Urban Sprawl
String garden how to
String garden hanging from buildings
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
4/9 progress
Here is the second draft of my overarching artist statement - still needs work -
My work and interests lie primarily in design, video and photography. I enjoy exploring many ways to get my desired message across, such as experimenting with typography, stop motion animation, straight forward designs, such as brochure, and web design, and video that can contain more ambiguous content, such as my piece entitled, Within a Dream. Because I use different mediums within my work, my body of work overall contains a good amount of variety.
I have used concepts pulled from how our society sees things, as shown in my piece entitled, Surroundings, as well as in my Vector Self Portrait, which focuses on the masculine and feminine stereotypes that appear within our culture, and how they are largely untrue.
Other concepts I focus on include personal experiences, which can be clearly seen in my cubism piece, Cubist Self, concepts about the inner workings of our minds such as dreams, the unconscious self, and imagination, and human emotions, as shown in my series of traditional black and white photography pieces, entitled All Kinds of Love. When using stop motion animation, I focus on whimsical content, which can be seen in my pieces, Two Little Birds, The Domestic Goddess, and Mischief, a short film about gummy bears coming to life.
The combination of mediums I use, and the concepts I have explored have made me a more versatile artist. I am able to create many different types of interesting visuals, while engaging the viewer to think further into the concepts being presented.
final design for business cards -
My project 1 is finished, with a sort of proof of concept PDF of it. -
My work and interests lie primarily in design, video and photography. I enjoy exploring many ways to get my desired message across, such as experimenting with typography, stop motion animation, straight forward designs, such as brochure, and web design, and video that can contain more ambiguous content, such as my piece entitled, Within a Dream. Because I use different mediums within my work, my body of work overall contains a good amount of variety.
I have used concepts pulled from how our society sees things, as shown in my piece entitled, Surroundings, as well as in my Vector Self Portrait, which focuses on the masculine and feminine stereotypes that appear within our culture, and how they are largely untrue.
Other concepts I focus on include personal experiences, which can be clearly seen in my cubism piece, Cubist Self, concepts about the inner workings of our minds such as dreams, the unconscious self, and imagination, and human emotions, as shown in my series of traditional black and white photography pieces, entitled All Kinds of Love. When using stop motion animation, I focus on whimsical content, which can be seen in my pieces, Two Little Birds, The Domestic Goddess, and Mischief, a short film about gummy bears coming to life.
The combination of mediums I use, and the concepts I have explored have made me a more versatile artist. I am able to create many different types of interesting visuals, while engaging the viewer to think further into the concepts being presented.
final design for business cards -
My project 1 is finished, with a sort of proof of concept PDF of it. -
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
3/26
I am working on my artist statement for my second project (the typography portrait) - this is it so far...
Every person has many layers that make up who they are. Which layers of ourselves we choose to show others, and how we portray them is a choice that we all make. In this self-portrait, I have chosen to portray certain traits to the viewer, and in particular I have chosen ones that I believe make up one of the major aspects of my life, which is the artistic portion. Artist, designer, open minded, free thinker, and clever are a few of the terms and traits that I would consider to be pieces of myself that are important in keeping myself creative, and my thoughts engaged in the artistic process. Although I am made up of many layers, it made sense to me to make a self-portrait out of these particular terms because it is this layer of myself that I feel is shown to most people.
Then I have also been rethinking my 3rd project -
I think I may want to take on the stop motion beast again, now that I have done two previous projects with it.
I have a few ideas floating around -
One idea I was thinking about could entail using gummy bears (or some other sort of recognizable candy figure). I was thinking maybe they could group up into teams out from the bag and then try to escape the fate of being eaten. Along the way though they will face challenges to escape such as, some may melt in a frying pan, some may fall into a sink full of water...or maybe float down a drain, some could get stepped on, and then maybe one group could escape the house. I was thinking if I did this, I might do a small written narration as it goes, probably on a dry erase board (or maybe some other way) - also in stop motion.
Another idea I was thinking about for stop motion, would be to take a poem (probably one by Robert Frost since that is one of my all time favorite poets) - that is public domain - and do a collage style stop motion, making up the typography of the poem. Then to go along with that, I could use clippings from various places (magazines, newspapers etc) to create imagery that the poem is talking about.
I saw this and liked the collage-type style it had.
Of course, this idea of doing stop motion with typography wouldn't have to just pertain to a poem, I could also choose a general concept, theory, philosophy or something like that and illustrate it through stop motion.
I would love to say I would like to take on a super ambitious stop motion and do one with the camera mounted from directly above the subjects....I found this guy's blog talking about how he rigged a mount up for it without buying super expensive equipment, but I haven't looked into it really any further than that - but I love the stop motions that are from directly above.
http://blog.iso50.com/15588/how-to-shoot-stop-motion-from-above/
If I could pull off a stop motion from above some concepts I'd probably think about using would be dreams, or the belief that your right part of your brain is your 'creative' portion of the brain, and the left is the more analytical/strategic portion.
