I think I may have found my new favourite illustrator. Marie-Laure Cruschi uses a lot of shape and is incredible at what she does. After coming across the book 'cabins' I looked more into her work and other things she has done.
Her work is hugely shape driven, with a really vibrant palette throughout most of her works and she has a huge portfolio, how have I not knowingly come across her before?!
She is incredibly versatile, producing sophisticated works for musicians and magazines, then going on to create really fun childrens books. I will definitely be following her stuff from now on.
Yesterday in the library I came across this book called 'Cabins'. I was simply pottering around the library, still struggling to come to terms with what I wanted to do for this brief. As mentioned previously on my blog, I am really interested in how buildings and their ecological surroundings work together and the different types of trees/building that work harmoniously, environmentally and visually.
The book explores different cabins and the surroundings they sit within, which obviously immediately caught my attention. The book is brilliantly illustrated and relies heavily on shape throughout, which weirdly fits right in with this brief. See below some examples from the book.
This book is the shit.
I am really glad I found this book, because I have found it really inspirational in many ways, but in many ways I'm so pissed off, I feel I may become too influenced by this book. Hopefully not.
The illustrations really appeal to me, I am really enjoying using shape at the minute, and I love he use of texture used in these.
Below are my final 3 GIFs for the brief. Overall I am pretty happy with the work I have done. I am particularly happy with my digital GIF, as I love the simplicity and framing of the image. I think the handmade GIF could definitely do with some polishing, however I like the 'raw' look that comes through and I think that comes from the handmade elements.
If I were to do the brief again, I would definitely try to refine my work more. However I am still happy with what I have made.
For me, I think the best course of action would be to research the cities before I start to think about what I'm going to illustrate. Internet research is good for researching unreachable places, but it's also dull as shit.
My plan is to go to a large city, one with a lot of things to see/do there and document my journey, similar to how we worked in out visual narratives brief. I want to go and take pictures and document my visit there, and although I may not find the exact idea or object(s) I want to illustrate on that day, I will be a lot more inspiring than staring at a screen all day.
I want to use this as a starting point, as inspiration for me to get ideas of what other cities I want to look into and the links between the other cities and go from there.
First Ideas Without research, I sat and though about what might be interesting to illustrate. Here are some of my first ideas.
- Distinguishable Architectural Styles
- Traditional Foods - Zoos - Industrial Cities (Steel, Textiles etc) - Street Signs (with addresses and shit) - Different Foliage (this one may sound weird but I'm sadly quite interested in how buildings interact with their surroundings)
So today we were set a new brief. The brief is to create 4 'postcards' of 4 different cities, the cities can be local or global, and the postcards can focus on and aspect of the 4 linked cities.
The postcards must be made digitally using vectors, which is obviously something I am pleased about as I like to work digitally.
I'm really excited about this brief, working with shape is something I have said I really enjoy doing, and I think this brief is the perfect opportunity to experiment a lot more with this.
Challenges I think the biggest issue that could arise from this brief is if I get too distracted by working with the computer and forget to document/ rough properly. Another thing which I am slightly worried about is the roughs themselves, creating images through analogue media compared to digital media is totally different, and creating somewhat complicated designs through handmade forms will be difficult.
Examples I have collected some examples of illustrators who I use shape in a way that I like. Not all of these illustrators will use vectors primarily but I think all of the images could be achieved using vectors. Geoff McFetridge uses a lot of shape in his work, and what I really like specifically about Geoff's work is his subtle use of texture in his shape to keep a handmade feel.
Eleni Kalorkoti is quickly becoming one of my favourite illustrators, her use of shape is great and so is her composition. Again, uses a lot of texture in her shapes.
After wrestling for ages with what I actually wanted to do for my 3D GIF, I am pretty happy with the final outcome. Although I did manipulate the images slightly using photoshop, I like the dark feel of the GIF. I again like the simplicity of the GIF, I think a simple action and movement really works with what I wanted to portray with this image. I wanted to create an almost bored or placid feel to the image, which I think really works.
