Category Archives: Proj3 Process

Project 3: Ego – Research and Process

2D is coming to a close with our final project, “Ego”. Time to get my brain cracking again!!

RESEARCH

For this project, we were free to decide on what medium and style we wanted to work with. For me, I want to use a style that is popular with my generation. I looked up online and here are some results.

Flat illustration with pops of colour/minimal colour

Vibrant, fluid colour

Photo collage

The first two styles are much more illustration based as compared to the last style. While the first two seem to depend heavily on colours, the last one depends more on the juxtaposition of images and colours come in as more of a secondary importance.

Although the other two cater to this project that focuses on colour, I have chosen to go with the photo collage style because I like how different it is from the rest. Making something new out of existing images has a somewhat fresh and eye-catching feel to me too!

ARTIST REFERENCE:

ADAM HALE

Adam Hale is a collage artist who shares his quick work on Instagram under the handle @the.daily.splice. One main thing I am taking away from his work is his focus on being unconventional, putting images that don’t seem to relate together and creating new meaning with it.

COLDPLAY – UP&UP

Another artist reference, not really, but this specific music video is filled with the style I am interested in recreating!


PROCESS

Looking at past year students’ works, I have decided to use this website called Paletton to help me choose my colours.

Image from http://paletton.com/#uid=1000u0kllllaFw0g0qFqFg0w0aF
Accessed on 7 Nov 2017

Here are some sketches of my ideas for the panels:

Planning

After consulting Shirley, I realised my outcomes were too straight forward. Again, I had to think of making these outcomes unconventional.

My second set of sketches, including colour choice:

Planning round 2

For my colours, I went with adjacent colours (3 colours) and triad colours. The adjacent colours would be used for my first and second panels, and the triad for my last panel, where both sets of adjacent colours mix, representing my ego mixing with the situation to give the outcome. I also want to stick to 3 colours as with photo collage work, lots of images have varying tones/colours so it’s not easy to stay at just 2 colours.


EQUATION 1: Jaguar

Image 1: Me, a capable and independent individual

I used a jaguar to represent me because it is one of the agilest animals in the animal kingdom. I donned it with Renaissance items as well as the Roman arch in the background to represent the idea of being forward thinking, as well as the image of space in the background to represent going beyond.

In this image, I used shades of brown (and red) because I wanted the image to feel safe and calm when juxtaposed to the second image.

Image 2:  Halloween Horror Nights

I’m seriously not a fan of haunted houses or anything scary. I went for Halloween Horror Nights only once and could only bring myself to go through one house (with my eyes closed).

Image from https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-illustration-haunted-house-top-hill-night-fantasy-scene-cemetery-image58780622
Accessed on 20 Nov 2017

I hence wanted to have the typical haunted-house-on-a-hill look with a huge moon and a long and winding path. I used shades of purple here to give the whole image an eerie feel. I do feel that the composition here can be pushed further though. Maybe I could add elements of space to make it seem as if Halloween Horror Nights is something out of my world, something I would not even give a second thought to.

Image from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/AbDSiQYMyQd4ndgoH_c1omRDUkao5oXH9UwE7ezZQ2zUe4uu34g7dFc/
Accessed on: 19 Nov 2017

Image 3: All known is lost…

For this last image, I wanted to have the Jaguar lose its spots as if his soul were sucked out of him. I tried not to literally remove its spots but use a pixel stretch effect to represent the Jaguar’s skin’s movement away from all things scary. I also threw in a windows error window to further bring forward the idea that the jaguar is so scared that it cannot think and malfunctions.

There is a triad colour scheme here where I mix the colours from the first and second images. I used a dark blue for the background with a scratchy texture to create an eerie look. The Jaguar remains a colour of brown, with hints of blue, so that it can stand out from the background. This kind of colour juxtaposition is very common with movie posters to heighten the contrast, and also because while these colours are on the opposite ends of the colour wheel, they are complementary.

Poster example
Image from http://abduzeedo.com/node/41225
Accessed on 20 Nov 2017

The colours for this image is okay but I feel the composition can be worked on a bit more as the feeling of being scared doesn’t seem to be conveyed quite well.

I thought maybe I could put the jaguar in a photo frame, like for his funeral after it dies from shock at the haunted house.

funny

That would be hilarious, but I was aiming for more abstract ways of representing this. I took to Pinterest to get my inspiration.

I found that it was a common thing to have objects and patterns branching out from the head of the subject. Each image told a different story because of the objects that branched out from behind each subject. I decided to work with that to express the feeling of being scared. (work will be in final)


EQUATION 2: Egg

Image 1: Me, an egg, with a shell as hard as brick.

