Presentation Week!

This week in class we had to present our ideas, findings to the class for critic and feedback. The actual build up to the presentation was somewhat rushed, however I managed to get it all prepared the day before the day of presenting (16th October Wednesday). I had rehearsed some of the slides that needed additional execution to make sense of the presentation.

So what was the content? My presentation consisted of a logical build up of explaining the processes that I went to in the prior two weeks, the research, the idea generating, the sketches that enabled me to build a clear picture of what I wanted. I also looked into colour schemes in a new creative way for me that was different from what I have been doing in the previous A-Level course. Furthermore I looked at a wide range of typographies to give the greatest impact when people walk past this poster which is an important aspect.

How did the presenting go? The presentation went a lot better than I expected, I was anxious before I started as I hadn't done one in a while and presenting to new people is always stressful, however I quickly got back into it and posing challenging and thought provoking questions to the audience to keep them engaged. I managed to explain and get my ideas across in the way that I think of them which is important to me.

Feedback on the presentation/presenting skills?
My feedback on my presentation was very positive, I scored 1 or 2 on every category and commended for my fluent speech and not using notes. My colleagues also said that my explanation of ideas was very entertaining. In terms of criticism I should of added mock-ups which is a valid point and I shall act on soon.

All in all it was a successful milestone in this assignment and I enjoyed it!

Pop Art!

Another one of the main styles we were told to base our assignment on was Pop-Art. Pop-Art was probably the one art style I knew/have seen the most of . The artists take a ordinary picture and modify it into a comic-book art style that looks like it has been drawn with crayons and pastels, this is a very dramatic look and can enable to artist to translate massive emotions/actions easily with just a few colour strokes, as you can see on this picture below, the woman has a white strip by her right eye which shows she is distressed or worried.


Pop art is a very cool and visually attractive art style for me, I think that it takes the basics of other art styles and just makes the message obvious which is the main objective when advertising with this style, which is why it could be very useful for a Science Recruitment Poster, bright, colourful, and eye catching with a simple scene to portrait a message quickly and successfully.

In this second picture of popart examples I found one that specifically shows Science in relation to popart so I myself could get a better idea of how I was going to execute the design process. It clearly shows how easily an area of science can be displayed by just colour schemes and contrasting colours. I like the fact that you can immediately get the impression of what the poster is about without any text, this will be a great colour scheme to follow when producing my poster.

Again I wanted to find out more about the history behind Pop-art, it seems that It originated in Mid-1950's in Britain and Late-1950's in the US, and further supports my idea that Popart is mostly used in Logos and product labeling as it gets peoples attention and is just genuinely visually appealing.

Image 1 Source: http://www.osnatfineart.com/images/girl-with-hair-ribbon.jpg
Image 2 Source: http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/pop-art-objects-science-medical-9543217.jpg

Looking at Early-20th Century Sci-fi Movie Posters

When looking at the content of this movie poster I can see that immediately the posters text is in Russian or a similar language, in the middle the poster there is a man wearing a bowler hat, he's wearing glasses and his face is mostly covered with yellow, underneath him are two people a man and a woman sitting on a bench, they have no colour they are just grey with text in between them, there is also title text at the top, this is the biggest and most eye catching typography on the page.

This poster shows a combination of things that are completely possible, but also definitely at the same time drawn from the imagination, with the mans face coloured blue and yellow with a red bowler hat this is certainly not a everyday occurrence, who ever drew this poster definitely had a very interesting and wild imagination, the colours themselves are very psychedelic and bright . I haven't seen any movie poster like this before, the typical layout are dark colours and informative 'cool' pictures/texts however this is very different. The immediate impression that the poster gives me aside from the fact I already know its a movie poster, is that it might be something to do with the mind, the way the two people are set apart and their facial expressions tells me that they are scared or worried and the abstract colours also give me the impression of a 'mind' or 'mind game' also the sinister look in the mans eyes gives him a 'mentalist' look.