I think if I were to do the GIF again I would definitely consider frame a lot more in the image. I felt like I didn't really control every aspect of what was in the frame properly, which I think brings down the overall look of the image.
This was so annoying to make, after developing the movement and action of the character I just went for it and started to create the action. It probably took about 2 days to make and get right. And after all that it looks so scruffy and messy. However, I kind of like that. I set out with the idea of using line and shape throughout the GIF, and I think the scruffy 'early animation' type look really fits the character. The numbers in the corner also add to that I think.
I focussed a lot more on the animation of this GIF rather than the actual character. But I think the other GIFs will bring the character through more so being able to really experiment with animation properly has been great.
I think the character could be moving a bit quicker, but I just couldn't get it to move more swiftly without it looking rushed. So this speed is it.
So this may be frowned upon, but I have totally changed my idea for my 3D GIF. I have made new ideas and developed them fully,and now am confident in what I can achieve to produce a GIF which is good enough.
The original stress for me on the 3D GIF is my ability to make a decent enough 'model' or set to create an interesting image. I have inserted images of 'failed' models on this post below. Ones that I just didn't feel I wanted to do any more, this could be my own lack of personal conviction though? The 3D GIF has been the one I have spent the most time thinking about and creating but has been the one that has made the least progress. Which is annoying.
My original idea was to create a small 'set' for a character to move around on, but this totally flopped. Partly because the idea was a bit under-baked, but probably partly down to me simply not wanting to do it, and I wanted to enjoy what I was doing. So I scrapped this idea as I simply wasn't feeling it.
Then I was downhill from there.
After hours of sitting and thinking for literally hours. I literally had fuck all. Nothing. I started to play around with different GIF ideas, to see if I could try and work backwards. i.e. think of an action or movement and create character around that. Which surprisingly worked quite well. I realised that I could be the character.
I messed around with movements, and then went on to think about what I do and how my actions could become a character. My biggest and personally my favourite trait is laziness. Sorted.
Once I had considered different compositions for the final image, I went on to start the design of it. I wanted the image to be simple, and dark, to give the image a gloomy feel whilst still looking quite crisp. I chose to stick with black and grey tones for the figure, again to keep in with the gloomy feeling.
The GIF really didn't take long to make. Once I had decided on the final composition and how the image would look it literally took about 2 hours to make, so it does feel like it may have been too simple? But out of all of the GIFs so far this one is still my favourite, probably because it fits what I like doing the most. Hopefully it isn't too simple.
I really like the composition of the final image. I toyed around with having the light cut across from different angles but i felt like splitting the image in half was the most effective. The original idea for the light being the frame came from last weeks VisLang session where we discussed framing in composition. We discussed how objects and elements of an image can be used to frame an image and make use of negative space. The below image by Brian Saunders is a great example of this, where the piano is used as the main part of the image but is completely invisible aside from the general shape. This is something that really intrigued me and was keen to use it in my own practice.
I am fairly proud of this GIF, if not for the animation (I may have delved too deep into that in other GIFs) but it really enjoy how the character looks. I like the ambiguity of the character having only basic shapes, and left out typically important features such as the eyes and mouth. Shape is something I have been really interested in since our VisLang session on it, and hopefully will be able to implement it into my future practice a bit more.
By far my favourite (and easiest) GIF to produce has been my digital one. THe convenience and freedom of producing through Photoshop has been great, and really suits my preferred style. My idea was to represent how I was feeling during the brief, which fitted the idea of continuousness and repetition perfectly. I therefore decided that the best character to illustrate would be a representation of myself doing work.
The idea and the execution is really simple, with only the hand really needing to move to give the effect of me working. So I am still trying to develop something to happen in the background to make the image more interesting.
I'm pretty much done with my Digital and Hand-drawn, and even from the start of the brief I knew the 3D one would be the most difficult for me. The biggest thing that I'm struggling with is the actual craft of the model. 3D stuff has never been something I have ever been that interested in, so I really don't think I'm very good at it at all.
