The last of the photomontage work =) Finally!

After realising how hollow one of my ideas was, I decided not to do it. It was the crumbling earth idea but after literally two minutes on google I saw exactly what I had pictured in my head as the outcome. So no need to redo what has already been done! Anywhose I’m onto the final idea, that is the only one that utilises my previous work for studio brief one.

I just jumped straight in here, plus I think we have seen enough print screen!My first two attempts, played with colour, contrast, composition. The composition was the hardest to get the final image I wanted, I ended up jiggling everything around.

Final – for this I decided to keep it simple because previous attempts were too cluttered!

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Working process -ABomb

Just the documentation from the ABomb photomontage:

Played around with the structure follows the same style as the one before, version 3, still have a lot of work to do though.

For a moment a thought that the bomb should be a different colour but after looking at the side by side I think the yellow works a lot better, the colour has enough similarities with her hair colour to blend into the theme, but also enough differences to stand out of the page. Also, it sticks to the nuclear symbol colours.

The one thing that i do like about this composition is how focused the girl seems to be on the bomb, she appears mesmerized by it. I think it has somehow lost the whole waitress idea that I started out with but this is definitely for the better. It reminds more of the Russian propaganda I started my research with as opposed to the american Bush/Blair mockery posters that ended my research. I like it. I’m not usually one for comedy based work so I sort of went out on a limb with this one but it seemed to wiggle its way back to my usual style of working. Even the girl seems to have a sorrowful yet composed nature to her face. This is definitely down to the filter I used to highlight the outlines of the figure in drastic blacks, this resulted in you not being able to see her eyes that clearly, which gives the idea of sadness.

I am now up to 7 layers =) did a bit of neatening up with the pen tool to go around the nuclear hazard symbol as it had pixellated when I blew it up from the photograph. Felt the white outline round the triangle was too dominant so I used it to cut the colour of the nuclear hazard symbol where it touched them then deleted it.I brought back the colour I tested on the bomb and I think it works perfectly, adds a nice aura to it whilst keeping it simple.

 

The finished product:

Don’t you just love pixels, god forbid the day this gets blown up to A3 =)

Test images for ABomb

A few layout tests I did in Photoshop, I chose to stick with the third because of its central composition. Also like the colours, but maybe a little too bold? Symbolic of nuclear warfare. Altered the log slightly so that you can easily see the slogan. Like the text aswell, glad this part is out-of-the-way as it was the part I struggled with the most.

Copy/Cut/Paste/Montage

All of the initial work I did in my sketch book for my first idea is below:

Initial ideas:

Logo design:

 

 

 

Referance and ideas test:

 

Development of waitress:

 

Acid Rain Girl, Print screens, Final Outcome.

A few colour alterations to the girl:

As you can probably guess I like the blue theme, none of the other colours I tried went with the background.

I moved onto the background and used the exposure tool to make it a lot more ‘drastic’. Playing on the acid theme here! Also inverted the colours on the girl but as you can see this made it a little too crazy! I love the background though.

Used paint brush to draw in some basic drip shapes from her left hand. Smudged the green onto the desaturated arm. Soften up the edges so that she fits into the background better, used smudg etool for this, so that it makes harsh spiked lines to fit in with the acid rain theme.

Here are my three outcomes for this piece:

Vibrant background

Dull  background to make green stand out

Desaturated background.

Photomontage – Acid Rain Girl.

This is the 2nd idea I came up with for the photomontage, I didn’t do as much sketchbook work as I have for some of the others, instead I did a few comp ideas, found some photo’s and went straight into photoshop. The main idea behind this piece was to follow on with the theme of nuclear war, but it focuses on the after effects as opposed to focusing on the actual icons of the war i.e. a-bomb. I never intended for the image to be a horrifying look at the effects of nuclear warfare, I wanted it to contain references but not necessarily be tied directly to reality.The background for this photo montage ties in alongside all the research I did for my first idea.

Here is the initial work I did for this piece.

Remember those photomontages?

I realise that I haven’t posted any of my work for my photomontage; this is because I have just finished them all! I think at the time I got obsessed with the digital film brief and pushed the photomontage to the side. Here is my outline of ideas, the subsequent posts will have my working progress =)

My photo montage ideas:

• War propaganda mockery, with female waitress serving up an atomic bomb – this is the main idea that responds to the brief by showing an issue I feel strongly about. Hence all the research I did on war propaganda etc
• Acid Rain Girl stemmed from an idea I had to use environmental problems as my issue. I didn’t want to delve too deeply into environmental issues though as I know a hell of a lot of photoshop based work is produced on this subject so I decided to look at acid rain – a subject tat exists but doesn’t do that much damage so it isn’t  on the news every other week!
• Crumbling earth is another idea based on environmental issues but a little more obvious than the acid rain girl.
• Finally we have Broken Face which is a totally random one that consists of a womans face with textures that I collected on the two trips for Studio brief 1.

Collective moodboard for all the ideas.

I know this is 2 weeks too late but..

I have recently come across some very nice poster designs for star wars travel. They would have been perfect for my cut/copy/paste/montage theme but hey what can you do! Anywhose, they are worth a look if you get chance.

LINK

Tarnished Earth

Presented by the Co-operative, Tarnished Earth is an exhibition of devastating power. There are some photographs outside Leeds Art Gallery at the moment, and I would have stopped to have a proper look if it hadn’t been raining on my way up to college this morning. Anyways, the few that I saw looked amazing and it did somewhat remind me of the visuals from Koyaanisqatsi by Godfrey Reggio. Similarly the photographs did tell the story of the ecological disaster of tar. The exhibition is by Jiri Rezac, and shows the wilderness, human folly, consequences and alternatives to portray devastating power.