This one is pretty amazing
And then I also am thinking of more possibilities for the Header of my portfolio site, or business cards - Not thinking I'll keep the CMYK circles, because I feel like that might imply that I only do Print design, and although print is actually what I do prefer, I wouldn't want to label myself as ONLY working in print design.
Every person has many layers that make up who they are. Which layers of ourselves we choose to show others, and how we portray them is a choice that we all make. In this self-portrait, I have chosen to portray certain traits to the viewer, and in particular I have chosen ones that I believe make up one of the major aspects of my life, which is the artistic portion. Artist, designer, open minded, free thinker, and clever are a few of the terms and traits that I would consider to be pieces of myself that are important in keeping myself creative, and my thoughts engaged in the artistic process. Although I am made up of many layers, it made sense to me to make a self-portrait out of these particular terms because it is this layer of myself that I feel is shown to most people.
Then I have also been rethinking my 3rd project -
I think I may want to take on the stop motion beast again, now that I have done two previous projects with it.
I have a few ideas floating around -
One idea I was thinking about could entail using gummy bears (or some other sort of recognizable candy figure). I was thinking maybe they could group up into teams out from the bag and then try to escape the fate of being eaten. Along the way though they will face challenges to escape such as, some may melt in a frying pan, some may fall into a sink full of water...or maybe float down a drain, some could get stepped on, and then maybe one group could escape the house. I was thinking if I did this, I might do a small written narration as it goes, probably on a dry erase board (or maybe some other way) - also in stop motion.
Another idea I was thinking about for stop motion, would be to take a poem (probably one by Robert Frost since that is one of my all time favorite poets) - that is public domain - and do a collage style stop motion, making up the typography of the poem. Then to go along with that, I could use clippings from various places (magazines, newspapers etc) to create imagery that the poem is talking about.
I saw this and liked the collage-type style it had.
Of course, this idea of doing stop motion with typography wouldn't have to just pertain to a poem, I could also choose a general concept, theory, philosophy or something like that and illustrate it through stop motion.
I would love to say I would like to take on a super ambitious stop motion and do one with the camera mounted from directly above the subjects....I found this guy's blog talking about how he rigged a mount up for it without buying super expensive equipment, but I haven't looked into it really any further than that - but I love the stop motions that are from directly above.
http://blog.iso50.com/15588/how-to-shoot-stop-motion-from-above/
If I could pull off a stop motion from above some concepts I'd probably think about using would be dreams, or the belief that your right part of your brain is your 'creative' portion of the brain, and the left is the more analytical/strategic portion.
This one is pretty amazing
And then I also am thinking of more possibilities for the Header of my portfolio site, or business cards - Not thinking I'll keep the CMYK circles, because I feel like that might imply that I only do Print design, and although print is actually what I do prefer, I wouldn't want to label myself as ONLY working in print design.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Update
I have started thinking about ideas for my portfolio website, as well as for business cards - this is just one idea so far. This would either be for one side of a business card or maybe for the homepage of the website. I am still messing with it and I want to have multiple things to choose from for the cards and the site so this is just the first idea.
I have also started thinking about my 3rd project for the semester -
and as a random side note - this website has some nice typography examples.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Monday, March 4, 2013
Change of plans for the third time....
Okay so...occasionally things don't work out how I had envisioned them and my second project has been an example of this. First, the movie poster idea....then the digital natives & immigrant idea that I actually made progress on....then it was just not turning out as I had planned.
It wasn't holding my interest and I can't expect something to hold anyone's interest...if it cant even hold mine.
I have been making a list of random ideas that I want to try for about 6 months, just randomly writing ideas down for projects as they pop into my mind. So, I looked over my idea list and I had forgotten that I really had wanted to experiment with a typography portrait.
Since this was something that I had never tried before, and I had basically wasted a week and a half or so working on my other project 2 idea...I have had to spend A LOT of time working on this in the past 5 or so days.
I chose words that I think can be used to describe myself, and created my portrait with the words. After that I thought I should add color, so I made a pallet on kuler and added touches of color with the words. I'm still deciding on if I want to do anything in the background, but as of right now I'm thinking I might leave it white
It wasn't holding my interest and I can't expect something to hold anyone's interest...if it cant even hold mine.
I have been making a list of random ideas that I want to try for about 6 months, just randomly writing ideas down for projects as they pop into my mind. So, I looked over my idea list and I had forgotten that I really had wanted to experiment with a typography portrait.
Since this was something that I had never tried before, and I had basically wasted a week and a half or so working on my other project 2 idea...I have had to spend A LOT of time working on this in the past 5 or so days.
