Sign 5- Poster

So here's the final...
Will do the evaluation thing later.

Gas Mask Ukraine

More and more people are saying the gas mask idea works best, I thought it wasn't very original.. but that's before I found out about this:

"Young man in gas mask in the bus in western-ukranian city L'vov. Panic due to swine flu is being increased artifically in Ukraine. This can be connected to up-coming president elections"

source: http://fishki.net/comment.php?id=60463, thanx Nikolay for finding it and translating =)

That's pretty much exactly what I wanted to say, I mean I didn't have the up-coming Ukranian president elections in mind, more the pharmaceutical industry who would be pretty sad to have spent so much money in research for nothing, but yeah, I guess the gas-mask idea it is then?

Sign 5- ROUGHS

These are the 5 roughs for the "Keep calm and carry on" quote - swine flu panic theme.
It's a bit difficult to pick one to develop for the final because every person I've asked has given me different opinions, except for my "peer to peer assessment group" who seemed to like the tube one better, but then again one liked the gas mask one best... I'll sum up people's opinions below each, even if you don't care, it might help me make up my mind.
Still confused about whether or not we're meant to include text in?

Quite a few people liked this one best, apparently it's quite eye-catching and works well from a distance, I'd probably do the text more like in the escalator one though or could even do without it. One person said she couldn't quite figure out why the girl was scared though, that it wasn't clear that everyone was coughing and sneezing in the tube- well I will have to make it a lot clearer and neater if I do it for the final, my concern is that it's a bit complicated though so it might not be so easy to make it all that clear.

Two people liked this one best, they liked how you can't see where the sneeze is coming from- getting the whole paranoia idea through, and how the text merges with the table outlines. One person said I should put the "ATCHOO" in some sort of speech bubble because it wasn't clear if she was thinking it or hearing it or sneezing herself. Aside from this three though people didn't really comment on this one, I think that the reason why a lot of people were attracted to the tube and escalator ones is because of the shadowy faces, so I might try to re-do this one and the cat one with shadowy/scared faces, because I think they're a bit more subtle and the composition work well, especially the cat one.

The feedback was mainly that the guy doesn't look scared enough, and the cat should maybe be a bit more centred? (not sure about that though), and that the message wasn't as clear/hard hitting as in the tube or gas mask one.. That point is the one that worries me with this one, I personally thought it was pretty clear, but maybe it's because I've been looking at a lot of political drawings/cartoons on the subject where there is a cow, a chicken and a pig all ganged up and suggesting what next (in one of them there's an elephant, maybe I should post a couple on here)... So I don't know now, I guess I could try it again with a shadowy face?

Or not, no I think it's actually my favourite but wouldn't work in the poster context, I'm pretty sure it would for a newspaper article though.

A few people liked this one best, really straight forward humour I guess, and clearly showing an over-the-top attitude with this flu thing, but I guess even though the mask symbol is one of the most effective, people instantly recognize it, it's kind of too easy... not original enough... Well maybe I'm just making things more complicated, but the more I look at it the more I find it boring.

This one came just after the tube one I think for a lot of people, one person's favorite. It was originally the one I liked least (now I think it's the mask one), and one other person felt the same way, couldn't really explain why either though, too simple? It's just too plainly getting back at the NHS ad, kinda cheap now that I think about it.

Sooo I don't know... Guess I'll try shadowy versions of the cat one and classroom one, people really like the shadowy faces, if I'm not convinced by either then I'll try the tube one, but I don't know if I'll be able to make it work in a neater version...

"Viral Humor Helps Mexicans Cope"

Love this cartoon by Solìs for the Mexican newspaper Excelsior - Sempé style, one of my favs

"Reading" by Alfred Megally
This one would fit the "keep calm and carry on" title quite nicely

source: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/viral-humor-helps-mexicans-cope/

Old School Anti-Flu Campaign

1918 poster by Clifford Berryman
source: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/an-anti-flu-campaign-for-the-gross-out-era/?apage=2

Catch it Bin it Panic

For the next project we have to do an A1 black and white poster, we had a series of quotes to chose from, I picked "Keep calm and carry on", the idea is to do something about swine flu because of the exageration and paranoia that is being created around it, more for business reasons than health I'm guessing.

