Exam Evaluation

A2 Graphics- Exam Project: ‘Inside, Outside and In-between’ Final Evaluation

When we started off, we were all given general insight into each of three options of the project: book jackets, book illustration and typography books. This included getting us all started with observational drawings, using techniques we would be able to think about and use further on. I strayed into the areas of techniques and mediums I had used before like paper cutting and digital experiments, working out how they would fit with the project I had in mind. Early on, I decided to follow book covers as though I hadn’t explored minimalism before, was still the one I felt didn’t have the most rigid guidelines of what you had to produce. As Book Jackets range in style according to the text and genre of the book, the best way the find inspiration is to read the books and look at artist according to the method you are using in your experimentation.

I chose Terry Pratchett’s Discworld collection of novels as what to base my jackets on as they are works of fantasy, based on another world, meaning and interesting take on the theme of inside, outside and in-between. What I took the meaning of the project to be related to these books are inside: what is really there, outside: what people see and in-between: what people expect to see. This is based on the theory explained in a few of the novels that people rarely see what is really there, only what they expect to see. This is the one of the issues in the main book I was experimenting with, called ‘Monstrous Regiment’ a parody and a book that challenges the view presented in ‘Monstrous Regiment of women’ by John Knox. I chose as accompaniments ‘Night Watch’ and ‘Hogfather’, as- though they do not feature a continuing storyline nor are next chronologically in Pratchett’s series of work- they are feature ideas of a state of things not being all of what they seem.

As progressed through this project, I’ve come across new inspirations at every new approach I took. Going through the double exposure tutorials, which inspired my idea of seamlessly merging layers for my jacket to symbolise the layers of intricacy and the balance of inside outside and in-between, then onto the abstract digital layer placement inspired by Ciara Phelan, fan illustrations of characters from the book then onto digital layers in a minimalist restrictions, created by the University of Cardiff for a poster. This inspired me to use the observational drawings and the experiments I had started with, liking particularly the aesthetic uses of colour illustrations on tracing paper, which I linked very closely to the project theme. Creating more illustrations to base on the books, lead me to the work of Hennie Haworth’s work, using different colours over each over layer to create a multi-coloured pattern. While working on the digital side of my exam outcome and putting the layers together, I also notice a handmade similarity to Ciara Phelan, who inspired using my primary source photographs which I try and work upon.

Overall, this project has been how well ideas develop through the refinement of ideas and individual research yield unique results. I have enjoyed the journey I went down, though clearer links should of been made as well as clearer refinement and greater inspiration from an artist but each experiment took me closer to a better result and what I wanted. As the process to making my outcome is long and requires detail, and because I expand every time I make it, I should think my outcome will show how far I’ve come, though making all three at once, is very time consuming and I hope to finish all of them in time to the best I can possibly make it look.

Final evaluation

1. Write an explanation of your brief - what did you have to do? How did you come up with the ideas for this project? 
To follow up from the CD packaging project is my Personal Project, which allowed me to write my own brief rather then follow a brief set out at the beginning and as such it deviates more noticeably from what I have done before as the project allowed me to explore methods and techniques which I personally preferred more. In the end, my idea involved designing and making toys handmade as it was a hobby I did in my spare time, however this would have to include various links to follow up from my previous project, which I chose to me the artwork, the design of the toys linking to my artist/ performer for the CD project and the use of colour and textiles to have a similar theme. My main theme from the CD project was the idea of space and exploration so I used some of artwork in the background and the idea for the top motion came from the exploration aspect so I decided on giving my toy character a journey.

2. Write about the creative 'journey' of the project - how did the project and ideas evolve from start to finish through experimentation and research?