I chose words that I think can be used to describe myself, and created my portrait with the words. After that I thought I should add color, so I made a pallet on kuler and added touches of color with the words. I'm still deciding on if I want to do anything in the background, but as of right now I'm thinking I might leave it white
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Progress&What Not.
I am fine tuning the background images for my second project - I have multiple options of what I like so far, but there is still a lot of work I need to do on it. I havent started the Digital Immigrant document yet, just the Native one.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Project 2/Progress on Surroundings
New idea for project 2
Concepts taken from here>> Digital Natives; Digital Immigrants
Two posters, collage style, illustrating these concepts. Thinking of doing a side profile of a person on each poster, then having imagery sort of sprouting up out of the heads of the people. Typography will only include 'Digital Native' and Digital Immigrant' on each. I will probably take most of the photography for this, anything I pull from other sources I will vectorize in Illustrator and modify significantly to make my own.
A couple styles I really like -
link:: http://reincarnatedconstructivism.tumblr.com/
For project 1 I think I am just being overly picky at this point. It is basically ready to turn in but I am continuously going back and moving the imagery around. In the process of making the final PDF for this, but I need to quit touching up the imagery before I can have a final PDF. One major thing I still need to do is resize and reposition my letters. I didnt want them to be centered, but some of the capital letters need more space, so the document may end up being centered, which I think will be fine.
Here are some of the letters that I like in the second set, I forgot to post anything from last week about this.
Concepts taken from here>> Digital Natives; Digital Immigrants
Two posters, collage style, illustrating these concepts. Thinking of doing a side profile of a person on each poster, then having imagery sort of sprouting up out of the heads of the people. Typography will only include 'Digital Native' and Digital Immigrant' on each. I will probably take most of the photography for this, anything I pull from other sources I will vectorize in Illustrator and modify significantly to make my own.
A couple styles I really like -
For project 1 I think I am just being overly picky at this point. It is basically ready to turn in but I am continuously going back and moving the imagery around. In the process of making the final PDF for this, but I need to quit touching up the imagery before I can have a final PDF. One major thing I still need to do is resize and reposition my letters. I didnt want them to be centered, but some of the capital letters need more space, so the document may end up being centered, which I think will be fine.
Here are some of the letters that I like in the second set, I forgot to post anything from last week about this.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Project 2
Almost finished with Project 1 finally. Should be ready to turn in this weekend, I’m basically just fine tuning at this point, and also trying human figures in some of the letters to see how it fits, but as of right now I’m leaning more towards staying with architecture and organic shapes in nature.
Now on to the second project that I’ll be starting while fine tuning the first one! Originally I had posted about wanting to do vintage style horror movie posters or minimal horror movie posters.
Then I found this::
(I believe his website can be found here.)
And I thought that was pretty sweet.
I would love to do 4 posters for this project (sized smaller probably around 11x17…maybe a little bigger) in a similar way to have them be displayed together.
For this I want to take 4 of my favorite horror(ish) movies – Halloween, Donnie Darko, Psycho, and The Exorcist – and then choose a main character from each and have the visuals show the character, and the surroundings of the poster embody the mood, traits, desires, or sort of inner workings of that character.
Halloween:: Michael Myers
Donnie Darko:: Donnie Darko
Psycho:: Norman Bates
The Exorcist :: Regan MacNeil
I chose these characters in particular because I think they all have some sort of back story, well known attributes, weaknesses, or types of problems that I could find many ways to display these things visually.
As of now, I’m still planning on displaying the movie’s title on the poster, but probably smaller than the name of the actual character that I am portraying because I want the character and their traits to be the main focus.
I want to stick with more of a blocky graphic look like the example I found has, and have each poster only make use of a few carefully chosen colors.
I plan on using these original posters to mirror the color schemes that were used, into my own posters.
Now on to the second project that I’ll be starting while fine tuning the first one! Originally I had posted about wanting to do vintage style horror movie posters or minimal horror movie posters.
Then I found this::
And I thought that was pretty sweet.
I would love to do 4 posters for this project (sized smaller probably around 11x17…maybe a little bigger) in a similar way to have them be displayed together.
For this I want to take 4 of my favorite horror(ish) movies – Halloween, Donnie Darko, Psycho, and The Exorcist – and then choose a main character from each and have the visuals show the character, and the surroundings of the poster embody the mood, traits, desires, or sort of inner workings of that character.
Halloween:: Michael Myers
Donnie Darko:: Donnie Darko
Psycho:: Norman Bates
The Exorcist :: Regan MacNeil
I chose these characters in particular because I think they all have some sort of back story, well known attributes, weaknesses, or types of problems that I could find many ways to display these things visually.
As of now, I’m still planning on displaying the movie’s title on the poster, but probably smaller than the name of the actual character that I am portraying because I want the character and their traits to be the main focus.
I want to stick with more of a blocky graphic look like the example I found has, and have each poster only make use of a few carefully chosen colors.