What got my attention were the "if you could see germs" posters in the tube, could only find one of them on internet and it's really small, but here's one of their TV ads, the first 19 seconds are what I'm talking about

Sign 4- "There's no such thing as free speech in politics"

Brief: illustrate a headline from the 5th of November 2009, headline: "There's no such thing as free speech in politics" from The times (we weren't suppose to base the illustration on the article, just on the headline). Part of the point of this project was to make us understand how it is to work under pressure for time a bit more like an editorial illustrator would I think.

At first I'd left the speech bubbles blank, but when I showed it to people outside from the illustration studio, they didn't really get it, when I told them they were speech bubbles they went "oooh!", I guess that's the problem if you only get feedback from classmates and tutors, we forget a bit how other people see it.

With the blank speech bubbles.. which don't look like speech bubbles apparently.

A lot of people liked this idea best, I did too, but it's true that it isn't as original.

I was gonna go with this idea for the final, but when it came to doing it in the studio and I didn't have the right materials with me, it went wrong and I got sick of it, so I went back to one of the first roughs I did that I liked better.

Sign 3- The Small-Tooth Dog

I did not want to put these on the blog, but apparently we have to put every project and reflect on them, I hope they don't put you off.

For this brief we had to pick a fairy tale/folk story and illustrate it in 5 images, minimum size A4.

You can read the story on : http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/beautybeast/stories/smalldog.html (same website I got the Gustave Doré images from)

Evaluation... I guess the only good thing about these is the light in the first image. I wanted to try to change media- charcoal and pastels in addition to some ink and watercolour pencils.. try to make it a little less precise, I was told for the previous project that I was being too rational, but I'm really not happy with the result, I should have done a lot more visual research and done a few roughs before going straight into the "final" drawings, I didn't manage my time very well. I did try to include some of my "image kit" in there: the eyes in the background of the third image, and I meant for the girl to be the same one as in my summer project, but I re-read the story and thought she was too young so it wouldn't have worked.

Sign 3 research - Gustave Doré

This is an illustration for Donkey Skin by the French artist Gustave Doré (1832-1883), and above is an other illustration of his for The Little Red Riding Hood. What I'm particularyly interested in with these illustrations are the atmosphere given by the forest and the use of lights/shadows.

Sign 2- Inspeyera Map

(bad picture, better one will come, I've also made the words stand out a bit more since)

The brief was to create a map of your land of inspiration using your "image kit" from your collection and summer project. It was a bit of a challenge to figure out how to put my "collection" in, since I'd done it wrong, but that was good, I always try way harder when I'm told I won't be able to make it.

So I used the hands, tree/leaves and doors from the summer project, and I put the eyes in as leaves.

The key says that the doors are briefs (open doors = open briefs, closed one = restricted brief, tiny one= very very restricted brief), the little curvy ladders in between are "paths to wisdom" and the eye-leaves are "top-class refined ideas" while the other leaves are vague ideas and slightly more defined ideas.

I was thinking of photosynthesis as the link from leaves to roots- seeing to drawing, and of course it involves the whole idea of growth, from seeing, exploring, drawing, and working.

I'm not very happy with how the watercolour pencil in-between leaves turned out in the end, feels like they kind of ruined it, and I wish I'd had time to make the hands actually draw things (which was the original idea). I'm quite happy with the idea and message though, and I hope I'll be able to re-work it properly sometime.

Sign 1- Eye Collection

(Not really getting the blogging habit yet.. )
So I guess I misinterpreted the brief, I thought we were suppose to gather a collection of 50 drawings of one type of thing then categorize them, but we were meant to do different types of things we're "obsessed" about. A bit frustrating because that's what I meant to do at first but then I talked to a few people and that's when I got confused.
Still fun though, categorized them according to the number of light reflections present.