It started from what my ideas of what I most wanted to do for this project so I mind mapped my best ideas which were 'toy making', 'animation' and 'costume design t-shirts' and all these projects would have to link to the CD packaging project. I chose the toy making idea but decided on using the toys I would make in a stop-motion animation advert after a discussion with my teacher on the purposes of my toys and the meaning of graphic communication design as a whole as a way of telling an audience what it is so you can sell it to them. I started then to look for inspiration for not only the animation and toy design, but the fabric and artwork I wanted to include as detail in my toy. I would say that my biggest inspirations were marydoodles, whose artwork and film editing of her illustrations, though not exactly stop-motion, shows her use of film understanding and narrative as well as inspiring ink illustrations and Shawnimals, who create simple yet stunning toys for children. Here I decided that what I making these toys would be for a recycling company it reflected the message in the song I wanted to use in my advert, 'I wanna be' by StarKid. I also decided to design a new logo as StarKid is Musical theatre production company, not a toy company though they do sell merchandise. My logo development really helped my think about what fabric and colours I should use and reflecting on StarKid's puppets in their various productions and linking it to my theme and who I am making it for, I took a puppet and made it with all the developments I made to make it my own. While this was happening, I was also discovering a story for my animation and practising my toy movement. In my final animation shoot, I decided to feature some of my main work from the the CD packaging project as that best suited with my theme and also I tied up the links in this personal project.

3. Who inspired your final outcomes? - You MUST talk about who has inspired your work - include images and links where possible. 

In my AS-A2, my inspirations came from these virtual wallpaper tutorials as they were the lift of to further experimentation: 

For my Personal project, I wanted these tutorials to be the building blocks and inspiration for the design of my toy as they were a big part of my AS- A2 work, though I knew I needed more inspiration then just the artwork of the piece. Looking at animation and toy artists were a big help as well too, as they helped understand how creative I could make my toy and video. It started with quite a few people, but my biggest inspirations were Jan Svankmajer for stop motion, Marydoodles for artwork, editing and effects and the Shawnimals toy company. 

4. What do you think you have done well? What has worked? Are you happy with your final outcomes?

What has worked the best in my video outcome has been the editing I think. I am happy with the way shots move together so my toy looks like it is moving and the transitions and pacing works well. I was initially aiming for the video length of 30 seconds, but as the video can out at a minutes length, this works even better as my message is fully addressed and it works well as a story. In editing I lost some detail of smoother movement, but when I cut it, I thought it was for the best so it could speed up the number of shots per second, though in a way which wouldn't make it too jumpy. 

5. What do you think you could have improved in your final outcome? - you need to talk about something, nobody is perfect!

What I could of definitely improved on would be the quality of the shot. I limited due to my camera as it adjusts it's focus and flash every shot, so each shot looks different in the way of lighting and focus. I also had to press my camera to take the shots rather than using it with a remote meaning that in many shots the camera moves out of position, so it isn't lined perfectly and looks unprofessional. I would have definitely have used a better camera. I could also spent more time on my sets and typography and as it is, my video looks rushed.

6. Conclusion - overall how did you find the project? What techniques would you like to develop further in the future?

It was hard at first, figuring out what we had to do ourselves. Making things not taught everyday is often hard, I think I adapted and did the best I can. I certainly helped figure out the best way to dye fabric and sew a child's toy, so I can do better in the future.

Final Outcome

Primary Images

To prove that I feel that moving into Toy making, here I have two basic toys that I made a year ago in my spare time out of old pencil cases and bags, as a mark of celebration for leaving high school, as it gave me the opportunity to rip up and reuse some of the equipment that annoyed me at school. The one on the right was made first and you can see on the one on the left that the design is not as roughly cut.

These are an interesting and different example of how toy designs can vary in look, shape and material. The Typography creates an interesting and unique element with an urban style which would appeal to young adults, not just children. This photo was taken in Kingston.

A bear made out of packaging tissue, cardboard and sellotape, this is an example of how a toy can be made out of reusable material.

Experimentation

To keep this project close to StarKid which was featured in my last project, I decided to sort through each toy or puppet that they have made for their main musical shows, allowing for me to pick the best few to look at make with my own design.

To play with these designs, I have taken a few of the puppets and made them into the letters StarKid using chalk pastels. The smudging of the pastels gives them a furry look, accenting their purposes as toys. As puppets, they all have a distinctive look and colour, which links to the target audience of the musicals; children to young adults. 

Moving away from the StarKid design, I tried to create my own look and favourite style of toy, so it took the shape of the Summer Sun-set Cavey, which is evident in its shape and design, though maybe a little too much. To distinguish it, I used Live Trace and Paint to create an effect that looks a little out of control! I painted it with an abstract brush to give it a whisky, furry look.