I plan on using these original posters to mirror the color schemes that were used, into my own posters.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Artist Statement (First Draft)
Project 1 Artist Statement -
Type & Common Surroundings
Type & Common Surroundings
Take seemingly ordinary, everyday visuals, and combine
them to create an uncommon representation of what they once were. That is the essence of this piece. Each day we
take in so much visual information that we literally can not process completely
each and every thing that we see. Because of this visual overload we
experience, many things become less appreciated, or simply overlooked. But it
is these common surroundings and visuals we experience that have the potential
to be something interesting.
For this piece I took an Arial font because of its
simplicity and frequent usage, and combined each letter of the alphabet with
photographs taken of common surroundings that would normally be overlooked. I
wanted the flow, patterns, textures, subtle variations, and minimalistic
technique to create a piece that would engage its viewer to perhaps rethink the
commonality of the two subjects here: Type and Common Surroundings.
The presentation of this piece, a very large format,
was a choice that I made to balance the fact that some of the letters have been
left to look more minimal and less involved than others. Mimicking the way we are bombarded with daily visual information, the format is large enough to be easily noticed, but one must stop and look closer to actually absorb the information. As with the visuals we
take in every day, variation within these letters was a key aspect I focused on
to make each letter its’ own unique composition.
Currently about half way done with this lettering project. Definitely ready to move on and start something else. I feel like I've got some interesting patterns and shapes going on in most of the letters that I've done, but I honestly think I need to go shoot more photos one last time to get the variety that I'm wanting for this.
I could easily just use the photos I have for now to finish all the letters, but I wont be totally happy with it. So, it looks like it will only be partially finished for critique today, but I'd rather it be partially finished, and be able to go take one more round of photos this week, and finish the project up this weekend, rather than have a finished product for today that I'm not 100% happy with. That's life I suppose.
I could easily just use the photos I have for now to finish all the letters, but I wont be totally happy with it. So, it looks like it will only be partially finished for critique today, but I'd rather it be partially finished, and be able to go take one more round of photos this week, and finish the project up this weekend, rather than have a finished product for today that I'm not 100% happy with. That's life I suppose.
As with anything too, I have run into some issues. Some of the letters (such as J and I) are very minimal. I don't have a problem with that, I actually like that some letters are so minimal, I really like the way J looks, but the letter I...not so much. Hoping to solve that problem when I go take more photos.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Project 1 Update
Took some photos this past weekend. Not nearly as many as I had wanted to because well, the weather was around 15 degrees or less all week.
Saturday I was able to go out to this lighthouse and I got some photos for this project at the beach. I definitely need to finish shooting my photos this week though, hopefully it stops being rainy.
Beyond taking photos though I started to create my first few letter images. And I figured out how to do the editing that I'll need to do for all the letters, so editing them past this point should go pretty quickly.
For the critique next Tuesday, I know I won't have the entire project finished. Thinking probably half the alphabet, but not sure how I should display the project since it won't be in its finished state***.
Currently I started this first letter with a document of 12Wx9H so I'm thinking that is the finished size I'll stick with.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
2nd project beginnings
I'm starting to think about ideas for the second project -
I love vintage horror movie posters & minimal horror movie posters. So, I think it is easy to see where I am thinking about going with this second project.
I am thinking of either doing 5 (amount can be more I guess) minimal horror movie posters, or vintage stylized horror movie posters. All will be different movies, but I want to keep the style consistent enough for them to be logically shown together.
Here are some that I like. I'm wondering if using titles and the info from the real movies will be a copyright issue? Not sure. -
I'm also not sure if I'll want to take on well known and recognized movies (Frankenstein, Dracula, The Thing, The Exorcist, Night of the Living Dead, etc) or if I should take on the super corny and cheesy basically awful movies that most people have never heard of (The Brain Eaters - which I already did a movie poster for but it was using photography of my own, Critters - awful...and hilarious at the same time, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Ghoulies, ect)
Here are some that I like ::
some found here
some found here
here
and here.
I love vintage horror movie posters & minimal horror movie posters. So, I think it is easy to see where I am thinking about going with this second project.
I am thinking of either doing 5 (amount can be more I guess) minimal horror movie posters, or vintage stylized horror movie posters. All will be different movies, but I want to keep the style consistent enough for them to be logically shown together.
Here are some that I like. I'm wondering if using titles and the info from the real movies will be a copyright issue? Not sure. -
I'm also not sure if I'll want to take on well known and recognized movies (Frankenstein, Dracula, The Thing, The Exorcist, Night of the Living Dead, etc) or if I should take on the super corny and cheesy basically awful movies that most people have never heard of (The Brain Eaters - which I already did a movie poster for but it was using photography of my own, Critters - awful...and hilarious at the same time, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Ghoulies, ect)
Here are some that I like ::
some found here
some found here
here
and here.
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