When looking at the form of the Poster, the two people sitting down in at the bottom of the poster are sitting apart at such a distance which is telling me that they are being held apart, and perhaps they are being held apart from the huge head which is placed in between them, both their body language is also showing that they might know each other however are unable to communicate. The large head in the middle of the poster is definitely the most important feature of this piece of work as it takes up around 90% of the poster and is so striking, not only the size but also the lary bright colour scheme instantly gets your attention and the simplicity of it keeps you interested.

The most memorable thing for me about this posted is definitely the colour scheme, as it's an early 20th century poster the buildings/surroundings of this would of been quite dull, so bright reds, yellows and blues would of caught anyone's eye and make the viewer immediately interested, not only that but the contrast of those colours again the grey smaller people also makes it more visually appealing.

When doing some further research on this image and this poster is from Soviet Russia drawn by Paul Lafargue for a film directed by Nikolai Okhlopkov, unfortunately the film that was based on Glutton millionaires was lost in a fire in WWII.

Image Source: http://en.ria.ru/images/17545/68/175456847.jpg

Steampunk

First off, I was shown the brief for our first assignment and our basic objective in a nut shell is to create a interesting and visually catchy poster for a A-Level science courses across the country. The brief also states that it would like you to follow the design styles or show similarities/influences from artists such as Steampunk, Victoriana, and Popart.

Coming from the A-Level iMedia course last year I thought I would be equipped for this degree course however I can now see that some basic knowledge of the founders of styles that we see and use today just aren't taught, so I'm going to some research!

Let's start off with Steampunk, now the first thing I see when I google 'Steampunk' is:

"Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction that typically features steam-powered machinery, especially in a setting inspired by industrialized Western civilization during the 19th century."
-Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk

This small paragraph has perfectly coined what I see Steampunks looks like:

 These are some images that I took from google images when I searched 'Steampunk'. When first looking at the photo it looks very dark, dirty and old fashioned, however when you continue to look the outfits on the people are clean, the picture is surprisingly well lit and you can see that its a recent photograph from the quality. This is all the style of steampunk and I'm starting to understand it now. In the background of the picture to the left is a huge steam engine, and with the man and woman stood in front of it gives me the impression that they are operating it. However it is just another illusion everything is a prop and staged but the way in which it is done is very deceiving.

-Image Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kyle-cassidy-steampunk.jpg

In this second photo that was the first search result when searching steampunk seems to be a bit more clearly representing that style. The image shows a very Victorian pale man who is dressed smartly and holding a cane, this immediately gives the impression of a upper class member of the public, and completely mis-fitting is a mechanical golden prosthetic arm that is held on with a harness, this is so different from the rest of the photo it really catches you attention, and could be a big factor as to why Steampunk is so well known due to the fact that it is just so hard to miss. The photographer who I found out through research was David Lynch has very cleverly made the man pose like a Victorian would if they were getting their photo taken to furthermore increase the difference between the two areas of the photo and also further confuse the viewer, with all of this set against a pale white background it makes everything stand out that little bit more.


-Image Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Steampunk-falksen.jpg


Aside from just analysing some images that were directly representing the style of 'steampunk' I wanted to find out a bit more about the origin of the term, and style to help me understand it further. So I continued to read on Wikipedia and it seems that the term 'Steampunk' was originally coined by an author named K. W. Jeter who was looking for a general term for a novelists work (Tim Powers) who often wrote about Victorian fantasies.

All of this information to me seems very dated however looking at the dates this style only really came around in 1980, maybe its just the effect of all these Victorian/Robot images?!

Anyway, thanks for reading and next i'll be looking at Victoriana to try and get some history behind that.

First Post!

First Post!

Just begun my first week on the Digital Media Design course, it's looking really interesting and I cant wait to start the first assignment of creating a Science recruitment poster. I'm also looking forward to further enhance my design skills on top of everything I learnt last year.