. then I can strive to be slightly different than the crowd and produce truly original imagery. 

Colophon: Promotion part.2

These images show the final stages of my Colophon preparation. After the 50 prints of the 6 postcards I had 50 posters printed, 25 of each design, and 200 business cards. 

The posters show an A4 snap shot of my Actionscript work from the previous project, this is my most technically advanced work to date and the images I wanted to show off the most, as they are quite rare and an unseen style.

As for the business card I went for a design that complemented the style of my website with the black framing and hand-made typeface on the front.

I opted for a double sided appearance with the front saved for my image and my screen name Mongeloui. The image itself is pulled from my portfolio and is from the last project; judging peoples reaction to it when they look at my website it's an image they all stop on and study so I thought it would be appropriate for a business card. It fits well in the portrait nature of the card.

On the back I went for a minimal design with bold Helvetica font and basic info. It's actually made from recycled paper and has a matte finish applied to it, this means that the finalised card is slightly thicker than the average and ensures that the design should stand out from the crowd.

Colophon: Promotion

These are the promotion designs that I got printed for a set of 6 postcard designs to used in a promotional pack for Colophon. They present a cross-section of my styles and include work created for this project. The reverse isn't so interesting with a short description of myself and contact details. I printed 50 for each design, arming me a little more ammunition to speak to people. They turned out real nice, and I'm loving the way that they look scanned in!