To tone down the 'out of control' look, I made a simple mouse design that would be made out of cloth. It is a mouse because of the recycled materials it would be made out of, and I imagine mice running around a dump full of old, thrown out materials. To link to my previous project the background is a primary piece in my outcome, which should have been the design on the toy but it was a challenge as some of the lines made in the Live Trace and design were too thin.

Fabric crayon proved to be interesting and enjoyable to use in designing, though difficult to get the right effect. As it came out weaker than what I hoped, I learnt that the best colours to use are darker blues and purple. Here I test out an idea for the brand name. The name comes from StarKid, though I thought that it would be better if I changed the logo from the previous project.

Here I test out colour on fabric using different mediums without using fabric dye. First we have ink, which helped prove my belief that blue and purple looked pleasing on that colour of fabric. To spread the ink out and to help colours blend into others, I applied water. The lighter the colours looked the better, but I didn't want them too dark or people wouldn't be able to see them.

This piece also made with ink, showed me it was best not mix fairly contrasting colour groups. I wanted to spell out 'STAR' all in a yellow, though I saw that the white background would be hard to see it on, especially if all the yellow words were pressed together so you couldn't distinguish them, so I tried to change the order with what I thought was black but it turned out to be dark blue. However I saw that yellow and orange worked well, but darker colours looked too dirty in comparison to lighter colours.

Here I tried to look at darker colors with acrylic paint. The blues work the best against the white. In this example, the black and green did not work as well and more unpleasant to the eye as the black looked too dirty and as the green was darker, became too dirty for my tastes as well, but the dark blue worked well with the lighter blue.

To look at lighter colours, I used water-colours in shades of blue and purple as they looked best combined together. The colours came out well, though in places a little dull. The white patches were supposed to symbolize stars as the theme of my last project was space, though it contradicts the uniqueness of the 'i' in this version of the logo and brand name.  

Moving on from paint to pens, I once again tried to find the best colour amongst felt tip pens. They all came out at a good balance, making quite interesting rainbow colours, however a few colours mixed in with others that wasn't aesthetically pleasing and though parts looked dirty it looks overall in the various shades of blue and the yellows.

Green shirt dyed blue with string markings

Dark Checked Shirt

Dyed Linen sheet with rubber band mark

Now it was time to do it with the real thing: dyeing fabric. I chose a medium ocean blue as it wouldn't be too light or too dark and what I liked was that it also created shades of purple as well, especially in the second material as it had dark checked design. I chose these materials as they were past there useful stage: the first two are old shirts and the last was a linen cloth I picked up in Oxfam so they are all recycled materials in a way. To experiment with their colour, I tied a rubber around the linen sheet then tied string around the previously green shirt to see how the results would vary between the two. As shown they came out very different as the sheet came out with a circle pattern though not very clear and the shirt had a strange, abstract, wispy yet beautiful circle that was not straight at all. Parts of the old green design were showing through that reminded me of one of the art pieces for my previous project outcome. 

Let's not forget about the eyes of a toy which are in usual cases the most important part of a toy as can add to what makes the toy unique. Here I have examples that I was thinking of in making the Bug toy: a bottle cap sewn onto the fabric (this proved to be too impractical as bottle caps are too large in size and sewing them takes a lot of time), wobbly eyes which I tested for their size (though these were too low quality and lacked professionalism) and cut pieces of plastic in the shape of two round eyes, which I used for the Bug doll as they had a resemblance to Bug's eyes. 

Stop motion animation

This is a quick experiment I made while creating my own version of the Bug toy for the StarKid musical 'Starship'. Here you will see me actually make the toy through stop motion animation, though in the video I have the toy filling do it by pushing all the parts into place. The idea is that they found all these parts which are made out of old materials which have been lying around: for the head it's an old towel, the left arm is coloured tissue, the right arm is crepe paper, the left leg is paper, cardboard, rubber-bands and netting, the right leg is some old cotton material and the torso is some netting left over from Christmas. The eyes and feelers are pieces of plastic and coloured pipe-cleaners. The song 'I Wanna Be' from 'Starship' is played over this as this is the song Bug sings when he aspires to be something more than what he is and I feel that this is appropiate in this situation as well as he is essentially a pile of rubbish in the form of a red ant, but that doesn't mean he can't be lovable.