This is the official website.

Here are a few of the displayed photographs –

Thankyou Chris =)

For pointing me in the direction of Gil Elvgren – 1930’s – 1970’s Pin-Up and Glamour artist. I originally didn’t want to look at pin-up in too much detail for my visual language brief, cut/copy/paste/montage, but after looking at 1940’s advertisements – especially Jantzen swimwear – I don’t think it would harm my design if I took a pin-up approach, as long as it follows the format and theme of each piece.

Useful websites – Cut/copy/paste/montage

whodies.com – check out the posters page, there are some awesome peace posters based on the No Blood For Oil Campaign.

Yo What Happened To Peace – This is the flickr photostream, some nice street art based on peace protests and general environmental art.

Leon Kuhn – I mentioned Kuhn’s work in a previous blog but I didn’t have the room to post loads of his work onto here, so here is a link to the the postcard section of his website.

40′s All American Ads.

Don’t you just love the 40’s?

I found some interesting adverts from the 40’s All American Ads book by Jim Heimann in the library. I am going to use them as reference for my montage piece, as I am producing an advert for a made up company whose main focus is peace, there is going to be one in the style of the 50’s/60’s focusing on nuclear warfare, and one set in the future focusing on climate change related issues.

Chesterfield Cigarettes, iconic, simple design, basic.

The women in the top two are shown happy, big smiles all round in fact. They have defined make-up, the red lipstick, slight hint of blusher and they are mainly central in the image.
The males in the last image seem to be promoting war as well as the cigarettes. It is almost like they are saying men in the army smoke and everyone idolizes them so every man should smoke.
More Chesterfield Cigarette Ads can be found here.

Copacobana poster, 1947.
I like the use of colour in this. The yellow splits the image diagonally, so that you follow the Z reading pattern. Plus this will be useful for clothing ideas.

Jatzen Swimsuits, 1940
Block colour, female figure, almost silhouette.

After a trip to the library

Here are a few of the pieces of work that I think are helpful for my copy/cut/paste/montage brief in visual language.

John Carr, Block Bush.

I like how obvious this image is in term of the comedic aspect of it.

Leon Kuhn –

Mad Dogs and Englishmen.

Capital City

Zionism

Karmarama, Make Tea Not War (Naresh Ramchandani & Dave Buonaguidi) (2004)

Photomontage influence.

Planet 51

50’s America on another planet.
Just another reference to how 50’s America has been portrayed.

Duck and Cover 1951 Civil Defense Campaign

Came across a screen shot of this video in Peace, 50 years of protest 1958-2008 by Barry Miles. The video is extremely useful for my visual language montage as it shows ”Bert’ the turtle’ using his shell to duck and cover from the explosives shown throughout the animation. It was made in 1951 and the soundtrack is quite reminiscent of that era of music. I am using this a reference to the type of imagery that was used in the 1950’s/60’s to raise awareness of nuclear weapons.

When you look back at this video and take into account that the majority of people affected in a nuclear bomb drop would die from the radiation sickness and not the actual blast, it seems a little bit useless.

Back To Basics

Irrational Games recently released the 10 minute gameplay trailer for BioShock: Infinite. The gameplay does look pretty amazing, I mean who wouldn’t want to steal someone’s shotgun and use it against them with only the power of Brooker DeWitt’s (protagonist) mind? But the game does have a few alterations that BioShock 1 and 2 players may find a little off putting, for example DeWitt is shown talking to himself until he reaches Elizabeth. I especially like the environment that this is set in, Columbia a city in the sky. The setting of 1912 runs throughout the gameplay trailer and it does look visually stunning. Though one could argue that Irrational were trying to become slightly more like the FallOut series of games, as they have incorporated the ‘free-roam’ idea to BioShock: Infinite and the player can choose who they would like to save, help etc and even if they want to have side-kick Elizabeth to help them throughout the game. Another similarity to FallOut is the use of opposite ideas, they have an environment that is set in 1912 and the characters fit in with this theme but there are some out of place things, like the mechanical horse and the sky wires. Even I got confused when the opening seemed like a 1940’s silent film opening sequence, which was reminiscent to the start up loading screen on FallOut 3, which consists of the slides moving up.
I am going to use this as a reference point for my visual language brief cut/copy/paste/montage as like FallOut it conveys the opposite ideas of futuristic advances mingled in with a setting from a past era.

The trailer is worth a watch if you haven’t seen it already.

Sexist Vintage Adverts

Just found this blog post on Shocking Sexism Vintage Ads. Will come in handy for my visual language photo montage piece as I have chosen to take the approach of 1950’s advertising combined with futuristic visions (as seen in fallout).

Find it here.

Lawrence Yang

The beauty of watercolour’s.

Check out this website to see some awesome watercolour and gouache paintings by artist Lawrence Yang. These are simply beautiful.

When the apocalypse comes…

Tanker homes are the future!

Just found this awesome blog about designer Aristide Antonas, who has designed mobile tanker homes. Perfectly suited for an apocalyptic world. I can just imagine them cruising around Fallout:NV =) Anyways this lead me onto Aristide Antonas’ blog. It is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in architecture. Here is the link: http://antonas.blogspot.com/

Also check out the Tanker Homes Drawings here: http://dprbcn.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/keg-apartment-aristide-antonas/