With this in mind, every idea I had for the 3D GIF is now out the window, as I don't have enough faith in my skills to be able to pull it off; which makes it increasingly more difficult to be motivated to do it. I keep re-developing other ideas in hope that I will be able to make one look good enough, but keep throwing them out once more.
I'm really starting to waste a lot of time thinking about this now but I guess it has to be done.
After developing the actual image of the characters I went on to start to develop the movement of the figures and how that would translate in a GIF. I started to think about how not only the characters would move but how their surroundings could be used top enhance the image.
I started thinking about how my pen would create the line, and how the line would look like it was continuously flowing into the horizon. The movement of the line was an absolute nightmare to work out. It literally took about a whole day just to get my head around how the line would actually look like it was moving into the distance. And after numerous tests I still didn't have it 100% correct.
I then went on to look at how the pen would move, which was in the end fairly simple. And I decided that the best motion for it would be for it to simply sway from left to right.
Collage was a weird one for me. I didn't really get it at first. As in I understand what it is, but the practical uses of it really confused me. I didn't want to just make a collage of images, to create an entirely new image, because aside from the visual aesthetic of it, this can be achieved through any other media. I wanted to focus on manipulation of current image. For me, collage is quite a funny media, as in comedic. Maybe this is because I'm not a huge fan of the aesthetic of it in general? But I just wanted to use collage to create subtle changes to images that already exist. I'm finding it hard to explain exactly what went on during my afternoon and evening of making collage. I decided I wanted to create my own mini brief to work towards with collage. And re-working a landscape seemed a really interesting place to start. I looked at taking a relatively 'flat' landscape image and messing with the perspective of it. I'm actually quite pleased with the outcome, I wanted the image to feel as though I was looking up at the mountain from the bottom, and I think I achieved that. Although I liked the outcome, I found it very tedious and a bit frustrating. It was pretty much downhill from there. I wasted (maybe not wasted) literally 4 hours cutting images out of a gossip magazine and creating my own (what I deemed to be) funny situations from them. The articles in the magazine in general were a bit of a joke to begin with, but I wanted to look at certain elements and features (facial expressions, body positions, use of text) which I found interesting to create other situations from them. Which kind of fit into the brief Matt set us of creating an imaginary event.
I really wrestled with what actually classifies as collage. If I was to take one singular image and write something next to it, is that collage? Is just two images stuck together collage? Or does it need to be a group of images. I see what I made to be collage, others might not, but I enjoyed doing it anyway.
Once I had decided on what I wanted to do for my handmade GIF. I went on to develop the image and how the final outcome would look. The development of the actual image didnt take very long, as I like the smple handmade nature of how I initially drew it, I think the biggest challenge for me on this particular GIF is how the pen will be animated.
I thought that the best way to find out how the pen would function is to simply draw the lines and see how the pen moved in my hand. However, I then realised that because the pen is to have arms, it would move much differently to how it would if the pen was being drawn by myself. I went on to look at similar actions in real life.
Gymnasts walking on their hands give the image of comfortability of walking on their hands and will provide a great reference to use for the animation of the pen.
This week in Visual Language we looked at composition of image. I really enjoyed looking at how images are consciously constructed by professional illustrators and the though process that potentially goes on whilst they craft the image. The main features of composition we looked at were line of sight, depth, scale and frame. All of this elements can help to exaggerate and draw the eye to certain components, as well as draw the eye away from others.
Smart composition can make the world of difference to an image, and is definitely something worth thinking about when creating images. Although this is never something I have ever really thought about, I usually simply 'feel' where and how things should be placed in an image, but I think thinking about why I'm doing what I'm doing will definitely bring in new depths to my work.
I have produced a total of 5 roughs, including the same elements, a figure, an object and a landscape, however all of the roughs utilise a different compositional method. Thinking about composition definitely made me think much more in depth about my images and massively influenced the final outcome.