I initially intended for the hens to surround the egg like a pattern but I eventually placed it in such a way where the hens frame the egg. For me, this composition is fine but too straightforward. It is also difficult to tell that the egg is as hard as brick – it looks fragile as always.

Colour wise, I used a darker orange for the egg to make it stand out. I kept the colours adjacent as I want the egg to look comfortable with its surroundings instead of sticking out like a sore thumb.

Image 2: Receiving a lot of love and affection.

For this image, I managed to lean towards the more unconventional side in which I represented the love and affection through the pinkish solution. With that, I also kept my colours close to pink, pastel hues to emulate love.

Image 3: Beginning to melt

I think the hard part with a lot of the images is composition. There are so many interesting ways I can tell my story but it is hard to figure out which would be the best or even what other interesting ways I could share my story. I really had to crack my brain for this project.

For example, here, I initially wanted the egg to leak out a little bit of yolk (representing how its walls have been broken), but I thought of trying for something more whacky and went with it leaking a river. I tinted the river pink and it didn’t look good at all. I tried another idea where steam comes out of the crack as if the crack had just formed and the air is being released… but it just looks like the egg is farting… The pink rain emoji idea does not work as well because it stands out too much compared to its surroundings.

I realised the problem didn’t lie in what was coming out of the crack in the eggshell, but in where the crack was placed. Of course, placing it at the bottom would make a viewer instinctively think of a butt.

I also realised the image looked a bit plain compared to usual photo collage work. They usually have a lot going on but somehow they all blend together nicely to form a surreal, dreamy landscape.  (work will be in final)

Colour wise, the image has a mixture of light pink/orange and blue tones, again as with the other equations, to show the reaction between the subject and the situation.


EQUATION 3: Laptop

Image 1: Me, a fully functional, brand new laptop.

For this image, I was going for the 80s retro style, hence the repeated laptops slowly moving through space, towards you, and the sparkle at the corner. For colour choice, I chose cool blue with green hues to give that sense of a brand new, high tech laptop.

Image 2: A sea of homework

I used orange shades in this image to contrast the first. I put the laptop in at around a third in the image as well to create a juxtaposition of the colour and size, showing the laptop being flooded with work. I also chose the orange shades to give a subtle hint to heat which would relate to my last image where the computer is overheated.

Looking at this image again, I might bump up the intensity of the orange and reds to deepen the contrast. (Image in final)

Image 3: Malfunction

Ah, yes, the rainbow wheel of death. I tried to simplify the colours in the wheel but it was still quite distracting. My choice in pastel colour does not really give the image the sense of something dire.

I tried making the background darker but the colours really clashed and did not work out at all.

Shirley suggested I could use the old mac icon for a broken hard disk – it tells the same story without all the colours:

So cute, mac should still stick to these icons
Image from: https://priceonomics.com/the-woman-behind-apples-first-icons/
Accessed on: 19 Nov 2017

On top of changing the icon, I probably had to change my approach to this as well, colour wise. I decided to stick to the darker shades of my already chosen palette (see final work)


EQUATION 4: Hoodie

Image 1: Me, a hoodie with personality and character.

Following from the last image of the first equation, I had objects come out from the subject, this time from the head of the hoodie. For my colour choice, I chose cooler toned colours as I never saw myself as a cheery, bright-coloured individual. The hoodie, however, is given a brighter green colour to stand out from the muted background if not the composition as a whole would look too muted.

Image 2: A big social event

What do social events for young adults like me always without a doubt contain? Booze. It’s also filled with chatty and loud individuals and usually overall noisy and a little crowded. Although it sounds unappealing, the noise and crowd usually add to the bright atmosphere of these social events. Hence I chose the bright orange shades and the image of the sunbeams.

While creating this image, I tried looking for engraved images of people raising their glass but could not find one, so I got to doing it myself. Previously there was a senior that found an engraving preset that gives the engraving effect seen on money but it didn’t seem to work too well for me. I did a bit of researching and found this simple method to create the same engraving texture.

My try with the tutorial:

Image 3: Tucking myself away in a corner

For this image, I inverted the colours and used the cool, dark colours for those at the social event and the bright colours for myself to make the contrast more prominent, as well as to draw attention to the hoodie in the composition. I added small streaks of orange for the glasses of alcohol as with the previous image, and at the lights and cheeks of some of the figures. I did so to tone down the contrast between my hoodie and its surroundings, as well as create more dimension to my image.

Initial image without extra highlights

 

On to my final pieces (-: